Probably gonna get yelled at for this

April 23, 2014 at 4:20 pm (Particle Physics)

I’m probably gonna get in trouble with some people for this.  But frankly… I can’t just let my thoughts go unsaid.  I can’t confine them to Twitter either, because there’s a lot more than 140 characters I want to say.

This post is in direct reply to a number of other posts… that are, sadly, on another blogging service, so I couldn’t exactly use a standard comment.  But, for ease of reference, allow me to provide the needed linkage:

http://brigidkeely.tumblr.com/post/83523795392/a-word-about-bronies-massive-content-notice-for

Here’s the basic summary of events:

Original Poster (SaintCheshire, henceforth referred to as OP) discusses a disturbing event at the recent Babscon event in San Francisco.  At this event a little girl called “Babby,” age 11, befriends the OP and (presumably) her fellow vendors at the convention.  The next day, a terrified Babby asks about hiding under their table for a few minutes.  It turns out that Babby has been followed around for most of the day, and he even tried to get her to follow him up to his hotel room.  When she refused to go with him, at one point he grabbed her arm in the elevator and tried to get her to follow him.

Understandably, and commendably, OP and her colleagues do what any decent people would do.  They invite Babby behind their table and station themselves around her because she’s an 11 year old girl who’s been assaulted by an adult who gives off sixteen different kinds of signals that he dearly needs a visit with Chris Hansen.  They’re all ready and willing to lunge across the table at this asshole and teach him a lesson or three.  Eventually, he comes nosing around the table multiple times, and Babby points him out.  to directly quote the OP:

At this point I’m ready to set him on fire, but when I ask if she needs me to go report him, she shakes her head. She doesn’t want to get in trouble, or make anyone mad.

Well, again understandably, they follow her wishes.  They send one of their number to serve as Babby’s escort when she wants to go around the con, knowing that she isn’t safe while this guy (heretofore referred to as Nitwit McPedo) is at the convention.  When Nitwit comes to nose around the booth, they give him the stinkeye and send him on his way.  They don’t report him though, because Babby doesn’t want them to.

There is followup about how they should’ve reported him, should’ve gotten the police involved, etc.  There is backlash to that because the people who are saying that they should’ve reported him are “policing the decisions of assault victims and survivors.”  All of this goes on in the Tumblr post that I link to, which IS NOT the original blog post.  That said, OP’s blog appears to have been yoinked out from under them, which is why I used that link.  But there’s one big problem here.  Understandably, people are kind of upset about the enivronment that the OP says was there.  Hard to blame her – I’m quoting it below for reference.

My point here: this is why I fucking hate “bronies.” Because grown-ass men are flooding into a space carved out for children—often little girls—and are making it unsafe for them.

I met a lot of non-awful people there, of course. I met a lot of parents and older siblings. A lot of adorable little boys who were happy to empathize with female characters, and a lot of little kids who wanted a picture with cosplays of their favorite pony. I met a lot of people who were cool and nice and just liked cartoons. I met a male Pinkie Pie cosplayer with a Fluttershy lady-friend who juggled and spun plates and was happy to entertain kids, and were generally just really cool people.

But I also met a lot of skeevy dudebros. A lot of guys in fedoras loudly discussing sexual shit in a room with children. Guys who drew/sold/displayed really fucking inappropriate “fanart,” including gross bodypillows that had no purpose in a little kids’ toy convention. I met a guy who gushed with absoluteglee about the pleasure he derives from “corrupting innocence.” I met a lot of people who wanted to take something sweet and nice for children and make it about THEM. A lot of guys who wanted to make it about their dicks. People who made it UNSAFE for the intended audience to even be in attendance.

So yeah. If you call yourself a brony, I’m prolly not gonna trust you. Because I’ve seen y’all in action, and I am not impressed. Frankly I’m infuriated. This is like a bunch of gross neckbeards swarming Disneyland and shoving kids out of the way so they can grope Cinderella, and finding nothing wrong with it because they think they’re entitled to it.

My Little Pony is a really cute show with a lot of nice messages for kids, and gross brony shitweasels are trying to fucking take it from them by force. And I will fight them.

That’s a pretty nasty, ugly con she’s described there.  Here’s the problem.  It didn’t exist.

I was originally going to go off on a rant about the way that folks went and assumed that horrible, horrible things had happened and that the bronies knew about them, and allowed it to go on.  But I’ve just finished an email exchange with some of the Babscon staff.  They had a definite “no adult material” policy for the vendor’s room, and people who were at the con have stated that there weren’t any of those bodypillows (sic) or anything else described there.  10 seconds of internet research turns up the code of conduct of the convention, including their non-harrassment policy.

So at the very least, the environment described… wasn’t real.  This is based on a “she said, she said” situation, but taken with a couple of other elements of the con, it makes that sudden disappearance of the original blog very interesting.

Because there were some people removed from the convention for breaking that non-harassment policy I mentioned.  Some of those people have a well-known disdain for the fact that there are bronies who aren’t puritanical pricks.  I don’t know for certain that there was any connection between these people and the appearance of a blog that describes a den of debauchery at a convention run by numerous people who have run perfectly clean cons in the past, who were running a convention that featured VA’s!  In case you’re wondering, in order to get Hasbro to approve the VA’s for a convention?  You need to keep it clean, for the precise reason that is described there – Hasbro doesn’t want to be connected with anything adult.

I don’t know this for certain.  But I sure as schnitzel suspect it, especially now that the original Tumblr seems to have disappeared.

And if that’s the case, then those Certain People should be frickin’ ashamed of themselves.  Again.

If it’s not the case, then that’s a rant for another night.