on power differentials
Jun. 26th, 2020 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wiredI used to pick people up at fannish conventions and professional conferences. Like meet a new person, flirt, take back to my hotel room for consensual shenanigans all in a weekend.
I might consider still doing that at a fannish convention, since I don't have any particular standing in that community. But I won't do it at a work conference.
See, in the last ~5 years, until the covid times, I went to a lot of conferences, in my professional capacity. For the last three years, it was literally my job description. I'm famous, on a small part of the internet.
It's not that I probably couldn't do it (although when would I sleep?). It's that I was at work. And that these people, even if they currently don't have the same employer, were my co-workers. And we don't fuck co-workers. My job-title has a few thousand people across the world and we see each other all the time, we're at conferences together all the time, like book editors. We get to know each other, we become friends, we know exactly who is queer or Very Married or The Other Kind of Married. We could probably make some low-drama arrangements.
But I still won't do it, because that would be implicitly condoning the behavior of consensually fucking co-workers at conferences, and that behavior is what predators (mostly but not exclusively men) hide behind. "Well, everyone knows that this conference is all $technology during the day and then you get drunk and get laid at night."
It would be lovely to have someone who was a consistent conference hookup whenever we were in the same place, but not so lovely that I'm willing to have it cover for predators. Not so lovely that it's worth risking anyone's professional credibility and employability. Because let's be real - men might survive being outed about a straight hookup, but queer people and women get less latitude.
So I guess it's not that I don't understand the temptation to screw around with people who you admire, who are brilliant in a way that you appreciate, who you've had a crush on, who are right there in person and maybe a couple whiskeys into Bad Decision Land. It's that I'm not 25 anymore, and I know that professional relationships are way more durable, valuable, and reliable than hot sex.
Don't fuck your co-workers, even the ones who have a different employer.
(if you know who I am, you'll note I left out a lot of identifying data. This is not locked, because I want to say it out loud, but also not tied to my professional identity, thanks for keeping it that way)
I might consider still doing that at a fannish convention, since I don't have any particular standing in that community. But I won't do it at a work conference.
See, in the last ~5 years, until the covid times, I went to a lot of conferences, in my professional capacity. For the last three years, it was literally my job description. I'm famous, on a small part of the internet.
It's not that I probably couldn't do it (although when would I sleep?). It's that I was at work. And that these people, even if they currently don't have the same employer, were my co-workers. And we don't fuck co-workers. My job-title has a few thousand people across the world and we see each other all the time, we're at conferences together all the time, like book editors. We get to know each other, we become friends, we know exactly who is queer or Very Married or The Other Kind of Married. We could probably make some low-drama arrangements.
But I still won't do it, because that would be implicitly condoning the behavior of consensually fucking co-workers at conferences, and that behavior is what predators (mostly but not exclusively men) hide behind. "Well, everyone knows that this conference is all $technology during the day and then you get drunk and get laid at night."
It would be lovely to have someone who was a consistent conference hookup whenever we were in the same place, but not so lovely that I'm willing to have it cover for predators. Not so lovely that it's worth risking anyone's professional credibility and employability. Because let's be real - men might survive being outed about a straight hookup, but queer people and women get less latitude.
So I guess it's not that I don't understand the temptation to screw around with people who you admire, who are brilliant in a way that you appreciate, who you've had a crush on, who are right there in person and maybe a couple whiskeys into Bad Decision Land. It's that I'm not 25 anymore, and I know that professional relationships are way more durable, valuable, and reliable than hot sex.
Don't fuck your co-workers, even the ones who have a different employer.
(if you know who I am, you'll note I left out a lot of identifying data. This is not locked, because I want to say it out loud, but also not tied to my professional identity, thanks for keeping it that way)
no subject
on 2020-06-26 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2020-06-26 07:15 pm (UTC)This is a particular facet of maturity that is so incredibly hard to convey to people who have just not done that many collaborative work-y things yet.
no subject
on 2020-06-27 01:44 am (UTC)Back in the olden times, I regularly slept with a co-worker during technical conferences. To be fair, we were married at the time and sharing a room made the trips easier to get budget approval for. :-D
But after that ended, I regarded conferences completely off-limits for FunTimes or even flirting (not that I'd been doing the latter before then) for multiple reasons, any of which is sufficient alone:
The Petrie Multiplier, not that I knew it by that name at the time. The USENIX conferences were semi-jokingly called the "unisex" conferences, and even a completely polite single-sentence flirt from a quarter of the men attending would result in each woman having to deal with several of them in any given day.
Setting an inappropriate standard. The conferences I went to were (mostly but not completely, sigh) devoid of "booth babes" and I didn't want to contribute to anyone's perception (including my own!) that women were attending for any reason other than to participate and contribute as professionals.
Social standards and power differentials. People socialized AFAB have years of societal pressure to go along, not say no, etc and as a cisgender heterosexual white man I hit privilege bingo. Even with "yes means yes", unless I know someone feels safe saying "no" it's difficult for me to trust their "yes".
At science fiction conventions, the gender mix is much less unbalanced; professional reasons for attendance exist, but are not as universal as at conferences; power differentials, on the other hand, still apply.
At cons I have less social power than I would at a conference (I'm not a potential co-worker/interviewer/etc). I still do my best to stay mindful of the imbalance, and rather than flirting directly prefer to open invitations (or accept flirtation at me on the rare occasions it happens); I'm sure I've missed chances that way, but I'd rather miss a few than overstep. Enough connections have developed to keep me from missing out completely, and I'm fine with that.
Not that physical proximity at conferences or conventions will happen any time soon, so right now this is all theory and no practice. *sigh* (I've already missed four different conventions since early March, and will miss several more by the end of the year. I'm not optimistic about next year, either.)