Crystal Huff: “Why I’m Not At Arisia Anymore: My Rapist is President. Again.”

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Alessandra Kelley

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Earlier today Crystal Huff posted the heartrending and infuriating Why I’m Not At Arisia Anymore: My Rapist is President. Again.

Her story was also hosted by Jim C. Hines and reported on on File 770, both in their news summary and by itself.

On paper Arisia has an anti-harassment policy.

When called upon to implement it in real life, Arisia treated Crystal Huff abominably.

Arisia 2019’s guests of honor, Daniel Jose Older and Malka Older, have announced they are withdrawing unless the situation changes.

Nalo Hopkinson has turned down Arisia’s request that she be a 2020 GoH.
 
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SarahJane

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Wow, that was really upsetting to read. It's bad enough to be raped and stalked, but then to be so betrayed by people you once considered friends. Crystal is very brave to speak out like this. Hopefully, some good will come from this awful situation.
 

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This was a disappointing read.

On one hand, I understand their not taking the rape claim at face value. Sexual contact that begins under consent and then one person violates the terms is really hard to deal with, and I can see them erring on the side of presumed innocence. Even with written consent agreements, it can be difficult to prove that the sex went outside it without the immediate opening of a rape investigation.

But the harassment after the relationship ended is obvious, with a clear record of unwanted and continued contact; a record that includes witnesses and voicemail. The board should follow their policy and sack this asshole.
 

jchines

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Statement from the Arisia Executive Board:

“Effective immediately, Noel Rosenberg is no longer President of Arisia, Inc. On October 26th, at an emergency meeting of the other members of the Arisia Executive Board, the first step we took was to ask Noel to resign as President of Arisia Corporate and we have accepted that resignation. The Arisia 2019 Conchair has informed the Eboard that Noel is no longer the Operations Division Head, and will not be placed in any other staff positions.


“Yesterday we issued a short statement that ‘the Arisia Executive Board takes our Incident Response process and the safety and concerns of our community very seriously.’ We mean that, but we acknowledge that we failed severely in this case…”
 

Nivarion

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They take it so seriously that they ignored it until it went public, and then let the guy bow out in a way that protects his future chances of a career in this type of thing.

I believe that they take it seriously. Not everybody might, but I do. [/sarc]
 

Don B

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This post really should be moved to a different forum. Yes, it is related to the topic of interest here because Arisia is an SF con, and some may know of and be interested in this controversy. However, it neither focuses on writing nor an AW member's literary effort, so I'd say another forum would be more appropriate.
 

amergina

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This post really should be moved to a different forum. Yes, it is related to the topic of interest here because Arisia is an SF con, and some may know of and be interested in this controversy. However, it neither focuses on writing nor an AW member's literary effort, so I'd say another forum would be more appropriate.

This is a fine forum for this post.

-Amergina, one of the SF|F mods.
 

zanzjan

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This is a fine forum for this post.

-Amergina, one of the SF|F mods.

As the other SFF mod, I want to be on record that I concur with amergina here.

I would like to add that I have been an attendee at Arisia since the con began, and I personally know people on both the victim and concom sides of this unfolding, complex situation, and I am not going to weigh in in any way on the specifics of the allegations. That said, I myself stopped attending Arisia for several years after another regular attendee who had previously assaulted me multiple times (not at Arisia) spent one con stalking and harrassing me, and it was only because of Arisia's stated no-tolerance harrassment policy that I was willing to return in the belief that if that person bothered me there again it would be officially dealt with. It was not a matter I ever made the convention directly aware of, but it was critical to me to know that I could if needed and that it would be taken seriously. I am absolutely certain I am not the only woman with that particular experience, and who chooses what cons to attend based on their policies. Information that a convention may not be living up to its promises is extremely important, as is the followup conversation of how (or if) those failures are being addressed.

While one could make an argument that community issues are not directly tied to writing SFF, I think that is a shortsighted and flawed analysis; when people cannot participate in the community without jeopardizing their own safety, it deprives the community of its diversity of voices, both of readers and writers, to the detriment of both individuals' careers and the health and vitality of the entire field. Writers (and editors, and artists) are almost always fans first, and particularly in the SFF world community and industry significantly overlap. The safety of any of us should be of concern to all of us, IMNSHO.
 
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