And people turn their heads and look away and make excuses, rather than taking an active stand. Urgh. *renews commitment to not-being-passive, even in small ways*
This story was horrifying to me, and as you said, this was probably not an isolated incident and we only knew about this because it happened to a network journalist. I was glad to see the mention of the women and soldiers who eventually rescued her, goodness knows if she would have survived had they not done so, and it says something to me about the women there that they put themselves at risk to help another woman no matter where she was from.
Last year, in the weeks following Dragon*Con, there we numerous people who talked about how they and their friends had been assaulted in various ways at the con.....in public areas as well as hallways and stairways of the hotels. I do recall in particular that the football fans last year (mostly drunken groups of young guys from the schools playing football at the bowl game that weekend) were particularly obnoxious, and security was definitely on edge.
But I really was shocked to hear about the dozens of incidents that had taken place. Everyone on the D*C LJ community had serious discussions on preventing this from happening again. We reached out to the management of the host hotels, we have been banding together, and everyone is committed to looking out for everyone else next year.
So, until we can get rid of that culture of rape acceptability, get across to people in general and men specifically that no means NO, we all have to do the best we can to be aware of what's going on around us, and to back each other up when needed.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 04:21 pm (UTC)This story was horrifying to me, and as you said, this was probably not an isolated incident and we only knew about this because it happened to a network journalist. I was glad to see the mention of the women and soldiers who eventually rescued her, goodness knows if she would have survived had they not done so, and it says something to me about the women there that they put themselves at risk to help another woman no matter where she was from.
Last year, in the weeks following Dragon*Con, there we numerous people who talked about how they and their friends had been assaulted in various ways at the con.....in public areas as well as hallways and stairways of the hotels. I do recall in particular that the football fans last year (mostly drunken groups of young guys from the schools playing football at the bowl game that weekend) were particularly obnoxious, and security was definitely on edge.
But I really was shocked to hear about the dozens of incidents that had taken place. Everyone on the D*C LJ community had serious discussions on preventing this from happening again. We reached out to the management of the host hotels, we have been banding together, and everyone is committed to looking out for everyone else next year.
So, until we can get rid of that culture of rape acceptability, get across to people in general and men specifically that no means NO, we all have to do the best we can to be aware of what's going on around us, and to back each other up when needed.