New York Comic-Con is coming at us, bringing dread and liver damage in its wake, but one thing that will be improved at this year’s show is anupdated harassment policy and far greater visibility for it. Last year’s con was marred by a bunch of disturbing incidents, and this year NYCC reached out to The Mary Sue, the geek girl oriented website, to help fashion a new improved policy, and that they did::
New York Comic Con has a ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY for harassment of any kind, including but not limited to:
stalking
intimidation
offensive verbal comments
physical assault and/or battery
harassing or non-consensual photography or recording
sustained disruption of Panels, signings, and other events
bathroom policing
inappropriate physical contact
unwelcome physical attention
in relation to, but not limited to:race
color
national origin
gender
gender identity
gender presentation
sexual orientation
age
body size
disability
appearance
religion
citizenship
pregnancy
Showing how out of it I am, I didn’t even know what some of these are: “bathroom policing” not not mean putting on your Hetalia cosplay in the bathroom but rather checking the gender of people who go into bathrooms to make sure they are anatomically correct.
NYCC’s Harassment policy is not that easy t find on their website, but it is part of the main drop down menu and is a prominent part of their app, which you can use to report ANY kind of incident of harassment.
Amy Reeder Hadley also drew the poster which will be shown prominently at the show. While in a FB post she says she considered usingone of her own characters, this more abstract iconic treatment lets it be adapted to many more uses.
Just as a reminder: if you experience harassing behavior at New York Comic Con, use the app to report it, or report it to the nearest t-shirted volunteer. A lot has changed since last year and I hope this is one of the biggest changes.
Growing up that is called “snitching” -for good, or bad, or better, or worse most reading this will agree that we perpetuate, and enable that behavior. I stress in that apathy on the part of “the victim”, because of adolescent fears of what others may think, or of being beaten up, or getting in trouble with parents is what actually victimizes ‘the victim’ -So then we “grow up”, put on a bunch of materials, and makeup that hides our own faces in that we emulate an advertisement disguised as entertainment soo much to the extent that we may be able to rant off writers, artists, and alternative dimensions about our favorite character-based asset, yet simultaneously most of us could not do the same when it comes to democracy; naming our congressman, and how to meet them, what gerrymandering has to do with datamining, what all the amendments are, the suffrage movement, where our town hall meetings are, or who comprises city council… -but we are just as good at obsessing on who we think at work is a ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’, just like we anticipate how Marvel or DC will be better than either or next year… Because like, its not like stories based on conservative/christian-extremist “Red Scare” tactics, speculators bubbles, and homo-erotic power fantasies in little over-priced pamphlets are ever unique, or predictable -I know riiight?!
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