[EveningStar]

ping

[MrEdd]

WorldCon is way overpriced, and the staff is overbearing.
Smaller conventions offer a better experience.

[Moonmad27]

I go to Comic Con (in San Diego and last year in London). Much as I love classic science fiction, and despite being older, I would be bored at Worldcon.

[Lysandru]

As much as I resonate with doing away with snotty behavior towards young women, this writer strikes me as being just as obnoxious and bigoted as the people she criticizes.

Anyone who doesn't buy into current fads about "gender flexibility" is automatically an old-fuddy duddy in her view. Somehow, the concept of having respectful disagreement on these issues eludes her.

Rape culture subtext in Firefly? She needs to skip a few womyn's study classes and watch some news reports on what has been doing down in Rotherham, England or northern Iraq.

I find it tragically ironic how closed minded Progressives really are.

[buwaya]

Oy, she’s a delicate flower.

[jeannineinsd]

Thank you for posting this.

The author seems to be a bit of a know-it-all, everything has to be her way or the highway. She preferred the Nine Worlds convention because the badges could list an individual’s preferred gender pronoun. At Worldcon, when she started a public discussion about racism or rape culture she had to field noisy interruptions from her peers.

I have very much enjoyed reading fanfiction these past few years. It has been an oasis for me. I don’t enjoy any current TV shows, and the movies and modern fiction books I enjoy are few and far between. Fanfiction is great for me, because there is no politics, no forcing the liberal point of view down my throat.

If I was happily involved in my fandom, and a know-it-all starting forcing “conversations” about gender identity and racism and rape culture, I would be very angry indeed. I would be one of the people noisily trying to get the conversation back to the fandom.

[Jack Hammer]

Used to love science fiction back in the day - all sorts of space ships, aliens, interplanetary travel, and loads of adventure.

Now every third novel/story has a feminist, socialist, environmentalist, and/or pacifist theme.

Good-bye world of my youth.

[icwhatudo]

“To a certain extent, Worldcon’s size is a barrier to this kind of inclusivity. A 10,000 person behemoth may not be able to implement gender pronoun badges or a color-coded social interaction system, not just because of the sheer volume of people, but because half of them would dismiss it as politically correct nonsense.”

Sounds like Worldcon is my kinda place.

[SuziQ]

At Nine Worlds, you wouldn’t feel belittled for not understanding an ancient in-joke, or for being a fan of anime or superhero comics, or for speaking out against racist subtext in a genre favorite like Firefly or Doctor Who.

The hell? Did this chick watch Firefly with some sort of feminist chip on her shoulder? I've watched every episode of 'Firefly' and the movie, 'Serenity', multiple times, and I have NO clue what she means!

Can't speak about Dr. Who, because I only really watched the show during the time Tom Baker was The Doctor, so maybe the really early ones could have been considered racist or sexist by today's standards, but good grief!!

[a fool in paradise]

People don’t read anymore.

[Nepeta]

I attended 3 worldcons in the 1970s. I stopped going to cons altogether because too many of the people were just insufferable.

[a fool in paradise]

So I read the article and many of the comments, what is it with the politically correct Leftists trying to run roughshod over 50+ years of fandom?

“Outmoded racial and sexual attitudes”.

These little dictators probably despise the speculative/allegory of George Orwell as well.

Ageism appears to be a problem amongst the young.

Not every convention revolves around them or should shift to having computer kiosks (for gaming and chatting naturally, not schedule revisions), choreographed stage dancing, and costume parades to appease them. The traditions of these conventions (including San Diego Con which goes back to 1970) are bigger than any one person or group. YOU choose to come to the annual event, it doesn't trick you into attending. Read more, discover what it is about. It doesn't need to bend to become what you think it should be, go put together your own event. So blogging has replaced fanzines, REALLY? Zines dating back to the 1920s still exist and are sold. I'd wager that well more than half of all websites (blogs even more so) created since 1994 no longer exist (well, unless you printed out each page and stored them in a binder or saved down the website to your harddrive that miraculously did not crash in all of that time and is still compatible with your current hardware configuration).

Readers read, writers write, and the current generation lives for the moment (the selfie, the laughs, and the nostalgia for last season's tv show).

I'm sick of 1/4-1/3 of the questions at con panels coming from leftists bitter about something they learned in their gender identity studies course. That's not fandom, that's political activism invading the escapist literature realm.

And for bloggers to hope that the holdouts will "die off soon" reveals their own unwillingness to compromise or consider views other than their own.

Forrest J. Ackerman was an attendee at the first world con, and he went in a "man of the future" costume (probably to the embarrassment of at least some of the other dozen attendees). But he built up a vast library and toured many thousands through his home over the years. He also established a new genre of magazine (one devoted to horror and SF films in the 1950s when movie magazines were mostly courting women and homosexuals). But Mr. Ackerman didn't go dressed as Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers, he brought his own creativity to it.

I'll believe that the new attendees are in it for the long haul when they begin to create and contribute something of their own.