I'm not a big fan of the name and shame, since these weren't really things the con organizers could have helped with. But the vast majority of them were small local events, the problem being that my repeated uncomfortable experiences even in my own city left me unwilling to shell out money and vacation time to go to any larger events.
However, I can pretty much guess why yours differ so much: How unusual do you look? I'm biracial, and unless I make an effort to hide it, it leads even regular people to stare at me a little too long, to ask me weird questions out of the blue, etc. In every day life, I just deal, or sometimes enjoy messing with people's racial theories. It's part of who I am.
But when the effect is magnified by people who just aren't very socially adept, it can lead to some unpleasantness... Let's just say that my particular ethnicity seems to be a fetish target for a lot of very scary people. When you combine that with the effect of just being a girl geek at all, the reactions can quickly get unmanageably bad. And darned if you can tell these people they're being creepy-borderline-racist when they're fawning over you.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: August 12th, 2009 04:51 pm (UTC)However, I can pretty much guess why yours differ so much: How unusual do you look? I'm biracial, and unless I make an effort to hide it, it leads even regular people to stare at me a little too long, to ask me weird questions out of the blue, etc. In every day life, I just deal, or sometimes enjoy messing with people's racial theories. It's part of who I am.
But when the effect is magnified by people who just aren't very socially adept, it can lead to some unpleasantness... Let's just say that my particular ethnicity seems to be a fetish target for a lot of very scary people. When you combine that with the effect of just being a girl geek at all, the reactions can quickly get unmanageably bad. And darned if you can tell these people they're being creepy-borderline-racist when they're fawning over you.