On social media (mostly on Twitter, I believe) there are several ongoing conversations about the problems with the initial programming lineup for the 2020 World Fantasy Convention. One of the first people to bring up the vast number of serious issues publicly¹ was Miyuki Jane Pinckard. She wrote a long thread on October 4 as she spotted issues, then compiled an open letter which she posted on Google Docs.

As she and others began raising the alarm on panel titles and descriptions, the official Twitter account for the con started posting tone-deaf responses that made it seem as though the con Chair didn’t really grok what might be wrong but also extending an invitation for people, especially marginalized people, to help WFC fix the problematic panels. And if you knew absolutely nothing else about this situation, that might seem reasonable and like some honest mistakes were made.

I’m here to tell you that this is not the case. That, in truth, WFC Chair Ginny Smith was warned that this exact scenario would happen unless she took specific steps to avoid it. This advice, which was based on the experience of many years, was ignored. And so the situation the WFC 2020 convention committee finds itself in right now is not the result of honest mistakes, but willful ignorance and likely some ingrained bigotry.

I’m going to lay out what I know–not just about this World Fantasy debacle, but some of the history behind it. I want people who are, in good faith, trying to fix WFC’s programming and think that they can somehow pull this con out of the tar pit to know that this situation cannot be fixed ad hoc, cannot just be addressed at the level of this one concom, and cannot be solved by continuing to attend.

Some History

If you’re not aware of the years-long history of the World Fantasy Convention being a bastion of Fail, here are the highlights (feel free to skip to Current Issues if you know this stuff):

WFC 2011 in San Diego: The con has no harassment policy. Several people are harassed at the con by a person who was eventually stripped of his badge, but the way the incident was handled by the concom was not optimal. But hey, this means they put policies in place to better handle these things in the future and also wrote up a great harassment policy for attendees so everyone was aware of the rules, consequences, and procedures, right? Wrong. (Note the date on this link.)

Also, the hotel/resort where the event was held had several spaces (restaurants and the like) that were not fully accessible to people using wheelchairs. One restaurant–which, if I remember right, was the only place to get breakfast–had two steps up to the main entrance. The wheelchair accessible entrance was blocked off by staff and, if someone wanted to use it, they had to ask for the blockages to be removed. Every time.

WFC 2012 in Toronto: After the previous year’s issue with accessibility several people (including author Mari Ness) called on WFC 2012 to ensure their con hotel and spaces were accessible. What I remember is that Mari was told that this would be so. Technically, the hotel was accessible. However, the main entrance had a stair or two in front of it. In order for someone using a wheelchair to get in or out of the building they had to go around to the back of the hotel, enter through the gym/spa, use a wheelchair lift, then come back to the front. Every. Time.

WFC 2013 in Brighton: Now is when the deja vu is gonna start. Because at this con we not only have hella accessibility issues but also harassment issues, all made worse by a belligerent Con Chair. Said Chair was very proud of the fact that the con did not have a code of conduct or harassment policy. There were problems identified in the run up to the con as well as during and then after.

Plus, there was the issue of how most of the panelists were white men.

WFC 2014 in Washington DC: No problems that I remember, and I defer to Natalie who said: “went pretty smoothly probably because Peggy Rae Sapienza was at the helm (pour one out).”

WFC 2015 in Saratoga Springs: By 2015 we’ve now had several WFCs where harassment was a big issue. Around this time in the community in general there was a big push made for cons to adopt harassment policies or codes of conduct that weren’t half-assed. As previously noted, the policy for 2015 before the con was less than well-received… by many. It didn’t get better at con and, oh look, still with the accessibility problems.

WFC 2016 in Columbus: WFC is an expensive con. And, like many cons, they offer a lower rate early on, then raise the price as they get closer to the event. In 2016, after several years of fights about harassment, codes of conduct, and accessibility policies, the concom did announce these important policies ahead of the con. However, they did so after the early registration had gone up by a significant amount.

Again, it had been known for months and years that these policies were necessary and needed. No one sprung this on the con at the last minute. And yet. Mari Ness had things to say.

And then we start getting more attention on an issue that had been ongoing but also low-key up to this point: the terrible programming². Because now the panels weren’t just terrible, they were racist.

Natalie Luhrs offered some excellent advice at the time on how the organization could fix these ongoing issues. That’s like… 4 years ago, isn’t it? Hm³.

WFC 2017: The biggest thing going on with this year’s con was the change from the World Fantasy Award bust of H. P. Lovecraft’s head to the new, not-a-head-of-a-racist award statue. It was a huge fight to make this change and the conversation about it had been going on since 2011.

I’ll note here that I had stopped attending WFCs (though I sometimes barconned) but heard from other BIPOC that, even when they didn’t have to deal with super racist panel titles/descriptions, they often had to deal with microaggressions while on the panels. Often, they would be the only BIPOC on the panel and, in a couple of cases, were essentially treated as if they stood in for all BIPOC everywhere and had to answer for all of us. This is a problem that’s not limited to WFC. Still, it’s part of a pattern and worth mentioning⁴

WFC 2018 in Baltimore: This con went well, from what I remember. Several people who attended said that it made them think WFC had turned itself around after all those years of constant problems. One key reason why is, I believe, Guest of Honor Scott Edelman.

I can’t find any posts about this (my Google-fu may be failing me this late at night), but I remember Scott saying to me that when WFC approached him about being a GOH, he told them he would only agree if they fixed the ongoing major issues of lack of accessibility, poorly done codes of conduct, and racist programming stuffed with white dudes. And, from what I understand, that year’s concom addressed those issues to Scott’s satisfaction and a good time was thus had by all.

Did these changes roll over into the following years? *sad laugh*

WFC 2019 in Los Angeles: Shortly after the 2018 con ended, the 2019 guests of honor were announced and the slate was a little bit… all… white. Silvia Moreno-Garcia raised the alarm and wrote to the World Fantasy Board directly, asking them to address it. Their response was ridiculous and insulting and promptly torn apart by myself and others. Eventually there was backtracking and the 2019 concom miraculously found a Black woman (the awesome Sheree Renee Thomas) to add to their lineup of honored guests. The 2020 and 2021 concoms also kicked into high gear right around this time sending invites to any of the Black writers they could think of whose names weren’t N. K. Jemisin or Octavia Butler.

WFC 2020 in The Cloud

After almost a decade of issues around programming, accessibility, and harassment (and that’s naming a few), the World Fantasy Convention’s reputation had gone from Beloved to I Remember When This Was Great to I’m Not Going To That Mess. The convention was supposed to take place in Salt Lake City, but the coronavirus had other plans. In early June WFC announced that they were going virtual.

Up to that point several conventions had made this kind of announcement and a few virtual cons had already happened. I was taking note of how many of these virtual cons had increased diversity since the barriers of travel expense, visas, and the like were no longer an issue. In that spirit, I asked on Twitter:

How many Black people, Indigenous folx, and other POC are on the @WFC2020 concom?

How many BIPOC are on the programming committee?

Has there been a commitment from this concom to ensure that panels are diverse?

I retweeted, quote tweeted, and new tweeted these questions over and over for about two weeks. Silence.

I then asked Nisi Shawl, who is slated to be a WFC 2021 Guest of Honor, to contact the concom directly and ask them to please address these questions. She also told Ginny Smith, the Chair, that I wanted to know the answer to the questions directly. On June 22 Ginny emailed me saying:

I was told you are trying to get in touch with me. I’m sorry – i haven’t received anything. What can i do to help you?

Sigh.

Thus began a series of emails that ended up being harbingers for the current moment. I’m going to summarize them, quoting a little from Ginny’s emails and more extensively from mine⁵.

The Conversation

From the beginning of our correspondence, Ginny took pains to point out multiple times that she’s a white, middle-aged woman who is trying so hard to do her best and that she’s absolutely terrified of doing things wrong and answering my questions. But she will, because she wants to get it right!

To start, at the time there were only two BIPOC on the concom. There had been a third, but she had left a few weeks or months prior.

There were two big reasons given for this. The first was expected: there aren’t many BIPOC in the Salt Lake City area to start, so there’s not a deep pool to draw from. The second I did not expect: World Fantasy Convention insists that all of its concom volunteers pay for their memberships to the con up front in order to serve on the concom.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

Not only are concom members–folks who volunteer their time for months on end–not comped a membership, they’re expected to pay just to volunteer. People can’t even be on the concom, not get a membership, and just not go to the con. Nope. You have to pay. So Ginny was having a hard time finding BIPOC who had the money for this nonsense as well as the time.

As to the programming committee: it consisted of one person at this time. A white woman. Ginny said she recognized this was a problem. “We NEED BIPOC to help! I’ve tried to recruit people as both guests and committee members. I’ve been turned down every time.” Maybe cuz of that whole “give us your money to be a volunteer” thing.

Ginny reiterated over and over that she would love my help and she wanted to get things right. Okay. But before I could offer that help, I wanted to know one thing: Why is there a rule in place that concom members must buy a membership to the con and not just volunteer? Who made that rule? I had a feeling.

And I was right.

“[It’s] a long-time requirement of the WFC organization. … WFC is a professional membership. They work very hard to make sure the membership is equal in every way. There is no distinction between members – professional editors, agents, authors, aspiring authors, whatever. Everyone is treated exactly the same, and therefore everyone pays to attend. … That’s because it’s a professional gathering – a place where pros come to network with each other and talk about what’s happening in the genre. WFC is completely different from fan conventions or writers’ conferences.”

— Ginny Smith, June 22

Wow, this rule is so everyone is equal in every way? Really?

Reader, I’ll have you know I was so outdone by this explanation that I didn’t answer her back for over a month. I kept trying to turn over in my mind how I was going to address the cascading fails at play here. And that’s not even getting to this bit:

“…membership in WFC comes with the ability to submit a nomination ballot for the World Fantasy Awards for three consecutive years. So that has a value…”

I had to lie down.

I didn’t end up getting back to Ginny until July 31 (I wasn’t kidding about the month thing) and that was, in part, prompted by the garbage fire that was WorldCon. I figured I could at least attempt to help WFC not go all the way down that road. And Ginny had been receptive to my help and advice.

I decided to tackle just one thing: the bit where people had to pay to be on the concom. I thought that if I could get Ginny to push back on that or find ways around it I had a chance of getting a few BIPOC to fill out that programming committee and work on ensuring it wouldn’t be a crapfest that marginalized folks would have to fix later.

*looks directly into the camera*

I told Ginny I knew this rule wasn’t her doing or her fault. However, her attitudes around this, and her buying into the idea that this setup is what makes everyone “equal”, needed dismantling.

This thing where *everyone* has to pay is not about making sure that everyone is equal. It’s about gatekeeping. … They make professional editors pay because they know professional editors have the money to do so. If you don’t have the money to go to this very expensive con, you are not in the club. I very much realize that this is not a fan con, because this con has always done its level best to keep fans OUT. And when fans do come, they’re treated like they crashed an exclusive party and are not made to feel welcome.

…

But beyond that, there is no reason why one should have to PAY to be on the committee. You said yourself that this has been a barrier to you getting BIPOC to work with you on this. That is the point. The WFC board won’t say that outright, but that’s the point. Any time you can’t volunteer at all unless you make a financial investment they are doing so in order to gatekeep.

There is no reason why WFC should not be allowed to have concom members and volunteers who just volunteer. … The first battle needs to be allowing people to volunteer to help without being forced to pay to become members.

I pointed Ginny to this thread about WorldCon in which the author says:

Pay to be a part of this space, where you are not welcome, where our imagination spanning FTL travel, fae, and vampires, cannot imagine of your joyful existence as equals, and then try, try to persuade us that you are worthy of respect.

That’s violence.

I concluded this email by saying:

“What WFC is doing is violence. To members of this community who cannot pay, to members of the community who might be willing to help.

My question is: Do you want to continue to be part of that violence? Because there is a way to make a change. But it will require standing up to the WFC board, maybe publicly if they do not listen in private. I am willing to do this thing if you are.”

On August 5 Ginny got back to me and, after some more reassurances that she wants to fix things and oh don’t I know there are sponsorship programs for BIPOC to attend the con and isn’t that great?, she launches into this:

Tempest, I’ve been a member of the WFC board for 2 years now, since Salt Lake won the bid to host 2020. I can promise you that I have never heard a discussion about excluding anyone from attending the convention. Not a single word. I’ve heard discussions about maintaining the professionalism of the organization through programming, the merchandise in the dealers’ room, and the art in the art show. I’ve heard conversations about not having costumes and masquerades and things that are typical fan con stuff. Those are all reasons I like WFC, because of the professionalism. But never has any board member said we need to keep people – any people – out of the organization.

I really should have expected this response. Why did I have hope?

At that moment my hope died. Because if Ginny is either this clueless or this much of a gaslighter, there’s little that can be done. We could be here all day listing off the ways that WFC overtly and “subtly” excludes people and groups along economic axes as well as racial, gender, and ability ones. I’ll leave that for others to chronicle further.

In my reply to this email, I tried to drill down into this for her and concluded with:

“I’ll point something else out that’s not meant as an attack but a statement of fact. You’re white. You live in Salt Lake City. How much deep and exhausting anti-racist work have you done on yourself? How much have you unpacked your privilege knapsack? How deeply aware are you of the ways racism is layered into the foundations of organizations that are run by a majority of white people? If you haven’t spent years doing *that* work, then you really cannot know and might not even be able to understand the ways in which the WFC board may be engaging in exclusion without having to literally say: we are excluding these people for these reasons.”

On the issue of comping memberships: aside from the fact that the Board won’t let her, Ginny claims she cannot afford to give anyone a free membership because the convention’s costs are too high and their committee started with 0 money, so they need all the membership money just to exist, even virtually. And that may well be.

Still, other cons manage to do this without going bankrupt if they comp a person. Since Ginny told me this was her first time running a con, I made an assumption that she might not know this.

“…are you aware that many conventions — not big media cons, but medium-sized fan run cons — regularly comp the memberships of their concoms and volunteer staff? ReaderCon, which has maybe only twice as many people as WFC is supposed to have, not only comps the concom, but also every person invited to speak on panels. Not just guests of honor. ReaderCon costs something like $80 for a membership. That said, I’ve also been on the concom for WisCon, and the concom isn’t comped (though we sometimes get part of our reg fee back after, once the accounting is done), though we generally charge less for membership fees.

…

WFC costs hundreds of dollars. … Of course it costs money for every person who attends. But cons that charge less than yours that don’t have so many more people that they are in a different league have figured out ways to ensure that everything gets paid for without acting like it’s some out of this world idea that concom members or at the very least department heads should get their memberships comped. They also don’t have a requirement that every concom member also be a member of the con itself. And at this point, given that conventions, be they fan run or professional, have a decades-long history, there’s no real reason any con can’t figure this part out.”

And, because she has a talent for throwing in one last sentence that makes me need to walk away from my computer before I punch a hole in it, Ginny tells me:

“[Everyone on my committee] paid $50 so they can participate in the convention. But you know what? … They feel a huge sense of pride and even ownership in this convention, and that might be in part because they have some of their own money invested in it.”

I feel the look on your face. It’s the same one I had on mine.

My main answer to this was: “This idea that folks feel more invested in a convention because they’ve invested money is a very……….. privileged one.”

She took issue with that. I’ll explain later.

The last thing Ginny was at pains to assure me of was that the concom was very committed to making the program diverse and having many BIPOC panelists. I responded thusly:

“That’s not enough. Do you or your program director have the skill to spot carefully crafted racist dog whistles in a program description? Do you know the best practices involved in ensuring that panelists from marginalized backgrounds don’t *only* make it on panels about marginalization, oppression, or their specific backgrounds? Are you willing to make a pledge that every panel will include a balance of genders and races? Not just “we put a brown person on this panel” but literally no panels with all men, or mostly men, or only white people, or mostly white people, or only white women where *that’s* the diversity? Are these issues ones you have thought of before this conversation? Deeply?

This is why you need more BIPOC and other people from marginalized groups to be *on the concom* and involved in crafting the program, not just at the con. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard from white con runners that they are working hard to make the program diverse and really want BIPOC to be on panels only to encounter racist or sexist program items, BIPOC being put on a panel and they are the only one, a panel going off the rails because known racists or sexists were allowed on it, or on as moderators, or BIPOC panelists being made to speak for all BIPOC and to account for all issues of oppression. And these are just the issues that have occurred *at world fantasy conventions* of the recent past.

You asked me what you can do. Here is what you can do.

You can go to the board and tell them that you need to be able to bring on concom volunteers who do not have to pay to be part of the concom. You don’t need to promise those volunteers that they will get a free membership (and this may affect their willingness, sure, but it’s a start). You need to bring to the table the idea that the lack of comp memberships is directly hurting their ability to have a “professional” convention that is also inclusive and safe, that the financial burdens put on volunteers who are then asked to do a ton of work — especially anti-racist and anti-bigotry work — is violence, and if they continue to uphold this they are upholding a culture of violence. You need to ensure that the people working on program items are not all white, and that group is not majority white, and that the person chairing/heading that group cannot ignore the contributions of the non-white members of the group.”

That was August 5th.

There are times when I’m real tired of playing Cassandra to white SFF.

Ginny’s first response to this email consisted of three major points.

1. She doesn’t live in Salt Lake, but in Kentucky “about 40 miles from Louisville where Breonna Taylor was killed.”
2. She’s been working hard to unpack her privilege knapsack, even before George Floyd was killed⁶.
3. Her response to my line about money = more invested = privilege was: “Is it really?! Thank you for pointing that out to me. I have a lot to learn.” Which I did not read with a very charitable tone.

It all might have ended here with this exchange. However, there’s one more twist.

I see another email from her right after the one above that says, “And here’s her answer. Nothing I say will make a difference, so I’m inclined to let this go unanswered.” As I’m staring at that, confused, another email comes in wherein Ginny apologizes because that last message wasn’t meant for me. She’d intended to forward my email to her vice-chair with that message but ooped and hit reply, instead.

Without missing a beat, Ginny launches into peak white womanhood.

“I feel so very…wrong. I’m a white woman, and I can’t change that, but it seems everything I am and have been my whole life is wrong. I’m trying to deal with that. I hope you’ll understand that I really am trying. But … I don’t have the bandwidth to tackle the entire social structure of a political system that goes from the top of the national leadership on down, and do it in under 3 months! I have to run a convention, and I’m doing the VERY BEST I can.”

Reader, will you forgive me knowing that I told her that her best wasn’t good enough?

“In everything I spent an hour typing out for you this morning your main takeaways seem to be that I pointed out you were white, suggested you needed to unpack your privilege, and accused you of being from Salt Lake City.

Meanwhile, I said far, far more than that. But that’s what you’re focusing on.

This says a lot.”

–Me

I had to walk away for a bit. When I came back, I wrote a more detailed response that included:

---

Footnotes

1. Trust, there have been a ton of people backchanneling about this in private spaces. [⇧]
2. For all the years I’d been going to WFC (starting in 2007, I believe) everyone had always agreed that the panels were hardly ever worth going to. You went to this con to be in the bar with fancy people, not go to panels with boring topics and boringer people. The readings were often a highlight just due to the talent on offer. That was it for great programming, though. [⇧]
3. This was also, apparently, the first time I chronicled how WFC had been a problem for years. Again, this was 4 years ago. [⇧]
4. If anyone had this experience and wants to share details in the comments, please do. Even if you wish to remain anonymous. [⇧]
5. I will make available the full text of the emails if people want to check that I haven’t taken Ginny or myself out of context. [⇧]
6. That’s now two Black people’s names invoked for no real reason. [⇧]
7. From what I’m seeing in the comments here as well as the convo on Twitter, I don’t think this is always true. It seems other WFCs have also started from 0 dollars. [⇧]
8. Don’t get me started on how they treated one of their guests of honor–shocker, that particular guest is BIPOC [⇧]
9. They’re likely not new. [⇧]
10. Vice-Chair: Pamela Oberg, Programming: Pamela Oberg, Advisory Board: Dave Doering, Bruce Farr, Terry Fong, Mike Willmoth–those are the big ones, but really many of the people listed on this page have some share of this responsibility. [⇧]