author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

And sometimes that time and place are never and nowhere. Quoth PNH:

Harlan Ellison groping Connie Willis on stage at the Hugos wasn't funny and it wasn't okay. I understand (from third parties; I haven't spoken to her about it) that Connie Willis's position is that Ellison has done worse and she can handle him, but I really didn't want to watch it and neither, I think, did a lot of other people in the audience. Up to then the comedic schtick aspects of the Hugo presentation had been genuinely funny. After that, I think, many of us just wanted it all to stop.

Just as with George W. Bush's now-famous uninvited shoulder-rub of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the basic message of Ellison's tit-grab is this: "Remember, you may think you have standing, status, and normal, everyday adult dignity, but we can take it back at any time. If you are female, you'll never be safe. You can be the political leader of the most powerful country in Europe. You can be the most honored female writer in modern science fiction. We can still demean you, if we feel like it, and at random intervals, just to keep you in line, we will."

It's not okay. It's not funny. It wasn't a blow against bourgeois pieties or political correctness. It was just pathetic and nasty and sad and most of us didn't want to watch it. It's another thing that's going to stop.

I have pathetic fantasies of having been in the audience--which I wasn't--and yelling, "Shame on you, Mr. Ellison!"--which I don't think anyone did--and having there been a standing ovation in response--which is nice to dream about, but, in absence of the action having occurred, who can say how the rest of the audience would have reacted?

Knowing me, had I actually been there, I would have blushed with rage and said not a word, for fear of being smacked down by Mr. Ellison's clever tongue and a roomful of acquiescing silence. Then I'd've gone looking for a knot of attendees to gripe with at the bar afterwards.

But I can fantasize. And I am in good company in the fantasizing, apparently.

And Patrick is absolutely right about what this kind of behavior, from Bush or Ellison, is intended to communicate. And that it has got to stop. And it is going to stop.