This is just to say:
mood: 
irate
irateI'm involved in a relationship with somebody I met, befriended, and grew to love largely at conventions. He never once felt the need to grope me, make an inappropriate comment on my body or dress, or ask if anything I was wearing was meant as a coded sexual message before the moment when we figured out that we were each interested in one another in a romantic sense.
Neither flirting nor building emotional connection is harassment, folks--and harassment is not flirting.
It's not actually all that complicated.
"Email is dead" is a running joke in the email industry. "Chivalry is dead" is a trope with the MRAs. I'm a firm believer that trolling is a lost art- a good troll, like "It's a little-known fact that Starfleet Captain James T. Kirk's middle name was actually 'Timmy'" is now lost in the noise from people who think "STFU HOMOFAG LOL" is a comment worth posting.
But if nitwits are genuinely concerned that flirting is under threat by anti-harassment policies, then I'm calling it: flirting is dead.
And years from now, I will make a killing, giving expensive seminars where I instruct people to repeat these words: "That's very interesting. I have to go now, but I'd love to continue this conversation later. Some friends of mine are meeting in the bar at six, if you're free, love to see you there". And perhaps add useful tips like 'have friends, and also have them in the bar at 6' and 'no touching' and "don't be creepy" and 'showering is good' and stuff. Oh, and "don't open with 'I like to have sex while dressed up as a leopard', because that's kinda something you want to ease into, maybe a third- or fourth-date topic".
...y'know, if we do this right, we can be a positive force in shaping the dating habits of the knuckleheads AND eliminate some harassment. Ugol's law! There's somebody out there for you! And not being creepy INCREASES YOUR CHANCES!
It's so crazy, it just might work.
One is being a jerk, and one is being a predator, and they are different.
But, yeah--it's not THAT HARD to obtain consent for a hug. You (general) make eye contact (preferably with somebody you've known for at least fifteen minutes), open your arms slightly, and wait to see if they make a similar gesture. If they don't, or if they say, "I'm sorry, hugging makes me uncomfortable," you say, "Oh, sorry, thanks for letting me know.
I've taken a particular interest in this topic because of the experience of
somemany of my friends and my time helping run conventions; I wrote the code of conduct for this year's UK Eastercon, where I chaired a panel on the topic.Whilst it's certainly true that flirting is not harassment, I have heard accounts of how tiresome and at times intimidating it can be to have it assumed that just because you are female and not obviously in the presence of a partner that you have come to a convention to meet men. (It seems that a lot of supposedly enlightened male con-goers forget that (a) not everyone is heterosexual, and (b) just because you are single does not mean that you are necessarily after a partner, short or long-term.) I think that there is a case for trying to get the message across that a convention is not a singles bar and that and that hooking up with someone is a nice possible outcome rather than an expected feature of the event.
Edited at 2013-07-01 07:08 am (UTC)
Whenever I read posts by other men on that particular topic my first thought is to wonder whether they are both ignorant and lacking in anything like proper social skills or simply utterly vile, because those are the only two options that occur to me as to why someone would make such a statement. Of course, when reading further in comments by people who make statements like this, I'm often find that they are both ignorant and vile. I'd love to see someone compile a list of men who have made such statements that could perhaps serve as a warning to others to avoid them.
Thank you.