so wiscon is over now. at least it is for me. the panels will continue this morning, but i've got to start working my way home. in the meantime, as i sit in the madison airport after paying for some overpriced wifi, i might as well collect my thoughts.
for a feminist convention, it was remarkable how little overt clinton support i saw at the con. during the weekend i saw 6 obama buttons, no clinton buttons. it is possible that i counted some of the obama buttons multiple times. for a contested primary that has gotten so nasty in the political blogosphere, it's really remarkable how absent the campaign was. i even went to one panel yesterday (#173) that was specifically about racism and sexism in the coverage of the clinton/obama race. even that didn't bring out a fight at all. overall the wisconians seemed to treat the thing as if it was a done deal. which i basically think it is, but i had the impression from reading blogs that a lot of self-identified feminists don't. it reminded me, once again, that the folks i read online are far from representative of anything other than the folks i read online. then again, wiscon is the feminist subculture of the science fiction geekdom subculture, so that wasn't a representative sample either. but it was very different than i would have guessed. maybe the real moral of the story is that my guesses aren't very good.
when i first started going to this convention 12 years ago(!), i used to go to a lot more panels about how writers come up with their stories and how politics affects their choices. over time i've realized that i don't like of those kinds of panels. most attendees of wiscon are science fiction writers or aspiring to be one. but i'm not. when you get down to it, i really don't care how the books are made as much as i care about what the end result is like. i'm not looking for writing tips, i'm looking for reading suggestions. i think science fiction as a genre has the potential of dealing with political issues in different ways that mainstream fiction does. because it's not bound by reality, its a perfect way to play out thought experiments. but when panelists start talking about their own books or how political they are, they're really just self-promoting. there's nothing wrong with self-promotion. it's just that i'm aware that whatever comes out of their mouth is really just a sales pitch. in those panels i don't end up getting what i want out of the process.
three years ago, in the midst of my central asian fixation, i found an uzbek at wiscon. she wasn't back this year. yesterday i found someone with whom i could have, but didn't really, practice arabic with.
yesterday everyone at the con got sick. well not really everyone, or even most people. but a lot of people did. and verily purell was suddenly everywhere. i didn't get sick. but CaTHY did, as did a whole lot of other people. on the plus side, once 10% of the con-goers were spending their time hunched over the toilet, there were plenty of seats in the panels and i didn't have to sit on the floor anymore. and there were extra desserts at the reception last night. yet people kept talking as if the outbreak was a bad thing.
even though i spent quite a bit of time at the con with her and her dude, i didn't find a way to gratuitously link to erin in this post. until now. there are also some other people i could link to. but i won't.
