Body Image / Israel Trip

[browngirl]

Two signal boosts:

My name is Alex Horwitz, a Junior at the University of Kansas. In my Holocaust Literature class, Eva shared her survival story and touched us all with her courage and perseverance in the face of horrific prejudice. He's spearheading a drive to send her to Israel.

Over at Dreamwidth, Damned Colonial posted a summary of results from a poll on body image and geek gatherings (various types of conventions, etc, I found it intriguing, and there are a lot of old-guard SF fans I'd love to show it to except for/because of how violently they'd react.

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

It definetely is an issue that warrants deeper investigation -- I think that this survey is meant as a start, not an end.

It's infamous the degree to which people's own feelings can be out of sync with the reality of their situations (in ways both good and bad).


This is true, but it's true for everyone. It's not just that someone may feel uncomfortable when someone else doesn't intend for them to, but that someone may cause someone discomfort without intending to. I think in US culture we tend to say that the former person is just "seeing things" or "making it up", and not least since (at least in my experience of these situations) the former person tends to be someone with less social, economic, and even physical power, I think that warrants challenging.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

And you get dangerous combinations, e.g., where someone experiences a low rate of actual ill-will, but it makes them fearful of random events of ill-will, which can lead to perceiving considerably more ill-will than actually exists. (I've seen research suggesting that this is easy to induce in people in many situations.)

I think that warrants challenging.

Unfortunately, ceasing saying that "someone is seeing things" doesn't actually relieve their discomfort. You've got to identify and change one or more of the causative factors. Perhaps the biggest cause is the pervasive looks-ism of US culture, but that's the one that one is least likely to be able to change.

I didn't recall the survey getting at any specific causes that might be corrected, but I hadn't read to the bottom of the OP. There are a few items that seem amenable to change:

"Booth babes" or other sexualised sales techniques present at the event (40.4% of respondents report observing this)
Official event tshirt doesn't fit you (40.4%)
Event didn't cater to my body-related needs (eg. disabled accessibility, activities not suitable for larger people) (14.2%)

Although I'm not sure if the incidence numbers are the number of people who witnessed this, or who found it disturbing.

It does look like event staffs do their jobs in this matter almost all the time:

Concerns about any of the above dismissed by other attendees (24.4%)
Complaints in relation to any of the above ignored by event staff (5.8%)