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WorldCon: Things I Did Wrong
(I was planning to write this as a section of my big roundup post pretty much from the start, to be titled "Ego Boosting and Deflating," but since I see an aspect of it is being discussed, I thought I should break it out separately so it would go up quicker.)
A number of people were kind enough to say to me that they liked things I said on panels or the way I moderated or things I write online. I am very grateful for and appreciative of those comments. However, since very few people (even at a con!) are going to come up to me and say that they thought I did a lousy job or said something stupid, I thought it important to publicly acknowledge the times I did something wrong at the con.
- I suggested a group of people sit somewhere physically incapable of accommodating at least one of the members of the group. I apologized to the group at least but possibly not to the specific person; I apologize for being ableist and sizeist.
- During a panel, I interrupted
karnythia to explain something that she was going to get to in just a minute. (I apologized after.)
- Upon reflection, I'm pretty sure I mispronounced
karnythia's name at least once while on a panel. I apologize.
(I read by word recognition not phonetics and keep wanting to swap the "n" and "y" in her name, "cah-RIN-thee-ah" instead of "car-NEE-thee-ah." However, she said it out loud, that's no excuse, I should have written it down.)
- I told Kathryn Cramer something true but not complete and appeared two-faced as a result.
When she approached me and said that she regretted that I had dropped off a panel with her called "X, Why? Minorities in a Large Field, or Majorities in Our Own?," I said that I had been scheduled for items at 9:00, 10:00 (that one), 11:00, and 12:30. I should also have added "and as you know, we have fundamental differences of viewpoint, so I didn't feel it appropriate to be on a panel with you." I apologize for the inaccuracy.
(I was considerably surprised by her approaching me, especially since I had previously been told that she had stated that I had refused to be on a panel with her [*], and so socialization took over in the absence of preparation.)
[*] Yes, her knowledge of this raises other issues; I'm asking you all to defer discussion of them for now.
- I was a thoughtless Anglophone to hotel staff several times.
I have more complicated thoughts on my moderation of the "Writing Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Geographic Terms" panel, but I think they need to wait.
Do feel free to add to this list. Anonymous commenting is on here as usual, but I will screen gratuitously nasty comments (and then repost under ROT13 so you all can judge for yourselves).
(As I've said before: please don't say "oh gosh those aren't that bad, you're too hard on yourself" or whatever. I'm not looking for consolation or cookies. Also, I'd appreciate it if you'd save anything nice you were planning to say for a more topical post. => )
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It may be a generational thing, but I feel that it can be useful to make differences and the reasons for them open, as well as the bases for possible agreement on some issues.
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Also, no, wanting to air differences is not the sole jurisdiction of the venerable.
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Indeed. In previous generations, it was considered appropriate for people of color to STFU and accept racist behavior from whites. I'm not sure that's a recommendation.
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You characterized
This ignores the long history of minorities being told to 'be nice' and disagree with backbending respect (if at all) with those beating them over the head with racism.
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I would certainly have preferred that he read the link before commenting but in light of that, I do not agree with your interpretation of his comment.
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(I also owe you an apology for mispronouncing your name after hearing it. I even transcribed in IPA to help me remember, and still failed. Sorry.)
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It was nice to meet you! I brought copies of your flyer to . . . some panel . . . and though I forgot to mention it at the time, gave it out to people talking after, and also to the POC meetup.
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I commend you for acknowledging these things you did wrong. They obviously meant enough to you to bother you quite a bit, which says good things about your character.
I just wanted to say that, while I can't say that I understand what happened at the con or topic or racism in general, I feel that I've learned a bit from reading several of your posts and links. Thank you for that.
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And thanks, I appreciate hearing that. It is very good to know that it makes a difference.
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That said, it's still a reasonable expectation that client-facing hotel staff in any decent-sized hotel in Montreal will speak English.
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People from countries that show similar respect in turn have more right to expect this sort of thing, IMHO--but of course, they're less likely to expect it, too.
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It is, however, good business sense.
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I don't think we have a right to expect it, but I agree that it's good business sense from the side of those being monolingual.
It'd be good business sense for us here, too.
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What countries "show similar respect" in having multilingual hotel staff, except for St. Martin/St. Maarten? I've never heard of a national policy about that anywhere else.
Also, I had an astonishing experience in St. Martin/St. Maarten translating for the only Swiss person I have ever met who did not speak either English or French at all--it wasn't clear to me if he spoke only German, or German and rudimentary Italian, but the hotel workers were completely crestfallen that their English, French, and Dutch was inadequate.
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For Europe I can only speak from personal experience about Switzerland and Iceland, both of which very much made the effort to have hotel staff that spoke English. (In Iceland, English and German are required in school, and it's just assumed everyone will learn them.)
Also in the small bits of Mexico I've been to, there's been English among hotel staff and other tourist establishments.
My understanding is that most countries have multilingual citizens, which sort of by definition means having multilingual hotel staff.
(Another exception may be Britain, though I haven't been there--but it was kind of astonishing how many of the crew members on British Airways spoke only English, something which caused some problems on at least one flight I was on. Maybe it's only English speakers who get smug about language ...)
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Oh, no. A Cantonese-speaking friend of mine rolls her eyes at a mutual Mandarin-speaking friend who sneers at her language as being 'not really Chinese' - she tells me this is prevalent among Mandarin speakers. I'm given to understand as well that there are parts of Belgium where people are snooty about speaking French to the point of pretending not to speak Flams. And apparently migrant workers in California who speak minority (in their native country) languages like Mixtec are looked down upon by Spanish-speaking workers.
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I do think we have the luxury of being able to find English almost anywhere these days, to some extent, at least in the west, though that may be true for different languages in other regions, too.
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I live in Flanders and haven't spent much time in Wallonia, so I can't comment on that, but I have totally gotten the hairy eyeball from people here just for offering to switch to French when my Flemish proved inadequate for the situation.
The only time it's actually annoying is when it's a bureaucratic situation where some piece of business has to get transacted and we're failing in both Flemish and English. Last week the guy at the tax office looked at me like I'd just peed on his desk. I know I need to get better at Flemish, but I seriously just wanted to pay my taxes :(
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I did have a bit of trouble getting a PAYG mobile phone in Sihlcity, though; my German isn't very good and neither was the counter staff's English. But I wouldn't have expected English there.
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But in general the English tend to be monoglots, almost as much as U.S. Americans, in spite of being so close to countries speaking other languages. Other European[2] countries tend to be better, with the Dutch in particular taking pride of place at speaking whatever language the tourists speak (and often better than the tourists speak their own language). Although away from tourist areas this is less common, I found parts of Germany where even English wasn't generally understood at all (and some parts where German wasn't spoken; Schwaebisch is effectively a different language).
[1] Apart from the Welsh, for many of whom English is a second language, and Scots and Geordies and Scousers who speak dialects which are not always mutually intelligible.
[2] Many Brits still don't accept Britain as being part of Europe. There was the famous British headline "Continent cut off" (by bad weather), and a lot of British people still refer to 'Europe' meaning the non-British part of Europe.
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It's not about "mutual respect" or Americans being dumb monolinguals (which is partly a function of our geography rather than mere xenophobia - Europe is not as culturally cool as rumor would have you believe), it's about good business sense.
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Sure, it's good business sense--no arguments with the notion it'd be wise to speak English. But I do have trouble with the notion that we have any right to expect English in a French speaking province--we're the visitors there.
And I'm well aware of the role our oceans play in our monolingualism, and am less and less convinced that's any excuse, given the many different communities folks come from. And it's especially no excuse in border states--and there is an element of xenophobia there.
No illusions about Europe being cool in all ways--I have relatives in Switzerland, and have gotten a sense of the flaws as well as the things done well. But I do think they're way better about languages than us. (And I include myself in that--my own monolingualism is something I know I need to work on.)
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I mean I am about as Anglophone as anyone living in Montreal can be, and this comment made me bristle.
This is a French speaking province, if you want English act like someone who is part of a minority, not like someone entitled and you'll be fine.
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Note that I work for an ISP helpdesk in a single-language, non-English-speaking country[1] where every single agent is required to speak English as well, just for the occasional immigrant. Not majority American or British immigrants, mind you, that switch to English to deal with us.
[1] Well, there's Frisian, but we don't offer *that*.
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(True story: I went to buy a camera battery in Lugano and discovered that the man in the camera shop in the center of one of the biggest tourist destinations in officially-multilingual Switzerland spoke NOTHING but Italian (not even French or German). That boggled me.
Now, to be fair, on rereading what
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The only place so far I've been stumped in learning at least the politenesses (hello, goodbye, please and thankyou) was in Guangzhou ('Canton', China), where the pitched tonal language defeated me. Apparently at least one of the ways I said "Ni ha" (hello) was rather rude, and I couldn't hear the difference, so I gave up rather than be impolite in a different way. I believe that if I at least start and end with attempting to use the local language people will be more willing to make the effort to communicate.
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And I hear you on the tonal languages thing. A couple of my fellow linguistics students in grad school were from Shanghai, and they tried to teach me tones. Apparently I am tone deaf, since I failed epically. I still have no idea what I said, but apparently it was really funny.
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[1] Which is, of course, the right side, due to oddities of the language...
[2] For the sake of any Americans who aren't familiar with the differences, what they wanted was an evening suit with a waistcoat, trousers and braces, what they asked for was a disc jockey with underwear and a garter belt...
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I think it's probably ok to "sort-of figure that they'll probably" speak English. And to be "slightly surprised" if they don't. And being "Disappointed" is of course ok (I can be disappointed whenever things don't turn out my way...). However, being "annoyed" or "put-out" is not ok.
"Expect" has a bit of the "demand" connotation to it I think, which is why it's causing problems here. IMHO.
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And much agreed on the annoyed/put out reaction. I'd have been very surprised if the hotel staff didn't speak English but not annoyed
And I was pleasantly surprised that the staff of the French-language bookstore over by the Central Bus Station DID speak English.
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New Brunswick is the only place I've called where the phone is typically answered "Bonjour Hello?".
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You can't require your customer service people to speak the languages that profit requires them to be conversant with?
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I usually say 'lo siento hablo muy poco Espanol' in Mexico, but that's different since I do have a tiny bit of Spanish.
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IME if you say "bonjour" back, though, they will *immediately* know you are Anglophone. =>
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I hope my apologetic expression made up for it!
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In Chris's case, her boss speaks fluent French, and she's pretty good at picking up bits of languages. She's also got a few words of Chinese from working at a Chinese company a decade or so back.
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* The exception is if you're speaking English to a friend. They can then figure it out.
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I've found in German, French, and Spanish speaking places that asking in the language if they speak English gets one a little farther than just starting in English, even if that's all the non-English one knows.
(Except in Iceland. As far as I can tell the expectation there is that one start in the language one wishes to continue in, and one can sprinkle in one's handful of Icelandic words later.)
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Monoglot Anglophones and Francophones abound in Canada, but it happens that Montreal is on the boundary of the two language zones,and it's been to the advantage of the Montrealais to be bilingual. In general, bilinguality is a characteristic of a subaltern group occupying a strategic (economic or cultural location), and the Montrealais are not unusual in this regard, though a bit less adept than, say Curaçaoans, Lagotians, or Dangrigans.
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"Bonjour hi" is the way we do it here.
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Should we add things we think you did wrong, or volunteer things we did wrong?
Here's one of the latter: When Kathryn Cramer apologized to me last Thursday for some things she had said to me in email, I accepted without suggesting to her that she should instead publicly acknowledge that her behavior in the matter of OutingFail was reprehensible, and apologize to CoffeeAndInk and the other offended parties. That option didn't even occur to me until last night. What you said about socialization taking over.
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I had seen "bonjourhi" described in a much clumsier way -- essentially as "This is a cute Montreal thing! Enjoy it!" -- and so I completely skipped over subsequent discussion and ignored it.
Blah. Well, I've acted like a jerk before this in my life.
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I can't think of anything you did badly (not that I was in your vicinity most of the time!) I remember being surprised at first at how businesslike you were with keeping panel discussions going, I thought it made things feel rushed at times--but that was, as I said, at first. After I attended a few rather more sedate and/or directionless panels I changed my mind. Competant moderaters are valuable.
This is the only Worldcon I've ever been to, by the way, my previous experience with panels is basically nil.
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It's looking likely that I'll be in NYC in October though for an oral argument, so I definitely would like to come by. Keep you posted.