Thanks for your response—I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you. To address your comments in order:

1] Thank you for your correction regarding gender-neutral bathrooms. I attended a panel where gender-neutral bathrooms were mentioned as one of the important developments in addressing the concerns of transgender, genderqueer, and/or non-binary identified attendees at this con, but perhaps that speaker was referring to the first gender-neutral bathrooms within this particular space at the Florida convention hall, since there were not such bathrooms available last year. In any case, I appreciate the correction, and I am happy the bathrooms were available this year.

2] I am very glad you mentioned the diversity of the Young Adult Lit (YA) track panels, since I did not have space enough in my initial single post to address the stark difference in this regard between the YA track and the non-YA general track (which included the mainstage events) this year. I have attended LeakyCon (now GeekyCon) for four years now, including the YA panels, and the disparity has never been so obvious. The YA track, as you suggest, included diverse representation in terms of race, sex and gender; in contrast, Mark Oshiro was generally the only person of color on more than ten non-YA (general track) panels, which read strongly as tokenism. The fact that YA attendees, who pay $100.00 more per ticket, have access to more diverse (female, transgender, people of color) panelists than general attendees suggests a class and cultural hierarchy here that is troubling.

3] If you read my post carefully, I note that there is a disconnect between the way “positive fandom” was used by the organizers to indicate the need for safe spaces, and the way it was often employed by many panel leaders to marginalize or silence critique. I have no doubt that the intentions of all these panelists were good, and I understand that the organizers could not be everywhere. I am pointing out this disconnect because the “positive” language can be interpreted in a variety of ways; an announcement during the Opening Ceremonies might have been helpful in clarifying the organizers’ intentions about its use. As you can see from my third paragraph here (and past posts), I give the con organizers a great deal of credit for addressing issues of sexual abuse within the larger fan community and endeavoring to maintain a safe and inclusive space at their cons.

4] Sidebar: Notice that I said “presumably cis and straight” men. At this and past cons, men who were gay or transgender often verbally identified as such, and there were less participants who did so this year, which reflected, proportionally, the increased presence of presumably cis and straight white men. My concern here was in the visible shift in demographics from female and queer-identified participants to white male participants who did not identify themselves in relation to queer communities (as “cis,” for example), and reflected instead the group most associated with the word “geek” in the culture generally: white, cis, straight men.

5] I used the word “sponsor” in relation to Wattpad’s presence at the LGBTQIA+ Meet Up because this private company was one of the con’s chief sponsors, and because the Wattpad representative began the Meet Up by soliciting material for the company’s site. It is wonderful that Wattpad is an LGBTQIA+ -friendly company; my concern here, however, is the commercialization of the space through direct advertising. You were obviously concerned about such implications as well since, as you say, you did discuss the matter among yourselves as panelists prior to the session. Unfortunately, it was difficult for audience members not privy to your discussion to know how to interpret the presence of Wattpad except through the conventions of sponsorship. It was a very jarring way to open the session, especially since, as you say, this particular Meet Up has long been a safe space at the con. I have attended this panel for three years and I am always very impressed by the community’s support for each other and the open discussion of gender/sexual identities in all their varieties that takes place. My comments here reflect my concerns about retaining this space – and the short time allotted to it—as a commercial-free zone.

Finally, both Jen and I are big supporters of the con, and of the many smaller ones like it that provide safe spaces for young people, especially for young women and LGBTQIA+ folk. We have written previous analyses about this topic on this site for the last couple of years. We have generally been enormously impressed by the amount of feminist/queer support and critique we have seen at LeakyCon and other similar cons. Our intervention here is to identify specific concerns that we had about how the rebranding affected some of the more progressive elements of the con. We are well aware this con is a work in progress and our intention here is to provide a productive critique.

Thanks again for your thoughtful comments.

Firstly, this is not the first year there were gender neutral bathrooms. Much of the comprehensive approach to gender inclusiveness is new, but the bathrooms were there in Portland as well, a few years back.

In terms of panelists, much of the programming is fan submitted and many presenters are women and otherwise minorities. LGBTQIA+ based panels of varying types are common. This is one of the only conferences where I’ve seen a female YA writer, a trans woman writer showcasing a memoir, and a woman of color in the YA field all get substantial billing and programming input. and A panel this year tackled Joss Whedon and his problematic behaviors in terms of diversity and women. Lit Day authors this year were more diverse than they ever have been, and that’s considering that they have always fought to fairly represent and air issues of women in a male dominated field. Mark Oshiro who is a huge advocate of safe spaces had several panels on representation, read from his upcoming book that has a diverse cast, and had an extended conversation on tokenism and how to avoid it.

Positive fandom in context is about many things, but it at the moment focused a lot on dismantling negative behaviors like sexual assault and idolization. When you talk about a positive and healthy environment, those are largely the things at play. Yes, there needs to be diversity representation as well, but to dismiss the whole idea as essentially fluff disservices the crackdowns on secual assault and unhealthy creator fan relationships that are already happening. The positive fandom thing is just in the beginning processes, and it has a long way to go. In terms of gender and sexuality, I think we’ve done a lot in terms of the year this has existed.

*Sidebar that many of the men you’re assuming to be straight may not be and trying to vet people is kind of gross?

Lastly, the LGBTQIA+ meetup was not “sponsored” by Wattpad. I and the other people running that meetup, who are of a wide variety of gender identities and sexualities, were approached and asked if it would be possible to include an outreach from Wattpad that advocated for finding or making representation when it wasn’t available in mainstream fiction. The only involvement Wattpad had was to come in, talk about their fiction service and how it could be beneficial to LGBTQIA+ golks, and then leave. They were told not to photograph the attendees. They were deliberately separated from the portion of the panel where people shared personal stories as a means of keeping that meetup safe and relevant. We discussed allowing them to come at all with full knowledge of how branding is often damaging and takes advantage of LGBTQIA+ folks. To say it was “sponsored” is a huge misrepresentation and disservice to the attendees, the presenters, the conference, and the community.