Wiscon: Monday

Panel: "How Much Is Too Much?" or, how to write a story about sexism, racism, etc., without being sexist, racist, etc. yourself. Surprise, people were awake and coherent at 8:30 AM on the last day of a con. Moderator Sarah Monette claimed not to be coherent, but she was lying. Talked about a lot of things, including the tough job of finding a middle zone between ignoring other cultures and appropriating them. Question: Can the racial distinctions among invented alien beings relevantly mirror those among real humans? General answer: Yes, and putting them among aliens highlights their arbitrariness. As with other panels yesterday, this was not a "how I done it good" panel but an intelligent theoretical discussion of problems facing writers, where the writers' examples from their own work served as personal testimony illustration rather than self-promotion.

Panel: "How To Be A Good Ally - And A Bad One." More on racism, sexism, etc. Often I avoid panels like this - too intensely navel-gazing - but I had a hunch this would be a good one, and it was. Sage advice. Don't be defensive if you put your foot in your mouth. Find friends among the group you're allied with who can tell you privately how you're doing: don't puff yourself to the group at large about what a wonderful ally you are. Also a lot about how to talk to people who don't get it. "Racist" is such a charged word that many people who do say racist things are more mortified by being called racist than they are by the racist things they say. (Same is true of "anti-Semitic" as I've found by experience: and then they blame you for calling them that.) One attendee rather ingenuously suggested responding to, say, comments about "shiftless Hispanics" by being a little loose with the truth and saying, "Really? I don't know any harder workers than my Hispanic brother-in-law," even though you just made him up. This suggestion struck me as a revelation, because I really do have a Hispanic brother-in-law (an engineer whose industry is testified to by his having put four children through college), but it had never occurred to me that I could use this fact in this manner.

Pleasant post-con afternoon spent with local friend: lunch at deli with carousel attached, walk through surprisingly large Madison zoo. The seals and otters were awake, but the penguins were lying down on the job. Wake up, limey fish!

Dinner at Turkish restaurant on State Street. Chicken cooked with orange and peach, tasted exactly as I expected, i.e. delicious. Satisfying conclusion. cynthia1960 and companions waved hello as I was writing this. And so to bed.