when dante was listing circles of hell, he curiously omitted "decant"

Okay, Violette Market. Apparently the order was so huge that many freebies were thrown in, so I got a couple of frimps in addition to the decants I ordered, and they were both perfectly lovely. Hooray for perfumey surprises.

First the frimps:

Rhea. A curiously sharp rose atop a bed of vetiver and cedar shavings, in a smoke-shrouded room.

Bartolomeo Alberti. Woody musk, with grounding undertones of violet and patchouli.

( And now we visit the State Fair 2012 )

oh, readercon, no

I was unable to make Readercon this year, and now it looks like that non-attendance may become permanent. Here's the backstory:

Genevieve Valentine was sexually harassed by Rene Walling at Readercon, and a report was made to the concom.

Although I have never heard of him, Walling is apparently some sort of big name in fandom, well-connected, with a lot of friends. And in a move that I'm sure is not coincidental at all, Readercon's Board has decided that the "zero tolerance" harassment policy is too harsh, and fails to "allow for the possibility of reform", so they're not actually going to apply it in this case. They're going to give him a two-year suspension instead.

I'm not even going to go into the fact that "reform" can bloody well happen without a return to Readercon in the predator's lifetime.

( My response to the Readercon board follows. )

Zero tolerance policies are blunt instruments that are easy enough to apply when the malfeasors are not really part of the community. It's harder to apply them to the popular crowd. That alone should necessitate a rethink of the whole zero tolerance concept, but the message being sent here - and it's being received loud and clear by an increasing number of people who are backing away from the thought of attending future Readercons - is that if a predator is sufficiently popular among the right crowd of people, the rules will be bent for him. This little handslap doesn't make anyone safer - and the nonsense about requiring "substantiated reports of continued inappropriate behavior" to enforce their rules merely ensures that future incidents will occur well out of eyeshot of witnesses. That doesn't make anyone safer, either.

What would I have them do? For starters, follow their own damn rules. Since the incidents occurred when the zero tolerance policy was in place, that is the policy that applies. If they want to change the rules for the future, they are welcome to do so. If they want to change the rules to allow for an appeal after a set period of time - two to five years, say - that would be fine, provided that the final say on whether or not a harasser returns goes not to the board, but to the people who were harassed. Their safety - really everyone's safety - should take precedence over the alleged redemption of a known predator.