Thought.

[sasha_feather]

Reposting a comment I left in cynthia1960's journal:

I actually think what WisCon is struggling with, as an institution, is whether it wants to be an SF/literary con with bonus social-justice-feminism, or whether it wants to be a Social-Justice-Feminism convention for people who are into science fiction and fantasy.

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Now back to nursing my cold and watching my gay movie marathon.

Comments

[grntserendipity]

I think you are on to something, here.

[eggcrack]

I believe you just nailed the WisCon's problem. Hope that the cold will go away!

[jesse_the_k]

BingO! (I feel guilt about the cold. Moar tea.)

[sasha_feather]

I think it's been simmering for a while.

[sasha_feather]

Thanks! I hope it goes away too.

[sasha_feather]

I think I got the cold from my co-worker. :[

[futuransky]

Yes, that is completely and totally it, I think. Well, that and the fact that it already is both, in the same space, with plenty of overlap...

[sasha_feather]

Right, yes. I am trying to compare it to the mainstream SF con that I went to (which was pretty boring to me), the queer social justice conference I attended (which was draining), and Think Galactice, which is a leftist SF con inspired by WisCon (which was awesome).

[futuransky]

Yeah, I've never been to any other SF cons, but lots of academic conferences with various degrees of political investment (I enjoy them but they're not spaces to let your hair down except in certain limited after-hours ways) and a few queer gatherings (which I love, but often feel a bit marginal to for my comparative mainstreamness and nerdiness)... WisCon remains my favourite actually for its combination of various elements, and I would actually prefer to keep its internal variety. I like being able to bounce between the mediafannish WisCon and the literary WisCon and the activist WisCon, and I even like that there are contradictions and disagreements among them all, though of course I do want all of them to be informed by a certain level of critique.

[starlady]

I definitely liked the smorgasbord postmodern aspect of it too.

[starlady]

I think you're right--and the two are definitely at odds in this case.

[sophygurl]

Very astute. I've passed this on to someone who doesn't do lots of internetting but who is very into WisCon.