PAX East was my first real con experience, and it’s been my experience since that it probably gave me a skewed idea of how competent volunteer con staff should be expected to be. The first time I saw somebody giving a New York Comic Con enforcer backtalk, it was like an alien experience. My experience with PAX East enforcers is that they have created a self-perpetuating image: everybody believes that they’re competent and on top of things and so should be treated with respect, which allows them to be maximally friendly, calm, helpful, and communicative to attendees… which allows them to be completely on top of things, which means that everybody believes they are on top of things… and so on. So it does not surprise me one bit that some of them have gotten together, in the wake of a well publicized incident of a disruptive media attendee, to reassure female cosplayers and attendees that they’ve got your back. With a nerdy meme.

Sushi Killer at 16-bit Sirens has a post up about a new photo project she’s been working on: asking cosplayers about their experiences with unwanted behavior, photographs, and physical contact at cons, and then asking them to pose with a whiteboard containing a personal message or the phrase “Cosplay ≠ Consent.” Says Killer:

These [incidents of unwanted behavior] can be as seemingly harmless and annoying as not asking for permission before taking a picture or bothering them for a picture or interview while they were taking a water or food break. But the majority of the stories were more serious and ranged from threats of violence to inappropriate touching, and from lewd facebook messages to stalking.

Her photo set already includes cosplayers both male and female, and even cosplay photographers who want to send a message to other folks who do what they do. If you’d like to know more about the CONsent project or even participate, I can’t recommend reading her entire original post enough. Here are some of the photographs she’s gotten so far:

Convention harassment is just an off-shoot of regular, old harassment but seeing it invade your “safe space” can be tough to stomach. And some people have had enough. At PAX East this past weekend, a journalist (I use that term loosely) decided to interview a group of Lara Croft  cosplayers at the new Tomb Raider video game booth. What followed was not a professional interview of fans but rather a chance to treat women in costume not as people, but as sex objects. The Mary Sue spoke with one of the cosplayers involved as well as PAX management about the situation – a situation we’re hearing about far too often these days. 

When do you go from banning/blocking someone on your websites to having a judge do it for you? Buffy the Vampire Slayer and How I Met Your Mother star Alyson Hannigan had that decided in court this week after receiving threats online.

Whenever I write about in-game harassment, I hear back from folks who cite that behavior as the reason why they’ve never tried multiplayer. Understandable? Absolutely. But those comments have made me think back on how initially hesitant I was to step beyond single-player and into the realm of online gaming. I, too, had been put off by stories of harassment and toxic behavior (this would’ve been almost ten years ago now, which is a little depressing). So today, I’d like to add a counterweight to this ongoing discussion, and offer a bit of encouragement to those who are thinking about taking the plunge.

I should start with the caveat that there are plenty of legitimate reasons for choosing to fly solo. If multiplayer wasn’t a good experience for you, or if you just aren’t interested in playing with others, that’s A-okay. I myself have games that I prefer to play alone. But to those who are curious about multiplayer but feel skittish about jumping in — gather ’round.

Verbal abuse is a pandemic in the online gaming community. And while it affects all sorts of gamers, there’s a select brand of vitriol reserved for women who venture into voice chat. This is an oft-discussed issue, and we still don’t have a good understanding of the root causes, or of what we can do to alleviate it. But some recent academic research provides a interesting (and sobering) look at how persistent the problem is.

Last week, Gamasutra featured a blog post by graduate student Wai Yen Tang, who discussed a study entitled “Communication in multiplayer gaming: Examining player responses to gender cues.” The study was published online in September of last year by Jeffrey H. Kuznekoff and Lindsey M. Rose, two PhDs from Ohio University’s School of Communication Studies. The study addressed two main questions: does player gender affect the types of comments received in-game, and is player skill a factor? 245 multiplayer matches and 1660 individual players later, they had some answers.

As a cosplayer myself, I’ve experienced convention harassment. We’ve discussed this many times on the site before as well, be it from the perspective of the Black Cat cosplayer or comedian Black Nerd. As with many things in life, awareness is key, and a lot of times awkward situations can be chalked up to ignorance. Here now are a few cosplayers with some tips on how to be respectful to cosplayers you meet at conventions. A lot more could be added to their shortlist but it’s definitely a good place to start etiquette-wise. They say their next video will be titled “How to Identify an Actual Creeper and What to Do if You Do Meet One.”

(via Jezebel)

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Keir Starmer, chief prosecutor for England and Wales, spoke this week about stricter guidelines for harassing and threatening comments online. Is it time for the United States to do the same? 

Baby’s first Halloween costume. Baby, you have awesome parents. (via TDW Geek) 

Apparently there are still people out there who think that a woman dressing in a revealing cosplay outfit is tantamount to her giving permission to be a sexist jerk. Not surprising, but it’s no less disgusting for being so common.