I'm still not sure what your end goal is when you're talking about ClexaCon. What would make it better for you? Do you want a written apology? Do you want the entire thing shut down? I can't imagine you still want to be a panelist, but do you want that? But I also haven't seen you offer any solutions, just a constant stream of your anger and disappointment. What exactly do you want, Layne?
I’ve been sitting on this for a while, trying to think of the right way to answer it.
Quite honestly, I’m not sure what my “end goal” is either. The problem is, I don’t think there is an “end goal.” I’m not talking about Clexa Con in an effort to bully someone into submission or to try and win some kind of war. When I talk about things, it’s to point out the problems that are there and discuss them and confront them and deal with issues within our society and within our community. Pointing out the problems in something doesn’t mean anyone who supports it is wrong. It doesn’t mean you can’t like it. In fact, I firmly believe you can like and support something while still talking about what’s wrong with it.
At this point, I don’t know that there is anything that would “make it better.” Because anything they would give now would simply be just that, an attempt at pacifying me so I’ll stop talking. Which isn’t to say they couldn’t somehow do some genuine back pedaling and fix things, but given everything I’ve seen so far, I don’t see that being that case and I would be pretty hesitant to accept anything further as genuine and not just placating. I did want a written apology, yes. When I spoke to the Clexa Con director on the phone, she apologized to me at length, addressing that they had given into bullies and perpetuated a harmful narrative and that she would never want to do that and understood that they’d done the wrong thing. What I wanted, at the time, and what I told her I wanted, at that time, was for them to say that, out loud where people could see it, where they were facing up to those actions and concluding the narrative that had been started by their decision. Because it was and is important to me, that if we’re going to go through all of this, we handle it properly and we dismount well and we learn a thing or two, as a community. It was important to me for them to admit out front that they’d let some loud bullies back them into a corner, and that that is shitty both on their part and on the part of people that chose that as a route to take to try and have me removed. It was important to me that they admit they should not have removed me, that it’s damaging to queer voices to police what we are allowed to discuss and how we discuss it. And that they admit all of that where other people, besides me could hear it. Because having them say it only to me and not out loud felt more like they were trying to play every angle and more like they were trying to still hide from the people who caused this. It made it feel like their PR and saving face on their twitter account was more important to them than the fact that they had silenced another queer person, that they had made people attending feel uncomfortable now, that they had humiliated me and made me into a villain in their story. It made the apology I received, the “personal apology” they keep repeating that they gave me, feel fake. Because what is the good in an apology if you’re scared to give it where people hear it? It’s not admitting you did something wrong if you don’t admit it. It’s not admitting it if you post it three weeks later just to cover it up. I’m sure you all understand that. We all know what those kind of apologies look and feel like,t hey kind where they still only barely get it, where they say just what they think you want to hear.
So now, I don’t think there is an endgame with them. They decided not to put me back on the panel, even after “admitting” that they knew what they did was wrong. So any attempt to do that now, this late in the game, feels a lot like they’d only be doing it to once again save face and cover bad press. I won’t be used for that. I won’t let this discussion and what we’re talking about be used for that.
My own personal continuation of these conversations comes from a few things. The first is that it simply bothers me. This is my blog and that is my twitter and I talk about how I feel about things on them a lot. It’s likely I’m going to continue to talk about this because it really fucking hurt me. It really, really made me feel shitty and humiliated and sad. It still does. People who I thought I really liked, people who I thought really liked me are now saying negative stuff about me because Clexa Con wanted to make me look like a villain. People who I still have great relationships with feel alienated because of this. I won’t get to meet the people I wanted to and spend time with all of you and contribute my voice to the conversations at this con. This is a little known thing but I knew about Lexa. I knew about Lexa and Clexa and Clarke’s bisexuality long before I worked on the show. I knew about them in their conception stages, when they were only being talked about and had just begun to be put on paper. I was quietly excited all on my own. I sat on set when they filmed Survival of the Fittest and watched my friends begin to breathe a real relationship into those characters and tried as hard as I could to contain my own personal excitement, knowing how great it was and how much everyone would love it. I knew about the kiss the day it was being filmed and I watched it air live with one of my friends, knowing it was coming and still losing it like a kid on Christmas. I experienced the sadness of knowing Lexa would die. I felt it when I first found out, and then again when I saw the cards on the board, and again reading the script. I cried in the office watching the dailies. I felt it again when you all felt it, but that time, I felt that sadness for you. No one could have prepared for the impact that death had and I watched you all get your hearts broken and lose hope and nothing could be done. I sat in the fall out of that and tried to listen, tried to remind you that you were allowed to be sad and angry and hurt and devastated. You were allowed to feel hopeless and betrayed and disappointed. In my own life, I reminded people of that same thing, over and over. I told them they’d never understand how you felt, that they’d never know what something like this can mean to you. I sat in the discourse of the months that followed, negotiating the terms under which we were allowed to fight and be sad with every other faction on the internet, negotiating the validity of Clarke’s representation in the coming episodes and seasons and storylines and what that meant to each of us, differently. I thought a lot myself, privately, as a bisexual woman about what Clarke meant to me and what she would mean going forward. Clarke’s bisexuality was introduced to me through Lexa, and what is her representation now, without that? What are the rules? Are there rules? Questions I don’t have answers to yet. Questions I’m sure I’ll never have real answers to, that we’ll see create discourse in the episodes and seasons to follow, and in television to follow for many more years. Questions we could have talked about, on a panel about bisexual representation that I had been invited to speak at. This might seem like a long, emotional, waxing poetic but the truth of the matter is that as self important as it may sound, I know that I am one of you. I know that I felt those feelings, maybe differently, maybe alone, maybe in silence but I understand – and please God, don’t ever tell me that I don’t again – the impact of Clarke and Lexa, of Lexa who was a character unlike any before her and Clarke who represents of piece of me that no other leading lady on television ever has. Being a part of that convention, being a part of you, being part of the history and the community and the conversation that is this movement and this relationship meant and still means the world to me. So unfortunately, whether you like it or not, whether you believe I’m “ruining it for other people” or “being too negative” I’m going to continue to talk about it. The same way you’re all going to continue to talk about the things that you feel. The way we should continue to always talk about the problems our community faces, the problems our community continues to contribute to within ourselves, the problems we face as individuals, the validity of our sadness and our anger at any level, big or small, personal or as a whole.
And no, my “endgame” is not to get the convention ruined or cancelled. My endgame is not to strip you of your opportunities to meet each other or to find community there or to meet your idols. I would never, ever want to take those things from you. You deserve whatever little happiness you can find in this universe that doesn’t always want you to have it. No matter how angry you are with me, no matter how much you hate reading this, no matter how much you hate me or wish I’d just stop talking for one minute for once, you will always be an important part of this community, and as such, an important part of me. I will carry you with me, I will fight for you and against you, I will continue to preach the importance of your feelings and your anger. And maybe some day, I will do the one thing that this moved me to make sure I never give up on, and I will write a story and maybe, it’ll mean something to you. Maybe it won’t. Maybe you’ll hate it. And if you do, I hope you’ll tell me. Because your voices are important and powerful and they move entire mountains and industries.
Short term, in the small lens that is this convention, it may look like this is all aimless. Like I’m talking just to hear my own voice, like I’m still angry about something that is over and done with, like I’m beating a dead horse that can’t give me anything, anymore. That tried and failed. As many dead horses will continue to try and fail, or fail some of us but not others. You may feel like it’s a self important crusade and you may be right. I may be acting out of pride and hurt and my own emotions. I won’t deny that. And no, there may not be anything they can do now to fix that. But this isn’t just one thing. It isn’t just one tiny pebble dropped into an ocean. It’s another pebble, among many, many other pebbles, among large boulders and rocks that ripple our community time and time again and that we must talk about, and we must learn from and we must listen to each other regarding. The bottom of our floor is already laden with the boulders and pebbles of previous experiences and all we can do is continue to throw them back out. My endgame doesn’t exist because there is no end. There’s no solution. We fight for as long as we live and in the case of our fictional heroes, long after we die. We can only continue to give voice to these issues, to give voice to our own feelings and to talk about these things.
To answer your question, what do I want? I want the people who think I’m the bad guy to consider beyond the small lens. I want us within our community to start regarding each other a little more, to start respecting one another a little more, to start being objective and empathetic so that we can understand a narrative no matter what side of it we happen to land on. I want us to continue to be a community that doesn’t cast one another out but embraces the voices and the views and the cries of each and every member of it beside us no matter how soft or how loud, how gentle or how harsh. I want us to put our community before allies, to question people who would use us and hurt us. I want us to protect the young members of our community that will come after us, and the ones who might fall for the promises of someone who doesn’t understand again. I want us to hold each other up even if we don’t agree with what someone stands for. I want us to stand for their right to stand anyway. I want us to continue to do more than just survive and always ask for better. We deserve better.
jacobvanloon
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