So I’m sure most of you have heard about the Open Source Boob Project. As my linking indicates, most other awesome feminist bloggers have done a great job of breaking this one down for me.
For those who need the abbreviated version, a dude at Penguicon decided to liken the open source movement to the need to grope boobs. Because just like software, women should stop selling their bodies and making completely arbitrary rules about what people can and cannot do with or to their bodies (like bitches should have any say on that matter!), and instead just trade them around for people to make their own adjustments and tweaks to for the betterment of the community.
Except he didn’t say it exactly like that.
So the upshot of the con was that women walked around with buttons indicating whether or not it was acceptable for a complete stranger to come up and ask to grope them. Be mindful: there was no reciprocity–while I’m sure there were plenty of man-boobs at the convention as well, there was no “touch my ass” or “grab my sack” button that a man could wear. And this was all so that the poor scarred psyches of the male geeks could be stroked and petted because they had such traumatic high school experiences, unlike the geek girls, who I’m sure were all voted Homecoming queen and head cheerleader.
The Ferrett has updated his post to whine about how this whole thing is being blown out of proportion and it’s the perfect example of how you can take a bunch of cool women and extrapolate out and us bitches who object to the idea that the only important thing about a woman would be a button on her chest indicating whether or not you could grope said chest are just ruining it for the other women.
Except he didn’t say it exactly like that.
Instead, we get a contrite declaration that the project needs to be suspended:
And the chances that the Project would get fucked up, making con spaces more amenable to hordes of stalkers and mouthbreathers who will grope and maul women, are pretty damn big. Hell, it’s already made women feel less safe by me mentioning it, and that makes me feel like shit. As it should.
Call me cynical, but after a bunch of women wrote in the thread about how they were seriously considering never attending a con again because they didn’t want to be sexually assaulted by some over-privileged dipshit male, I get the feeling that his apology was driven more by the fear that the ladyflesh would go in short supply and he wouldn’t be able to ogle beautiful girls in incredibly skimpy blue princess outfits. And what a tragedy that would be for the poor men… it would be like high school all over again.
God I feel bad for any woman who attended that con who was a rape survivor.