Photo of me at Anime USA by the Patches.

I’m back from Anime USA and I’ve officially recovered enough energy to start blogging about it. The highlight of my weekend was definitely when the Patches and I gave our Sexism in Anime Fandom panel for the second time. We made a lot of changes to update it and improve flow, and combined with the more active audience participation that comes with a smaller con, I think it turned out completely different than our Otakon presentation. Thanks to everyone who showed up!

Each time we’ve given the panel, we’ve premised with an explanation of “Why are we still talking about sexism in 2012?” (Right now, the corresponding slide title is “LOL Sexism.”) But after work today, during which I assisted my talented coworker Aja Romano in a report about sexist rants against “fake geek girls,” it’s pretty apparent to me why panels like mine are still worth talking about.

I was impressed by how quickly geeks started to decry this latest example of sexism. It’s clear that our community has gotten very good at identifying injustice. The question we need to face now, however, is how to respond.

During the  panel, I gave the first half of my story about receiving the “geek test” from a group of fellow Gundam fans (here’s the blog post about it for a refresher), and concluded that it was “uncomfortable.” Somebody in the audience raised their hand and asked me a very valid question.

“What did you do to those guys after they gave you the geek test?”

I’m sure he was expecting that I schooled them in Gundam knowledge or totally told them off. After all, I’m the one at the front of the room instructing people on what to do when you see sexism. But my blog readers know the real story—I just froze up.

We went around the room and audience members suggested lots of fantastic comebacks I could have used. Questions I could have shot back at them. One even suggested that maybe the guy who talked to me was just awkward and trying to start a conversation with a fellow fan. But I feel like everybody thinks that when this happens to them, they’ll be stronger. That’s why so many well-meaning people condemn passive victims of sexual discrimination—they think if they were in her place, they’d do more to defend themselves.

It is really easy for me to speak out against Tony Effing Harris‘s crazed rant about cosplayers who only “pretend” to like comics, but what if I were a cosplayer? It’s easy to identify and shut down geek culture gatekeepers—until their target is you.

You’re probably wondering what we told attendees at our panel to do when they see people getting shut out of geek culture. The answer? Always, always say something to let them know it’s not okay. I couldn’t say something then, so I’m trying to make up for it by doing the next best thing: telling my story to lots of people now.