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A thing I think people aren't understanding about missing stairs in general & Big Name Missing Stairs in particular is that they choose their victims wisely for the most part. People who are new, who are not well connected & who seem unlikely to feel comfortable complaining.
Big Name Missing Stairs often rely explicitly on the perception of power (that for the record they don't have) to silence victims. But more than that they rely on the people they have not harassed/abused etc to speak up for them. Because they don't just carefully select targets.
They carefully select their friends too. They cozy up to people who they know are well known and liked. They are on their best behavior in front of people who have more power than them whether it be social or otherwise. They are unfailingly careful to curate their public image
It's the perfect cover. Because most abuse/harassment happens in private. And what isn't private is often then blamed on alcohol. A bad trip. Then? Effusive apologies & references to unnamed stressors, plus a plan to get themselves together. Because a redemption tour is easy
All they have to do is pretend to be contrite & people will leap to forgiveness for something that wasn't done to them. The actual victim is then socially coerced to be forgiving too. Especially if they themselves are imperfect. (Because again predators choose prey carefully)
Sure sometimes a Big Name Missing Stair has a misstep, but that usually comes after years of getting away with it. They get careless in the absence of consequences. And it's only when they pick the wrong prey that we see anything like meaningful consequences. Maybe.
And then because of race & gender some people are less forgivable (forever) than others. So some people can be made into perpetual dragons to slay & Big Name Missing Stairs set themselves up as perpetual heroes. They perform so well you almost miss that the dragon is toothless.
I'm going to tell you a secret as someone who has been harassed at cons & not at cons & who came through it because I'm actually something fell and awful myself, most of these stories about your faves will turn out to be true. They did something terrible once or a dozen times
Not only are you not at every event they are (pros can do 30-40 cons a year in different cities easily & some are global so their numbers are even higher), but you don't know a thing about what they do outside of cons. Not at writers groups, or local events, or wherever
I can sail through what goes awry in SFF because while I spend a lot of time in SFF it's not my primary work. For most people cons are once or twice a year & a lot of online buildup. So you can see someone you know is trash, tell them to kick rocks and go on with life.
Editors, agents, writers, whoever tells you they have the power to harm your career is lying. I know, they told me that a few times. *stares in bestselling author* Can they keep me from working with them? Sure. They aren't close to the only game in town. And I make money for pubs
Some of the same folks who would swear they killed my career in 2009 or 2013 or 2017 are eating big slices of crow right now. And here's the kicker, that was always the risk, but I'm a Cinderella story so they bit at the wrong apple this time. But they did it because I look easy
I'm Black, darker than a paper bag & I'm not nice. A dozen girls like me get chewed up by industry every day. So what makes me different? Luck, talent & oh yeah, I'm in multiple genres and people like to read my work because everyone loves a dragon that isn't eating their sheep
I eat a lot of wannabe heroes though. And I mistrust the ones explicitly offering to rep POC when they never did before they saw money on the table. So I never let myself think any of these people are my friends. They're here to do business. Making friends isn't their goal.
Big Name Missing Stairs benefit from the same system I do. Publishing is about money not morals. I know, that's awful to hear, but well here we are. A lot of fandom thinks you have to be a good person to succeed & in my experience this industry is a beautifully decorated snakepit
Does that mean everyone is awful? No, but far more people have the capacity to be awful than we want to admit. And frankly SFF's "We welcome everyone" narrative means that the worst people know where to go in a pinch. Because SFF prides itself on not kicking them out early.
There's a lot put on cons to speak up about what happens, but y'all, some of the worst people I know in SFF do their dirt at local gatherings & then go to cons in a different city. Because they know word won't really travel. And there's always a new con trying to get Big Guests
And that's before we get into people who only act up at tech conferences or fan cons or whatever. There's no shortage of places on offer in any corner of media as an industry. Hell the first time I knew I had a problem with a harasser was at ALA & that took two years to blow up
And listen I'm a monster who bites back. So I was taken aback when it blew up. But even with me talking about it, I still see some of y'all working with that person. And I let it cook because here's the other thing...shitty people don't cease to exist when they get outed.
They just move on. And they start new careers & get new contracts & so on. Because fundamentally we don't actually care about Big Name Missing Stairs enough to change anything, not when it's so much easier to learn to step over that space. We forget their sins every day.
