If you step on my foot, you need to get off my foot.

If you step on my foot without meaning to, you need to get off my foot.

If you step on my foot without realizing it, you need to get off my foot.

If everyone in your culture steps on feet, your culture is horrible, and you need to get off my foot.

If you have foot-stepping disease, and it makes you unaware you’re stepping on feet, you need to get off my foot. If an event has rules designed to keep people from stepping on feet, you need to follow them. If you think that even with the rules, you won’t be able to avoid stepping on people’s feet, absent yourself from the event until you work something out.

If you’re a serial foot-stepper, and you feel you’re entitled to step on people’s feet because you’re just that awesome and they’re not really people anyway, you’re a bad person and you don’t get to use any of those excuses, limited as they are. And moreover, you need to get off my foot.

See, that’s why I don’t get the focus on classifying harassers and figuring out their motives. The victims are just as harassed either way.

Hershele Ostropoler, in a comment on John Scalzi’s blog post, “Readercon, Harassment, Etc.”   

The comment is in reference to sexual harassment that occurred at the Readercon convention and the subsequent defense of the situation by some members of fandom and the Readercon Board.  

It’s also applicable to other situations where someone claims their intentions were pure and they didn’t mean to do something sexist/racist/heterosexist/abelist, etc.  Even if you did not mean to step on someone’s foot—you did.

(via racebending)

John Scalzi is an awesome human and so is this commenter. This may not have anything directly to do with Amber Benson but, he is a good friend of her’s and it’s awesome knowing she surrounds herself with people like this.

I’ve posted a few segments of Amber Benson’s Forward to Buffy: The Making of a Slayer before. However, I decided one cannot fully appreciate Benson’s dedication to her character, Tara, or loyalty as a Whedonite without reading it all. Read; marvel; share.

“If there’s one thing I can say about my time on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it’s that Alyson Hannigan was right: I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I remember the exact conversation.

Alyson - who will forever be enshrined in the science fiction and fantasy lexicon as Buffy Summer’s best friend, Willow Rosenberg - was trying to explain to me how I was now a part of something that wasn’t just entertainment, but a bona fide way of life. Of course, I had no idea what she was talking about. I was just there to do a couple of episodes of this sci-fi television show and that was it.

At least that’s what I thought- little did I know back then how much this ‘sci-fi television show’ was going to change my life.

Because Alyson was right: Buffy is so much more than just entertainment. It’s a way of being that transcends its medium. It’s opened minds, changed hearts, and shown people there are different and better ways to live- and it didn’t just do it at home in the United States. No, Buffy became a worldwide phenomenon.

Without preaching from a soapbox, it tackled the day’s hot-button issues, making grand statements about gender, sex, violence, and inequality- without talking down to its audience. The writing was clever, the relationships felt real, and there was at least one character each of us could identify with. In a nutshell, Buffy was smart, and it made you feel smart for ‘getting it’.

But it wasn’t just intelligence that marked Buffy as something different. In a world rigged to make us feel alone and insignificant, Buffy gave us hope. It made us feel as though we were a part of something bigger than ourselves; that we belonged.

If someone like Joss Whedon could find his way in Hollywood; if he could create an imperfect, human heroine like Buffy Summers and get someone as cool as Sarah Michelle Gellar to inhabit her; if this little mid-season replacement nobody cared about could get (and stay) on the air while, at the same time, growing a large and devoted audience of rabid fans… well, then maybe the Hellmouth was the place to be.

Even now, so many years after the end of the show, there are still new fans finding their way into Sunnydale. Buffy doesn’t care that they’re late to the game. She’s been waiting for them - and she accepts all of them exactly as they are. Besides, no matter how many times you may have seen an episode, there’s no such thing as an expert. I can guarantee there are always new and intriguing things to discover in Buffy; things that you somehow missed on previous viewings.

So as you dive into this lovely book, be prepared to lose yourself in its pages. As all initiated know: Once the Buffyverse has you in its clutches, it won’t ever let you go.

- Amber Benson