Comic-Con Sexual Harassment: Female Fans Complain About Geeks Groping


San Diego Comic-Con is one of the most eagerly anticipated events of any year. It’s where like-minded aficionados gather together to celebrate the world of comics, movies, television, books, and pretty much every other facet of pop culture.

One of the highlights includes walking around the city and getting to see geeky fans of all shapes and sizes wearing costumes inspired by their favorite characters. However, female fans have now revealed that some male attendees have been getting a little bit too overly familiar with them, and they’ve now made a plea to try and get the sexual harassment to stop.

According to the Daily Mail, a new survey has revealed that 25 percent of women who attend Comic-Con complain about being sexually harassed. These fans have added that they have to endure being on the receiving end of crude comments, while others have added that they’re groped and leered at on a constant basis too. Some have even added that perverted fans have tried to take up-skirt photos too.

It’s been estimated that 41% percentof people who actually attend the convention are now women. One of these included 19-year-old Maria Russell, who visited this year’s Comic-Con as Poison Ivy, one of Batman’s most infamous foes, and she recalled, “I had a 12 or 13-year-old boy come up and ask if he could touch me.” As you can imagine she rebuffed his advances.

A group of female fans have now decided that enough is enough and they’ve started a movement called Geeks for CONsent, which has been designed to make Comic Con address the issue. Their Change.org petition insists that Comic Con needs to have a formal anti-harassment policy, while they also need to train people and post signs educating volunteers on the matter. It has so far been signed by over 2,500 people.

This years event has also seen its 130,000 attendees be provided with a note that explained: “Harassing or offensive behavior will not be tolerated. Comic-Con reserves the right to revoke, without refund, the membership and badge of any attendee not in compliance with this policy.”

San Diego’s Comic-Con is the largest gathering of its kind in the world, and during the event the world’s most famous filmmakers, actors, writers, comic-book authors and artists speak intimately about their various pieces of work to adoring attendees. So far this year stars of Game Of Thrones, The Big Bang Theory, and Interstellar’s Christopher Nolan and Matthew McConaughey have each been rapturously received.

[Image via Bing.com]

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