I know that with MileHiCon in Denver readings are assigned on the basis of a mass emailing to all all authors potentially showing up asking them along with all the other panel preferences if they would like to do a reading. So the ratio is dependent on who is coming to the convention, who gets back to programing with a preference, who wants to do a reading, and finally on the basis of space. Usually there are more authors than reading slots and when the last few are being assigined it is on a basis of who is available, who wants to take those last less favorable times, and who is more famous-ish. I got handed the task of making the final cut this year and I used a combination of Goodreads and Amazon to decide between the smallest of the small press people left at the end.

I probably should have figured out the female to male ratio, but I did not because it just did not occur to me. I think we had about 40 reading slots. But that is an off the top of my head guess. At least with those I was making a cut on I think it was even numbers of females and males who got a reading. For the rest I have no idea. Not that I am in any way in charge of programing, I just help out.

Ideally, of course, it wouldn't come down to that.

Easy for me, of course. I'm a married middleaged ciswoman; I am neither powerful nor imposing; and I don't do intoxicants, so my impulse control is pretty good. (So far I've never been sleep-deprived enough to get inappropriate, but I guess it could happen).

For those who might be in a position to be misinterpreted: I acknowledge you have a difficult path ahead of you. Whether it's worth negotiating is your call.

> probably something along the lines of "guests who violate the courtesy due to fellow guests and hosts will be eaten".

I need this framed. Possibly in cross-stitch.

And yes, the split readings at Philcon worked out wonderfully. Gregory Frost, E.C. Myers, Alex Shvartsman, and Lawrence Schoen all offered of their own volition to share their readings. This allowed four more women to read. Kudos to them.

Photographic proof here.

Also note the shuffling around the 9-11 pm slots. At 8:55, we wanted to attend the Self-Censorship panel. We noticed it had been moved to 10--we verified this with the program chair who was standing there. We went away and came back an hour later and discovered that it had been moved back to the original timeslot and upon closer perusal of the printed schedule, we discovered that the "Time Keeps on Slippin'" panel never seemed to actually exist. So I don't know what was going on with that but the result was that the Self-Censorship panel ended up being one panelist short. Or it ended up not happening at all.