Blogger Molly McIsaac has a post up about her experiences cosplaying as superheroines at San Diego Comic Con and elsewhere, and what it feels like to discover that people—including those who later ask you to pose for them—have been taking pictures of your rear end and trading them on the internet that’s helped me clarify some of my thinking about sexual harassment at conventions. Specifically, these paragraphs stood out to me:

Several people have tried to make this argument to me: If you didn’t want people photographing your butt, you shouldn’t wear the costumes that you wear.

FUCK. THAT. That’s like telling women not to wear short skirts if she doesn’t want to be raped. These characters are drawn in very little clothing due to art direction and wanting to make sales – and I love them and want to portray them despite what they are drawn wearing. I don’t want to be burka Wonder Woman – I want to be Wonder Woman in all her sexy hot pants glory.

We as a geek community have some of the most rampant sexism and misogyny I have ever seen. Women in cosplay are treated as pieces of meat, on display to satisfy a man’s fantasy of that character. We are without personality or interests, and there’s no way people will believe that we actually know ANYTHING about the character we’re dressed up as (especially if we are hot). I don’t know the reasons for this – I have theories, but that’s for another time entirely. But the behavior I have witnessed over the years is abysmal. And it’s not okay.

For some people, like McIsaac, cosplaying may be about claiming the sexual and physical power of the character she’s portraying. For some people, the fact that a character is sexually appealing or wears revealing clothes may be a secondary impact. But whether cosplaying is a sexual act or not, engaging sexually with someone still requires their consent. They’re a person, not an image, with the right to set their own terms of your interaction with them. And taking pictures of someone’s ass, specifically, rather than of their whole costume from the front, is a sexual act. The fact that folks are doing so furtively, attempting to avoid an interaction that might lead to their being denied permission for their actions, suggests that they’re pretty aware they’re doing so without consent. And if you know you’re sneaking around, and also want to be a decent person, that should probably make you think. As she puts it, cosplay is not a permission slip. There isn’t a lower level of scrutiny for people who take furtive shots of a woman’s behind at a convention or while she’s at school. A creepshot is still a creepshot, no matter where it’s taken and what a woman is wearing.

I’m sitting in the airport waiting to hop a plane to Los Angeles, and Twitter’s exploded with the news that, in the wake of this morning’s terrible shooting at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, some folks on Fox have suggested banning costumes at movie screenings. AMC has already moved to do so:

AMC Theatres said it will not let any guests in costumes or face-covering masks into the theaters, and issued a ban on fake weapons. The company added that anyone wanting a refund in light of this new policy will be granted one. “We are taking necessary precautions to ensure our guests who wish to enjoy a movie this weekend can do so with as much peace of mind as possible in these circumstances,” AMC Theatres said in a news release.

I get this as a matter of company practice, and the ban on fake weapons may even be sensible, both from the perspective of preventing people from walking in the door with the real things disguised as fakes (although as Aurora tells us, that’s hardly the only way to get guns and gas into a theater) and from the question of where they put them once the screening starts. But it does make me pretty sad to think that theaters would start banning costumes altogether. Whatever a lone murderer does, the impulse to play, and dress up, and pay creative homage to culture you love is not the problem here.