Celebrity Is Not Consent, Either

The headline is, as you might have guessed, about the voice actor Vic Mignogna and the yet-again surge of awareness of his creepy con behavior. But this post is aimed squarely at conventions and the people who manage them

First, to set the stage of the current controversy surrounding Mignogna. When I first got involved in conventions and the cosplay community a decade ago I immediately started hearing stories of his inappropriate behavior. Those stories ebbed and flowed over the years, but never disappeared, only gathering more tales. Finally, in this era of the #MeToo movement, even more people who have been subjected to his alleged inappropriate and unwanted physical contact have come forward in the past few months. 

The website AnimeNewsNetwork has a pretty solid article with well-researched personal accounts of Mignogna asking people in an autograph line to take a photo with him, then hugging too tightly, touching in a way too familiar and even kissing on the cheek without asking permission. The article includes photos of many of these incidents, which the subjects say was unwanted touching and in which their permission was not asked.

There have been other allegations about Mignogna, such as homophobia for not wanting to sign non-canon art of yaoi or yuri images, and of being anti-Semitic, based on his response to a Jew citing their religion as the reason for not buying one of Mignogna’s Christian music CDs. The charge of being anti-Semitic is in the AnimeNewsNetwork article, which admits it is a single source story and hasn’t been separately verified, unlike the consent violation stories. And Mignogna states clearly on his fan group website that, because of his Christian beliefs, he won’t sign anything that encourages the display of sexuality among characters in projects he has worked on, including yaoi, yuri or hentai. 

Any or all of those other allegations may be true, but there is nothing like the overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence that exists for Mignogna’s violation of consent. Also, it needs to be said that he is accused of many violations of consent, but there is a noticeable degree of difference between that and what Bill Cosby has been convicted of (drugging and raping multiple women) or what Dr. Larry Nassar was convicted of (sexually assaulting underage girls under the guise of medical exams or physical therapy). That divergence of the level of violation is in part what has allowed Mignogna to work through a decade of reliable reports of problematic behavior. 

Mignogna has released a statement on Twitter (written about here on Polygon) in which he denies the accusations of homophobia and anti-Semitism. But he admits he has engaged in unwanted touch in the past and vows to stop doing so. That would be good news, except he goes on to use one of the most common tactics of an emotional manipulator — your accusations against me means I have to ruin fun for others. To quote: “Hence, I will not be interacting in the same way with fans in the future.” He continues, “To my fans who ask me for hugs, etc., I’m sorry, but please know that I am no less grateful to or supportive of you.” I have to assume Mignogna knows the difference between requested contact and contact not requested, yet in typical manipulator behavior he conflates the two into what he sees as the same thing.

It’s time for cons to stop looking the other way when confronted with Mignogna’s behavior. I mean, I understand why — he is still a big draw that can get attendees to buy tickets, just for a photo op or an autograph session. But most cons have adopted the Cosplay Is Not Consent movement and policies, and have generally done a good job about enforcing it for attendees. 

Now is the time to extend that to Celebrity Is Not Consent. 

(Note: Vic Mignogna image from Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons license. Shot by Flickr user Gage Skidmore.)