BronyCon: Female attendance plummets after Watson takes aim at convention policy

Call her Rebecca the Convention Slayer.

In a row that mirrored the TAM controversy of 2011, women are abandoning BronyCon in droves after Skepchick leader Rebecca Watson questioned the convention’s commitment to the safety of female attendees. In an angry missive on her website, Watson accused convention organizers of pandering to “bronies” — adult male fans of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic — at the expense of young girls and women, who are the target audience of the animated hit.

“The show preaches friendship, tolerance and respect, but Bronies have perverted conventions into hormone-fueled bacchanalias, replete with men cosplaying as hypersexualized versions of the program’s characters,” Watson said. “The sad truth is that Bronie conventions are no longer safe spaces for women. Some of them are straight up meat markets, with alpha Bronies mounting mares like Dothraki horselords on Viagra.”

Grolgoth the Brony King declares war on women.

The skeptic icon went on to quote extensively from a Livejournal entry posted in early 2014 by a female fan who had been accosted by bronies at Equestrian Dreamz, a Montreal-based convention that draws thousands of fans annually. The victim was stepping into an elevator to return to the hotel room she shared with her parents when a bearded, 30-something man cosplaying as Apple Bloom shouldered his way into the lift.

“I could tell he was excited by the festivities, and he wouldn’t stop talking about the Cutie Mark Crusaders,” the victim wrote.

She said she didn’t feel as if she was in danger until the elevator stopped and an enormous man in the pink and magenta hues of Twilight Sparkle waddled into the lift. Apple Bloom high-fived Twilight Sparkle, and as the elevator doors closed “my creep radar was off the charts,” the girl wrote in her Livejournal entry. She described the rest of the ride as “the longest 45 seconds of my life” as the two Bronies sheepishly asked her to join them for banana smoothies in their hotel room.

In the wake of those accusations — and other harrowing accounts detailed on dozens of Tumblrs — female attendance at MPL-related conventions has plummeted more than 40 percent in 2014. Or, as Watson put it, “Brony conventions are packed with more sausage than Abe Froman’s factories.” Tales abound of out-of-control Bronies walking about conventions with their testicles exposed and engaging in lube-fueled “pony rides” along Slip n’ Slides.

A Bronie is attended to by a bevy of female admirers before the Carnivalis Bacchus, the afterparty Bronie orgy that has become convention tradition.

Watson herself was a keynote speaker at last year’s SparkleFest in Munich, where she delivered a talk on My Little Pony’s feminist themes. She was hit on by 26 Bronies, a fact independently confirmed by lesser bloggers.

“I had just finished giving a talk about how it irks me when men hit on me,” Watson said, “when a guy cosplaying Prince Blueblood told me he’d make me neigh, whinny and nicker like a magnificent courser. Is this what My Little Pony fans have to deal with all the time?”

Through Skepchick, Watson issued a general fatwa against supporting My Little Pony or any of its associated conventions until organizers apologize, allow Watson to write convention harassment policies, grant exclusive control of after-parties to Skepchick Industries, and ban dissenters — with the exception of the odd contrarian, so attendees “can be reminded of how fucking stupid Bronies are,” Watson said.

Watson cosplaying as Princess Luna at HoofCon 2012.