Piers Anthony: Vile or Visionary?

Great Debates
1

[mournful lament]
Oh, if only the board would allow smileys on thread titles…
[/mournful lament]

This is a continuance of a tangent spawned by the “Bad, ‘guilty pleasures’ authors and the readers who buy their books” thread, which was enough off topic to merit taking the discussion somewhere else. It begins with this post by Fenris, and goes a bit between us from there. Nothing much to do with the OP, so I brought it over here to respond to his last post on it.

Well, there ARE people like that; for better or worse, they’re out there. Just as there are people who like big girls’ panties (and evidently their male counterparts).

Again, there are people like this. I personally can’t for the life of me understand the attraction to squirming from discomfort or pain; but the enjoyment of pleasurable squirming is at least somewhat understandable (look how much fun it is with adults; some simply don’t see that big of a difference between the two).

In Firefly the “official” molestor is jailed and killed, while the rest involved in Nymph’s abuse are not punished.

Haven’t read it, so can’t comment on whether the author intended it to be “funny”, nor on the consequences to the characters. Presenting someone as being involuntarily molested doesn’t necessarily constitute advocacy of the practice, though. We put kids through all sorts of things they don’t want (measles shots, spankings, Sunday School, etc.). That doesn’t automatically make those things abusive by definition.

Your horror is understandable, if that’s the message he’s trying to promote. Having not read the book, I can’t divine his intentions; but it strikes me as something that a lot of kids can at least identify with, as a lot of kids go through such experiences. Maybe he’s letting them know they’re not alone.

Nope, it certainly isn’t. Of course, Mad wasn’t a therapist. But a more important point is what should constitute therapy for someone who has been raped? Presenting sex in a context where the victim has control, and can learn once again to accept the sex experience as a positive one? Sounds to me like that’s what he did.

Well, one person’s “excuses” are often another person’s “reasons”. Whether it “helped” her or not isn’t made clear, but the other three conditions were well established. She did initiate it, it was consentual (at least between the two of them), and she did enjoy it. We as a society want to take the position that none of those things should matter because the contact is disapproved of by US. Anthony seems to think that when we pass judgment, the facts should take precedence over our prejudices. Was Nymph really being abused by Mad, or have we just decided to declare it so? And what effect does that decision have on the child? We as a society, unfortunately, don’t seem to feel obligated to care, because we’re in charge so we don’t have to. Anthony thinks we owe it to our children to do so. I agree with him.

Many people feel that way, but I’m not convinced it’s a valid argument. You could say the same thing about taking your kids to a baseball game. Can they make an informed choice about that? No. Is the relationship equal in power? No. But no-one says that it’s unhealthy. The problem I have with this is that the reasoning applies to lots (if not most) situations between adults and children, but it’s almost always when the situation involves sex that this reasoning is held up as a justification for unilateral condemnation. I find that arbitrary and unjustified.

Yep, I think so. :slight_smile:

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Really?

Even if Freud had never existed, most people recognize that the development of sexuality and a person’s response to it is a pretty hefty part of creating the human adult. I see nothing at all arbitrary in looking to ensure that children do not have unwanted sexual experiences. I am rather sure that people who have undergone premature sexual experiences do grow up to have a lot of problems as adults. Those experiences are hardly in the same league as being forced to go watch a game or a play or being forced to sit through church services. (Depending how the “forcing” is accomplished may affect other things in a child’s development, but I do not believe there is anything arbitrary about dividing sexual experiences from other experiences when we are discussing children.)

(I don’t have any comment on P.A. 'cause I gave up on Xanth after the third book.)

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But baseball games don’t have the lasting physical and psychological consequences that sex can have.
You’ve actually got two discussions going on: “Piers Anthony: Pervert or Priest” :wink: and “Let’s reexamine our attitudes about Child Molsestation”.

I’ll write more, later (work beckons).

BTW: As always, Dijon, I’m enjoying talking with you. The last time I had a discussion regarding Anthony and his views on child-molestation, it started ugly and got worse. The tone of your post was refreshing (for this topic), and you made some good points!

Fenris

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I haven’t read any Anthony in years (ever since I read a painfully, painfully bad novel of his by the name of “Killobyte” that I finished out of pure grudge–a sort of, by gob I’m going to finish this book, not vice versa) so I can’t contribute there. The direction the later Xanth books were taking (“later” at that point probably equalled number six or so at the utmost, it was a while back), I do remember thinking were getting more than a little odd with an increasingly prominent princess-panties theme. However, no question whatsoever that there are large numbers of people who are “a little odd” in various ways harmless to harmful. That phasing over into the latter brings towards this:

I might agree with arbitrary, but the unjustified…simply doesn’t sit right. Sexuality is a major component of humanity; people are sexual creatures. Children being people, they’re sexual creatures as well, in their own way. That italicized bit is very important, both because of its truth, and how easily the preceding clause can be heatedly misinterpreted in this day and age.

Sexual experiences are also one of the most powerful mind-altering things possible that don’t involve the scrutiny of the DEA. There’s good reason that religions have had a love-hate relationship with it, from ritual sex to the other end of the axis with ritual celibacy. The latter may get codified as “law”, but I think that’s essentially just a dumbing-down for the masses; the reason for it was most likely originally mystical–it’s no coincidence that a lot of mystical writings are downright sexual in imagery. (Nope, I have no cites, simply my own thoughts on the matter.)

In essence, it can be very powerful. And that power is something people grow into at their own pace. It is an adult responsibility to care for children; caring for them involves arranging a pattern of life around them that protects them from things that it’s not a good idea they handle.

And certainly what kids can handle is in large part societally determined–I think adolescence is artificially lengthened to an unhealthy degree, for one thing. But just as there’s an emotional gap in development and capacity between most teens and adults, there is a much larger gap between the capcities of a prepubescent child and an adult. It’s a wider gap on some things than others; I don’t think it’s unjustified to say sexuality is one area where the gap is enormous; the difference between childhood sexuality and adult sexuality is huge. Forcing them together is, to put it lightly, irresponsible. “But little Sally didn’t want to go the baseball game either!” just doesn’t ring as a valid counter-argument.

How much any of that touches on what Anthony wrote about, I’ve no idea.

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either of the Xanth books in question. Perhaps Fenris could post a brief sample of th escenes in question. It is difficult to judge things like the author’s tone based upon a summary.

I have read Firefly, though it was more than a decade ago. My recollection is that it was a novel of psychological horror and that assuming tha author’s sympathies lie unequivicolly with any single character or situation depicted is probably unsound. In particular, I read the scene in question as being designed to take what at face value would be a very black-and-white situation and inject it with tones of grey. At the time I read the book, I found that interpretation to have relevance to some of the themes of the novel as a whole. I never imagined that it represented a archetype of the author’s views on pedophilia.

I also don’t think that Tom Harris is a proponent of cannibalism or that Anne Rice wants to be raped.

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As a pre-teen and teen, I was a big Piers Anthony fan. I read all Xanth books up to the point where I outgrew them, and read Firefly, the Adept series and several of the other more adult books written by him. To me, this debate is analogous to the debates over whether Huckleberry Finn is racist, or is a work commenting on racism.

I assume that I fit the profile of the bulk of his readers: I started reading his books a year or two before adolescence and continued through most of high school. Adolesence, as goes without saying, is steeped in budding sexuality, and kids going through it are constantly adjusting and re-adjusting their thinking about things sexual. A lot of it is scary and threatening, and a lot of it delightful, and much of it titillating as hell. Anthony’s works are strictly and unambiguously fantasty, and as such offer a wonderful, safe venue to explore themes of sexuality for adolescent readers.

When Esk is terrified of the demoness, the character’s terror is real, but it’s placed in a context of humor and wonder which make reading about the terror non-terrifying. I don’t think that kids reading about such intense situations need to be terrorized themselves. They need to be able to read the whole thing, make decisions about how they would handle such a situation, maybe make comparisons for themselves to real-life situations. By firmly placing the scene in the context of a quest in a wholly imaginary world, Anthony can let his readers keep a safe distance from something that might otherwise be overwhelming.

Another key to this (for me, anyway) is that his characters always manage their own course through their worlds without guidance from parents or elders. They are treated as equal to any task or challenge set before them, and eventually they succeed. For kids who don’t feel they have guidance, or who are too embarrassed or stubborn or introverted to seek it, these books offer a chance to be an independent adventurer, even through sexual topics, which most adults are leery of discussing openly. The fascination with panties, etc. isn’t so much Anthony’s own fascination as his ability to identify with what young boys are intrigued by. He keeps it pretty innocent-- the characters who want to know the color of another girl’s panties aren’t after anything else. The panties alone are imbued with enough mystery and to know anything about them is exciting, just like the playground games of “Show me yours and I’ll show you mine” are exciting.

I never really noticed that the antagonists or attackers in his stories never met with consequence for their actions, but in many ways that’s fitting. He’s speaking to his readers and putting them in a world where young people make their own decisions, strive to meet their own goals. In the real world, most of us don’t see our antagonists or attackers come to justice. I was picked on and harrassed for years, and to this day, as far as I know, nothing stopped those kids other than growing up. Teachers did nothing and I never met their parents. Every day, both kids and adults encounter jerks or downright terrible people, are hurt by them, and never see them “get theirs.” Yet we grow and survive and move on. So do the heroes on Anthony novels.

Firefly is most certainly aimed at an adult audience, as stated clearly on the cover, inside the jacket, in the introduction, by where it’s shelved in the library, etc. Children shouldn’t be reading it. When I read it several years ago, I didn’t know quite what to think of it. I thought it pretty obvious that he wrote the book to be erotica-- the story of Nymph was one of many fantasies including, but not limited to, a giant sexy amoeba, sentient trees, a man unable to achieve an erection, and others, all packaged around a story-telling format. Taken as nothing more than fantasy, Nymph’s story was disturbing and tragic, but not an invitation for molesters to clamor, “See! 5 year olds like it!” Rather, it’s a powerful invitation for us to examine our own sexuality and its roots, and discover why we draw the lines of acceptable behavior and sympathy where we do.

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tomndebb:

Of course, it is a large part of development, which is why it’s so important to ensure that we handle it properly. What I was referring to as arbitrary (which it isn’t entirely, but I feel is to a degree) is what oftentimes appears to be the singling out of matters sexual for unilateral ban (beneath a certain age) for reasons which also apply to other situations that are not similarly forbidden. The concept of “informed consent”, for example. Kids can’t give “informed consent” to hardly anything at all, but that argument is rarely brought up in contexts other than the sexual. They can’t give “informed consent” to ride in cars, for example; yet we don’t blink at parents who put them in the back seat, despite the thousands per year that die in auto accidents. No-one raises the argument that parents who would put their children in such potential danger aren’t fit to make a decision on behalf of their child, yet if those same parents decide to raise their children in a sexually open household, this is precisely the argument used by society to overrule the parents’ decision.

I am rather sure of this, as well; but I can’t help wondering how much of those problems are caused by the clash of those experiences with society’s condemnation of them, rather than the experiences in and of themselves. I think this is part of what Anthony was trying to get people to think about (at least, so he said in Firefly).

Certainly, we as adults see things that way; to children, it may not be that different.

I don’t think it’s entirely arbitrary, either (should’ve tossed a qualifier in the OP), but to me it seems less of a Totally Different Thing Altogether[sup]TM[/sup] than it does to other people. There seems (to me) to be an inordinate amount of the “because it’s (whisper) [sub][sup]S-E-X[/sup][/sub] (whisper)” thinking going around to justify more of a fundamental differentiation than actually seems to be there. Or would be there if we didn’t insist on it. When that insistence that “it’s different, 'cause it’s sex” gets in the way of objectivity, we run the risk of making the situation worse rather than better.

Fenris:

There may be, at that; and I’m with you on betting they’re extremely few and far between. However, I’m not certain how necessary all those qualifications are to begin with. If we’re talking about the effect on the child (which is the area of my concern), whether they would qualify under A) would in large part depend on what kind of contact we’re talking about. Obviously, something like penetrative genital intercourse would be a bad idea, if not impossible (Anthony does have Nymph and Mad engage in this; I’m wondering how much he knows about the physical limits of a 5 year old’s body, and not really sure I want to know how he found out :eek: ), but females are fully functional from an orgasmic standpoint from birth, and babies and small children are known to masturbate, so they are physically developed to that extent, at least. As for B):, certainly they’re emotionally less developed than adults, but because of that, they process things from a different context. It doesn’t take an adult to enjoy being tickled, which to a child may be all sex amounts to. C): Jerry Springer has convinced me that intelligence is not a requisite for a sexual relationship :rolleyes: (although it would be a very good idea :D). D): Probably not, but experience (and to a lesser extent, intelligence to make a decision) could be provided by the adult in the relationship (who would be the responsible party in the relationship, anyway).

I’m becoming convinced that this is where I will forever disagree with people (not necessarily a bad thing): the idea that the minority is justifiably sacrificed for the good of the majority. “If I ruled the world,” (Clodagh Rogers Trotsky, natch) I wouldn’t settle for anything less than protecting 100% of them.

No, but car accidents do (as do lots of other things), and we don’t hesitate to put children in danger of those.

Well, he (at least in Firefly) was calling for the second, so they’re unavoidably intertwined. But I already did a thread on the second a while back.

Thank you, sir. I truly appreciate that.

Drastic:*

What I meant was that the arbitrariness that I perceive doesn’t seem justified. Not that concern over the issue is unjustified.

There would be more, but I gotta scoot for now. What is here would have come sooner, too; but I don’t get to the boards every day. Came in last night, and gave myself some hours to digest and compose, and now my beverages are really wanting out. Thanks to everyone who stopped in so far. :slight_smile:

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Great post! Well written and very enlightening.

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A couple more quick points, now that I’ve got some breathing space time-wise:

I agree totally; and in a situation like we have where kids are hitting puberty younger and younger, putting off preparing them for it as long as we can is just asking for trouble all around. It lengthens the period of their vulnerability, which is increasing the danger to them, not decreasing it.

No argument from me on this. But while I’ll agree the difference is huge, I’m not convinced that it’s so insurmountable that any resemblance to its acceptance must be unilaterally condemned, which is what we seem to do.

Certainly forcing them together is wrong; but I’m not sure that allowing them to naturally converge is necessarily always the abomination we’re taught to believe. There’s something there that doesn’t ring as genuine to me; and given the damage that’s wrought by the enforcement of that mentality, to me it positively screams for re-evaluation. Anthony seems to be arguing along these lines, as well.

Well, that gets back to what I see as arbitrariness in the whole business. At times, the child’s unwillingness to participate is seen as an indicator (if not proof) of abuse, but at other times it’s considered irrelevant. Whether we consider something abusive rarely if ever consists of taking the child’s own response seriously…unless, of course, their response will bolster our own position. Then, their response is used to justify our own position. That’s where I feel some of the arbitrariness lies.

Indeed, and I haven’t seen anyone calling the author of the Hannibal Lecter books creepy or suspecting closet tendencies of him just because of the characters he writes about; yet there’s a persistence of opinions of Anthony based on the characters he portrays. I wonder how Stephen King would stack up under that standard. :smiley:

Amen. That was a excellent post.

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Tom Harris–Hannibal Lecter…okay, so it’s early for me. :slight_smile:

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While I agree with most of that, I am not clear on how they would “naturally converge.” If sexual contact isn’t forced, it happens by mutual choices and acts of will, it doesn’t just happen. (“I dunno what happened, I was just walking along and bumped into her and next thing I knew…” is a bit of dialogue my brain offered up when writing that bit of the blindingly obvious.) Children can display sexual behavior at adults, and perhaps sometimes be rather overt in asking for it. That’s being precocious. A juvenile response is “woo hoo!” though there are others, perhaps involving exclamations about cooties and ewww. The adult response to that is to decline, and I’m having difficulty seeing how anything other than that would ever be right. What kind of natural convergence makes not declining correct?

Well, my feelings are outlined fairly clearly, I think–there’s a gulf between childhood sexuality and the adult variety. Bringing them together is irresponsible at best; the greater the degree that consent is violated in the course of it aggravates the initial wrong, but it isn’t the source of it. A child doesn’t consent to needles (I sure wouldn’t have, given the choice), but it isn’t irresponsible to immunize them. That’s my position regardless of whether the child is crying to avoid getting stuck, or is exceptional in agreeing cheerfully to it.

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In our current society and mindset: none, I think; but I’m not convinced that is the best we can do. If it happened in a context where such an relationship wasn’t unilaterally and automatically reviled and condemned, then other considerations could come into play, such as (in the event of the child acting “precocious” by inviting and/or requesting such attention) how will rejection of the child affect them versus accepting and returning their attention, and which is more harmful to them in the long run? We aren’t even allowed to make such an assessment, regardless of what results it would produce, and I think that’s a serious shortcoming in our position on the issue.

The scenario I condensed from Firefly gives an example of what I would consider a “natural convergence”. Certainly the rules of society dictate that it was wrong of Mad, but his concern for Nymph’s well-being (and presumably his own disagreement with the Law on what constituted a valid partner) led to a situation where the two people involved had no objection to the activities engaged in. How often does that really happen, though? I’ve no idea. Probably a lot more than we as a society approve of, I’m guessing.

Certainly I can see how age is a factor in such a relationship; but I’m not sure I’m convinced that it merits a unilateral ban. Mad didn’t hurt Nymph in any way; if anything, he gave her a larger (and more informative) perspective from which to understand what was happening to her. This, IMO, would be a good thing. Problem is, the social backlash from it is a bad thing. So what should take priority there, the well-being of a child or the mores of the legislature? That’s the question I have concerns with, for my conscience tells me the child should take precedence, but from a personal safety standpoint, I can’t allow it to. I don’t like being in that position.

True, but I don’t see it as fundamentally unbridgable; if it were, people would never be able to grow from one to the other. There’s a good deal of distance between the numbers 0 and 1,000,000; but that’s fundamentally different than the difference between 0 and Infinity, which is how most people seem to see the child/adult sexuality gulf: they are fundamentally unmixable, which justifies the unilateral ban. I just don’t see it that way, I guess.

Given our society’s current position on the subject, sure. Outside of that, I’m not sure this is so cut and dried. There are arguments for saying that depriving children of sexual experience is irresponsible, as well.

Again, this brushes my “arbitrariness” thingamajig. We violate children’s consent constantly, whenever we think it’s what’s best for them. Mention sex, however, and suddenly “informed consent” is not only required, but children are then forbidden to give it. It’s a curious double standard of telling kids, “It’s your body, and no-one has the right to make you do anything you don’t want to with it,” and then in the next breath, “Here’s a list of things you’re not allowed to do with it, whether you want to or not.” Denying children a sexual component to their development isn’t any less a violation of their consent than imposing one, IMO; just a different violation. If a child can’t give informed consent to participate in a sexualised relationship, how can they give informed consent to being forbidden from doing so? They can’t, of course; but “informed consent” suddenly becomes a non-issue in that case. Again, an argument which is trumpeted when society objects to something, and ignored when it approves. Rather arbitrary in my book.

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Here is one perspective:

Even if I were to totally accept your arguements–which I don’t–I still think there is another problem–it’s not just that we cannot trust any given child to know what the really want, but the fact that we cannot trust any adult to correctly assess what the child wants/what is best for the child. As Fenris points out, many, many child molesters (perhaps most) honestly believe that the child wanted it, asked for it, initiated it, even in cases where that is manifestly not the case. The ability of an adult to correctly interpret a child’s behavior is totally unreliable. In the face of that,we have to come up with some sort of objective criteria, and age seems to be a pretty good one–sure, there is not a one-to-one coorospondence between age and maturity, but it is not a random coorspondence wither.

We assume that a parent has no personal interest in whether or not a child is immunized, beyond a desire for the child’s well being. A person who wants to have sex with a child has a serious conflict of interest when determining whether or not that child really wants to have sex with him.

Furthermore, I think the potential harm of too-early sex far, far outweighs the potential harm of too-long delayed sex. In the face of that, it seems like an abitrary bann on the side of caution–one that denys sex to those that might not be harmed by it rather that allows sex to those who might not be ready–is the only sensible course.

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Well, if hypothetical worlds were horses, they would drink. Er…something like that. In any case, the social realities of the world we all live in are a large component of why such a choice on the part of an adult is at best irresponsible–but I simply don’t see it as the only component.

That was pretty much the point of the immunization example. The non-consent issue is an aggravating factor in abuse, but it is not the root factor in why adult-child sexual contact is wrong. Manda JO said it so well that I’ll just repeat this, because I wish I could have expressed it with such clarity (damn you!):

Part of making adult choices is recognizing caution zones, and choosing responsibly taking them into account. That may seem terribly unfair, and arbitrary, but it’s a (I think) rather simple fact.

I also don’t see, either in theory or from personal memory, how preventing adult-child sexual contact denies a development of that child’s sexuality. I don’t mean to take it entirely out of context, but I think the statement points up that gulf between them that I’m on about–it’s an adult prejudice that sexual development needs another person, since in the adult side of the gulf, it pretty much does. Children do quite handily on their own, pun intended.