Works for me. BTW.
I went over to Amazon and commented on the “Most Helpful Customer Review” for Mists of Avalon to point out the truth about MZB, because the Author Bio on Amazon leaves out the pesky little details about MZB’s child raping ways. If you want to do something positive to make MZB’s legacy properly known, more comments might be helpful. Fighting ignorance and all.
Sure, all for it. Just an accusation would not be enough. Such as when Arthur C. Clarke was accused by some grubby British tabloid of being a pederast with what turned out to be complete lack of evidence.
Views?
Do you think this is all about their damn views??
Some three-year olds are, of course, quite mature looking.
They can look as old as five sometimes, y’know. Now, while raping a five year old is bad, it’s not quite as bad as raping a three year old-it’s like the difference between 2nd degree murder and first degree murder.
Just so you know, Broomstick, this is how you actually sound. Nothing on this board has ever made me quite as sick as your posts in this thread. Devil’s Advocate my ass.
Yes–let’s time travel back in time and take photographs of MZB raping her daughter…since overwhelming circumstantial evidence, a long, ugly history of related (and confessed to) criminals and testimony from the victim corroborated by her brother just aren’t enough for you.
You are so brave–you’re like just like Atticus Finch and Oliver Wendell Holmes put together…except that MZB has already confessed to a bunch of related crimes.
Yes, there are new books in the series. They are not being written by MZB, obviously, since she is dead. There have long been other people writing stories in the Darkover universe, the main difference is that now, instead of being completely unrecognized ghost writers the authors are getting their names on the cover.
If people want to boycott those books because of who the money goes to I’m OK with that. Personally, I haven’t bought any of them myself. I borrow them from the library. Granted, the rights-holder still gets a bit for that, but it’s far less support than if I myself purchased the book myself. I may continue that method going forward because I object to where the money is now going.
Yes, I felt it was. By the time I was 10 or 11 I could easily pass for 16. This wasn’t a good situation at all. My parents had to shoo away a couple of older guys who, seeing me, assumed I was 15 or 16 and wanted to date me or more, which might have been appropriate if I was that old (they being in that age range themselves) but because I wasn’t no, it wasn’t right at all. Just looking at me those young men had no way to know how old I was or wasn’t. Someone attracted to me at that point would be attracted to someone physically adult, which is actually normal to a certain degree. Which is why I say that while molesting a 3 year old is automatically unforgivable I could see a situation where there could be confusion over age.
Now, I don’t know if the 10 year old boy Breen molested looked 7 or 17. Frankly, after I was satisfied the slimeball was guilty I didn’t feel a need to dig further. And if you want to condemn someone who rapes someone who looks physically adult to the same extent as someone who rapes a baby go for it. Oddly enough, different people do have different opinions and viewpoints. But please don’t conclude that because I think some crimes are worse than others I somehow think the “lesser” offenses are OK because I don’t. They’re all crimes, and in this case they’re all pretty damn serious crimes.
Again -** ANY sexual contact with a person under the age of consent is WRONG.** All I’m saying is that some crimes, and some perversions, are worse than others.
A false claim of rape IS serious. Gary Dotson spent 8 years of his life in prison for a rape he never committed. The bitch who lied accused him to cover up consensual sex with someone else that lead to a pregnancy scare. She screwed over Dotson rather than admit to her parents she was sexually active. You don’t think that sort of thing is serious?
Depends on the circumstance. Yes, I know that’s not what I’m “supposed” to say.
I used to live next door to a chick who constantly claimed she was being “seduced”, or date raped, then two weeks later she’s going steady with the guy and oh, it didn’t happen then when they broke up it did again - yes, HER I’d ask for proof because she was such a delusional dingbat about everything. Is she typical? Certainly not - thank Og. But let’s not pretend false accusations never happen.
I’m not asking for DNA level proof (that’s for the courts), but yes, I’m more comfortable if there’s some sort of corroboration. I do understand than in many instance it comes down to he said/she said, and lack of evidence is not lack of guilt or innocence. If a woman (or a man, for that matter) comes to me and says they’ve been raped I don’t question it to their face but if they start to tell me the story yes, there’s a part of my mind mulling it over for things like consistency and plausibility. Most of the time it is plausible, and as I said before in regards to Moira’s accusation, I am inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the accuser and accept their story as provisionally true but what the hell is wrong with wanting to back up a claim?
Oddly enough, I’ve stated before that I make no effort to research authors/artists so I haven’t looked into the accusations of MZB’s crimes until now (fandom and a conviction made it impossible to be ignorant of Breen’s). I’ve already stated my opinion has changed in just the last few days upon receipt of new information.
OK, what do you want me to say?
Samuel R. Delaney is on record as “supporting” NAMBLA in print but as far as I know he himself has never had sex with an underage person of any gender. That is a viewpoint, I find it objectionable, but he has not performed any actions that are criminal.
Allen Ginsberg was a card-carrying member of NAMBLA, which makes him scum in my eyes but hey, he’s still lauded by many.
Breen has been convicted of criminal action.
There is evidence that MZB likewise performed criminal actions.
It is still legal to have evil thoughts. Actions are what is and isn’t legal. If a person has evil thoughts and impulses but never acts on them then they are not criminal. If a person does act on evil impulses then they are criminal and should be punished accordingly.
Boy, you’ve bought into the MZB Cult of Personality 100% haven’t you? She admits to covering up, procuring, not reporting and aiding and abetting child rape. SHE ADMITS IT. And there’s only “evidence” that she did it?
Testimony under oath isn’t enough for you?
Your disapproval of my opinion will not make me change it.
Now, if you want to discuss factual errors I may or may not have made, or provide new information, that might change my mind but frankly I don’t give a damn about your disapproval of my opinions.
I fully support your right to disagree with me, of course.
IS, I labeled it “iffy” because I hadn’t (and haven’t) seen those reports. I don’t know the details of what you’re referring to. I asked for detail on what the dude has admitted to, and you still haven’t answered. (Admittedly I haven’t read this thread since Monday, so there may be something in the two pages accumulated since then that I’ve missed.)
Let’s magically time travel back to last year and information me then about a statement by Moire Greylord made public only this month why don’t we? Fire up your TARDIS and let’s go.
For whatever reason Moire didn’t speak up until very recently. So how was I supposed to know about it in the past? To anyone reading this thread without devolving into hysteria it should be equally obvious that I wasn’t away of Mark Greylord’s post until today, a post which, by they way, was only posted this month.
In other words you are expecting me to have had precognitive knowledge of internet posts dating from June 2014.
Regardless, once again, the topic of this thread is “Now that Marion Z. Bradley’s child raping has come out, does it change your desire to reread her?” and the answer for me is still “no” because I don’t base my decision to read or re-read her works of fiction on what she did or didn’t do in real life. It might affect my purchasing decisions in the future because I do care about what my money supports, it does not affect my decision to re-read a book I’ve had on my shelf since the 1970’s.
Testimony under oath IS evidence, how could it not be?
Question: was MZB ever convicted of these crimes?
No, she wasn’t. Arguably she should have been. I think it would have been better for all concerned if this was dragged out into the open decades ago and the harsh light of scrutiny used to illuminate the dark recesses of the whole mess. It wasn’t, though. Since we don’t prop up corpses or pots of ashes in court it never will be. More’s the pity. We probably would have lost the later Darkover books but if that would have saved the victims from abuse it would have been better for them and we wouldn’t know what didn’t exist. Again, that’s not what happened. Not reading those books will not un-do the evil that has been done. It makes no difference.
I don’t view any of the court testimony as “only” evidence, they ARE evidence. A lot of what is now known probably would stand up very well in court.
What’s the difference? If you say someone was convicted it’s a nice, short way to say the evidence held up well enough to pass a jury or judge, it’s not just hearsay. If the person was never taken to court I want enough details so that I can go and confirm for myself that what is claimed is actually true.
I haven’t seen any references, either, and I have been reading this thread steadily.
This is an instance of what I object to - Inner Stickler is referring to something but has not given anything that would enable someone else to research this on his or her own. I am being asked to take someone else’s word on this, someone who is not directly involved in the matter, who is hearing this at best second-hand, and I have no way to fact-check or confirm or deny details on the matter.
Can you name the women and/or point to these statement they have made so we can go look at them themselves? I’d prefer to hear their words more directly than a one-sentence summation by a third party. I would appreciate it.
These are sentiments I can more than agree with. If MZB were alive publishing now, I would probably not read her new work because of the behavior mentioned. But dead does change the perspective. Let’s face it, plenty of great and famous artists and historical figures had their perversions, it doesn’t change the validity of their work as an artform.
I can’t wrap my head around the parents of the 3 year old. They, what, just stood by and watched him rubbing a pencil around her privates and being “displeased” thought to themselves, “Well I was planning on getting him some good cigars for Christmas but now I think I’ll just get him a bottle of cheap wine.”?
Okay, so the degree of culpability of the rapist is dependent upon the normality of the sexual attraction? It’s not quite so bad to rape an attractive 25 year old wearing a low cut shirt because–hubba hubba–but no one’s into old woman so that’s so much worse?
You’re seriously arguing this? I didn’t think you were at all immoral for wishing to continue Bradley’s books. I got my doubts about your morality given the way you think about rape.
Broomstick is obviously NOT arguing what you write in your first paragraph. It requires a perverse and deliberately selective misreading of her post to think or claim otherwise.
It’s not obvious at all to me. Have you read all of her posts in this thread? Sure, she’s talking about teenage boys in her own case, but she’s said throughout that raping a three year old is worse than raping a ten year old–especially a mature looking ten year old–because it’s a more perverse sexual attraction.
The perversity here is not mine.
It all depends – do you have a paper towel tube?