Personally, I’ve seen enough posts here and elsewhere, from people who say they would think twice about rereading MZB, and didn’t know about her past, for me to think I was right to raise the matter in that original thread.
Come to think of it, Wendell’s kept his trap shut since that original thread. I wonder why?
This other article had more.
Looks like our fearless iconoclast has moved on.
Well, that daycare won’t staff itself!
sorry, couldn’t help it.
I’m very hesitant to make any post that even remotely sounds like I’m condoning child rape in any way. Which I’m not. But… a lot of what Broomstick is saying is not only true, but basically completely inarguably true in a way that shouldn’t even be controversial.
(1) There clearly IS a scale for how bad things are.
A 19-year-old has sex with a 19-year old. Ethically fine, totally legal.
19- and 18-. Ethically fine, totally legal.
19- and 17-. Ethically starting to get sketchy, legality varies based on state
19- and 16-
19- and 15-
etc
19- and 5-. Ethically HORRIFYING, totally and completely illegal in all jurisdictions.
Clearly, ethically, there is no one line where you say “well, on this side of the line, it’s OK, and on the other side, it’s horrible”. And yet on one end it’s 100% OK and on the other end it’s about the worst offense to humanity that anyone can commit. So there obviously is an ethical scale, where it gets worse and worse as you go down (likely plateauing at some point), and that ethical scale may not particularly correspond to the scale of legality. Which is pretty much unavoidable, because laws about age-related stuff generally speaking have to have a cutoff age lest they become unworkable.
(2) There is clearly some relevance to whether someone physically looks mature. NOT in a “this is an excuse that should get me a shorter sentence prison” sense, but in a “how people probably think about the offender” sense. This is for two reasons:
(a) Most people are physically attracted to people of one or other (or both) sexes. And in general, that sexual attraction starts once they are showing secondary sexual characteristics. For most people who are attracted to females, the physiological reaction they’d have to a photo of a naked 8-year-old girl and a naked 14-year-old girl are very very different. We all understand that. So the crime of raping an 8-year-old is vastly more alien and horrifying to us because it’s not only illegal and damaging, it’s also twisted and incomprehensible.
(b) There’s also the possible ignorance factor. If a 10-year-old literally looks like a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old hits on her, honestly believing her to be 16, well, that’s something that we can understand… we’ve all heard tales of 30-year-old men sleeping with 20-year-old women who turn out to be very mature looking 16-year-olds.
To put it another way, if I had an 18-year-old acquaintance who was convicted of statutory raping a 10-year-old, I wouldn’t say “well, that 10-year-old looked 16, hey, let’s use that as evidence and appeal this wrongful conviction”, but if I was convinced that honest-ignorance-of-age was involved that might well affect how I personally felt about the 18-year-old, how willing I was to continue to be associated with someone who had been convicted (correctly) of committing what society generally views as an incredibly heinous crime.
None of this means that rape of anyone is OK ever, or that rape of children is OK ever. But to respond to Broomstick’s very correct point that not all rape, and not even all rape-of-underaged-people, is the same; as if Broomstick were somehow being an apologist for rape, or trying to downplay it, is just bizarre. People are acting as if Broomstick said “sure, he raped a kid, but the kid was a 10-year-old, and some 10-year-olds look sexually mature, so, hey, mistakes happen, not a biggie” or something like that. Which could not be further from the truth.
However that’s one paradoxical part of the equation, at least for the events that went on in the 1960s/early 70s: The authorities as individuals could have been inclined to apply some “people’s justice” to a perv caught red-handed (and gotten away with it), but at the same time general society was still inclined to hide away that sort of dirty laundry from widespread public knowledge. The abuser could get an old school ass-kicking but there would be no headlines in the mainstream press, and DAs would seek to get a lesser plea “to spare the victims a public trial”. Those wanting to further delve into the allegations would be easily pushed into the category of cranks and scandalmongers.
That referenced internal community fucked-upedness where you could molest a 3 year old in front of others and they would just be “uncomfortable” may hint at how come in the 60s and 70s there was so much concern of “kindred communities” devolving into cults. You gather together a group that believes they are achieving some more advanced view of life and throwing off the shackles of the old-fashioned system, not only do you risk finding among them those who will feel that gives them free-for-all license to act out their impulses, or to establish a new morality that’s deliberately oppositional to the old one just for the sake of violating the old norms; but then the followers/acolytes will tend to be cowed from acting to stop abuses, because, hey, who are we to hurt the enlightened masters’ cause.
And yes, in the time period there was a trend to hitch a ride on the Free Love notion for a busload of often unrelated variant conducts, a very common one of which was teenage sex. But that’s different from older adults helping themselves to little children where consent cannot come into play. Had Breen and Bradley merely preached tolerance for pedophilia with their words, that would be reprehensible; that they would actually act upon it (or aid and abet the action) takes it into the criminal sphere.
I didn’t realize the conversation had moved over here…this is basically what I said in the GD thread. MZD isn’t my thing, but I used to like Anne Perry until I found out she murdered somone in cold blood. I’m just not reallty interested in being reminded of horrific crimes when I’m reading something for a lesiure activity. If it was truly worthwhile as literature…maybe it would be different.
Also, I find it just weird that anyone would spend so many words defending it by making the argument that it wasn’t that bad, or other people do bad things as well (like, have abhorrent opinions, as if that is the same thing), or that it’s mitigated by some nebuluous “good” the person did. That’s reallyl kind of fucked up. Read it if you can put the crime out of your head and can still enjoy it, more power to you. You don’t have to justify your own actions, but for the love of god don’t try to justify hers.
Sigh. The discussion has not been about age of consent laws or minor age differences. Broomstick’s comments referred explicitly to two full grown adults, both of whom raped their own children and the children of others. Her most despicable comments dealt with the relative maturity of a ten-year old boy raped by Walter Breen. Hey, the kid could have looked older. The last line in your post is indeed pretty much what she was arguing.
And, wow, yeah…arguments over here are much grosser. We have 1) If the crimes didn’t affect her writing, then why should I care? and 2) Nitpicking the definition of the crime to make it seem like it wasn’t so bad, to a much more sickening degree than in the GD thread. What a bizarre defense of a criminal.
Number one doesn’t look like a defense of the author to me.
The ick factor is of course higher because she decided to write about crime and murder. And how she completely glosses over her little youthful indiscretion in her biography.
Meh, whatever. … so it’s a defense of “why I will defend this author to the death.”… same diff.
Without spittle: if you find yourself ranking the relative horribleness of child rapes, something has gone terribly wrong with your argument and you need to stop.
And what Broomstick is doing is classic concern trolling: trying to disrupt support for one side of an argument by presenting “concerns” in the guise of supposedly supporting the argument. It is a particularly horrible way to undermine the credibility of rape victims.
What you have just done is another variant of the same: you’ve shifted the discussion from what happened to Moira, to a precautionary warning against borderline age-of-consent… which, as Emiliana notes, actually has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
People are reacting to Brookstick as if she has been ranking how horrible child rapists are based on the age of the children they rape – which is gross, regardless of whether you support her logic – and Broomstick has been undermining peoples’ support of a child rape victim’s story by her varied attempts at concern trolling.
Neither one of these are efforts you should want to get in support of.
Yanno, I did a google search for “mature looking 10 year old boy” (and a couple of other variations), and I couldn’t find any that looked like a teenager. They all looked exactly like what they were… little kids. Now, I have no way of knowing (thank God) if any were past puberty, which I think is the point. So, the argument that Breen and Bradley, fuckfaces extraordinaire, could’ve picked their victims in such a way that made them ephebophiles versus the child rapists that they were, is fucking ridiculous on any level. No one, and I repeat no one, mistakes a kid that young for a teen. It’s bullshit of the highest order.
ETA: And that search made me feel like I need to seek out a priest for confession. Good God that was gross at the mere thought.
Wow, you’ve changed a lot in the 2 years since this thread, when there seemed to be a lot wrong with asking you to back up certain claims.
Minor quibble–it’s not the age, per se. It’s the apparent age. Per “Broom-I can break your femur with my Kung Fu”-stick, it’s (on her sliding scale of naughtiness) much worse to rape a 12-year old with no signs of pubescence than it is to rape a 7 year old who’s waaaaay over on the far end of the bell curve and started puberty way early. So a 3 year old is worse than a 10 year old because the 3 year old looks younger, you see.
:rolleyes:
Great point on the concern-trolling. I hadn’t seen that aspect.
One addition, you left out the oh-so-charming part where she’s doing typical '50s “Blame the victim” behavior as she comments how Moira might (just…might, y’know) be lying because her motives for lying were…um…something-something. You’re not allowed to look at ANY circumstantial evidence, corroborating evidence, under-oath confessions that support Moira. Nothing but direct evidence will do and otherwise, anyone who believes Moira doesn’t have the True American respect for “Innocent until proven Guilty”.
I think there’s a huge distinction between this:
Joe: Oh goodness, someone just raped a 10-year-old
Bob: Wait a second, a 10-year-old? That’s not NEARLY as bad as raping a 5-year-old
And this
Joe: Oh goodness, someone raped a 10-year-old many years ago
…
1000 posts of discussion of an issue
…
Bob: Actually, despite some of the claims that people are making in this thread, I don’t think that all child rape is equally bad
There are very very few “bad things” that are always equally bad. Not all rape is equally bad. Not all CHILD rape is equally bad. Not all child porn is equally bad. Not all torture is equally bad. Not all murder is equally bad. In fact, not all first degree murder is equally bad. None of that is intended to diminish any of those things. Just because (for instance) not all child porn is equally bad doesn’t mean that any of it is in any way GOOD or non-horrifying.
I believe the reaction that many of you are having is because you assume that someone saying “not all child rape is equally bad” must be making the first step of a chain of argument that leads to “…and therefore THIS particular example of child rape is really barely more than fraternity initiation stunts, why are we getting so worked up about it?”. And I suppose that it’s possible someone would make that chain of argument. But I’m certainly not. I’m saying “not all child rape is equally bad”. Some of it is 9.999 on the horrifying and criminal scale, and some of it is 8.0 on the horrifying and criminal scale (or whatever). But it’s still all horrifying, and all criminal, and I’m perfectly happy for the laws against it to be unforgiving and severe. Precisely as they are.
(Upon rereading this post, I have decided that the phrase “Actually I don’t think that all child rape is equally bad” really does have a twisted and disturbing ring to it… it certainly SOUNDS like the beginning of something apologetic. But if you just read the literal words and meaning of it, I don’t see how you can possibly deny that it’s true.)
I have not commented on the main part of the thread, because I don’t think there’s too much to say. MZB and her husband were both horrible criminals, and it’s terrible what they did, and I hope they metaphorically rot in hell. I have zero interest in defending them or trying to lessen their responsibility or the gravity of what they did.
That in no way stops me from responding to precise claims that people have been making in this thread which I find to be pretty clearly incorrect… which doesn’t mean that I disagree at all with the larger consensus.
Yeah, but the problem is that this is a rhetorical black hole. On a scale of 1-10, most people will throw child rape at 10+ and so whether one is an “11” and another is a “13” just becomes a pretty irrelevant sidebar. It gets touchy enough when you start debating underage teenagers, but hardly anyone is going draw enough distinction between a three year-old and ten year-old to make it worth the waste of electrons. It just distracts from the rest of the conversation by throwing the argument equivalent of a molotov cocktail in the middle of the room.
I’m not seeing a real clear distinction there either.
It’s not just that Broomstick said that raping a three year old is worse than raping a ten year old, which would be bad enough, given the context of the discussion. She’s asking whether or not the raped ten year old was mature for his age as if that were somehow relevant. Because a forty year old man might mistake a ten year old for…a 12 year old??
Concern trolling is exactly what it is. As in, of course it would be horrible if Bradley and Breen raped children, but maybe they were mature looking children who would be sexually attractive…
Fuck, other people have put it much better. She’s just made me too sick to write coherently,