What it comes down to, Fenris, is that you are unable to engage in a calm, logical discussion and thus resort to sputtering character assassination. Almost as classy as faithfool dragging my mentally ill sister’s suicide into this thread which was clearly done to either upset or hurt me.
When come back please bring something new to the conversation.
First, you’ve misread at least this one quote in a pretty serious fashion… you’re accusing Broomstick of saying she’ll give MZB the benefit of the doubt, when in fact Broomstick is saying she’ll give Moira the benefit of the doubt.
In general, I don’t really want to be an apologist for Broomstick, as she can do so just fine herself. But if you take a step back, I think that for some reason you’re reading all of Broomstick’s posts in some kind of sarcastic, sneering, way, in which you already assume the worst, and then insert some kind of mental air quotes and sneering tones and so forth to make all of her posts as snide and obnoxious as possible, but if you just read the literal words you’ll see that they’re really not saying what you think they’re saying.
For instance:
“I know little to nothing of Moira Greyland, or what sort of person she is, or how reliable she is. While I’m inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to her and believe her I wouldn’t feel comfortable repeating what she claims as a fact. An accusation, yes, but not an indisputable fact.”
-She knows nothing about Moira Greyland
-But will give her the benefit of the doubt and believe her
-But would not repeat her accusations AS FACT
How is that not just a completely reasonable position? In fact, isn’t that precisely the position that anyone who had heard of the accusation but not further corroboration SHOULD adopt?
Honestly, the only thing Broomstick is guilty of is being mildly pedantic in a situation in which everyone else didn’t think pedantry was called for. Perhaps some conversational tone-deafness but in no way deserving of the vitriol that was inexplicably heaped upon her.
You seem to be pretty heavily invested in white knighting for a pedophile apologist. I notice that your Flickr stream is loaded with pictures of you frolicking in the sand with prepubescent boys, and even giving them piggy back rides. Are those boys sexually developed enough to suit your and Broomstick’s criteria of deserving to be raped? (As opposed to infants, of course, which would just be plain wrong)
I think Broomstick has been unnecessarily thin-skinned and defensive in this particular thread, assumed facts not in evidence and just generally argued herself into a hole in the ground by bringing up some truly irrelevant nonsense. Tone deaf is putting it a little too mildly.
But MaxTheVool has been polite and reasonable enough in his defense of her. I see no need to sling that level of shit.
Whether done politely and reasonably or not, it is clearly a stance he is willing to put a heavy investment into defending. Seeing as how he’s doing it on a public message board and all it is also reasonable enough for me to question his motivation.
If you boil down the pages of text he and Broomstick have thrown into this thread it comes down to her saying “Of course I think all rape is wrong! All I’m saying is, hey… if she’s got tits already … you know what I mean?” and him portraying her as a victim for getting a lot of criticism for it.
I’ll bet it is reasonable enough for you to question ANYONE’s motives. I’ll bet you’ve got a briefcase full of the names of people who can reasonably be accused of white-knighting someone you consider a pedophile apologist, don’t you?
Well not as much as, say, some lady who raped an infant should have. That’s for sure.
But maybe more than someone who only raped a mature looking 10 year old. (not that I approve, mind you! Just saying it’s less bad. And especially if she was an early bloomer… But still, it’s wrong, wrong, wrong! But you know sometimes a woman blossoms very young. But don’t get me wrong, I’m still against it, I"m just saying…)
This is just an incredibly long-winded and seriously overly-invested way of saying “She’s right you know? Raping some 10 year olds is a little more normal than raping others. I mean as far as the big picture of rape goes… not that I approve of any child rape… at all! But it’s not quite as bad as it would be if it were an infant or a ten year old who wasn’t already asking for it by being sexually mature.”
Child rape is either acceptable or unacceptable. There aren’t any shades of gray. This stubborn attempt to insist that some perceived technical variance in the severity of different kinds of child rape is at best totally irrelevant and unhelpful to any discussion of the subject, and at worst advocating for some child rapes to be considered less severe because the child was hot, after all.
Those are the only two ways you can go with the subject you’re defending. It is perfectly fair to ask you which one it is.
One of the ugliest SDMB posts I’ve encountered. As Evil Captor implies, this approaches the platonic ideal of McCarthyism. Do you have a cave you could crawl in to? if not could you dig a small hole in some dirt?
Just as well, after 15 years of the Dope, I can miss one or two.
I’m strictly agnostic about whether people should feel skeevy about reading books by, or otherwise consuming the works of, persons who’ve sexually abused children, or aided and abetted same. I sure would, but I’m not ready to pass judgment on those who wouldn’t.
In the case of a mediocre* talent like MZB, it’s a pretty low-cost thing for me. If we were to find out that Ludwig van Beethoven buggered six year olds in between composing symphonies, that would test my attitude a hell of a lot more.
I read a rather penetrating essay recently - too much trouble to locate it right now - about Hollywood’s recent predilection for developing Strong Female Characters who don’t do anything meaningful with their strength. In the two MZB books I’ve read (Firebrand and The Mists of Avalon) the protagonists fit that description to a T.
Or, option (b), he seems to be heavily invested in fighting ignorance.
And his contributions herein do just that.
That’s absolutely not true. It’s a good illustration of the fallacy of the excluded middle. We are perfectly capable of saying that Act #1 is heinous and repulsive, and also acknowledging that Act #2 is heinous, repulsive, and worse than Act #1.
And I suspect that if someone presented that thought, you might agree…without quite comprehending that the truth of that statement makes it virtually mathematically accurate to say that Act #1 is not as bad as Act #2. For some reason, you have conflated this simple observation into a wholesale approval for Act #1.
Why?
Why is it impossible to compare two acts of depravity and evil and conclude that while both are despicable, one is worse than the other? What law of philosophy or nature forbids this comparison?
Comparison criteria would include the harm done to the victim, both physical and emotional trauma being harm, the culpability and motivation of the actor, the degree of revulsion society generally imputes to the act… Perhaps other criteria I’m missing.
But how does any of that preclude being able to weigh two acts against each other and opine that both are depraved, but one more so than the other?
OK. Two rapes occur. Bother women are thirty years of age, live in the same geographical area, went to the same high-school. One is a nun, the other is a prostitute.
To me, using their vocations as comparison criteria is wrong.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems that’s what was happening in this thread.
Here are 4 different acts:
(1) Someone literally penis-in-vagina rapes a 3-year-old girl, causing massive internal trauma
(2) Someone gets naked with a 3-year-old girl and pleasures himself manually while touching her external genitalia with his fingers
(3) Someone goes out, meets a consenting woman who kinda sets off his might-or-might-not-be-old-enough alarms, wonders if she’s 18, kind of intends to check, has a bit too much to drink, convinces himself that of course she must be, has sex with her, and it turns out she was 14
(4) Someone rapes an unwilling 14-year-old at gunpoint
All four of those are “child rape”. All four are things which I believe should carry several criminal consequences.
But no two of those, in my opinion, are “equally bad”. If I learned that someone had committed one of those four acts I would react differently for each of the four. And of course you could come up with zillions of other variations, again, not all precisely equally bad.
Do you disagree?