I’m saying the fact that most abusers claim not to have been abused means that *isn’t *true. Unless you’re alleging that the number of non-abused is several orders of magnitude greater than the number of abused, to mask that difference, which would not seem to match the observed incidence…
Not nearly as positive as it used to be, that’s for sure. After this month her reputation will probably be in free-fall.
Why would she be stripped of this award? Is there a morality requirement for it?
THIS is something I, personally, have a big issue with. It seems to me the money from her estate should be going to her kids. What’s up with that?
I’m mostly just a casual observer in this thread, but it appears that you are, just based on the sheer magnitude and vehemence of your posts in this thread and the other. You can do what you want, of course, but from someone who couldn’t care less, you’re coming across as a total obsessed, apologist of this woman and her behaviors. Just so you know. Do with that what you will.
And for the record, even if a 10 year old was post-pubescent, I’d still consider someone who molested them a pedophile. Why? Because, as a herbal rule, most of them are not and I’d venture a guess that whatever adult was attracted to them, didn’t know they were until after the damage was done. So, the intent would be to have sex with a specific little kid, not to seek out someone who was old for their age.
His post of 17 June, but also some of his poetry.:
These are the wrong questions - the question should be “Can it be revoked? How soon?” not “Is there some rules-lawyerly reason not to?” as to why? Because she is a despicable human being, and as such, I don’t think she deserves any awards, even if she wrote pretty and had acolytes.
We’re really talking past each other. Take a different set of numbers: in 1000 people, let’s say that 50 have been abused, or 5% of the population. Let’s say that 50 abuse, or 5% of the population.
Let’s say the crossover is 10 people, people who have both been abused and continue abuse. That’s 20% of abuse victims who abuse other folks, a higher rate than among the general population who commit abuse.
That leaves 40 abusers who weren’t abused themselves. That means that 80% of abusers weren’t abused themselves.
A set of numbers like this meets both what I’ve said and documented–that rates of abuse are higher among previous victims of abuse than among the general population–and your objection–that most abusers weren’t themselves abused. Your objection doesn’t contradict what I said.
Is there a problem in my math?
Obviously the real numbers are not what I’ve used here as an example; all I’m doing is showing that your objection doesn’t refute my claim.
It goes to her same-sex life partner, which would be fine, if she wasn’t complicit.
Ditto. Broomstick, you’re making distinctions between raping 10 year olds and raping 3 year olds, and between Bradley’s procuring children to be raped by her husband and her raping children herself. As if any of this mattered!
You can certainly say the books stand on their own, completely apart from the utter immorality of their author. But you seem to be saying that degrees of immorality matter to you and that if she could be proven to have raped the dead bodies of toddlers you might rethink your position. You don’t look good in this thread.
You’d get the same overwhelming majority of non-abused if you use a rate for abused-abusers lower than the background 5%. And you’re including those abused abusers in your general population 5% figure.
BTW, the actual rate of child sexual abuse is more like 15% But since your cite didn’t say how much of the 1/3 figure was subsequent sexual abuse, we* don’t* have a cite for “rates of abuse are higher among previous victims of abuse than among the general population”.
It’s called being a Devil’s Advocate. I also don’t like it when people start telling other people what to do or think. I don’t like it when someone takes rumor as gospel truth. If you’re going to say someone has committed a crime you should be able to back it up.
There are 10 year old kids who look older and more physically mature than they actually are. Again, it is in no way acceptable to rape 10 year olds, but if that 10 year old is on the tall side and is developing secondary sexual characteristics of an adult and someone finds them sexually attractive it strikes me as far less perverted than someone who is sexually attracted to infants or toddlers, who look quite different. It’s still wrong, and rape is never acceptable, but to my mind it’s a different level of perversion. Sort of like the difference between first and second degree murders - they’re both murder and both wrong, but one strikes me as more evil than the other.
YMMV, of course.
…and now that you have Mark Greyland’s words :dubious: ?
Oh, for fucks sake, I can’t believe you’re going there. What, in heels the little slut could pass for 13?
So, after that is done will you then lobby to have Oscar Pistorius’s name struck from the record books and history because he killed his girlfriend? Perhaps we should also scrub OJ Simpson from all sports history and destroy every movie he ever appeared in since he murdered two people.
I have a problem with revoking awards for unrelated matters, it comes far too close to the notion of re-writing history and erasing people. I don’t think criminals should be erased. I think it should be an example of how criminals can pose as “nice” people or be talented people or otherwise blend into the scenery for years at a time. Being accomplished doesn’t make you beyond reproach. Heros are capable of also being villains at the same time.
If there was anything I could change about this whole mess by decree that would be it - have the money go to her victims rather than an accomplice.
If they were going before a judge yes, it would matter. Being an accomplice to a crime is not quite the same as actually committing the crime yourself. It’s still wrong and still criminal but the world is not as black and white as you seem to think.
As I stated, I do draw a distinction between raping pre and post pubescent children and consider the former the greater crime. Pubescence is a physical state and not a date on the calendar. If all the accusations are true then I would say MZB is a worse piece of slime than Breen because MZB was raping toddlers. That certainly kicks my opinion of her down another dozen notches as a human being, but it doesn’t change a thing about her writing. It doesn’t convert her from a good author to a bad one.
It would make me rethink my view of her as a human being. It would not make me change my opinion about her fiction writing. I’m not sure why that separation is so puzzling to people but perhaps I am in the minority in this regard.
So?
I don’t form my opinions based on what’s popular, I form them by looking into things and drawing my own conclusions. I don’t have a problem with being in the minority on an issue.
In addition, giving their highest award to a child rapist does not reflect well on the people who put out the World Fantasy Award. They dishonor themselves when they honor Bradley.
All right then! Carry on with your contemplation of the degrees of wrongness involved in the rape of little kids.
Gosh, I never knew child molestation was a sliding scale, here I thought it was binary: Too young (Y/N)
I didn’t have them two days ago so until now they weren’t figured into how I thought about the matter. As I said in a prior post, I find raping toddlers a greater crime than raping teens or tweens, so that would in fact make MZB worse than Breen in my view.
Let me try to explain what I object to here. If I am, hypothetically, at a SF con and someone says “MZB and her husband raped kids!” and I say provide a cite and all that person can say is “Everybody knows that! They’ve been saying it for years!” then I know that that person is relying on rumor and in fact knows jack about the topic.
If that person says “Walter Breen was convicted in a court of law, here’s how you can find the details and read about it yourself, and both of MZB’s children have spoken publicly about being abused by their mother, here’s Mark’s post of June 17 and Moire’s e-mail to a friend posted on line here.” then I know the person isn’t taking accusation as conviction or relying on rumor but actually knows and can point to facts.
(Thank you, by the way, to those who pointed out the on-line references to her kids’ statements, which I did not have before. Believe or not, it has made me change my thoughts on this whole mess)
We have a serious problem in our society with people being accused of something then tried and convicted in the media with no recourse if they in fact turn out to be innocent. This has been going on for some time. It can also work the other way, such as with the recent case of a man allegedly forgetting his toddler in a hot car all day, which may in fact be a case of murder. But hey, people automatically put up a petition to have him released which was all of a sudden taken down in a hurry. Maybe they all should have waited a week and remembered that just because you read a media story doesn’t mean you have all the facts at hand. I want people to do more of their own fact-checking and do more of their own thinking.
Again. Nobody’s said that. You’re reading words that aren’t on the page.
It’s not a “rumor”, it’s an accusation that you seem to be pretty glibly dismissing the victim with the oh-so-charming sentence " While I think it is possible such a thing occurred given what we know of MZB" (italics, yours)
If it came out of the blue and she wasn’t involved in any other shady aspects of child-rape (like procuring victims for her husband, like perjury, like covering for him, etc), I’d understand a need to caution a rush to judgement. But since for…what? 20 years? she was an active participant in child rape, and since she’s point-blank admitted to everything about being an accessory and an enabler of her husband’s crimes, we don’t need a normal standard of proof that we’d need if, say, Fred Rogers was accused of it.
This may be the most disgusting thing I’ve ever read on the Dope. If an 8 year old boy has a baby-fuzz mustache, anally raping him isn’t as bad as it would be if he didn’t have that baby-fuzz mustache? By your…um…let’s call it “logic”*, raping a prim, conservatively dressed librarian type woman is a “different” and worse “level of perversion” than forcibly raping a woman in 7-inch spiked heels, a mini-skirt with a slit up the side and a tube top where her boobs hang out?
To you, appearance is what matters, not age or consent?
Oh it does, lady, it does.
*With the caveat that it’s nothing of the sort
No-one’s said anything about scrubbing out MZB’s history. Just taking back an award. Don’t make up shit I didn’t say.
The award is for “Lifetime Achievement in Fantasy”. As it stands now, she’s done the field more harm than good. Leaving aside many of Breen’s victims were fen, what do you think the general public’s attitude is going to be towards transgressive feminist SF now? Like NAMBLA-defending Delany, she does more harm than good, IMO.
Taking back a (posthumous) award is not “erasing” anyone. Especially if you record the take-back and the reasons for it. It’s the exact opposite of that. All you’re doing is (rightfully) replacing notoriety for fame
Specifically about MZB, the commercial/mass market will exact its punishment such as it may be. Publishers/retailers/distributors/producers are not in the business of standing up to a justifiably outraged public. Surely we will not be likely to see any new movies/SyFy miniseries/graphic novels being greenlighted any time soon with the title: “Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover”. Reprints and reeditions will become fewer and farther between, reading clubs will start to stay away. Entirely to be expected and justified.
Works stand by themselves. But, knowing the creator’s backstory ***does ***help one to make an ***informed ***evaluation of the work. I myself am not absolutist about it, I will not feel personally polluted by a piece of work because I learned the creator was a child rapist/girlfriend-shooter/heroin dealer/card-carrying Nazi/KKK official. But I might take a second look at what subtext may be there. I might also think such things as : “Jeez, what a waste of talent on scum like this”; “OK so that passage was already creepy; now it’s revoltingly shameless” ; “hope you slept well your last 40 years, Mr. I-did-what-I-had-to?” ; “holy smokes, how it must have been to share the studio with such an utter sleazebag and still produce something this good” ; “huh… wait, this supremacist/segregationist writes about living in peace with the Indians out in the prairie?”
It is not unknown for awards or honours to be retroactively vacated if something is learned about the awardee that, had it be known earlier, would have resulted in the award or honour being withdrawn or not granted at all to start with (Where’s the Joe Paterno statue now? What’s his won/lost record on the official books?). Not all awards or honours have a provision in place contemplating that but it’s not unreasonable to seek such redress, and if there is the procedure for it, it would not be inappropriate to withdraw the one in discussion.
Who’s profiting by the continued revenue from the creator’s work, that is a matter for civil litigation. If MZB’s partner and not her descendants get to profit from her work that strikes me as a continuing moral assault.