Abusive behaviour
Last year, in Glastonbury, some members of the OTO, Aleister Crowley's Thelemite order, held a conference. It was well-organised, well attended and generally it's considered locally that it was an excellent event and we hope they'll repeat it. The one sour note was the presence of an attendee who was somewhat obnoxious during the event, enough so for people to start looking into his background, and very soon it turned out that he had a conviction for child abuse, and aggravated assault (he assaulted a senior female detective, but unfortunately one can't convict for arrant stupidity per se). He was promptly banned from future conferences, his name and multiple aliases were shared and noted, and he is likely to be pre-emptively banned from other organisations' events as well as future versions of the one he attended. We've also banned him from the shop, because he has been a customer. Another occult organisation of which I am a member dealt similarly with someone else who also has a conviction for grooming and assaulting an underage girl.
With these cases, both were dealt with efficiently and swiftly. There has never been any question that these people ought to be banned. So let's look at recent events. I do not, in fact, think that survivors of assault should be automatically be believed (or, God forbid, automatically be assumed to be lying, either): like any crime, it's a matter of evaluating the evidence and keeping an open mind until all the evidence is in. But I would suggest that a sizable part of the evidence with regard to Marion Zimmer Bradley lies in her own legal deposition: I read this through, when the matter arose on the internet a couple of weeks ago, and some of her comments are frankly sinister. In the case of her husband, the evidence seems overwhelming (on a much more minor criminal note, he was apparently known in the Bay Area as a book thief, as well, and was banned from a number of bookshops - they don't seem to have had a problem with barring him from the premises). Reading some attempts at the time to excuse all this (also contained in the legal depositions) make unpleasant reading.
I'm not going to go into Bradley's work here in depth because my opinion of it is actually irrelevant, but I suspect future critics will be looking closely at the Catch Trap and some of the Darkover novels (why Mists of Avalon is hailed as a feminist classic baffles me, since the women in it spend most of their time stabbing one another in the back. I'd suggest a revisiting of the manipulative, ruthless Viviane might pay dividends, however).
But, outrage at Bradley, whilst understandable, is safe. She's dead, and so is Breen, so unless you know a really good necromancer, there's unlikely to be much comeback (You can decide what you want to do about supporting her work - her royalties go to her estate, apparently not to her children, and I understand that Moira Greyland has suggested that people who want to support MZB's children more directly take a look at her brother's artwork). What about people who are still walking around? Why was James Frenkel allowed back into Wiscon this year? If Wiscon have new evidence which exonerates him from groping women, great: we'd like to hear about it. If not, then why on Earth wasn't he banned? It's not difficult. Why did it take so long to extract Ed Kramer from con-running? Why is Samuel Delany's association with NAMBLA not being looked at more closely? A number of people who are quick to call out anyone making a not-currently-accepted linguistic error have been silent on the issue of someone who, hello, has expressed his support for a pederasty organisation. (And is this even legal in the US? There was something similar here in the UK but it disbanded in 1984 after its committee members were arrested for guess what). Delany, whom I have only ever met briefly, is an interesting writer but he's not God, and he's not above the law. He may not in fact be a paid up member of NAMBLA, but surely he could clarify that, and whether he still supports it? He's on public record as doing so. Until he does that, would I be happy to take a child to a convention where he's appearing? No, I bloody wouldn't.
This sort of thing is not a witch-hunt. It's not political correctness gone mad. It's asking serious questions about the behaviour of a small percentage of individuals, some of whom have actually been convicted of crimes or who have a long track record of abusive behaviour.
If the followers of Aleister Crowley* can get their act together and expel people whose behaviour is beyond the pale, then what's been so wrong with fandom over the years? I'd suggest a combination of cowardice, expediency, and sycophancy (in the case of Bradley). This is particularly reprehensible because, if fandom was dealing with, say, members of some secret police force, with the threat of real reprisals (doors kicked in, guns to head) there might be some justification for timidity, but we're talking about writers. Writers have no genuine power in the world: you might think they do, but they don't. Neither, really, do editors. Samuel Delany is a bloke with some dodgy interests who sits down every day and writes words. Marion Zimmer Bradley was an ordinary, if apparently abusive, woman who employed her imagination and got paid for it. By all means give those of us who are pro writers some credit for our hard work, imagination and discipline, but don't pussyfoot around someone's crappy antics because they've had a few novels published. The only social power is the one that you lend them: if people other than her victims knew what she was up to and were too scared of MZB because she was A Writer to say anything about it, then that's completely fucking reprehensible.
*As opposed to the 1920s, when sexually assaulting people was practically compulsory if you wanted to be a Thelemite. (I'm joking. But only slightly).
And what is it with 'the Great Breen Boondoggle?' Only fandom could rename a paedophile scandal as something that sounds like a bad 60s band.
With these cases, both were dealt with efficiently and swiftly. There has never been any question that these people ought to be banned. So let's look at recent events. I do not, in fact, think that survivors of assault should be automatically be believed (or, God forbid, automatically be assumed to be lying, either): like any crime, it's a matter of evaluating the evidence and keeping an open mind until all the evidence is in. But I would suggest that a sizable part of the evidence with regard to Marion Zimmer Bradley lies in her own legal deposition: I read this through, when the matter arose on the internet a couple of weeks ago, and some of her comments are frankly sinister. In the case of her husband, the evidence seems overwhelming (on a much more minor criminal note, he was apparently known in the Bay Area as a book thief, as well, and was banned from a number of bookshops - they don't seem to have had a problem with barring him from the premises). Reading some attempts at the time to excuse all this (also contained in the legal depositions) make unpleasant reading.
I'm not going to go into Bradley's work here in depth because my opinion of it is actually irrelevant, but I suspect future critics will be looking closely at the Catch Trap and some of the Darkover novels (why Mists of Avalon is hailed as a feminist classic baffles me, since the women in it spend most of their time stabbing one another in the back. I'd suggest a revisiting of the manipulative, ruthless Viviane might pay dividends, however).
But, outrage at Bradley, whilst understandable, is safe. She's dead, and so is Breen, so unless you know a really good necromancer, there's unlikely to be much comeback (You can decide what you want to do about supporting her work - her royalties go to her estate, apparently not to her children, and I understand that Moira Greyland has suggested that people who want to support MZB's children more directly take a look at her brother's artwork). What about people who are still walking around? Why was James Frenkel allowed back into Wiscon this year? If Wiscon have new evidence which exonerates him from groping women, great: we'd like to hear about it. If not, then why on Earth wasn't he banned? It's not difficult. Why did it take so long to extract Ed Kramer from con-running? Why is Samuel Delany's association with NAMBLA not being looked at more closely? A number of people who are quick to call out anyone making a not-currently-accepted linguistic error have been silent on the issue of someone who, hello, has expressed his support for a pederasty organisation. (And is this even legal in the US? There was something similar here in the UK but it disbanded in 1984 after its committee members were arrested for guess what). Delany, whom I have only ever met briefly, is an interesting writer but he's not God, and he's not above the law. He may not in fact be a paid up member of NAMBLA, but surely he could clarify that, and whether he still supports it? He's on public record as doing so. Until he does that, would I be happy to take a child to a convention where he's appearing? No, I bloody wouldn't.
This sort of thing is not a witch-hunt. It's not political correctness gone mad. It's asking serious questions about the behaviour of a small percentage of individuals, some of whom have actually been convicted of crimes or who have a long track record of abusive behaviour.
If the followers of Aleister Crowley* can get their act together and expel people whose behaviour is beyond the pale, then what's been so wrong with fandom over the years? I'd suggest a combination of cowardice, expediency, and sycophancy (in the case of Bradley). This is particularly reprehensible because, if fandom was dealing with, say, members of some secret police force, with the threat of real reprisals (doors kicked in, guns to head) there might be some justification for timidity, but we're talking about writers. Writers have no genuine power in the world: you might think they do, but they don't. Neither, really, do editors. Samuel Delany is a bloke with some dodgy interests who sits down every day and writes words. Marion Zimmer Bradley was an ordinary, if apparently abusive, woman who employed her imagination and got paid for it. By all means give those of us who are pro writers some credit for our hard work, imagination and discipline, but don't pussyfoot around someone's crappy antics because they've had a few novels published. The only social power is the one that you lend them: if people other than her victims knew what she was up to and were too scared of MZB because she was A Writer to say anything about it, then that's completely fucking reprehensible.
*As opposed to the 1920s, when sexually assaulting people was practically compulsory if you wanted to be a Thelemite. (I'm joking. But only slightly).
And what is it with 'the Great Breen Boondoggle?' Only fandom could rename a paedophile scandal as something that sounds like a bad 60s band.