No. "This categorical indicator for PEOPLE WE DON'T KNOW (sometimes people we do) = automatically good people!" is part of the problem. It's not some ~D&D "detect alignment" spell. Marion Zimmer Bradley. See also: "trans/queer/nonbinary authors are automatically good people and writers!" No. - ThreadSky

deuceofgears.bsky.social • 45 days ago

No. "This categorical indicator for PEOPLE WE DON'T KNOW (sometimes people we do) = automatically good people!" is part of the problem. It's not some ~D&D "detect alignment" spell.

Marion Zimmer Bradley.

See also: "trans/queer/nonbinary authors are automatically good people and writers!" No.

Reposted from Leah Petersen

Read female authors in sci-fi and fantasy! Not only are they amazing, you're unlikely to toss your cookies over an article that comes out about their horrific sexual abuse.

Comments

lisairontongue.bsky.social•45 days ago

Big sigh. I loved some of her books, can't read them now.

minimallycrazy.bsky.social•45 days ago

Bradley is an extremely good example because she was also a rapist herself, not just an enabler, and her work is shot through with a transparently abusive mindset, and it still was only knowable in hindsight after she’d done horrible things.

It’s scary to admit you can’t know, but it’s much safer.

priyachand.bsky.social•45 days ago

thinking about [prominent trans author] who was misgendering & sending her fans after *other* trans authors she didn't like 🙃

I wish people wouldn't equate being oppressed/lacking privilege with being a good person! or really any of this....

deuceofgears.bsky.social•45 days ago

Sadly, I'm trying to think which of *several* people this could be. Which only underscores the point.

priyachand.bsky.social•45 days ago

damn I only knew about the one 💀

but yeah, assume *nothing* omg

ninamelechen.bsky.social•45 days ago

I loved her books in my 20s, then started to find them too formulaic and stopped reading her. And when her daughter came out with the stories about her parents, I was grateful for that. I can’t imagine the sense of betrayal I would have felt if I’d still been reading her.

flycuttlefish.bsky.social•45 days ago

That kind of mindset is what makes women predators more likely to get away with their crimes, and their victims less likely to come forward about it. :(

Absolutely boost women (and other marginalized) authors, but not because they're "less likely" to be creeps. Do it because their work is good!

sillysyntax.bsky.social•45 days ago

There is a deeply problematic woman who at the very least is guilty of enabling what happened regarding some of the women, according to the article.

To read that and brush it all off and say just read women! Is very troubling.

sablearadia.bsky.social•45 days ago

Yes. Assholes come in all genders, and they look just like everyone else

jennarainhm.bsky.social•45 days ago

Agreed. It's fine to promote female (& other marginalized) SFF authors who have been traditionally underrepresented; in fact, please do. But the idea that only a male author will turn out to be an awful person - or even that most male authors are likely to turn out to be terrible - is simply BS.

mightybattlecat.bsky.social•45 days ago

My first and worst encounter with “hey, did you know that one author you idolized who wrote a bunch of your formative works is actually horribly evil?”

deuceofgears.bsky.social•45 days ago

I'm so sorry. It's tough.

joqatana.bsky.social•45 days ago

None of the abuse I’ve suffered from famous people was sexual but no less damaging.
Being the child of a charismatic, famous narcissist is a gateway drug. One of my abusers was a woman author. How could I resist somebody just like Mom who baked me cookies.

nigelfaustino.bsky.social•45 days ago

Not sff but Alice Munro. You simply don’t know, and there’s a huge problem with putting people on a pedestal they can use to shield themselves for scrutiny

swingingstorm.bsky.social•46 days ago

Yeah Alice Munro was the first thing I thought.

deuceofgears.bsky.social•45 days ago

Ironically, when that news broke, I had to Google who the heck Munro was. (I live under a metaphorical rock; not to diminish the awfulness of it, but simply to say that there's a lot of contexts I simply don't follow because time is finite.)

swingingstorm.bsky.social•46 days ago

Oh I am a fellow rock-dweller; I hadn't heard of Munro and for that matter I haven't read anything by Gaiman apart from a brief college readaloud of the first few chapters of Good Omens, though I at least knew who he was. Sometimes life is cozier under the rocks.

deuceofgears.bsky.social•45 days ago

I wandered away from Gaiman's books over a decade ago (I read Sandman and a couple novels) NOT out of any moral virtue reason but because my attention span sucks. That was literally it.

caitlinrozakis.bsky.social•45 days ago

There's SO MUCH stuff out there. No one could possibly stay on top of it all.

swingingstorm.bsky.social•46 days ago

*ADHD jazz hands*

(Please know that whenever I type ADHD I am mentally saying "ad-had")

stephanieacain.bsky.social•45 days ago

Seriously. How did people miss that Palmer was complicit in this?

marwoodbramwell.bsky.social•45 days ago

More than just complicit if you listen to the podcast. She seemed to be identifying people and sending them to Gaiman, with some very weird instructions, to mark them out as potential partners

stephanieacain.bsky.social•45 days ago

I have only read the article, but maybe I should have called her an accomplice. 🫤

marwoodbramwell.bsky.social•45 days ago

The fact she said 14 other people had come to her with stories… that underlines both that there are more people involved than this article spoke to, and that she had a very relaxed attitude to it (at that time).

The podcast has some important details that this article omits.

flere-imsaho.circumstances.run•44 days ago

for those who might prefer reading to listening, @kathryntewson.bsky.social did a great job of transcribing the episodes *and* marking the relevant passages; you'll find links in this thread https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:g6asx7scljsgdu3vqwtyfszj/post/3kwnkvh5xhm22

ausir.bsky.social•44 days ago

Her attitude changed only when she learned that Gaiman was involving their kid in all this

davidw1457.bsky.social•45 days ago

Yeah, I look for art from people of other genders, races, sexual orientations because I am interested in perspectives that are different from mine, but not because I think they are somehow above our darker urges. That's just model minority racism/sexism/etc

elladrien.bsky.social•45 days ago

I was going to use clips from a miniseries based on her books for a mvid. So, I googled her. And OMG, was I glad I did before making the video.

anonyhex.bsky.social•45 days ago

Yyyyyup. Part of challenging stereotypes in my experience is remembering people are people no matter what their identity is. And sometimes people are bad.

topazlight.bsky.social•45 days ago

There is literally at least one EXTREMELY well-known counterexample to OP’s post come on now

amywasp.bsky.social•45 days ago

I had to get rid of my books when this all came out. To see them made me so sad for all the children that were hurt. And it really made a lot of the stuff she wrote read very differently. It made me ill.

p-h-lee.bsky.social•45 days ago

thank you.

bpladek.bsky.social•45 days ago

thank you. really, really don't love the moralizing of identity.

bdallenwriter.bsky.social•45 days ago

As a gay I find it fetishizing. As a man, I find it problematic since masculinity/men are often denigrated in the process. As a polisci grad it’s concerning. As a gay polisci bro it’s just demoralizing. Not to mention I see what it’s doing to straights and politics.

turnedtofire.bsky.social•34 days ago

Yep. Especially looked at from a UK perspective where "yay women/feminist writers!" is a profoundly insufficient and misleading lens for interpreting the morality of the TERF coterie that is so prominent in our journalism.

codenameminali.bsky.social•45 days ago

Co-signed SO HARD. ::sighs::

deuceofgears.bsky.social•45 days ago

This is the thing about *being* a writer/reader. It's not bad that a work of art one created has touched someone - that's part of the point. But a book is a *restricted data set* and a CRAFTED/CURATED fictional presentation; the reader and author CANNOT know each other based on the author's book.

priyajsridhar.bsky.social•45 days ago

All we can do is try and hope most if not all authors honor a social contract of basic decency.

deuceofgears.bsky.social•45 days ago

I mean, I hope this about *human beings generally* but I've also read too much military history and/or social psychology and/or genocide studies so I'm at "exhaustedly cynical."

mysticlawyer.bsky.social•44 days ago

Exactly this.

likeadeuce.bsky.social•45 days ago

Thank you!

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