every time
Feb. 1st, 2018 10:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davemerrillevery time I think I might be a little too contemptuous of SF fans, I remember that large chunks of SF fandom looked the other way or downright denied the child molestation offenses of Walter Breen and Marion Zimmer Bradley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_H._Breen
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/27/sff-community-marion-zimmer-bradley-daughter-accuses-abuse
I was a teenager when I got into fandom, and there were child molesters in Atlanta fandom at that time. Some of them were just creeps who showed up to every event, and some of them *ran* the events. They eventually got caught, but lots of fans looked the other way, didn't want to cause a fuss, didn't want to be the bad guy. And as a result children were assaulted, and there isn't a fan club or a fanzine or a convention anywhere on Earth that's worth that.
Of course, this is fandom, where serial groper Issac Asimov was just a hilarious old guy, and Julius Schwartz was oh so funny and charming until he got you alone in an elevator. Fandom was A-OK with these guys.
Anime fandom isn't so swell, either. There's a guy I knew from Texas anime fandom who's now out of jail after doing a stretch for kiddy porn. We were in an APA together before he got arrested. Now he's back and he's on Facebook and there are people who are cheerfully chatting with him like nothing happened. Maybe they don't know. However, I know, and that means zero contact with that guy and zero contact with anyone he's in contact with because if he goes up the river again I'm not going with him. If you want to look up anime convention chairs getting accused of creepy sex texts or statutory rape, just do some googling.
Seems like these days the creeps are getting a good airing and every day there's a new allegation of sexual assault or harassment, and middle aged men are starting to sweat a little, asking themselves if they were creeps or gropers in the past. And maybe they should. Maybe everybody should start checking their behavior a little. It'd be a nice start after sixty or seventy years of assault that nobody took seriously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_H._Breen
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/27/sff-community-marion-zimmer-bradley-daughter-accuses-abuse
I was a teenager when I got into fandom, and there were child molesters in Atlanta fandom at that time. Some of them were just creeps who showed up to every event, and some of them *ran* the events. They eventually got caught, but lots of fans looked the other way, didn't want to cause a fuss, didn't want to be the bad guy. And as a result children were assaulted, and there isn't a fan club or a fanzine or a convention anywhere on Earth that's worth that.
Of course, this is fandom, where serial groper Issac Asimov was just a hilarious old guy, and Julius Schwartz was oh so funny and charming until he got you alone in an elevator. Fandom was A-OK with these guys.
Anime fandom isn't so swell, either. There's a guy I knew from Texas anime fandom who's now out of jail after doing a stretch for kiddy porn. We were in an APA together before he got arrested. Now he's back and he's on Facebook and there are people who are cheerfully chatting with him like nothing happened. Maybe they don't know. However, I know, and that means zero contact with that guy and zero contact with anyone he's in contact with because if he goes up the river again I'm not going with him. If you want to look up anime convention chairs getting accused of creepy sex texts or statutory rape, just do some googling.
Seems like these days the creeps are getting a good airing and every day there's a new allegation of sexual assault or harassment, and middle aged men are starting to sweat a little, asking themselves if they were creeps or gropers in the past. And maybe they should. Maybe everybody should start checking their behavior a little. It'd be a nice start after sixty or seventy years of assault that nobody took seriously.
