Just a Sci-Fi Kid Like Me

I've been mulling over what to post on this topic for a while. In case you missed it:

Marion Zimmer Bradley: It's Worse Than I Knew

In which Bradley's daughter came forward about her mother's abuse.

Rape, Abuse, and Marion Zimmer Bradley

In which Jim Hines rounds up links and points out that we cannot silence the voices of the abused no matter how famous or popular the abuser is.

SFF community reeling after Marion Zimmer Bradley's daughter accuses her of abuse

In which mainstream media takes note.

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I want to preface this by saying I was/am a fan of MZB; I've spent years and years reading and collecting her work and the works about her work; I've written academic essays and gone to cons to talk about her; at one point I wanted nothing more than to write her biography and met with numerous people who knew her towards that end. In short, this is all from the perspective of someone who was invested in her as a person and figure of import.

I am not shattered by these revelations. I'm not going to throw out her books. I'm not going to read them with the same amount of enjoyment, either. I do want to think about what happened then and what is happening now means.

I know from conversations with people that MZB grew up in an abusive situation; how abusive and whether that too was sexual, I do not know. One BNF I spoke with at DarkoverCon a few years ago told me how she herself was a victim of sexual abuse, and how MZB helped her heal and also come out of the closet.

MZB did good in this world, even as she did evil. It's difficult to reconcile these things, but this too is true.

I also know that Bradley's generation is dying off; one of her friends and protegees, who mentored me in turn, passed away this Fall. I do not think it is an accident that Greyland chose to come forth in a time of relative safety, when MZB's greatest defenders are gone or quiet, when her popularity is on the wane. In some ways, I think this is a smart decision, because it means people are LISTENING: decades ago, they wouldn't have done, not only because of MZB but because of society's own attitudes towards abuse (and let's face it: we STILL have a long way to go before we can end the whole "blame the victim" mentality).

At Darkovercon, people were matter of fact about Breen and his evil; it was an open secret, if you will. People took care to monitor their children even as there was very much a mentality of "protect Marion." This comes up in The Great Breen Boondoggle, in which the author opines that someone should "warn" Marion about the man she was marrying. You can read the depositions of Marion as knowing accomplice; from conversations I've had, you can also read them as a clueless woman trying to protect those she loved and failing miserably.

MZB was truly a cult figure with all that entails: charisma enough to garner followers and protectors; keep in mind, the same people who wanted to protect her reputation regarding Walter are the same ones who wanted to protect her writing reputation, up to and including how she would pay (or not) fans/followers and pass off their work as her own; not quite plagiarism, not quite ghostwriting. The last books to bear her name have very little of her own writing in it; for instance, the Exile's Song trilogy was written by Adrienne Martine-Barnes, who wrote from MZB's notes; MZB hated that Barnes killed off Regis and summarily packed her off. The Trillium books MZB co-authored had Elisabeth Waters writing for Marion, etc.

MZB's history has also been rewritten after her death. Waters, who is in charge of Bradley's estate, has worked tirelessly to make a clean narrative. For instance, Bradley was an open pagan who wrote articles for The Green Egg amongst other spiritual zines, including pieces on how to set up a Wiccan altar in one's own home, etc. Her Literary Works Trust site maintains that she was a lifelong Christian. There's also very little [nothing] there about Bradley's life as an open lesbian (who happened to marry men, twice, and have children with them both) (we could probably talk here about bi-erasure, but "lesbian" was also the term MZB preferred, so.).

In her own life, MZB took pains to rewrite her history, changing narratives as necessary to make her work more heroic. There's an interesting essay she wrote about being a lone woman in SF in the 50s, and never mind that she sold her early stories to a woman editor. (Woman's inhumanity to woman, etc.)

We can also talk about the cultures of silence in the 50s-90s, especially about abuse. In several of her stories--I'm thinking of "Knives" here, MZB wrote sympathetically of characters who were abused, raped, etc. and who overcame those traumas. Now we know that MZB was both abuser and abused. Another blogger wrote about the underaged/coerced sex of The Mists of Avalon and how it's difficult to reread in light of what we know. I'm thinking of her character Dyan Ardais from the Darkover books; a villain who is and is not sympathetic (not unlike Marion herself); who on the one hand abuses boys and on the other is a "good" man protecting his planet. That character had a significant following; somewhere I have a fanzine devoted to stories only about him. I can't help but feel now that Dyan Ardais was a version of Marion, and the mystique of that character was her mystique too.

This got long and went nowhere fast. To conclude: We cannot separate the art from the artist. We cannot separate the artist from the person. People aren't pies--you can't slice them up and just take the bits you want. It's all mixed up together. Was Marion a great writer and important to SF? Yes. Did she at the least aid and abet in crimes, and probably commit them herself? Yes. Did she help and comfort the abused? Yes, that too. Do her works remain important to genre history? Yes. Can we separate anything out to make a clean narrative of any kind?

No. No, we cannot.