Newgon’s apologia for Marion Zimmer Bradley

A few months ago, I noticed Newgon’s article on “Intergenerational Lesbianism,” arguing that sexual and romantic relationships between women and girls are consensual, positive, harmless, and even liberatory. In its subsection “Research Literature,” one of the items listed is “Marion Zimmer-Bradley, ‘Feminine Equivalents of Greek Love in Modern Fiction’[10], in International Journal of Greek Love, Vol.1 No.1, 1965, page 48.” In the subsection “Personal perspectives,” it says “Marion Zimmer Bradley, who was outed by her homophobic daughter might be an interesting point at which to begin some research.”

The latter links to Bradley’s Wikipedia page. Here is its very first paragraph:

Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley (June 3, 1930 – September 25, 1999) was an American author of fantasy, historical fantasy, science fiction, and science fantasy novels, and is best known for the Arthurian fiction novel The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series. Noted for the feminist perspective in her writing, her reputation has been posthumously marred by her daughter Moira Greyland’s accusations of child sexual abuse, and for allegedly assisting her second husband, convicted child abuser Walter Breen, in sexually abusing multiple unrelated children.

I was disturbed and outraged that people might think it is acceptable, in any way, to present a known child molester as some sort of Wholesome Uwu Great Girllove Icon You Should Learn About The Topic From—to brazenly cite discussion of CSA allegations against her as something that just makes her even more interesting—and, furthermore, to demonize her victim for stating what was done to her. I found the claim that Bradley was “outed” by Greyland (as either a lesbian, pedophile, or lesbian pedophile) to be bizarre and misleading. Bradley was already well-known as a lesbian throughout her life, and the accusation did not target “attractions”; as Lecter has said in response to a recent round of new complaints: “A rape victim speaking about their experience is not ‘outing’ their abuser, because it’s not about the abuser’s orientation.”

(There’s also a small possibility that Newgon actually meant Greyland “outed” Bradley as an abuser/child rapist, though that term is much less often applied in that context or understood to mean that, and I doubt Newgon would think that way.)

 

In late June, Lecter wrote,

I resumed working on the list for Newgon’s problems, and I want to share what I have so far under point 2 (removal of positive and uncritical references to and quotes from people known for bigotry, abuse, and medical malpractice):

1. https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Intergenerational_Lesbianism

“Marion Zimmer Bradley, who was outed by her homophobic daughter might be an interesting point at which to begin some research.”

 

The daughter said that both her parents were raping her. I did not find any homophobic comments in her confessions.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/27/sff-community-marion-zimmer-bradley-daughter-accuses-abuse

https://web.archive.org/web/20140611112902/https://deirdre.net/marion-zimmer-bradley-its-worse-than-i-knew/

Newgon responded,

It is widely accepted that Moira Greyland is a homophobe, or at the very least, repeatedly uses problematic and homophobic language in her 2017 book, “The Last Closet” in an attempt to link the abuse she accuses her parents of with homosexuality and the gay movement. She is known to grift on Facebook in a similar manner (I have attached evidence), and I find her motives for accusing her parents (regardless of whether any moral norms were violated) to be highly suspect.
 

[They attach a screenshot of a queerphobic Facebook post by Greyland]

Note that Lecter did not say Greyland has never been homophobic at all, just that her confessions themselves did not contain homophobic comments (i.e., that it’s inaccurate to connect her going public about the abuse with homophobia). This is true, and whether or not Greyland held homophobic views at the time, whether or not her later activist motivations and behaviors when she told her CSA story overlapped with homophobia, her initial accusation had no homophobic content, nor did most of her sympathizers pick it up to start disseminating bigotry. Additionally, she does not label her mother as a “pedophile” or “MAP” or accuse her of having any sort of deviant orientation in it. This is fairly obvious, and Newgon would be aware if they had bothered to read the 2014 articles Lecter linked above:

Moira Greyland, Bradley’s daughter, went public with her accusation on the blog of the author Deirdre Saoirse Moen earlier this month, giving Moen permission to quote from an email in which she wrote…

The second link contains the full text of the email:

Hello Deirdre.

It is a lot worse than that.

The first time she molested me, I was three. The last time, I was twelve, and able to walk away.

I put Walter in jail for molesting one boy. I had tried to intervene when I was 13 by telling Mother and Lisa, and they just moved him into his own apartment.

I had been living partially on couches since I was ten years old because of the out of control drugs, orgies, and constant flow of people in and out of our family “home.”

None of this should be news. Walter was a serial rapist with many, many, many victims (I named 22 to the cops) but Marion was far, far worse. She was cruel and violent, as well as completely out of her mind sexually. I am not her only victim, nor were her only victims girls.

I wish I had better news.

Moira Greyland.

(Notice how she also alleges Bradley had abused victims who weren’t girls, yet no one calls this “outing Bradley as bisexual.”)

“and I find her motives for accusing her parents to be highly suspect”

Really? Because these are all pretty typical feelings among survivors:

Greyland, writing to the Guardian via email, said that she had not spoken out before “because I thought that my mother’s fans would be angry with me for saying anything against someone who had championed women’s rights and made so many of them feel differently about themselves and their lives. I didn’t want to hurt anyone she had helped, so I just kept my mouth shut.”

 

Greyland, a harpist, singer and opera director, said it was now clear to her that “one reason I never said anything is that I regarded her life as being more important than mine: her fame more important, and assuredly the comfort of her fans as more important. Those who knew me, knew the truth about her, but beyond that, it did not matter what she had done to me, as long as her work and her reputation continued.”

 

She hailed the “outpouring of love and support” which has followed her revelations. “What has happened in the past 20 years, apparently, is that rape, child abuse and incest have been enough in the public eye for them to be accepted, and victims and survivors to routinely be believed now, and there are so many survivors among my mother’s fans, as well as supporters of survivors and decent people who care about the truth that my mother is now being held to the very standards she wrote about,” her email continued.

“I am so glad I spoke out, because on the blog, so many people have shared their OWN stories of abuse and incest and heartbreak. I am going to keep talking about it, if only so that those people who need to share their own stories will do so now.”

Do they not understand how fucking violent it is to further this oppressive silencing, denial, and erasure? Should this not have been an opportunity for highlighting the experiences and advocacy of queer CSA survivors whose narratives are doubly denied by queerphobes’ and CSA apologists’? But of course—that would require far too much nuance and principled analysis and actual care for the marginalized—far too difficult! More convenient instead to cynically weaponize Greyland’s story to further Newgon’s insidious line that anti-CSA activism is inherently queerphobic, that the political interests of queers align with those of CSA perpetrators and their enablers.

Surely they’d love these rape-apologist cowards too:

After Greyland spoke out earlier this month, Deborah J Ross, author and editor of Darkover anthologies, tweeted in response to a question about the claims: “Only half the story is being told. Please be careful about believing sensationalist rumors online.”

 

…

 

Russell Galen, the literary agent for the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, which owns the copyrights to the literary works of Marion Zimmer Bradley and which is administered by an outside trustee, said he and the trustee were “aware of the allegations that have been made.”

 

“Marion is deceased and we are not able to ask her about her side of the story, nor do we have any personal knowledge of the events that are being described. All we can say is that during the decades in which we worked with her, we found Marion to be a great friend and enormously kind person. She was much loved by many friends, especially in the literary community where she supported the careers of many writers at considerable personal expense. That’s just a statement of fact based on personal knowledge, and is not meant to be a response to these allegations,” Galen told the Guardian.

And, “violating moral norms”? Seriously? The issue with raping children, for the nth time, is not “violation of the norm” (it is the norm, in fact), but that it violates the victim’s bodily autonomy and is incredibly abusive and likely to be traumatizing! The problem with child rape is not fucking subjective!

I concur with this Twitter thread by an abuse survivor, talking about apologia for patriarchal abuse and sexual violence he had recently observed, including in a discussion about Bradley and Greyland:

https://twitter.com/NeolithicSheep/status/1286430703446564867

Today I retweeted a thing about Marion Zimmer Bradley abusing her daughter, Moira Greyland. And someone replied to the tweet without bothering to untag me to suggest that the story needed to be “contextualized” with the information that Greyland is homophobic.

I don’t know what that person thinks the usefulness of doing that would be, but as an abuse survivor all I hear is “you’d better be likeable if you expect anyone to care.”

 

It’s an old fucking game, making sure survivors know they’d better be perfect.

…

The misogyny gets to be a lot, is what I’m saying. The demand to make sure that a story of abuse is “contextualized” with the information that the victim is a bigot, the demand to consider that raped and murdered women had it coming.

Like… I know I don’t look or sound like what you think an abuse survivor should. That’s the whole point, you can’t know over Twitter, you can’t know by looking.

…

You want to accuse us of “defending homophobes”? Yeah! We’ll defend homophobes—from other bigotry. Principled leftists believe that no one deserves to be subjected to abuse or oppression, no matter how terrible they are. Defending Greyland from CSA apologia does not mean defending her as a person in general, or defending her homophobia or mapmisia or political activism. Newgon members seem incapable of grasping this—which is unsurprising, giving how much they love mocking opponents’ appearances and perceived disabilities and using antisemitic caricatures and misgendering me/my comrades despite claiming that they’re not bigoted and that they only do these to Bad People.