Ah, yes. Totally slipped my mind. Part of the problem might be that I was reading that kind of material by age 10 so I’m a bit desensitized. However, I continue to think that the overall package is generally appealing to children. Perhaps delivery of a hard copy that has been judiciously edited might work.
Of course. But I can’t think of a single Piers Anthony item that I’d actually recommend to a child. Or, for that matter, to an adult, but that’s because Anthony’s work sucks, not because it’s inappropriate.
It’s a power thing. In our culture, the power differential between most 16-year-olds and most 30-year-olds is large enough to make the concept of ‘uncoerced consent’ problematic.
In principle, nothing. Positive, worthwhile, sexual relationships can exist between 16-year-olds and 30-year-olds. In practice, there can be a great deal wrong, that cuts against the probability of any given relationship with that age split being a net positive. There are immediately obvious power differentials (several legal and common commercial age lines of increasing responsibility and power are between them[1]), there is a large disparity in history and experience, and probably economic power. These really can lower the downside immensely, while not raising the upside.
[1]: i.e. 18 several things change, 21 drinking, renting cars at 25
I’d put it differently: There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with a 16-year-old and a 30-year-old having sex, any more than there is anything intrinsically wrong with two 30-year-olds having sex. There may be extrinsic factors in either case that make it problematic (somebody’s being coerced or forced, somebody’s elsewhere married, somebody’s intoxicated, somebody’s being manipulative to get the sex). The way our society is set up, the first case is dramatically more likely to feature such extrinsic factors than the second case.
Most of my aversion to that theme is (just?) cultural preference. I cannot tell whether I would object to the practice in another culture without more information about, for example, any physical or emotional trauma involved, reproductive implications, degree of physical maturity and the opportunity for the girls to self-determine their own lives. I would then have to compare the practice with ‘forced schooling’ from our culture to decide which is more disgusting.
I would then have to compare the practice with ‘forced schooling’ from our culture to decide which is more disgusting.
I’ve read a fair bit about this, but I would be interested in reading more about your perspective on this, in particular, the parts of the system that evoke for you such a visceral feeling as disgust.
I’m interested in wedrifid’s response as well, but I share the disgust for forced schooling, at least as it’s currently practiced.
In particular it’s the extreme lack of freedom that bothers me. Students are constantly monitored, disciplined for minor infractions, and often can’t even go to the bathroom without permission.
Knowledge is dispensed in small units to the students as if they were all identical, without any individualization or recognition that students may be interested in different things or have different rates of learning.
Students are frequently discouraged from learning on their own or pursuing their own interests, or at the very least not given time to do so.
The practice of giving grades puts the emphasis on competition and guessing the teacher’s password rather than on creative thought or deep understanding. Students learn to get a grade, not out of intellectual curiosity.
Students are isolated in groups of students their own age, rather than interacting in the real world, with community members of all different ages. This creates an unnatural and unhealthy social environment that leads to cliques and bullying.
There are many schools that have made progress on some of these areas. Many cities have alternative or magnet schools that solve some of these problems, so I’m describing a worst-case scenario.
I’d suggest “The Teenage Liberation Handbook” by Grace Llewellyn for more on this, if you haven’t already read it.
Right. And I would consider that inappropriateness sufficient to refrain from recommending the books to a child. The fact that they also suck is necessary to extend that lack of recommendation to adults. Sorry if it was unclear.
Oh no, you were clear. All I mean is that the skeeviness of that particular theme is sufficient for not recommend PA to adults (even if the writing weren’t ass).
ETA: Yeah, so, that was me being unclear, not you.
I’m incredibly curious why that theme bothers you so much that you wouldn’t recommend that book to adults. There’s a lot of fiction, and erotic fiction, around that theme: would you be against all of it?
I haven’t read Anthony, so I don’t know how he handles it. But despite cultural taboos, in some sense it seems like a better fit for young (straight) men to date older women, and vice versa. The more experienced partner can teach the less experienced partner. The power imbalance can be abused, but any relationship has the potential for abuse.
Is it just the violation of the cultural taboo that bothers you? Is it the same sort of moral disgust that people feel about incest? Sexual taboos are incredibly fascinating to me.
Having read quite a bit of Piers Anthony’s work, I noticed that it got consistently worse as he got older. I still think A Spell for Chameleon was pretty good (and so was Tarot, if you don’t mind the deliberate squick-inducing scenes), but anything he wrote after, say, 1986 is probably best avoided—everything had a tendency to turn into either pure fluff or softcore pornography.
The entire concept of Chameleon is nasty. Her backstory sets up all of the men from her village as being thrilled to take advantage of “Wynne” and universally unwilling to give “Fanchon” the time of day, while about half of them like “Dee”. (Anthony is notable for being outrageously sexist towards both genders at once.) Her lifelong ambition is to sit halfway between the two extremes permanently, sacrificing the chance to ever have her above-average intellect because she wants male approval and it’s conditional on being pretty (while she recognizes that being as stupid as she sometimes gets is a hazard). Bink is basically presented as a saint for putting up with the fact that she’s sometimes ugly for the sake of getting “variety”. It’s implied that in her smart phase he values her as a conversation partner but actually touching her then would be out of the question. I haven’t read the book in years, but I don’t remember Chameleon having any complaints about the dubious sort of acceptance Bink offers; she just loves him because he’s the protagonist and love means never having to say you want any accommodations whatsoever from your partner, apparently.
I still have some fondness for Macroscope. The gender stuff is creepy, but the depiction of an interstellar information gift culture seemed very cool at the time. I should reread it and see how it compares to how the net has developed.
Um… Chapter 7 is not the child-friendliest chapter in the world. Teen-friendly, maybe. Not child-friendly.
Ah, yes. Totally slipped my mind. Part of the problem might be that I was reading that kind of material by age 10 so I’m a bit desensitized. However, I continue to think that the overall package is generally appealing to children. Perhaps delivery of a hard copy that has been judiciously edited might work.
True story: when I was 8 or so, I loved Piers Anthony’s Xanth books. So much that I went and read all of his other books.
Even Xanth isn’t harmless throughout.
Xanth’s dark places are a heck of a lot more kid-friendly than, say, Bio of a Space Tyrant.
Of course. But I can’t think of a single Piers Anthony item that I’d actually recommend to a child. Or, for that matter, to an adult, but that’s because Anthony’s work sucks, not because it’s inappropriate.
I’d classify his… preoccupation… with young teenage girls paired with much older men as “inappropriate”.
This is one of those “stupid questions” to which the answer seems obvious to everyone but me:
What’s wrong with a 16-year-old and a 30-year-old having sex?
It’s a power thing. In our culture, the power differential between most 16-year-olds and most 30-year-olds is large enough to make the concept of ‘uncoerced consent’ problematic.
In principle, nothing. Positive, worthwhile, sexual relationships can exist between 16-year-olds and 30-year-olds. In practice, there can be a great deal wrong, that cuts against the probability of any given relationship with that age split being a net positive. There are immediately obvious power differentials (several legal and common commercial age lines of increasing responsibility and power are between them[1]), there is a large disparity in history and experience, and probably economic power. These really can lower the downside immensely, while not raising the upside.
[1]: i.e. 18 several things change, 21 drinking, renting cars at 25
I’d put it differently: There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with a 16-year-old and a 30-year-old having sex, any more than there is anything intrinsically wrong with two 30-year-olds having sex. There may be extrinsic factors in either case that make it problematic (somebody’s being coerced or forced, somebody’s elsewhere married, somebody’s intoxicated, somebody’s being manipulative to get the sex). The way our society is set up, the first case is dramatically more likely to feature such extrinsic factors than the second case.
Most of my aversion to that theme is (just?) cultural preference. I cannot tell whether I would object to the practice in another culture without more information about, for example, any physical or emotional trauma involved, reproductive implications, degree of physical maturity and the opportunity for the girls to self-determine their own lives. I would then have to compare the practice with ‘forced schooling’ from our culture to decide which is more disgusting.
I’ve read a fair bit about this, but I would be interested in reading more about your perspective on this, in particular, the parts of the system that evoke for you such a visceral feeling as disgust.
I’m interested in wedrifid’s response as well, but I share the disgust for forced schooling, at least as it’s currently practiced.
In particular it’s the extreme lack of freedom that bothers me. Students are constantly monitored, disciplined for minor infractions, and often can’t even go to the bathroom without permission.
Knowledge is dispensed in small units to the students as if they were all identical, without any individualization or recognition that students may be interested in different things or have different rates of learning.
Students are frequently discouraged from learning on their own or pursuing their own interests, or at the very least not given time to do so.
The practice of giving grades puts the emphasis on competition and guessing the teacher’s password rather than on creative thought or deep understanding. Students learn to get a grade, not out of intellectual curiosity.
Students are isolated in groups of students their own age, rather than interacting in the real world, with community members of all different ages. This creates an unnatural and unhealthy social environment that leads to cliques and bullying.
There are many schools that have made progress on some of these areas. Many cities have alternative or magnet schools that solve some of these problems, so I’m describing a worst-case scenario.
I’d suggest “The Teenage Liberation Handbook” by Grace Llewellyn for more on this, if you haven’t already read it.
Students don’t get to see adults making decisions.
Right. And I would consider that inappropriateness sufficient to refrain from recommending the books to a child. The fact that they also suck is necessary to extend that lack of recommendation to adults. Sorry if it was unclear.
Oh no, you were clear. All I mean is that the skeeviness of that particular theme is sufficient for not recommend PA to adults (even if the writing weren’t ass).
ETA: Yeah, so, that was me being unclear, not you.
I’m incredibly curious why that theme bothers you so much that you wouldn’t recommend that book to adults. There’s a lot of fiction, and erotic fiction, around that theme: would you be against all of it?
I haven’t read Anthony, so I don’t know how he handles it. But despite cultural taboos, in some sense it seems like a better fit for young (straight) men to date older women, and vice versa. The more experienced partner can teach the less experienced partner. The power imbalance can be abused, but any relationship has the potential for abuse.
Is it just the violation of the cultural taboo that bothers you? Is it the same sort of moral disgust that people feel about incest? Sexual taboos are incredibly fascinating to me.
Having read quite a bit of Piers Anthony’s work, I noticed that it got consistently worse as he got older. I still think A Spell for Chameleon was pretty good (and so was Tarot, if you don’t mind the deliberate squick-inducing scenes), but anything he wrote after, say, 1986 is probably best avoided—everything had a tendency to turn into either pure fluff or softcore pornography.
The entire concept of Chameleon is nasty. Her backstory sets up all of the men from her village as being thrilled to take advantage of “Wynne” and universally unwilling to give “Fanchon” the time of day, while about half of them like “Dee”. (Anthony is notable for being outrageously sexist towards both genders at once.) Her lifelong ambition is to sit halfway between the two extremes permanently, sacrificing the chance to ever have her above-average intellect because she wants male approval and it’s conditional on being pretty (while she recognizes that being as stupid as she sometimes gets is a hazard). Bink is basically presented as a saint for putting up with the fact that she’s sometimes ugly for the sake of getting “variety”. It’s implied that in her smart phase he values her as a conversation partner but actually touching her then would be out of the question. I haven’t read the book in years, but I don’t remember Chameleon having any complaints about the dubious sort of acceptance Bink offers; she just loves him because he’s the protagonist and love means never having to say you want any accommodations whatsoever from your partner, apparently.
I still have some fondness for Macroscope. The gender stuff is creepy, but the depiction of an interstellar information gift culture seemed very cool at the time. I should reread it and see how it compares to how the net has developed.