Kate Messner: Hot take: I'm truly not interested in hand wringing over how much people will miss enjoying the books of men who have turned out to be abusers. I'm far more concerned about the missing art that women haven't been able to create/publish because they crossed paths with such men.

Hot take: I'm truly not interested in hand wringing over how much people will miss enjoying the books of men who have turned out to be abusers. I'm far more concerned about the missing art that women haven't been able to create/publish because they crossed paths with such men.

I for one am very glad that people are finally realizing that Monopoly was, in fact, created by a woman, to warn people of capitalism. Thank you Lizzie Magie. It's a shame your game as a stark warning about capitalist monopolies is being so twisted beyond its intended lessons.

Hang on I heard a story about how it was some guy and he was a big red writer, got more on this?

Her name was Elizabeth Magie and it was called the Landlord’s Game, and had two different games/sets of rules—one to show how anti-monopolist frameworks were beneficial and one to show how horrible monopolies are www.womenshistory.org/articles/mon...

Monopoly’s Lost Female Inventorwww.womenshistory.org Monopoly’s roots begin with a woman— a progressive named Elizabeth Magie.

When I learned about this, that the game I felt so frustrated & unhappy playing as a kid was designed to make you feel awful (reflecting the realities of capitalist monopolies) and that there was a better way she was trying to share knowledge about, it was both comforting & even more upsetting, lol

I became an adult communist first and then i heard about how this guy made it and also proposed a more realistically capitalist form of basketball where teams pay to adjust the hoops and rulebook for each game

Weird! I think one or multiple men took credit for monopoly but I heard about the Landlord’s game shortly after—years ago now. it’s one of my favorite secrets about the world to explain to kids —it’s ok, you’re supposed to be unhappy playing this, it’s unlike every other game lol.

ago.xn--its-so0a

I am getting very fed up with seeing Dudes Writing At Length about how you're obligated to read things you don't enjoy, or where the author skeeves you out, and must Separate the Art from the Artist. One somehow managed to compare Holocaust denial to sports celebrities being overpaid.

it's quite something that, on my book podcast, i did an ep on ts eliot & ezra pound being fascist sympathizers and an ep on charlotte perkins gilman being a virulent racist and guess which ep got guys to come out of the woodwork defending them

Definitely the men upset about the implications of life without The Yellow Wallpaper, I'm sure.

I find it very hard to consume the art of someone I know who has done harmful things to others. Kinda ruins the experience all round. I have been arguing with a colleague at work, who likes Woody Allen works, about this very point. I simply can't separate the two. That is just who I am.

Same. I think it's a entirely natural response.

Why is it always dudes, too. I mean, we know why.

The music, the comedy, the stories, the plays, the paintings and sculptures. For example, theconversation.com/sexism-perme...

Sexism permeates every layer of the music industry – new report echoes what research has been saying for yearstheconversation.com Gender discrimination permeates every layer of the music industry.

Do books … do books stop being sold after their author is accused or convicted of crimes? Lots of authors out there have comitted crimes, doesn’t seem to put much dent in their book sales, not on its own. Sometimes it makes them a lot more popular

And also -- enjoying art made by an objectively bad person doesn't make you a bad person by association! Like absolutely fuck TS Eliot's gross antisemitism, but as a student of poetry I can still care about what he did with the form.

Sure, that’s fair. But enriching a bad person by buying their works or encouraging others to do so by praising those works does make you a bad person

Bingo

I don't think praising a book necessarily means you're encouraging others to buy it. There's lots of ways to read books that don't involve a purchase. The public library, for example.

That IS a purchase though, and your checkouts go toward determining whether to repurchase and/or add more copies -a librarian

This was about Woody Allen, not about a book.

Except **there's no such thing as a bad person.**

Hell yes

agreeing with all of you, and esp this. only reason i could read Lovecraft was bc he was already safe from me. just learned about Larry Niven, which is gutting to think i encouraged others to read some of his stuff? (he's against poor people using hospitals, maybe esp brown people who speak Spanish)

Lovecraft changed his tune before he died. But the key is they are dead. They cannot be enriched. And often rejecting recently dead people's art that you love ends up harming their closest victims. Their family. Worry more about the living, the future.

I am really learning from this thread and wanted to appreciate that fact vocally

Yeah I mean I very eagerly blame rich people for the actions of their ancestors, if those actions made them rich, but with artists we’re talking here about people who just got rich from making art, and were imperfect or maybe awful in other realms of life while doing so

He is dead. He cannot be enriched. You cannot cancel dead people. We can do the work of making it safe for current and future creators while also acknowledging assholes created good art in the past. It's not zero sum.

Not if they’re dead, I assume. The author. Is there any reason not to give money to their estate by purchasing the product in that situation? Generally I just pirate almost everything, so that ‘handing someone money’ concern almost never comes into it. Libraries should still have their books right

It just does not. You have no clue whether most of the people who worked on books & movies you own or like were ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ It’s both puritanical and pretentious to think that you do

That's why you better buy second hands like for everything.

Okay thank you bc late 80s woody Allen movies are really good

Oh you mean the ones from the time he was literally grooming a young girl? Cool

And since you take such a hard line here, I suppose you've never enjoyed a song by the Beatles, or Michael Jackson, or David Bowie, or Elvis, or Tupac, or Kanye . . .?

This whole mini thread feels like you’re missing the point by talking about the men & their art when OP was focusing on the women’s art that’s been suffocated, thwarted, hidden, lost or never had the chance to even exist.

Coming in hard to defend a pedophile isn’t the great look you seem to think it is.

Elvis didn’t eat pussy, fuck him

I want to ask again about works by currently dead men who may not have been good men. Bowie, Jackson, Tupac, Elvis - all dead less than a century. What about slave owners? Should we not read their words? If they wrote words that sell, should their descendants not get that money?

I did not know this when I first saw the movies.

Almost no one did

Neil Gaiman is no TS Eliot

If course, but it does not change the broader principle one bit in my opinion.

Seriously! “Oh boo hoo I’m so sad my fave author turned to ge a total shitbag.” Yeah guess what asshole I bet some people are way more unhappy about that than you are.

Yeah, I bet. Being sexually assaulted definitely sounds like it sucks more than being merely disappointed. I'm still disappointed, though. Not sure why that makes me an asshole.

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