Coffee has been consumed and I’m going over the various pieces of documentation available. Mind you, this is still early days on the topic and RWA has not, to my knowledge, made any statements about what happened other than those contained in the Ethics Committee findings. That means the situation is still fluid and, as is so often the case, folks are jumping in based on emotion and not studying what we do know.
As a bit of background, Milan is known to this blog and we’ve covered her several times before. Not for anything negative but for her work against plagiarists. The latest occurred within the past year when she helped take on a serial plagiarist working out of, iirc, South America. Milan was one of her victims, as we Nora Roberts. So to say I was surprised to wake this morning and see the latest concerning her is putting it mildly.
But, other than knowing she is a romance writer and attorney and has worked against plagiarism, I really don’t know much about her. That may be why I’m not having such a visceral reaction to what has transpired.
The first complaint:
Author Suzan Tisdale filed the first complaint against Milan with the RWA. According to the complaint, Tisdale is an author with more than 20 books published and has started her own publishing company. Her complaint is “for blatant ethics violations for repeatedly and intentionally engaging in conduct that is, at best, dishonest and disingenuous.”
Needless to say, Twitter posts play a large role in the complaint. When will folks learn they need to use common sense before hitting the “post” button on social media platforms like Twitter?
Specifically, Tisdale raises four issues for RWA’s consideration. The first is “Repeatedly or intentionally engaging in conduct injurious to RWA or its purposes.” Let’s face it. That’s a broad and almost generic complaint. It is also one that would probably be the easiest for RWA to rely on in coming to a decision because it is totally a judgment call.
The next complaints allege Milan “repeatedly or intentionally engaged in” what amounts to cyber bullying. You can read the specific language in the complaint. What follows next in the complaint is the history of how we got to today’s controversy. I’m sure no one is surprised to find folks on Twitter took exception to someone supporting a conservative or liking a tweet by Trump. We see that all the time. But it is what is alleged to have happened next that led to the complaint in question.
Tisdale stood up for her editor, the person “foolish” enough not to follow the group. She contends she looked into the allegations of racism and found no proof to support them. That’s where Milan supposedly stepped into the fray, wanting to know how many authors of color Tisdale had published. (Note, at that point, Tisdale’s “house” hadn’t published anyone)
According to Tisdale, Milan went on to then start attacking another of Tisdale’s editors. The support for the alleged attack? A book the editor wrote some 20-odd years ago. A book Milan admitted in her series of tweets she didn’t read. In fact, she admitted she hadn’t read the entire sample. She made a judgment on the quality of the book and its message and the author’s intent based on a few pages and took to twitter to attack.
Now, let’s face it. We all make judgments about books within a few pages. Where I believe Milan went wrong was in taking to twitter and calling the book–and by implication the author–“a fucking racist mess.” (the complaint contains a screen cap of the tweet). In this day and age of Twitter mobs, that is simply asking for folks to start piling on.
But, more to the point, it is where publishers start getting cold feet and canceling contracts and books. Something we’ve seen happen before and something Tisdale alleges to have happened in this case.
To support her claims, Tisdale included a number of screen caps from Milan’s twitter feed. You can see them here.
The Second Complaint:
The second complaint is from the editor in question, Kathryn Lynn Davis. In the complaint, Davis also alleges Milan engaged in cyber bullying that cost not only a three-book contract but damaged her reputation. Serious charges and something the RWA had to take a hard look at.
Davis also brought up potential IP violations by Milan. Specifically, Milan quoted large portions of the book in question and did so in a way Davis alleges were meant to devalue the work. She offers two examples to support this claim in her filing.
Needless to say, Milan denies the charges against her. She has been a voice for diversity within the RWA over the years, even before it became en vogue. Has she gone too far, as alleged? In my mind, yes. She attacked a book and the author based without doing her homework. She did so in a public forum and using language any reasonable person, especially a lawyer, should have known would incite negative feelings for the other person involved. Does it reach the level of seriousness to require RWA to suspend her from the organization? I don’t know.
In Comes the Ethics Committee:
According to the Ethics Committee’s findings,:
the committee determined that Ms. Milan’s comments were in violation of the organization’s expressed purpose of creating a “safe and respectful environment” for its community of writers.”
The committee did not find for Tisdale on the other three complaints. However, the committee did note that it was unable to adjudicate the Twitter comments because of the way the rules are written, rules that were put into place by the Ethics Committee when Milan served on the Board. It further went on to say, Milan “very likely understood she would be able to act in the manner she did, without being in violation of the code.”
In other words, they felt she knew what she was doing and was confident the Board could do nothing about it. Were they right? I don’t know. But, again, her actions do seen to fail the sniff test.
However, because of the complaint they did uphold, the committee recommended Milan be censured by the RWA, be suspended from membership for a year and be banned for life from holding any leadership position with the RWA on either a national or local level.
Milan’s Response to Everything:
Milan has not taken this and slunk off to a corner in silence. Like others, she has taken to Twitter.
Here are a few of her tweets:
https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/1209366597309042688
Remember, at the time all this went down, Tisdale’s “house” hadn’t published anything. When that was pointed out, she went after one of the editors for something written 20 years ago. Something she didn’t read all of before using inflaming language to condemn. Shouting “racist” on Twitter is something she should have known would not end well for anyone.
https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/1209455019411435526
There are a number of other tweets by Milan about all this. I’ll leave it to you to read them.
Conclusions:
I’ll be honest. I hate this. I’d respected Milan for how she stood up for authors, herself and others, against plagiarism. But the tweets leading up to the complaint and her tweets since the committee’s recommendation lessen her, at least in my eyes.
She claims she is being persecuted because she called out a book for being racist and the committee didn’t address that issue. Except that’s not really what happened. She is being punished for behavior that reflects negatively on the organization. It is not what she said but the way she said it. As an attorney, she knows–or should know– that. It was the manner in which she conducted the “discussion” and the way it impacted the organization that led to the decision.
Her continued attempts to justify not only what she said but how she said it don’t help her cause,in my opinion. Instead, it makes her look like she is trying to play the victim instead of admitting she screwed up and should have been more circumspect in her language, etc.
The fact she chose a book that is 20 years old to attack also leaves me shaking my head. How many of us haven’t said or done something when we were younger that could be looked on very differently today than they were at the time?
If you google Milan and the RWA, you will find the cites I’ve listed as well as a few others. Twitter is alive with posts about it. Milan isn’t happy that the “trolls”–ie, those who don’t support her–have found her Twitter feed. She has her supporters and she has her detractors. Welcome to the real world.
Here’s the thing. She might have done all this with the best of intentions. But she did them in the wrong way. She should have known it would blow up. She reasonably should have foreseen complaints being filed. Most of all, she should have thought long and hard before hitting the post button with accusations phrased in such a way any reasonable person would know they would bring derision on the person they were aimed at.
I applaud RWA for taking the allegations seriously and not sweeping them under the rug. That’s certainly more than SFWA did when certain members (including past and future officers) attacked members of the Sad Puppies and did their best to ruin careers. Did they take the right action? I’m not sure. The action does seem harsh for first-time offense. So that leaves me wondering if there is more we don’t yet know. As I said earlier, there is sure to be more information forthcoming. Where will it lead? Your guess is as good as mine. The only thing I know for sure is this incident is a prime example of why writers and editors need to think long and hard before hitting the post button on any social media platform and on Twitter in particular.
Remember, the internet is forever.
Mad Genius Club 
62 responses to “RWA and Courtney Milan, Pt. 2”
Love him or hate him his short survival guide should be kept handy as it can save you a lot of grief. Maybe even keep a link/copy to share with friends in need?
Click to access SJW_Attack_Survival_Guide.pdf
His SJW books aren’t bad reading either, they maybe no more interesting to you than other “survival guide” type books, but handy information to be at least aware of if needed.
Reading the tweets it’s clearly bog-standard SJW hyper-sensitive BS being used to attack other authors. Look at some of the response tweets. Mocking the list of what the publisher is looking for because “Highlander” isn’t a Historical period? She was definitely inviting a pile-on.
And the gist of the “racist” complaints are that the Chinese culture of whatever time the book (published 20 years ago) is set in is patriarchal and women are taught to be subservient? Is that actually not true? And more pile-on because someone described other races as exotic in books?
This ranks up there with having a baby-meltdown because someone describes skin tones as coffee, chocolate, cream or milk. Sometimes the appropriate response is to roll your eyes and sigh heavily at whatever your pet peeve is and move on.
And then the responses about how blue eyes are clearly genetically weak?
And not knowing the race of the writers who submit to you, nor ordering them, counting them, and asking for photos or paint-chips be sent in with your e-subs is not assuming that everyone is white until you know different. And yet she insisted that this was the case. She was, in fact, specifically calling Tisdale racist.
“We welcome submissions from all authors of all races, genders or sexes. Please include a paint-chip and dick-pic with your submission.”
Was Milan’s initial public remonstrating in good faith? Who can know?
This is what happens when you take a hen-party bitch-session public, and call it Twitter.
Also… [reads screencaps] …I see that blue eyes are now racist. Good to know! Next time some dickwad flings the term at me, I’ll respond, “I can’t help it; I was born this way. I have blue eyes.”
How about green eyes? I’ve always felt that those blue-eye people had it easy!
Speaking of, did everybody get their White Male/White Female Privilege checks this month? Mine’s late.
Not yet. Probably a weather delay.
Plus Christmas delay.
The assumption made was that two parents who were non-blue-eyed could not possibly have a blue-eyed child. Therefore: racissssstttt to state so. Except they can, and do. Neither of my parents have blue eyes. One of my sisters and I have blue eyes, my other sister has deep brown eyes like my mother’s. She also has my mother’s olive skin and very dark hair. Unlike my fair sister and I who burn if we look at the sun funny. Phenotypical expression is far more complex than the simple mendelian concept she was trying to force into the mold she wanted it to shape for her accusations.
Even the simple mendelian concept allows for blue eyed children from brown eyed parents if three grandparents on either side have blue eyes. No?
Blue eyes are in fact the standard example of a recessive gene. They can lurk for generations and suddenly pop up when two heterozygous parents have a child.
I think it’s just 2 grandparents. At any rate, both my parents have brown eyes, I don’t remember what color eyes my grandmothers had, but my kid brother and I both got our grandfathers’ blues.
Yes. Dan and I had a decent chance of blue eyed children because my mom is green eyed (three of my grandparents had blue eyes) and his dad is blue eyed. It didn’t happen, but it might have.
Also I think her complaint was a Chinese or part Chinese woman having blue eyes.
Well… I’d say it depends when and where. There were after all trade cities and absorbed populations, and though EXTREMELY rare — the term “exotic” would full apply — it is POSSIBLE.
No, not likely. And from an artistic point of view it might be like fantasy girls with violet eyes. BUT it could happen.
And which of us hasn’t written something dumb somewhere along the line, without it having anything to do with racism, sexism, homophobia, or whatever the phobia of the month club is handing out these days?
Since two (and I’m not sure of one of those) of mine had blue eyes and two certainly do not…
Sigh. This blue-eyed/brown-eyed thing is … lame. Obviously, none of the SJW set really paid attention to genetics. My mother had brown eyes, my father blue – but three of the four of their children had blue eyes — because Mom’s Dad had blue eyes! A clearer demo of recessive traits in my own family couldn’t better be performed.
Wasn’t there a classic mystery, where the parentage of a child – who had brown eyes, yet the ostensible parents both had blue eyes – was a plot point? Because – genetically impossible?
I know there was at least ONE, because it was mentioned in one of the “science marches on” books I inhaled as a kid, but I can’t help with the name.
Looks like the current theory is that the “blue eye gene” is actually *two* genes, and one of them can “break” in two ways, one that causes blue and one that causes green.
So you have one of four genes that is making pigment, and you get “brown”; if all four are not making pigment, you get either blue or green, depending on which flavor of the second pigment make your got. (half-functioning or not functioning)
I wish someone with stupid amounts of money would set up a thing where they take pictures of folks’ eyes, got DNA samples, and just got a ginormous data-bank of it– because our blue-eyed kids have different blues, from steel to deep water to cloudy sky, and I know they change. (Without environmental changes.)
Blue eyes, unlike brown ones, are caused by refraction, rather than pigment. That could produce a lot of changes.
There is something weirder. Our younger son was born with pitch black eyes. This is not … normal. They’re actually slightly lighter now.
Eye doctor says it’s something about the direction of the cones and rods (?) This was years ago, so I’m not sure I have it right. Apparently the kid’s eyes are actually blue (blink, blink, blink) but a defect that doesn’t affect function makes them appear black.
Oh, and makes them unholy sensitive to light. Which is why he wears sunglasses all the time and forgets to turn on lights.
It would seem to me the opposite might also be true.
Human genetics are weird.
Amen!
I used it as “impossible” but it was a little more complex than that because of the populations involved, and at the time it would SEEM impossible.
But yeah. Extremely unlikely in the case I used it in.
Actually it was the other way around: two blue eyed parents are unlikely to produce a brown eyed child. Unlikely enough that in common belief (at least in the village) it is “impossible.” (Note cases like younger son’s, and also parents with brown recessives. Obviously not impossible. But rare enough to cause suspicion.)
Sad thing is, it doesn’t even reach grade school genetics levels.
(I know because it came up recently for our ten year old! Since there’s only two folks in this house who DON’T have blue eyes, and I don’t mean blue hazel, it was of intense interest.)
Blue eyes are the gold standard example for a recessive gene; so if you have two parents who each carry the recessive, one in four of their kids will have blue eyes.
If only one parent carries the recessive, one in four of their kids will carry it– which means you can have generations of brown eyes suddenly have a blue eyed baby, because two of the recessives finally met up.
This of course doesn’t hit on blue eyes that are caused by any of the other reasons, which last I heard were still being argued about. It use to be believed that the recessive gene was the most common cause, but….
That whole eye color thing gave me pause. I’m part Japanese and I have blue eyes. Apparently I can’t exist.
I hope you find being ontologically challenged not that difficult.
Apparently the other objection was that she spent her life looking down. That was the only real complaint I got concerning the “racist author”. “How is it possible no one ever saw her eyes because she was always looking down? Didn’t she run into things?”
So, a fiction author doesn’t understand hyperbole and metaphor? And she’s on the board of the RWA? (Romance fiction has to be the most metaphor-heavy fiction writing in the universe!)
Or did I miss something there?
I realize that this page is specifically and purposefully non-political. I still want to point out something that most people may not be aware of. That is the dichotomy of racist vs. anti-racist that Milan uses as a binary choice and ultimatum to RWA.
The concept of anti-racism is not inclusiveness or equality or the absence of racism. Specifically the concept of anti-racism is that there must be ongoing, conscious and deliberate redress of historic inequities. Everyone *must* be judged by their ethnicity or race and decisions made on those bases to accomplish anti-racism.
It’s excessively Orwellian to call overt demand for racism by the term “anti-racism” but I’m not misrepresenting or exaggerating.
I do realize, also, that this page is often trolled by people with the intent of picking out Bad Thought and running back to Mommy to explain what the Bad People are up to. The only possible defense of anti-racism as a concept is that somehow people not oppressed deserve to oppress people who are not guilty and racism is the explicit way to accomplish it. If you argue that this fixes something other than breaks it more thoroughly, argue it honestly and don’t pretend that equity is equality or that the goal is to end rather than maintain racism and racist judgement.
Equality before the law is what we have now. That’s not what is being sought by “anti-racists” at this point. What they want is -inequality-. Non-whites get a Special Deal, whites pay for it.
Based entirely on skin colour too, the cherry on top.
I have no problem seeing such people on the receiving end of what they’ve been dishing out the last 20 years. What goes around comes around.
We have equality before the law. We do slightly less well actually in the courts. This is legitimate inequality and should be continued to be addressed. We have racism still in society. I recall someone listing off “microaggressions” she’d experienced and in the list were a few overtly racist actions. So why not just call it racism if it’s racism? Why lump overt racism directed at you in with microaggressions?
Because they broke the word and the meaning of the word. It’s broken by the insistence that a person is racist, or not racist, because of who they are and not because of actions or attitudes. “That’s not racism,” I’ve been told, “it’s just race based bigotry.”
Broken. The language is broken and it’s all in favor of letting people off the hook for their own actions and attitudes.
But anti-racism is different yet even from systemic racism, because it’s still possible to legitimately say that some of the normal ways things are done disadvantage some people and that ought to be fixed.
The guy who created the term “anti-racist” though went from believing and arguing for equality, personal responsibility, and fixing things to having some sort of epiphany where he no longer believes or even wants equality. He wants active efforts to remake all of those systems into something that actively and deliberately advantage a specific one group of people and actively and deliberately disadvantage others.
That’s not what is being sought by “anti-racists” at this point.
No, what they desire is power and revenge for perceived slights (assuming the “anti-racist” is a minority).
The theory is that human history and prehistory can be neatly divided into oppressors and oppressed, and that ethnic affinities assigned to a category from one period describe such for all periods.
Then one can define a racism that goes only in one direction, with its matching pair being ‘anti-racism’.
Implication of these assumptions is that you could be rid of racial conflict in one of two ways. 1) Extermination of all oppressor ethnicities. 2) Extermination of all oppressed ethnicities.
People who believe this might be all “Let’s do it” when in a position of power, and “you can’t do that” when not.
There is no ‘we’ in equality before the law. Canadians have that Human Rights thingy. Americans have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 🙂
My interpretation based on what I read was that there has to be more to this. If publishers were actually canceling contracts because the “publishing house is afraid of getting into Ms. Milan’s crosshairs,” then either (a) this is a Requires Hate situation where she’s a long-term, repeat offender bully, or (b) the publishing house is full of ninnies, and they’re the ones the RWA needs to be going afterwards.
The screenshotted tweets read like those of one of the perpetual cry-bullies, but there wasn’t any mention of this being a pattern of behavior in the complaints. If this was a one-off, I think Milan was wrong but probably still within her rights. If she’s a perpetual offender, however, probably best for RWA to stomp on it.
Or the publishing house and potential authors aren’t responding specifically to Milan but to a well understood pattern of behavior. They know the rules.
What doesn’t seem obvious (yet) is if Milan is a Requires Hate or a Zoe Quinn type character who is using this to establish herself as the potentate who’s ring must be kissed. Maybe she’s not.
I am so tired of social justice bullies.
plus infinity
Oh, Ghod, me too. I’m still working off a tank of exasperation over last weekend’s mass media Soc-Jus freakout over military cadets at the Army Navy game exhibiting the Circle Game on camera and the Usual Soc-Jus Media tools having a cow over assuming it to be a White Power symbol.
I’d never before heard of the circle game and perhaps it is silly or childish, but that’s all – at worst. The claims of racism or such were FAR sillier and FAR more childish – at best.
Same.
I’m trying not to get too judgy on this one, because I had such a reaction to the gal’s twitter pic– she looks like a “Karen.” (For those not familiar with the memes–woman of a certain age who escalates every failure to please her immediately to “I want to speak to your manager!” Generally quite emotionally invested in getting Satisfaction for this Wrong.)
Sometimes, but very rarely, it can be fun:
“I want to speak to a manager.”
“You are.”
Or the ultimate: “In fact I am the owner and you are no longer welcome in my establishment. Leave or be arrested for trespass.”
Yes I am a Reddit junky, why do you ask?
It was a childish but pleasurable experience when I used to tell cigar smokers to extinguish their stogies. (I used to own two live music nightclubs.) It was standard SOP for me to handle all such situations. Why? First, I did not want any tipped employee to be required to handle situations that might negatively impact their gratuities. And two, I have to admit I kinda enjoyed it. My no cigar policy was well-known, and 99.9% of the time the smoker involved was of the opinion that he was too important/rich for the rules to apply to him. )Always hims. I have no memory of ever needing to confront a female.) It was a very well-heeled crowd, adjacent to the ritziest neighbor hood in Houston. (River Oaks) My standard line was, after tapping the offender on the shoulder, to ask a question. “Do I smell a burning cigar, or are my socks on fire?” Sometimes the chimney in question would protest. “I paid $50 for this cigar!” “Then I’m sure you would enjoy it more if you were outside. I know I will.” This nonsense would sometimes go on, culminating with my promise to break that cigar in half and toss the smoker and the cigar out on his rancid ass if he took one more puff. The very best part came next. The put-upon man would demand to talk to my boss/the owner/someone in charge,at which time I’d tell ’em, “They don’t get more in charge than I am. I own this motherfucker.”
“I loved being my own boss more, I think, than the boodles of money I made every month.
The stupidity burns. At this rate the world will burn. Oh well, time to hit the booze.
~/the radio has let us know that this is not a test/~
Was it London calling?
THIS is yet another reason why I will never join ANY of these organizations… sigh… People’s careers have probably been if not destroyed, harmed by this simply out of spite.
Thank you for highlighting Milan’s online behavior. She and her gang ( Cole, Dare etc) are the self appointed gate keepers of romance writers community. They have created their own “safe space” where they feel comfortable to be nasty to other romance writers who don’t meet their standards.
About a year ago she went after Eloisa James because EJs biracial hero was acting too white. She used some pretty cruel comments towards EJ and basically told her to stay in her lane. So much for diversity.
And Milan knows how to act not-white how?
Because I really sort of doubt she has the first notion how to act not-white.
As a side note, what does “acting white” even mean, besides needing to slather on sunscreen more often and needing less energy to process Vitamin D?
Well, you see ethnicity and culture are completely identical, completely heritable, unchanging, and neatly falling into oppressed/oppressor categories. You can’t change your results by changing your behavior, instead you can only betray or conform to the station you were born to in life.
It’s bourgeois, but for “anti”-racists.
Sigh
It’s an insult, similar to Uncle Tom or Oreo, but usually applied to K-12 students. My mother the teacher has encountered it among black students since the 70s. It’s applied to minority kids who come to school and try to learn, don’t get into trouble, do the homework assignments, etc.
The implication is that by doing those things, they aren’t authentically black, but trying to suck up to whitey. You can find a better explanation in Thomas Sowell’s books.
Curse you 60 and your non-vitamin-D-by-the-handful taking privilege! 😀
She dissed Eloisa James? I love Eloisa James. I saw a panel with her and some more radical feminist authors like Julia Quinn and Sarah Maclean and it was so uncomfortable because Eloisa had different and unpopular opinions and really had to downplay what she was saying in order not to offend anyone and get attacked.
Genetics is far more nuanced than the simple ‘rules’ would have it be. Those of us who are Caucasian have more diversity than the Chinese (Han) DNA. The rules don’t say that blue eyes cannot occur, only that they are LESS likely when one of the parents is Chinese.
But, a recessive gene, by definition, can hang around for a LONG time, without making its presence known. With a Chinese-Chinese mating, the odds on TWO blue-eyed genes combining is VERY unlikely. However, when you add in a known blue-eyed gene for a father, the random chance reduces to more possible.
BTW, I’m a science teacher, who HAS taught genetics.
And I am a scientist, with some molecular biology background, and you are quite correct. The assumption of racism based on faulty genetic understanding irritated me deeply.
Hank Williams (senior) was WAY ahead of his time, as he sang a great anti-SJW tune, “Mind Your Own Business”! It basically says, “‘If you mind your own business then you won’t be minding mine!” SJWs seem compelled to butt into other folks’ business, when they should just mind their own business.
Personally, I find the best way to react to a threat (from an SJW, or from anyone) is to counter-attack. If someone threatens me, I give them an escalated counter-threat that they won’t like. I once had a young punk threaten me that he would go online and wreck my credit rating. I countered his offer with a threat of physical violence. I bluntly told him that if he did wreck my credit rating, that I would physically wreck HIM, and that while I would be able to repair my credit rating, there weren’t any number of doctors that would be able to repair HIM. I concluded with, “So, you do what you think you have to do, and then I’ll do what I’ll HAVE to do.” Needless to say, he never messed with my credit rating.
I came to this philosophy after being bullied when I was a kid. I learned to physically fight back against the bullies, and so I no longer feared the bullies. If they threatened me, they would learn to fear me! I never had to fight the same bully twice. Once they had one fight with me, they did not want another, as they clearly came out second-best in the first fight.
So, the best way to respond to SJW threats is to go after them, using whatever means necessary, whether it be legal or physical. (Use their own slogan against them “By Any Means Necessary!”)
Ironically, the father of the blue-eyed half-Chinese girl was also blue-eyed.
Okay, folks. Here’s the thing. I don’t mind if anyone disagrees with what I say. That’s part of the discussion. However, I am not going to approve comments–which mean someone has never commented here before–if the comment devolves into a personal attack on others commenting here.
Don’t like what RWA did? Fine. Present your reasons. Agree with what the organization did? Same response. But do not go into personal attacks. Thanks.
You know what? I’m Italian, and I never threw a tantrum over mafia romances. I think they’re stupid, not racist. If anyone thinks my fellow citizens are all mafiosi, I do not even dignify such bs with a response. The day I do, please shoot me
I realize that there’s a greater temporal gap but imagine the day I found “Viking” romances. 😉
There you go, acting like an adult. That’s something too many on the other side of the argument forget to be.
Okay, since there are apparently those who either refuse to “get” it or won’t read comments, I’m going to try this again. We had yet another drive-by poster who left a comment that landed in moderation. The comment did nothing to discuss the issue. It was barely literate. It also accused not only me but anyone who didn’t agree with the poster of being basically being racists. Why? Because we didn’t instantly agree with condemning someone over a 20 year old book that neither Milan, by her own admission, or the poster, by implication, ever read. Anyway, please read the following.
MGC welcomes anyone who wants to comment on a post. The only caveat is we aren’t going to sit still if all someone does is come in and does a drive-by comment which attacks others who have commented on a post. You don’t have to agree with us. We love a good debate. But be prepared and come with your arguments and facts to support them. Otherwise, you will be reminded where the door is and our readers, who are loyal even if they don’t always agree with us, will use you as chew toys.
For those of you who are new to MGC and who have come here to discuss the issue, really discuss it, welcome. We hope you’ll stick around. We are sometimes rowdy but we will respect anyone who doesn’t mind scrapping it up with us and having a good, fact-based debate. Hell, we’ll even welcome good, well-expressed opinions, just be prepared to support them.
Classic case. She should probably see a psychiatrist. She got some small amount of fame and praise doing some little good work against plagiarism, and then fell back into being just another midlist romance author. She craved the attention she wasn’t getting anymore, and went looking for someone else doing something wrong. Having a hard time finding a cause, she opened up her boundaries for what is wrong, and voila! She is once again the center of attention. At least that is the way it looks from the outside. I am not a psychiatrist, but she should probably be seeing one, for everyone’s safety.
a) Psychiatric meds are pretty serious things. b) I don’t think we have the information to conclude whether this is character or health. And if health, whether a psychiatrist or psychologist or whatever is the best source of remedy.
Even if someone was a credentialed psychiatrist, I would find them less than credible or professional if they were opining on someone far away on a blog, of all things.
I am not any sort of life scientist, social scientist, legal professional or medical professional.
If I credit the allegations of extensive bullying campaigns, the pattern I see looks more of criminal sort than a mental illness sort. Which is not to say that I think that a crime has occurred, or think that process is appropriate either. It simply feels like the result of too much calculated manipulation to be a recent mental breakdown. Additionally, your theory of the breakdown doesn’t feel particularly plausible to me, and I haven’t seen any evidence about Milan being a physical danger to others.
There are other ways to harm someone than physical. Ruination of livelihood strikes me as a definite harm. If she is inclined toward this type behavior, then get it diagnosed so she cannot harm others. And if the behavior fits the pattern, then it needs to be determined if it is an illness or intentional criminal behavior. Which is why we have psychiatrists to start with.