Note 2: Koen Book Distributors has picked up my book, so if you want to buy a copy from a bookstore rather than over the net, it may help to give the bookstore Koen's name to speed up the process.
Note 3: Many additions to the web pages today -- I spent about 3-4 hours working on them. Too many to list -- just wander through.
Instead of a regular journal entry, I thought I'd give you a sample of some of the other stuff I write -- this one is part of an ongoing discussion on the alt.polyamory newsgroup.
In article (E69pn6.By4@world.std.com), bearpaw (bearpaw@world.std.com) wrote:
>Rights always carry responsibilities, however often that's
overlooked.
>My take would be, yes, someone who "incited" violence is in a sense
>"responsible" for it, though they are not "as responsible" as the
>assholes wielding the bats. They are certainly *ethically*
responsible,
>whether they can be held *legally* responsible is a much messier
>question. (I think they *should* be held legally responsible, I'm
>just not sure how that's best done. The connection between the
>victim and the asshole with the bat is a lot easier to show than the
>connection between the victim and the asshole with the voice.)
So here's a question for you -- what about someone who says or writes something that could be construed as advocating Something Bad (tm), but who had had no intentions of advocating said Bad Thing, and in fact, didn't even consider the possibility?
And how does ethical responsibility apply to fiction/art?
This is wandering a bit far afield, but recently this question was brought home to me very sharply when one of my readers told me that he felt one of my stories was glorifying killing in a sexual sense. That wasn't at all what I intended, and I still don't really think the story says that, but looking back at it, I can certainly see how it can be read that way.
Am I responsible if someone goes out and gets into snuff because they got all turned on by my story? Are writers/artists generally responsible for what people read into their work?
Details of story and critique at:
http://www.mamohanraj.com/Stories/diana.html
http://www.mamohanraj.com/Stories/dianacrit.html
- Mary Anne