{"id":181,"date":"2010-05-23T09:37:10","date_gmt":"2010-05-23T09:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carrollmyth.wordpress.com\/?p=181"},"modified":"2010-05-23T09:37:10","modified_gmt":"2010-05-23T09:37:10","slug":"rejecting-apology-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/2010\/05\/23\/rejecting-apology-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Rejecting Apology II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, we just received two comments (click here<\/a> and here<\/a>)\u00a0 on this blog of a kind I\u2019m sure is nauseatingly and yawningly familiar to everyone who runs a Lewis Carroll website. We all get them by the ton, and mostly we just trash them. But these two so perfectly exemplify everything Contrariwise has been saying about this subject recently that, queasy (and horrendously spelled) as they are, we\u2019re not trashing them this time. We\u2019re letting them stand. As a kind of monument. Or \u00a0waymarker.<\/p>\n

Because Mr Porlaverdad3 (don\u2019t you just have to hope he isn\u2019t really anyone\u2019s dad?!) didn\u2019t arrive at his ideas in an intellectual vacuum. He got there in the same way millions of others have, by reading what\u2019s been written, and by assuming stuff from the silences where rebuttal should have been. His drooling and dishonest image of Lewis Carroll as the proud emblem of a whole fraternity of \u2018child-lovers\u2019 channeling their desire to have sex with kids into a beautiful expression of \u2018love\u2019 and enchantment is not really very far removed from the picture the Apologists have painted, and, sadly, continue, in some circles, to paint.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s really why Carroll\u2019s sexuality matters so much. Because it\u2019s been adopted as a symbol for a group of very dangerous and deluded people. And when we dodge the issues about him, when Derek Hudson squeamishly begged for understanding of the guy\u2019s weaknesses, because he was a genius, and when other authors whine that\u00a0 ‘yes he was weird about little girls, but he can\u2019t<\/em> have done any harm because the kids all loved<\/em> him too much’ (as if predatory pedophiles are never adored by their victims), we\u2019re handing over the man\u2019s reputation to these people.<\/p>\n

We contend there is simply no evidence to show Lewis Carroll was pedophilic in desire or action, and that his relationship with children\u00a0 has been distorted and simplified by legend to appear a lot ‘weirder’ than it actually was.\u00a0 But if you think that\u2019s not true. If you think Carroll \u2018loved\u2019 children even slightly inappropriately, then you can’t dodge what that means. You have to go with the corollary, that when he sought their unchaperoned company,\u00a0photographed their naked bodies, he was behaving like a predatory and dangerous sexual pervert. Avoiding that obvious and stark choice, being coy and fluffy about it, using special pleading to argue he was somehow above such questions, sanctified by magic and joy, is something we can\u2019t afford to do, because it plays straight into the hands of the too numerous people like Porlaverdad3,\u00a0who want to believe they can be \u2018innocent\u2019 pedos, just like Mr Carroll, frolicking happily in a rainbow Eden with the children they \u2018love\u2019.<\/p>\n

We think Lewis Carroll would probably have deplored being associated with such individuals, and deplored possibly even more, the false logic and queasy special pleading that puts him in such company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, we just received two comments (click here and here)\u00a0 on this blog of a kind I\u2019m sure is nauseatingly and yawningly familiar to everyone who runs a Lewis Carroll website. We all get them by the ton, and mostly we just trash them. But these two so perfectly exemplify everything Contrariwise has been saying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-carroll-myth","category-wilful-myth-blindness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17WIo-2V","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}