It Was Acceptable In The 70s: Why I won’t excuse the actions of the past.

This is part of a series responding to issues that came up in comments on my post, David Bowie was wonderful. He was also an abuser. How do we handle that?In this post, I’m going to explore the idea that as the 70s were a different time, we can’t judge what people did back then by today’s standards. Here are some of the things that commenters had to say: Continue reading “It Was Acceptable In The 70s: Why I won’t excuse the actions of the past.”

It Was Acceptable In The 70s: Why I won’t excuse the actions of the past.
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Aoife is a vile opportunist attention-seeker, jumping on a bandwagon for clicks and money.

Well. An awful lot of you read my last post on Bowie. And a lot of things came up in the comments, as well as discussions about the post in other spaces (my Facebook and Twitter and.. a lot of other places). There are some things I’d like to respond to here. I’m going to separate them into a few different posts, because they’re different enough to warrant it. And I pretty much haven’t the time to deal with them all in one go.


“Aoife is a vile opportunist attention-seeker, jumping on a bandwagon for clicks and money.”

I could tell you that the ad revenue we get here at FtB is the opposite of spectacular. Sure, that post garnered more hits than anything I’d ever written before. That does mean that in a few months time I’ll get a somewhat bigger chunk of cash than I normally would. Continue reading “Aoife is a vile opportunist attention-seeker, jumping on a bandwagon for clicks and money.”

Aoife is a vile opportunist attention-seeker, jumping on a bandwagon for clicks and money.

David Bowie was wonderful. He was also an abuser. How do we handle that?

A couple of notes. First: CN for discussions of CSA.  Second: despite my repeatedly asking them not to (and having my comments removed and accounts blocked), a site whose views on trans women I find abhorrent insists on linking to this post. If you’ve come from there, please read this.


I feel genuinely sad about Bowie’s death. Like many people, I grew up listening to his music. He had a unique voice in every sense of the world. He was brave and beautiful and fearless. Growing up as a queer kid and a bit of an oddball, it would have been hard to not feel a connection to him. Space Oddity was one of my favourite songs, way back when I was a child obsessed with space and robots, convinced that I could go to the Moon someday.

Some of my friends don’t understand why people grieve celebrities.

They say- we’ve never met them, so why would it affect us?

Just as they don’t understand me, I don’t get that perspective either. After all, we don’t just spend our time with the people we know. We spend it with artists we’ll never meet.

That’s not even a 21st century thing. Ever since humans first learned to draw and then to write, we’ve been connecting with each other through time and space. Music written centuries ago gives me goosebumps. Authors who died long before I was born feel like old friends. They’re not, of course. We get their final drafts. What they choose to share. But despite that, this one-way connection is still real. Continue reading “David Bowie was wonderful. He was also an abuser. How do we handle that?”

David Bowie was wonderful. He was also an abuser. How do we handle that?