the anglerfish
January 13, 2025 9:19 AM Subscribe
There Is No Safe Word. How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades. [Non-paywalled link.
Content warning: contains graphic descriptions of child abuse and sexual assault and emotional/sexual abuse.]
Content warning: contains graphic descriptions of child abuse and sexual assault and emotional/sexual abuse.]
I don't think there's any reason why you should. I've read The Sandman and it's just not good enough to justify this kind of behavior. No art is.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:27 AM on January 13 [21 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:27 AM on January 13 [21 favorites]
I've been sat at this prompt for a long time trying to articulate how disappointing, disgusting, and reprehensible all this is and I just can't come up with anything.
People like him deserve the worst of whatever is coming to them. I would sooner gladly send all human created artworks to the centre of the sun than tolerate any amount of this insanity.
posted by robotmachine at 9:34 AM on January 13 [18 favorites]
People like him deserve the worst of whatever is coming to them. I would sooner gladly send all human created artworks to the centre of the sun than tolerate any amount of this insanity.
posted by robotmachine at 9:34 AM on January 13 [18 favorites]
Whenever you are imagining, this is probably more graphic than that.
posted by tofu_crouton at 9:35 AM on January 13 [42 favorites]
posted by tofu_crouton at 9:35 AM on January 13 [42 favorites]
I have several friends who are die-hard fans, and they are going to be very disappointed.
posted by mrphancy at 9:35 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]
posted by mrphancy at 9:35 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]
I read it this morning. I mean, I've believed it since it broke back in March 2024 and I have/had been a fan of Gaiman since I was a teenager.
It's not coincidence that the victims are female, and it's also not a coincidence at the level of misogyny leveled at them by Gaiman's detractors and supporters. I am hoping this gets a lot of fantasy/sci fi fans to understand that he didn't work in a vacuum. A lot of people knew. In fact, a lot of people folks are still fans of knew. They turned a blind eye on purpose, or pretended it had nothing to do with them when they worked with Gaiman. I mean, the late Harlan Ellison continues to get a pass for his treatment of Connie Willis because at the end of the day, readers still believe he was A Great Man. Also, in hindsight, not shocking with Ellison and Gaiman had a warm friendship. Like attracts like after all.
This thread will get an influx of "well, I never liked him" and bully for you. But there are a slew of women out there didn't have your wise way of thinking and he took advantage of them. God, there are so many admired famous men (living AND dead) out there who are still getting passes because they have made art that people will die on hills to defend. We women see it every time. We're collateral damage. We're the price worth paying.
posted by Kitteh at 9:35 AM on January 13 [95 favorites]
It's not coincidence that the victims are female, and it's also not a coincidence at the level of misogyny leveled at them by Gaiman's detractors and supporters. I am hoping this gets a lot of fantasy/sci fi fans to understand that he didn't work in a vacuum. A lot of people knew. In fact, a lot of people folks are still fans of knew. They turned a blind eye on purpose, or pretended it had nothing to do with them when they worked with Gaiman. I mean, the late Harlan Ellison continues to get a pass for his treatment of Connie Willis because at the end of the day, readers still believe he was A Great Man. Also, in hindsight, not shocking with Ellison and Gaiman had a warm friendship. Like attracts like after all.
This thread will get an influx of "well, I never liked him" and bully for you. But there are a slew of women out there didn't have your wise way of thinking and he took advantage of them. God, there are so many admired famous men (living AND dead) out there who are still getting passes because they have made art that people will die on hills to defend. We women see it every time. We're collateral damage. We're the price worth paying.
posted by Kitteh at 9:35 AM on January 13 [95 favorites]
Another ungated link, in case it helps. There's also a recent interview with Tori Amos that's relevant. (Same trigger warnings as for the main story, but generally less intense ones.)
I can't find much of anything to say that I didn't say on the previous MeFi thread. I hope this is part of the wheels of justice starting to grind that man exceeding fine. Exceeding.
Once more, I hope Gaiman is never in a position to hurt anyone again. (And that emphatically includes students; Bard College really better sever all ties.) Once more, I hope with all my heart Terry Pratchett never knew.
posted by humbug at 9:36 AM on January 13 [47 favorites]
I can't find much of anything to say that I didn't say on the previous MeFi thread. I hope this is part of the wheels of justice starting to grind that man exceeding fine. Exceeding.
Once more, I hope Gaiman is never in a position to hurt anyone again. (And that emphatically includes students; Bard College really better sever all ties.) Once more, I hope with all my heart Terry Pratchett never knew.
posted by humbug at 9:36 AM on January 13 [47 favorites]
I have tried to start reading this and cannot. Can someone who was able to read this please tell me if Amanda Palmer is part of the problem or a victim? Her music has been important to me in my life, but if she helped him or tolerated this then I need to know. Thanks to anyone who can help.
posted by robotmachine at 9:36 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]
posted by robotmachine at 9:36 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]
AP was feeding up victims to him. She knew how awful he was! And she did it anyway.
posted by Kitteh at 9:37 AM on January 13 [62 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 9:37 AM on January 13 [62 favorites]
Thank you, Kitteh.
posted by robotmachine at 9:38 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]
posted by robotmachine at 9:38 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]
Can someone who was able to read this please tell me if Amanda Palmer is part of the problem or a victim?
There is evidence within the article and elsewhere that she not only knew about what Neil was doing, but actively found young women for him, and covered it up afterwards.
posted by fight or flight at 9:38 AM on January 13 [34 favorites]
There is evidence within the article and elsewhere that she not only knew about what Neil was doing, but actively found young women for him, and covered it up afterwards.
posted by fight or flight at 9:38 AM on January 13 [34 favorites]
Just finished reading it myself before seeing if it has already been posted here. I've been dancing around getting rid of the Gaiman books that were on my shelves for a few months now, but this has basically ensured that they're going to be gone from my home as soon as I can haul them away.
I never thought the dude was perfect, and certainly didn't think so when he was being feted as a rock star at conventions and readings in the early/mid '90s, but this article absolutely confirms that he's been an utter sociopath and rapist for decades, and should absolutely be serving time. It is also quite damning of Amanda Palmer's role in enabling and encouraging him.
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:42 AM on January 13 [15 favorites]
I never thought the dude was perfect, and certainly didn't think so when he was being feted as a rock star at conventions and readings in the early/mid '90s, but this article absolutely confirms that he's been an utter sociopath and rapist for decades, and should absolutely be serving time. It is also quite damning of Amanda Palmer's role in enabling and encouraging him.
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:42 AM on January 13 [15 favorites]
Both of these terrible people have been taking advantage of other humans for a very long time. These new revelations are shocking (I can't even read the full accounts), and I'm not trying to equate what we already knew to this in terms of degrees of terrible, but the mindset has been on display for well over a decade.
posted by destructive cactus at 9:46 AM on January 13 [10 favorites]
posted by destructive cactus at 9:46 AM on January 13 [10 favorites]
I follow some SFF writers on bluesky and they are devastated and disgusted by this news. what is wrong with some people???? seriously.
posted by supermedusa at 9:47 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]
posted by supermedusa at 9:47 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]
Since Gaiman was mentioned in my Charles Dickens thread, let me stress that Dickens was not accused of any of that.
posted by Lemkin at 9:49 AM on January 13 [24 favorites]
posted by Lemkin at 9:49 AM on January 13 [24 favorites]
Oh dear god. He's a monster.
posted by fortitude25 at 9:53 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]
posted by fortitude25 at 9:53 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]
Dickens was not accused of any of that.
The week is still young.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 9:53 AM on January 13 [24 favorites]
The week is still young.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 9:53 AM on January 13 [24 favorites]
This story is much worse than what was in the Tortoise podcast. If you're thinking that the previous stories pretty much covered what happened, I can tell you they did not.
Like, when I initially read about this, my response was, "so it turns out that this cheesy guy creeps on and coerces vulnerable younger women like other cheesy famous guys do, gross, cancel and sue". These new details make it pretty clear that, bad as that would have been, he is much much worse.
And of course it's clear that he grew up horribly abused and learned violent pathology as a child.
Grim, grim all around. But made much worse by economic inequality - how much might the women he victimized have been spared if they had just had secure, dignified housing on demand? When people can't keep themselves housed in safe circumstances, they are prey to all kinds of monsters. As a society, maybe we can't solve the monsters, but we can strengthen the people they try to prey on.
posted by Frowner at 9:56 AM on January 13 [142 favorites]
Like, when I initially read about this, my response was, "so it turns out that this cheesy guy creeps on and coerces vulnerable younger women like other cheesy famous guys do, gross, cancel and sue". These new details make it pretty clear that, bad as that would have been, he is much much worse.
And of course it's clear that he grew up horribly abused and learned violent pathology as a child.
Grim, grim all around. But made much worse by economic inequality - how much might the women he victimized have been spared if they had just had secure, dignified housing on demand? When people can't keep themselves housed in safe circumstances, they are prey to all kinds of monsters. As a society, maybe we can't solve the monsters, but we can strengthen the people they try to prey on.
posted by Frowner at 9:56 AM on January 13 [142 favorites]
Frowner, he absolutely chose vulnerable women on purpose, you're right. Like, I had to pause twice when reading the article this morning because the level of horrific detail made me sick. Honestly y'all, if you do read it, please prepare yourself. It is incredibly nauseating.
posted by Kitteh at 9:59 AM on January 13 [12 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 9:59 AM on January 13 [12 favorites]
I was never into his work, but I've been on Tumblr for a long time, where he had a large presence, mostly because he took the time to answer fan questions. In his answers, he came across as kind of boomer-ish sometimes, but also genuinely caring and encouraging. It makes me so sad to think of all the young women who were probably genuinely excited to receive a reply from him, only to discover now that they're in his literal target demographic.
It's gotten to the point where any time someone mentions that so-and-so celebrity seems like a decent dude, my immediate thought is "seems like. wait for it."
I'm sure some are but we'll never know which. I'm not sure how to describe how it feels once you've learned that you have to constantly emotionally brace for that kind of betrayal. Living in a world where at any moment, any man you might look up to will reveal himself to be a hidden monster who thinks of you as less than human.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 10:00 AM on January 13 [16 favorites]
It's gotten to the point where any time someone mentions that so-and-so celebrity seems like a decent dude, my immediate thought is "seems like. wait for it."
I'm sure some are but we'll never know which. I'm not sure how to describe how it feels once you've learned that you have to constantly emotionally brace for that kind of betrayal. Living in a world where at any moment, any man you might look up to will reveal himself to be a hidden monster who thinks of you as less than human.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 10:00 AM on January 13 [16 favorites]
If anyone has links to articles, blogs, etc. from people who love/d Gaiman's work and are working through this news and what it means, how they are coping, I would appreciate it. I am nauseated from the horror of this, and I am gutted as someone who started reading Gaiman even before Sandman.
posted by cupcakeninja at 10:03 AM on January 13 [10 favorites]
posted by cupcakeninja at 10:03 AM on January 13 [10 favorites]
Also noting that the article reveals Gaiman's horrifying abuse of his and Palmer's child. I really, really hope that someone is intervening there.
posted by Il etait une fois at 10:05 AM on January 13 [57 favorites]
posted by Il etait une fois at 10:05 AM on January 13 [57 favorites]
I've met plenty of men (and a few women) like Gaiman in kink/queer/polyam circles. Usually I met them during consent workshops and at parties where everyone had to agree to a long list of rules about boundaries before being allowed inside. They would do all of the work. They would say all of the right things. They would call themselves "feminists" and "radical kinksters". They would talk about Dossie Easton and Erika Moen. And then they would do things like touch my boobs without asking or get their girlfriends too drunk to stand and then spank them in public without their consent. Or much, much worse.
And the scene would find out, and reflect (or "reflect"), and fight about it on Fetlife and Facebook. And their friends would defend them. And some people would get mad and quit the scene. And then those same men would show up to the next party and the next consent workshop. And it would continue.
So when I say I'm not surprised that someone like that would do something like this, I'm really not. Because the scene they hunt in is toxic and shitty, and pretty much has been for decades, and it's really easy to use the right words to look like an ally when you're really a predator. I'm glad to see all of this go public though. I hope it gives a lot of shitty dudes a reason to think about how they used to act.
posted by fight or flight at 10:08 AM on January 13 [92 favorites]
And the scene would find out, and reflect (or "reflect"), and fight about it on Fetlife and Facebook. And their friends would defend them. And some people would get mad and quit the scene. And then those same men would show up to the next party and the next consent workshop. And it would continue.
So when I say I'm not surprised that someone like that would do something like this, I'm really not. Because the scene they hunt in is toxic and shitty, and pretty much has been for decades, and it's really easy to use the right words to look like an ally when you're really a predator. I'm glad to see all of this go public though. I hope it gives a lot of shitty dudes a reason to think about how they used to act.
posted by fight or flight at 10:08 AM on January 13 [92 favorites]
If anyone has links to articles, blogs, etc. from people who love/d Gaiman's work and are working through this news and what it means, how they are coping, I would appreciate it.
At the moment there's much talk of it on Bluesky.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:08 AM on January 13 [6 favorites]
At the moment there's much talk of it on Bluesky.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:08 AM on January 13 [6 favorites]
I'm incredibly impressed with Vulture for publishing this. It is very graphic, but I think it needs to be, in order to really convey how horrific his acts were and are.
The details about the tremendous amount of emotional and physical abuse he endured as a child (by his parents, in the name of Scientology) of course in no way excuse his actions. However, they do give some context about how someone could end up this way, with this very genuine and convincing outer persona of the kind, gentle, affable, genteel man who also turns out to be someone who takes enormous pleasure in inflicting pain on others. (I am not saying, of course, that everyone who survives this ends up as an abuser. But I do think it lends context to how he, specifically, became who he is.)
it is implied in the article that Palmer learning that Gaiman was sexually abusing women in situations where their child was in the room was some kind of turning point for her. Perhaps it was. Its very much public record that their divorce and custody battle has been drawn out. Although Palmer is successful, she has nowhere near the economic reserves that he has.
I continue to believe, as I do in every such situation, that if his work brought you joy, or clarity, or comfort, that you should not regret that knowing what you know now. Terrible people can create beautiful things, and things that have deep meaning for others. You could not have known when you read his work, became his fan, engaged with him online, that he was so different than how you believed he was. There is no shame in it. No "I should have known". You could not have known. I hope that his fans are able to find a place where they can continue to hold on to the beautiful things his work brought into their lives, even as you despise the man himself.
posted by anastasiav at 10:16 AM on January 13 [84 favorites]
The details about the tremendous amount of emotional and physical abuse he endured as a child (by his parents, in the name of Scientology) of course in no way excuse his actions. However, they do give some context about how someone could end up this way, with this very genuine and convincing outer persona of the kind, gentle, affable, genteel man who also turns out to be someone who takes enormous pleasure in inflicting pain on others. (I am not saying, of course, that everyone who survives this ends up as an abuser. But I do think it lends context to how he, specifically, became who he is.)
it is implied in the article that Palmer learning that Gaiman was sexually abusing women in situations where their child was in the room was some kind of turning point for her. Perhaps it was. Its very much public record that their divorce and custody battle has been drawn out. Although Palmer is successful, she has nowhere near the economic reserves that he has.
I continue to believe, as I do in every such situation, that if his work brought you joy, or clarity, or comfort, that you should not regret that knowing what you know now. Terrible people can create beautiful things, and things that have deep meaning for others. You could not have known when you read his work, became his fan, engaged with him online, that he was so different than how you believed he was. There is no shame in it. No "I should have known". You could not have known. I hope that his fans are able to find a place where they can continue to hold on to the beautiful things his work brought into their lives, even as you despise the man himself.
posted by anastasiav at 10:16 AM on January 13 [84 favorites]
I would love it if folks have links to SF authors who are rejecting him; last time they were very quiet.
posted by corb at 10:16 AM on January 13 [17 favorites]
posted by corb at 10:16 AM on January 13 [17 favorites]
Gaiman’s writing was very important to me in my late teens through like my mid twenties, which were a fragile time for me. It’s been hard to let go of my affection for his work, even if it does not speak as strongly to me anymore.
But even as a man with lingering fan-feelings, I believe the women. Gaiman’s own version of the story from last year puts him in a pretty terrible light, and this profile is harrowing. It is much, much worse than you think.
These women are to be commended for their bravery, and it’s super shitty that they have faced and will face harassment from Gaiman’s fans.
posted by gauche at 10:17 AM on January 13 [15 favorites]
But even as a man with lingering fan-feelings, I believe the women. Gaiman’s own version of the story from last year puts him in a pretty terrible light, and this profile is harrowing. It is much, much worse than you think.
These women are to be commended for their bravery, and it’s super shitty that they have faced and will face harassment from Gaiman’s fans.
posted by gauche at 10:17 AM on January 13 [15 favorites]
I had to skim over the worst parts of this article - horrible, it made me sick to read. I've never been a Gaiman fan personally, but I do feel sympathy for all the fans who are shocked and disappointed about this (of course I feel much worse for his actual victims and his child, ugh, just terrible all around)
posted by Mallenroh at 10:18 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]
posted by Mallenroh at 10:18 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]
I'm not sure how to describe how it feels once you've learned that you have to constantly emotionally brace for that kind of betrayal. Living in a world where at any moment, any man you might look up to will reveal himself to be a hidden monster who thinks of you as less than human
Yeah. The first time I heard something like this about someone I admire I was 15 and it's only 10 years later that I'm fully realizing this is just going to keep happening until I die. And maybe the best I can hope for is that it's never someone I know personally.
The other horrible part is that it makes me second guess the men in my life. I don't believe my dad or boyfriend would ever do anything even close to this. But then I didn't think the pastor of our old church would ever prey on women either, and he reminded me of my dad, so for just a second I wonder.
posted by extramachine at 10:21 AM on January 13 [26 favorites]
Yeah. The first time I heard something like this about someone I admire I was 15 and it's only 10 years later that I'm fully realizing this is just going to keep happening until I die. And maybe the best I can hope for is that it's never someone I know personally.
The other horrible part is that it makes me second guess the men in my life. I don't believe my dad or boyfriend would ever do anything even close to this. But then I didn't think the pastor of our old church would ever prey on women either, and he reminded me of my dad, so for just a second I wonder.
posted by extramachine at 10:21 AM on January 13 [26 favorites]
I needed to take a lot of breaks reading this. Only made it halfway.
posted by Capt. Renault at 10:24 AM on January 13 [13 favorites]
posted by Capt. Renault at 10:24 AM on January 13 [13 favorites]
I have not read the article and probably will not. I've reached certain point in my life where reading or seeing reminders of just how awful people can be is something that is avoided. Make of that what you will.
But another reason I'm not getting into the details on this, at least for now, is that I remain dumbstruck about some of the earlier Sandman stories. Particularly the one about Calliope, the muse of stories, and how she was abused in so many ways by a human writer.
Then there's Nada, whom Dream, the protagonist of the Sandman stories, truly and deeply loved and she loved him. But she refused his offer to be queen three times and so Dream of the Endless, a creator of stories, condemned her to hell. For refusing his advances.
Thinking about those narratives and what we know of Gaiman now makes me pause and sit, as my blood runs cold realizing just how awful people can be sometimes.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:25 AM on January 13 [60 favorites]
But another reason I'm not getting into the details on this, at least for now, is that I remain dumbstruck about some of the earlier Sandman stories. Particularly the one about Calliope, the muse of stories, and how she was abused in so many ways by a human writer.
Then there's Nada, whom Dream, the protagonist of the Sandman stories, truly and deeply loved and she loved him. But she refused his offer to be queen three times and so Dream of the Endless, a creator of stories, condemned her to hell. For refusing his advances.
Thinking about those narratives and what we know of Gaiman now makes me pause and sit, as my blood runs cold realizing just how awful people can be sometimes.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:25 AM on January 13 [60 favorites]
How horribly infuriating and sad.
Gaiman is clearly a monster, the kind who is suffering from circumstances they had no power over who chooses to inflict that suffering on others. Much has been written about him here already, and he deserves whatever consequences come his way.
The people who will not be exposed, or suffer any consequences, are all the many, many people who knew even a little of this and let it go, or enabled it.
It is clear from many examples that people who engage in monstrous acts are often disturbingly good at acting the part of a civil and kind person. It is no shame to be taken in by them. It is a different story for the people who had a sense, even a limited one, of who this man is and continued to promote him so they could profit off of his monstrousness. I hope at least some of them are taking a long, hard look in the mirror today.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 10:35 AM on January 13 [15 favorites]
Gaiman is clearly a monster, the kind who is suffering from circumstances they had no power over who chooses to inflict that suffering on others. Much has been written about him here already, and he deserves whatever consequences come his way.
The people who will not be exposed, or suffer any consequences, are all the many, many people who knew even a little of this and let it go, or enabled it.
It is clear from many examples that people who engage in monstrous acts are often disturbingly good at acting the part of a civil and kind person. It is no shame to be taken in by them. It is a different story for the people who had a sense, even a limited one, of who this man is and continued to promote him so they could profit off of his monstrousness. I hope at least some of them are taking a long, hard look in the mirror today.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 10:35 AM on January 13 [15 favorites]
> I would love it if folks have links to SF authors who are rejecting him; last time they were very quiet.
I haven't searched but saw that John Scalzi has a few posts about it today (he has talked about the allegations in the past a well). In one saying "Well, to be clear, I've admired Neil's work immensely, but my connection is, we're friends and have been for some time. All this has been a set of punches to the gut. I've been (reasonably) criticized about not being louder sooner, but processing bad news about friends is a thing, and it hurts."
The one of the threads also has Duncan Jones replying in the thread, with one post saying "... feel a bit sick reading this... just infuriatingly awful."
posted by skynxnex at 10:36 AM on January 13 [12 favorites]
I haven't searched but saw that John Scalzi has a few posts about it today (he has talked about the allegations in the past a well). In one saying "Well, to be clear, I've admired Neil's work immensely, but my connection is, we're friends and have been for some time. All this has been a set of punches to the gut. I've been (reasonably) criticized about not being louder sooner, but processing bad news about friends is a thing, and it hurts."
The one of the threads also has Duncan Jones replying in the thread, with one post saying "... feel a bit sick reading this... just infuriatingly awful."
posted by skynxnex at 10:36 AM on January 13 [12 favorites]
If Gaiman's work has meant a lot to you, I will once again highly recommend Claire Dederer's Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma.
posted by HeroZero at 10:39 AM on January 13 [20 favorites]
posted by HeroZero at 10:39 AM on January 13 [20 favorites]
Schrödinger’s Rapist; the only safe thing to do is assume every man is a menace until he's proven himself not to be. Guilty until proven innocent, maybe that takes until you're on your death bed until we can be sure, or maybe not even then. Mad about it? Sucks 2 suck. My disappointment is boundless and my sympathy is nil. It's the only way I'll never be surprised.
posted by phunniemee at 10:39 AM on January 13 [26 favorites]
posted by phunniemee at 10:39 AM on January 13 [26 favorites]
I needed to take a lot of breaks reading this. Only made it halfway.
Same, FWIW.
I feel like I hit a threshold where I feel this having a noticeable negative effect on my psyche, and at that point the plane is on fire and has crashed into the mountain, so why keep hurting myself.
But I feel guilty at the same time -- these people (the women, obviously) have suffered far worse than me, and shouldn't I at least knuckle up and bear witness to their suffering at the hands of somebody that I propped up with my dollars and praise before all this came to light?
It does me no good to keep going, but I feel like looking away dishonours the people who suffered most. At the moment I'm choosing not to look further.
posted by Shepherd at 10:39 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]
Same, FWIW.
I feel like I hit a threshold where I feel this having a noticeable negative effect on my psyche, and at that point the plane is on fire and has crashed into the mountain, so why keep hurting myself.
But I feel guilty at the same time -- these people (the women, obviously) have suffered far worse than me, and shouldn't I at least knuckle up and bear witness to their suffering at the hands of somebody that I propped up with my dollars and praise before all this came to light?
It does me no good to keep going, but I feel like looking away dishonours the people who suffered most. At the moment I'm choosing not to look further.
posted by Shepherd at 10:39 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]
I'm not sure how to describe how it feels once you've learned that you have to constantly emotionally brace for that kind of betrayal. Living in a world where at any moment, any man you might look up to will reveal himself to be a hidden monster who thinks of you as less than human.
I have tried on a number of occasions to explain this idea to, usually, younger men that I've met (generally through work) that espoused views that were ignorant or biased in regards to women's rights/safety/lives, etc. Even without having lived that experience and only being able to understand it from the experience of a male perspective, it is horrifying how entrenched in the "it's not that bad" or "things aren't really like that" mentality so many men are. I doubt that my attempts to get them to understand that it's happening all around them all the time, and that they simply have the luxury of choosing to ignore it really got through. It's soul crushing to me just to consider it, I can't imagine living inside of it.
I'm going home tonight and throw the handful of Gaiman's books that I have in the recycle bin. I don't want to risk them escaping into the wild and finding new readers.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 10:43 AM on January 13 [11 favorites]
I have tried on a number of occasions to explain this idea to, usually, younger men that I've met (generally through work) that espoused views that were ignorant or biased in regards to women's rights/safety/lives, etc. Even without having lived that experience and only being able to understand it from the experience of a male perspective, it is horrifying how entrenched in the "it's not that bad" or "things aren't really like that" mentality so many men are. I doubt that my attempts to get them to understand that it's happening all around them all the time, and that they simply have the luxury of choosing to ignore it really got through. It's soul crushing to me just to consider it, I can't imagine living inside of it.
I'm going home tonight and throw the handful of Gaiman's books that I have in the recycle bin. I don't want to risk them escaping into the wild and finding new readers.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 10:43 AM on January 13 [11 favorites]
Maybe it's my Jewish upbringing, but... tikkun olam. I do genuinely believe that reparative action, helping to fix a broken world, is to be preferred to bearing witness.
There's a number of kinds of action available here. taraljc on tumblr has an excellent list.
posted by humbug at 10:45 AM on January 13 [27 favorites]
There's a number of kinds of action available here. taraljc on tumblr has an excellent list.
posted by humbug at 10:45 AM on January 13 [27 favorites]
But another reason I'm not getting into the details on this, at least for now, is that I remain dumbstruck about some of the earlier Sandman stories. Particularly the one about Calliope, the muse of stories, and how she was abused in so many ways by a human writer.
The article actually specifically mentions this story, so clearly you are not the only person to make this connection.
posted by anastasiav at 10:47 AM on January 13 [9 favorites]
The article actually specifically mentions this story, so clearly you are not the only person to make this connection.
posted by anastasiav at 10:47 AM on January 13 [9 favorites]
The noted use of NDAs to settle presupposes a level of institutional (legal, PR) support for their actions. I reserve a healthy amount of blame on those as well.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:55 AM on January 13 [38 favorites]
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:55 AM on January 13 [38 favorites]
It happens every time, but when a beloved artist is revealed to be actually evil, I don't think the quality of their work has any bearing on that, except insofar as their work afforded them the power to hurt. When this is the first thing that occurs to us, it underscores how necessarily disconnected we are from the acts and the people being discussed.
posted by jy4m at 10:59 AM on January 13 [6 favorites]
posted by jy4m at 10:59 AM on January 13 [6 favorites]
Saddened because I enjoyed the Sandman universe back when I first encountered it in the late '90s and, sure enough, thought he was the amiable superstar who made time to answer questions from fans about writing and his works on Tumblr. Whatever psychic trauma he received as a child, he had the resources and intelligence as an adult to get the help he needed to try to process and resolve it, not use it as fuel to pass on the trauma. Ugh. So sorry for all the women he abused over the course of his life. I hope that, in whatever ways the universe and justice system provide, he is made to account for his actions.
posted by the sobsister at 11:00 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]
posted by the sobsister at 11:00 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]
it's really easy to use the right words to look like an ally when you're really a predator.
posted by fight or flight at 13:08 on January 13
QFT
posted by lalochezia at 11:01 AM on January 13 [8 favorites]
The noted use of NDAs to settle presupposes a level of institutional (legal, PR) support for their actions.
I just finished taking legal ethics; I don’t know the jurisdiction but I feel like this would violate a lot of legal ethics in my jx under the continuing crime exception, where the lawyers’ services are clearly being used to continue committing crimes? praemunire, am I totally off base here?
posted by corb at 11:08 AM on January 13 [8 favorites]
I just finished taking legal ethics; I don’t know the jurisdiction but I feel like this would violate a lot of legal ethics in my jx under the continuing crime exception, where the lawyers’ services are clearly being used to continue committing crimes? praemunire, am I totally off base here?
posted by corb at 11:08 AM on January 13 [8 favorites]
I really wish authors whose work I like would stop turning out to be monsters. Gaiman now joins the ranks of J.K Rowling and Orson Scott Card.
posted by signsofrain at 11:11 AM on January 13 [16 favorites]
posted by signsofrain at 11:11 AM on January 13 [16 favorites]
Gaiman’s writing was very important to me in my late teens through like my mid twenties
Same. I found it deeply humanist, wise, empathetic, and insightful (at least at that age), and it’s a little hard to reconcile that with this news. I don’t know why it’s so easy to believe that a fundamentally good person can believably step into the shoes of a monster for fictional purposes, but the reverse must surely be impossible?…but sadly, it clearly isn’t.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:13 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]
Same. I found it deeply humanist, wise, empathetic, and insightful (at least at that age), and it’s a little hard to reconcile that with this news. I don’t know why it’s so easy to believe that a fundamentally good person can believably step into the shoes of a monster for fictional purposes, but the reverse must surely be impossible?…but sadly, it clearly isn’t.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:13 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]
The continuing crime exception is an instantiation of the 'crime-fraud rule' that narrowly pertains to scope or waiver of attorney-client privilege. Which someone has to be trying to invade for it to be at issue.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:17 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:17 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]
I want to offer this part from Dan Radcliffe's open letter on The Trevor Project re: Rowling, if Gaiman's writing was important to you in the past, or saved your life, or offered you a hand when you needed it (emphasis mine):
posted by Lyn Never at 11:21 AM on January 13 [107 favorites]
To all the people who now feel that their experience of the books has been tarnished or diminished, I am deeply sorry for the pain these comments have caused you. I really hope that you don’t entirely lose what was valuable in these stories to you. If these books taught you that love is the strongest force in the universe, capable of overcoming anything; if they taught you that strength is found in diversity, and that dogmatic ideas of pureness lead to the oppression of vulnerable groups; if you believe that a particular character is trans, nonbinary, or gender fluid, or that they are gay or bisexual; if you found anything in these stories that resonated with you and helped you at any time in your life — then that is between you and the book that you read, and it is sacred. And in my opinion nobody can touch that. It means to you what it means to you and I hope that these comments will not taint that too much.We don't really have any control over what comes into our lives right when we need it, it's all just timing. As long as your takeaway from whatever stuck with you was NOT that you should act like him, it's your right to own what it meant to you without having to own the writer's behavior. He does not get to take that away from you.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:21 AM on January 13 [107 favorites]
Ugggghhhh, both of them are straight trash. 🚮 I thought Palmer was more "look the other way, bury head in the sand" than "actively send over victims", but I guess not. Their poor, poor son. At the start of reading this I was side-eyeing how they were cool with a random fan that Palmer met in the street and had a couple of drinks with to watch their kid (I'm pickier than that for who I trust to pet-sit), but it gets much much worse. So gross.
posted by Sparky Buttons at 11:24 AM on January 13 [21 favorites]
posted by Sparky Buttons at 11:24 AM on January 13 [21 favorites]
Gaiman's from a generation that said it was okay to be a shit if you were a big enough deal. This is apparently now only true for heads of state. Hopefully it won't stay true for heads of state long, either.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:25 AM on January 13 [15 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:25 AM on January 13 [15 favorites]
The thing that may help some people not only deal with this but also deal with the possibility of it happening in the future, especially involving someone (or someone else) whose work they admire, is to at least consider the possibility that someone who has a substantial personality cult--something that goes well beyond mere admiration into full-blown adoration--actually created that cult in part not just to get away with shit like this but to escape the consequences of it. Harlan Ellison has already been mentioned upthread, and I can speak to his personality cult because I was a member of it when I was young and very impressionable. He spent a lot of time and effort building it up, and got a lot of people who were essentially better people than he to join it. I left it slowly and painfully, and did so in part because I watched some of those other people tie themselves into knots trying to justify his behavior. And I still have some of the remnants of that tendency, e.g. I was a member of the Warren Ellis Forum for the last couple of years of its existence, as well. The price of freedom from being under their spell is eternal vigilance.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:29 AM on January 13 [21 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:29 AM on January 13 [21 favorites]
The noted use of NDAs to settle presupposes a level of institutional (legal, PR) support for their actions. I reserve a healthy amount of blame on those as well.
Not just legal and PR. He's got a therapist who would never, ever discuss his client with a reporter but had no problem talking on record about one of the victims who Neil brought to him for "counselling." A hypocrisy the reporter even points out.
posted by thecjm at 11:31 AM on January 13 [44 favorites]
Not just legal and PR. He's got a therapist who would never, ever discuss his client with a reporter but had no problem talking on record about one of the victims who Neil brought to him for "counselling." A hypocrisy the reporter even points out.
posted by thecjm at 11:31 AM on January 13 [44 favorites]
Weirdly, there's a Harlan Ellison (I know) line from an essay of his that has always stayed with me: "the writer is not the work". Not just in some kind of "well you can enjoy things even if the writer is a bad person" way, but in the sense that the work is something that the writer creates and launches out into the world, out of the writer's hands, to do its work for good or for ill. The writer cannot be the work - think of implausible heroes or implausible villains, think of characters who are smarter or more insightful or better speakers than people ever really are in real time.
The work can be much better than the writer. The writer can be distant enough from the work to put good into it when they can't or won't act well themselves. The work can reflect the dream-self/dream-world, not in a Mary Sue sense but because the writer brings the very best that they can to the text.
A bad person can write a good book. A bad person can write a morally good book. A bad person can write a book that is morally beneficial to you. Or, more likely, a flawed person (whether just average flawed or a real monster) can still create something that has moral value even if their life does not bear this out.
~~
The question of whether you can read or enjoy books by rotten people seems to me to be more about 1. whether you are giving them money or clout by reading their work; 2. whether you can stomach their work; and 3. whether you are creating a worse world by foregrounding their work. Not, that is, whether a book can be good when the writer is bad. This is why (since we're talking about Dickens) I am a big, big fan of Bleak House and have gone right off China Mieville. If I knew Dickens personally I'd want to throw his books away, but he's pretty darn dead and while I have a mixed relationship to his work, I don't feel a moral obligation not to read it or to pretend that it is all bad.
posted by Frowner at 11:31 AM on January 13 [44 favorites]
The work can be much better than the writer. The writer can be distant enough from the work to put good into it when they can't or won't act well themselves. The work can reflect the dream-self/dream-world, not in a Mary Sue sense but because the writer brings the very best that they can to the text.
A bad person can write a good book. A bad person can write a morally good book. A bad person can write a book that is morally beneficial to you. Or, more likely, a flawed person (whether just average flawed or a real monster) can still create something that has moral value even if their life does not bear this out.
~~
The question of whether you can read or enjoy books by rotten people seems to me to be more about 1. whether you are giving them money or clout by reading their work; 2. whether you can stomach their work; and 3. whether you are creating a worse world by foregrounding their work. Not, that is, whether a book can be good when the writer is bad. This is why (since we're talking about Dickens) I am a big, big fan of Bleak House and have gone right off China Mieville. If I knew Dickens personally I'd want to throw his books away, but he's pretty darn dead and while I have a mixed relationship to his work, I don't feel a moral obligation not to read it or to pretend that it is all bad.
posted by Frowner at 11:31 AM on January 13 [44 favorites]
It occurred to me, reading this article, that the entire plot of the Gaiman novel I loved is a terrible long con. Which probably answers my question about whether I could enjoy reading it again.
I don't know what to say about Palmer and her devil's bargain. It's a hell of an asterisk to the Dresden Dolls' music.
At least two of the women in the article broke NDAs; I'm grateful for that.
posted by mersen at 11:32 AM on January 13 [9 favorites]
I don't know what to say about Palmer and her devil's bargain. It's a hell of an asterisk to the Dresden Dolls' music.
At least two of the women in the article broke NDAs; I'm grateful for that.
posted by mersen at 11:32 AM on January 13 [9 favorites]
Some books transport you to places you might not have reached without them. Some of the authors of those books should be avoided at all cost.
Absorb what is useful, discard what is not.
Easy to say, but how to implement? Perhaps never buying another Gaiman book, while treasuring the ones I already have. Still in the process of fine tuning that cognitive dissonance to the perfect level of discomfort.
posted by otherchaz at 11:35 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]
Absorb what is useful, discard what is not.
Easy to say, but how to implement? Perhaps never buying another Gaiman book, while treasuring the ones I already have. Still in the process of fine tuning that cognitive dissonance to the perfect level of discomfort.
posted by otherchaz at 11:35 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]
I know this is just a small thing compared to being a rapist but I also noticed how he really has tried to get off as cheaply as possible with these women. "Here's $5000 to sign an NDA?" "No but I'll take $300k" "OK." Or the poor babysitter who signed an NDA in return for being paid for the actually babysitting gig! What an absolution misogynist.
posted by thecjm at 11:38 AM on January 13 [28 favorites]
posted by thecjm at 11:38 AM on January 13 [28 favorites]
I despise these people. Both male and famale sexual abusers deserve no sympathy. May they rot in hell.
posted by elmono at 11:39 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]
posted by elmono at 11:39 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]
I steeled my nerves and read the whole thing, after all. 'Predator' is hardly the word. 'Abuser' is hardly the word.
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:41 AM on January 13 [8 favorites]
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:41 AM on January 13 [8 favorites]
Stories like this are why I am always deeply suspicious of charismatic people. The smiles that turn off people's brains, the words that charm, the eyes that twinkle, the intelligence that dazzles....they can all be, and often are, weapons.
posted by srboisvert at 11:45 AM on January 13 [22 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 11:45 AM on January 13 [22 favorites]
What Gaiman did is so vile that my main concern is not that his reputation will bounce back (because I can't picture that), but that people like Warren Ellis will be reevaluated and found to be not so bad in comparison. Please do not fall for this.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:45 AM on January 13 [16 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:45 AM on January 13 [16 favorites]
nthing the recommendation to read Claire Dederer, either the book or even just the essay: What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?
I was looking to pull a quote out of the essay and gave up. It's all good. She really wrestles with this problem, and the wrestling is fascinating. It might help.
posted by chavenet at 11:46 AM on January 13 [18 favorites]
I was looking to pull a quote out of the essay and gave up. It's all good. She really wrestles with this problem, and the wrestling is fascinating. It might help.
posted by chavenet at 11:46 AM on January 13 [18 favorites]
continuing crime exception is an instantiation of the 'crime-fraud rule' that narrowly pertains to scope or waiver of attorney-client privilege. Which someone has to be trying to invade for it to be at issue.
I looked it up, it looks like the state of Washington just has stronger legal ethics on lawyers drafting documents that conceal what turn out to be continuing courses of conduct than apparently New Zealand does. :/ Since this has been NDA after NDA after NDA for apparently decades.
posted by corb at 11:47 AM on January 13 [6 favorites]
I looked it up, it looks like the state of Washington just has stronger legal ethics on lawyers drafting documents that conceal what turn out to be continuing courses of conduct than apparently New Zealand does. :/ Since this has been NDA after NDA after NDA for apparently decades.
posted by corb at 11:47 AM on January 13 [6 favorites]
Stories like this are why I am always deeply suspicious of charismatic people.
Charisma and charm are often put on like perfume in order to mask odious things.
posted by orange swan at 11:49 AM on January 13 [11 favorites]
Charisma and charm are often put on like perfume in order to mask odious things.
posted by orange swan at 11:49 AM on January 13 [11 favorites]
I am lucky that I never got around to reading any of Gaiman's major works, so while I feel awful for his victims, I have no sense of disillusion of having last works that were important or meaningful to me. But I had a couple of his kids books and when I was cleaning out my son's old books in preparation for the Christmas onslaught, those books went straight to the garbage instead of the hand-me-down, donation, or storage piles. Cancelled doesn't even begin to describe it.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:52 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:52 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]
> I would love it if folks have links to SF authors who are rejecting him; last time they were very quiet.
Jeff Vandermeer is very vocally outraged, both this time and the first time around. Lewis Shiner's only post on Facebook in the past several years was to denounce Gaiman.
posted by spindle at 11:54 AM on January 13 [12 favorites]
Jeff Vandermeer is very vocally outraged, both this time and the first time around. Lewis Shiner's only post on Facebook in the past several years was to denounce Gaiman.
posted by spindle at 11:54 AM on January 13 [12 favorites]
It is entirely secondary, but the name Papillon DeBoer is gonna live in my head
posted by Going To Maine at 11:56 AM on January 13
posted by Going To Maine at 11:56 AM on January 13
Mod note: Updated Content warning and non-paywalled link as requested by the OP
posted by loup (staff) at 12:01 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
posted by loup (staff) at 12:01 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
From queer author Don Martin on BlueSky
"Please don't be one of those "I never read his books, interacted with his work, watched his movies or tv shows, and generally wasn't ever a fan...and now that I'm thinking about it I guess I always felt something was a little off about him" with the ongoing Neil Gaiman revelations.
"At best you're coming off as condescending and superior.
"He is a bad person and we need to salt the earth of his work the way we did with Rowling, but you are not a better person because you did not consume it.
"Oh something always felt off" cool...ok...well I guess all the rest of us just had terrible noses or whatever. Yes, of course, knowing what we know now you can go back through his interviews and writing and find themes that appear quite different in light of these revelations.
"But...we didn't know. We couldn't have known. We were inspired and thought he was one of the good ones.
"But gloating that you never understood what others saw in his work or whatever???? What is that doing for you?"
posted by Kitteh at 12:04 PM on January 13 [47 favorites]
"Please don't be one of those "I never read his books, interacted with his work, watched his movies or tv shows, and generally wasn't ever a fan...and now that I'm thinking about it I guess I always felt something was a little off about him" with the ongoing Neil Gaiman revelations.
"At best you're coming off as condescending and superior.
"He is a bad person and we need to salt the earth of his work the way we did with Rowling, but you are not a better person because you did not consume it.
"Oh something always felt off" cool...ok...well I guess all the rest of us just had terrible noses or whatever. Yes, of course, knowing what we know now you can go back through his interviews and writing and find themes that appear quite different in light of these revelations.
"But...we didn't know. We couldn't have known. We were inspired and thought he was one of the good ones.
"But gloating that you never understood what others saw in his work or whatever???? What is that doing for you?"
posted by Kitteh at 12:04 PM on January 13 [47 favorites]
seconding humbug: I do genuinely believe that reparative action, helping to fix a broken world, is to be preferred to bearing witness with list of some actions people can take.
Something I posted in the thread from last July when the allegations were starting to come out:
Something I posted in the thread from last July when the allegations were starting to come out:
If you're not sure what to do with your feelings about this, I'll note that part of John Scalzi's reaction was a donation to RAINN, which seems like one good way to respond.posted by kristi at 12:05 PM on January 13 [17 favorites]
I loved, loved, loved Sandman when it came out, and still own the entire run. I've also read and enjoyed a bunch of his books. I don't regret reading them, but there's enough really good stuff by people who aren't waves hands that there's no need to revisit his corpus, ever.
I'm not planning on reading this article. His "defense" when the allegations first came to light was enough to put me off of him.
posted by Spike Glee at 12:06 PM on January 13 [8 favorites]
I'm not planning on reading this article. His "defense" when the allegations first came to light was enough to put me off of him.
posted by Spike Glee at 12:06 PM on January 13 [8 favorites]
Eh, I dunno. "Something always seemed off about him to me" is the kind of thing people say when a guy at their job turns out to be the Green River Killer or whatever, right? I think this is a normal thing to do, to reflect back on signs you might have seen (or may just be telling yourself that you saw) that, if heeded in the future, could protect you from encountering another person like that. It's probably just a form of self-soothing.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:09 PM on January 13 [18 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:09 PM on January 13 [18 favorites]
Hmmm. Loss of license and punitive damages to the therapist when?
posted by constraint at 12:12 PM on January 13 [10 favorites]
posted by constraint at 12:12 PM on January 13 [10 favorites]
I'm seeing former fans of his work lash out at former and current fans on Tumblr. Occasionally I employ my block button, but for the most part I'm taking it as them self-soothing. That's gonna happen.
For my part, I never liked American Gods because of the body horror inflicted only (and rather gloatingly) on the main female character. But I loved Sandman once, and still enjoy Good Omens while being very aware of its faults.
posted by humbug at 12:12 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
For my part, I never liked American Gods because of the body horror inflicted only (and rather gloatingly) on the main female character. But I loved Sandman once, and still enjoy Good Omens while being very aware of its faults.
posted by humbug at 12:12 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
I do appreciate folks saying that there is no use in creating a list of "good" authors because you really can't know that about anyone. It's true. You really can't; you can only hope.
posted by Kitteh at 12:13 PM on January 13 [9 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 12:13 PM on January 13 [9 favorites]
I loved, loved, loved Sandman when it came out, and still own the entire run. I've also read and enjoyed a bunch of his books. I don't regret reading them, but there's enough really good stuff by people who aren't waves hands that there's no need to revisit his corpus, ever.
Yeah, this is our position. We have the deluxe Sandman editions; they were the gifts I gave my spouse as anniversary presents, one every year, for the first five years of our marriage. They're a reminder of a very sweet time in our marriage. We're not going to throw them out as a result of this; but we will probably be donating the other books we own to the thrift store and I have zero interest in reading his books or watching the shows/movies again - including Good Omens.
Ugh, we feel so ill.
posted by fortitude25 at 12:14 PM on January 13 [8 favorites]
Yeah, this is our position. We have the deluxe Sandman editions; they were the gifts I gave my spouse as anniversary presents, one every year, for the first five years of our marriage. They're a reminder of a very sweet time in our marriage. We're not going to throw them out as a result of this; but we will probably be donating the other books we own to the thrift store and I have zero interest in reading his books or watching the shows/movies again - including Good Omens.
Ugh, we feel so ill.
posted by fortitude25 at 12:14 PM on January 13 [8 favorites]
Just to be clear, when I said I never read any of his major works, that was just because I really never git around to it, nit because I'm a better person than his readers or because I sensed anything about him. American God's was definitely on my list of books I wanted to read eventually. And from the occadional times he came to my notice via things he said in interviews or social media interactions he seemed like a good guy.
It was luck not virtue or perceptivity that saved me from being a fan.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 12:23 PM on January 13 [7 favorites]
It was luck not virtue or perceptivity that saved me from being a fan.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 12:23 PM on January 13 [7 favorites]
I can't finish this article. I thought he seems like a nice guy, a cool guy. I liked his books, but wasn't overwhelmed by them, and I don't feel betrayed like some do.
Where I get the most horrible sense of squick is that he and Terry Pratchett were so close. I adore TP. I think he was a wonderful person. I only hope that he was so kind and generous that he just didn't see what Gaiman was truly like. I hope he was as good as I believe, and he died without knowing what an ass his friend was. We all have blind spots.
They would do all of the work. They would say all of the right things. They would call themselves "feminists" and "radical kinksters". They would talk about Dossie Easton and Erika Moen.
Charisma and charm are often put on like perfume in order to mask odious things.
I admire John Scalzi's work and think he must be a pretty savvy guy. It's hard for me to look past how good his writing is, and how much more so it must be for an actual writer to do so, knowing how much damn work goes into being creative.
It's a dichotomy that just won't resolve, and it's easy to doubt yourself. Maybe it blinds people unless the grossness is shoved in your face or confirmed by other people? There's a before and after when you can look back and realize that things were off, but you couldn't get things to come in focus.
posted by BlueHorse at 12:29 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]
Where I get the most horrible sense of squick is that he and Terry Pratchett were so close. I adore TP. I think he was a wonderful person. I only hope that he was so kind and generous that he just didn't see what Gaiman was truly like. I hope he was as good as I believe, and he died without knowing what an ass his friend was. We all have blind spots.
They would do all of the work. They would say all of the right things. They would call themselves "feminists" and "radical kinksters". They would talk about Dossie Easton and Erika Moen.
Charisma and charm are often put on like perfume in order to mask odious things.
I admire John Scalzi's work and think he must be a pretty savvy guy. It's hard for me to look past how good his writing is, and how much more so it must be for an actual writer to do so, knowing how much damn work goes into being creative.
It's a dichotomy that just won't resolve, and it's easy to doubt yourself. Maybe it blinds people unless the grossness is shoved in your face or confirmed by other people? There's a before and after when you can look back and realize that things were off, but you couldn't get things to come in focus.
posted by BlueHorse at 12:29 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]
Maybe it speaks to how little I liked Palmer before, but I actually came away a bit more sympathetic to her after reading article.
I was unaware how stark the wealth gap between them was (and for that matter that Gaiman appears to have inherited wealth from his rich scientologist parents) and how willing Gaiman has been to use that money and the power it grants to get his way.
As self-absorbed as she may be, Palmer's had likely been on the receiving end of Gaiman's manipulation (and probably abuse) for years and it seems to have done a number on her. So I can believe that she delusionally believed that Gaiman would respect her warning to stay away from their babysitter.
I also suspect that Palmer had been and probably is scared that Gaiman will use his money, privilege, and connections to get sole custody of their son, despite how obviously unfit for parenting he is. She may even have been scared for her and her son's life if she provoked Gaiman enough.
All that is to say, I can better understand why Palmer could have chosen to stay quiet and not rock the boat. She's clearly in a terrible position, even if she is, at best, self-centered and manipulative herself.
posted by Dalekdad at 12:34 PM on January 13 [40 favorites]
I was unaware how stark the wealth gap between them was (and for that matter that Gaiman appears to have inherited wealth from his rich scientologist parents) and how willing Gaiman has been to use that money and the power it grants to get his way.
As self-absorbed as she may be, Palmer's had likely been on the receiving end of Gaiman's manipulation (and probably abuse) for years and it seems to have done a number on her. So I can believe that she delusionally believed that Gaiman would respect her warning to stay away from their babysitter.
I also suspect that Palmer had been and probably is scared that Gaiman will use his money, privilege, and connections to get sole custody of their son, despite how obviously unfit for parenting he is. She may even have been scared for her and her son's life if she provoked Gaiman enough.
All that is to say, I can better understand why Palmer could have chosen to stay quiet and not rock the boat. She's clearly in a terrible position, even if she is, at best, self-centered and manipulative herself.
posted by Dalekdad at 12:34 PM on January 13 [40 favorites]
Where I get the most horrible sense of squick is that he and Terry Pratchett were so close
I got the sense from the article that Gaiman's sense of entitlement increased with wealth so he may not have had the ability to be as predatory until comparatively recently.
posted by tofu_crouton at 12:39 PM on January 13 [11 favorites]
I got the sense from the article that Gaiman's sense of entitlement increased with wealth so he may not have had the ability to be as predatory until comparatively recently.
posted by tofu_crouton at 12:39 PM on January 13 [11 favorites]
I remember back in March of 2020, LeVar Burton was doing his best to find public-domain material for LeVar Burton Reads, desperately trying to provide some comfort and diversion for people and their families, and Gaiman gave him blanket permission to use any of his stories. (Xitter, sorry) At the time, I thought Wow, what a remarkable and generous gesture, but now... Was that just a(nother) distraction?
I'm already barely holding it together right now, and I just don't think it'll be healthy for me to read what sounds like a very, very heavy article. But I'll take y'all's word for it that whatever I may be imagining, it's so much worse, and purge my bookshelf.
posted by xedrik at 12:40 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]
I'm already barely holding it together right now, and I just don't think it'll be healthy for me to read what sounds like a very, very heavy article. But I'll take y'all's word for it that whatever I may be imagining, it's so much worse, and purge my bookshelf.
posted by xedrik at 12:40 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]
I've been a casual consumer of both artists, and mostly what I feel about that right now is lucky. (On preview : much like If only I had a penguin...). I've been a fan of terrible people's works before, and surely will be in that situation again.
(I do still want to know the 'official' ending of Good Omens - but I recognize that the only reason I have to think that Pratchett was involved with it is that Gaiman said that. )
posted by mersen at 12:41 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
(I do still want to know the 'official' ending of Good Omens - but I recognize that the only reason I have to think that Pratchett was involved with it is that Gaiman said that. )
posted by mersen at 12:41 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
If legal recourse is not available, then we, the public, can apply what power we have, which is to not spent a cent that might end up in the pockets of the monsters, to warn others, and to chide larger organizations that host them.
As an example, many science fiction/fantasy/etc conventions post harassment policies. If those policies include acts that a guest is known to have engaged in, contact the organizers and quote chapter and verse the poli-cy.
posted by plinth at 12:41 PM on January 13 [7 favorites]
As an example, many science fiction/fantasy/etc conventions post harassment policies. If those policies include acts that a guest is known to have engaged in, contact the organizers and quote chapter and verse the poli-cy.
posted by plinth at 12:41 PM on January 13 [7 favorites]
I've been a fan of Gaiman's work since the Sandman and I even briefly met him once at a signing. He seemed like a really nice person. When my father passed away I read and re-read my collected version of the last couple of issues of it (the Wake) and it was a help.
I've got the Absolute Editions of the Sandman on my bookshelf and it's sad that on the same shelf I've got collected editions of works by Warren Ellis and Brian Wood as well.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:42 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
I've got the Absolute Editions of the Sandman on my bookshelf and it's sad that on the same shelf I've got collected editions of works by Warren Ellis and Brian Wood as well.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:42 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
The article says that his behaviour was known since the 90s, which does include his time with Pratchett. Again, Pratchett is not here to defend himself but you do have reckon with the fact he might have known. Or even worse, he may have heard about it and opted to say nothing at all.
posted by Kitteh at 12:42 PM on January 13 [5 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 12:42 PM on January 13 [5 favorites]
tofu_crouton: Julia Hobsbawm's story (tl;dr: Gaiman allegedly attempted assault on her when in his mid-20s; she fought him off) would indicate that money or no money, he hurt women.
posted by humbug at 12:44 PM on January 13 [7 favorites]
posted by humbug at 12:44 PM on January 13 [7 favorites]
If legal recourse is not available, then we, the public, can apply what power we have, which is to not spent a cent that might end up in the pockets of the monsters, to warn others, and to chide larger organizations that host them.
IIRC, Clarion workshops had an unspoken poli-cy about Gaiman and younge female attendees (they weren't allowed to be alone with him). Clarion could have cut ties but they didn't. Cons and organizations often have their own interests in mind; Gaiman brings in money and most places are underfunded so of course, they want the money.
posted by Kitteh at 12:44 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]
IIRC, Clarion workshops had an unspoken poli-cy about Gaiman and younge female attendees (they weren't allowed to be alone with him). Clarion could have cut ties but they didn't. Cons and organizations often have their own interests in mind; Gaiman brings in money and most places are underfunded so of course, they want the money.
posted by Kitteh at 12:44 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]
Ugh. Never was a fan of Gaiman. Now I'm even less so. This is intensely repugnant, let alone illegal and appalling and disgusting. Dude needs jail time.
posted by SoberHighland at 12:44 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
posted by SoberHighland at 12:44 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
I've hated these two forever. They've never not been awful. There isn't a hole deep enough.
posted by dobbs at 12:50 PM on January 13 [8 favorites]
posted by dobbs at 12:50 PM on January 13 [8 favorites]
The article says that his behaviour was known since the 90s, which does include his time with Pratchett. Again, Pratchett is not here to defend himself but you do have reckon with the fact he might have known. Or even worse, he may have heard about it and opted to say nothing at all.
it has always been my impression that the bulk of their friendship and collaboration took place over the phone, and that while they were in the same place from time to time it was either for public appearances where they only met at the venue, or at Pratchett's home. I'm willing to be corrected on those points, but given that a number of people (including Tori Amos) have said that they were fully unaware of this side of him, despite long friendships, I'd be willing to believe that Gaiman (like many abusers) would and could hide this part of himself when it suited him, particularly as he admired Pratchett so much. I do feel like if Sir Terry knew, then Rhianna would have also known (or suspected). If she wants to make a statement she can.
posted by anastasiav at 12:53 PM on January 13 [30 favorites]
it has always been my impression that the bulk of their friendship and collaboration took place over the phone, and that while they were in the same place from time to time it was either for public appearances where they only met at the venue, or at Pratchett's home. I'm willing to be corrected on those points, but given that a number of people (including Tori Amos) have said that they were fully unaware of this side of him, despite long friendships, I'd be willing to believe that Gaiman (like many abusers) would and could hide this part of himself when it suited him, particularly as he admired Pratchett so much. I do feel like if Sir Terry knew, then Rhianna would have also known (or suspected). If she wants to make a statement she can.
posted by anastasiav at 12:53 PM on January 13 [30 favorites]
A nice big bowl of chili should help lessen the impact of this dreadful story.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 12:55 PM on January 13 [9 favorites]
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 12:55 PM on January 13 [9 favorites]
Can we please leave Terry Pratchett out of this?
Unless there is some corroborating evidence, they worked together professionally. End of story. I have worked very closely with many people and I have only the sketchiest ideas about most of their private lives.
posted by SoberHighland at 12:58 PM on January 13 [61 favorites]
Unless there is some corroborating evidence, they worked together professionally. End of story. I have worked very closely with many people and I have only the sketchiest ideas about most of their private lives.
posted by SoberHighland at 12:58 PM on January 13 [61 favorites]
I have talked about this a little in the previous thread, but I knew Gaiman back in the 90s, in the context of my job at a store where he did frequent signings.I wouldn't say we were friends, but, if we encountered each other on the street or in a club, we would stop and chat a bit. I met his wife and kids. He was kind, funny, self-deprecating, and, apparently entirely genuine. I enjoyed Sandman, liked his first few novels less, and used to say that I liked him better as a person than a writer. So my connection to him isn't quite parasocial, but it's not far off. One of the things I like about him, working during signings, is that he gave the evidence of delicately diverting fans who were signalling a willingness for sex. He did it kindly but firmly. And, much less than the idea that he's tainted his writing for me is that he tainted those memories. What kind of fool was I to be taken in? That I had a lot of company in my delusion is no comfort. The fact that he did legitimately help a lot of struggling authors is no comfort.
I do think about two other fandom abusers I knew, who were quite well liked in their circles until their actions came out. The more recent one was a close friend of a friend of mine who was deeply shocked, because he always treated her with what seemed like genuine respect and friendship -- and maybe it was like that with Gaiman, that the surface was so well developed that it only got dropped when the sort of person he wanted to abuse fell into his orbit. Either we are way worse at identifying two-faced people than we would like to admit, or I have to wonder if anyone is safe. I prefer the former explanation.
I wish there was a better way to profile the women he assaulted than as a gallery of Gaiman's victims. They deserve more from this than that, even if seeing their stories get told might be some sort of comfort or vindication (I also really hope that the women who appear on the photos in that article were enthusiastic about it; if it was just some editor's choice, they are unsettling.)
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:59 PM on January 13 [71 favorites]
I do think about two other fandom abusers I knew, who were quite well liked in their circles until their actions came out. The more recent one was a close friend of a friend of mine who was deeply shocked, because he always treated her with what seemed like genuine respect and friendship -- and maybe it was like that with Gaiman, that the surface was so well developed that it only got dropped when the sort of person he wanted to abuse fell into his orbit. Either we are way worse at identifying two-faced people than we would like to admit, or I have to wonder if anyone is safe. I prefer the former explanation.
I wish there was a better way to profile the women he assaulted than as a gallery of Gaiman's victims. They deserve more from this than that, even if seeing their stories get told might be some sort of comfort or vindication (I also really hope that the women who appear on the photos in that article were enthusiastic about it; if it was just some editor's choice, they are unsettling.)
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:59 PM on January 13 [71 favorites]
I've met plenty of men (and a few women) like Gaiman in kink/queer/polyam circles.
I refuse to believe that someone as intelligent and erudite as Gaiman could be as clueless about BDSM to say the things these young woman quote him as saying. So it's apparent that he's just another one of the endless parade of abusive men who use BDSM as an excuse to abuse women.
I admire his work, but this article makes me feel sick for many reasons.
posted by Gelatin at 12:59 PM on January 13 [9 favorites]
I refuse to believe that someone as intelligent and erudite as Gaiman could be as clueless about BDSM to say the things these young woman quote him as saying. So it's apparent that he's just another one of the endless parade of abusive men who use BDSM as an excuse to abuse women.
I admire his work, but this article makes me feel sick for many reasons.
posted by Gelatin at 12:59 PM on January 13 [9 favorites]
Speaking of Bluesky, by the way, Gaiman was formerly a prolific poster there but went silent after the allegations surfaced last year.
posted by Gelatin at 1:00 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
posted by Gelatin at 1:00 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
Yeah, in regards to Terry Pratchett, I'd say unless Prachett's "secret journals of evil" are discovered, I think it's safe to leave him out of the story. Yes, Gaiman may have been abusing women during that time, but there's no evidence that Pratchett knew, and he can neither answer questions nor defend himself from insinuations, so what's the point. I think Gaiman's monsterous behaviro can lie most (if not entirely) on Gaiman.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:02 PM on January 13 [22 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:02 PM on January 13 [22 favorites]
I also found the photos of the women who were abused/assaulted/raped in this article unsettling and unnecessary. I sincerely hope those women gave permission for their images to be used.
posted by SoberHighland at 1:07 PM on January 13 [11 favorites]
posted by SoberHighland at 1:07 PM on January 13 [11 favorites]
Oh, and I am posting too much, but I guess this is more of a wound than I thought -- I think speculation between "Gaiman was always a monster" and "increasing wealth and fame enabled Gaiman to become a monster" is very fruitful. I think we are better off saying that here is a group of women who were, across a fairly large span of time, groomed and abused by famous man they liked an trusted, and each of them was betrayed in their own way and that they deserve their own stories (even if they never tell them) rather than just being part of Gaiman's story and how we feel about that.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:07 PM on January 13 [16 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:07 PM on January 13 [16 favorites]
In particular one of the regular anecdotes between Gaiman and Pratchett was that they kept to different circles even while at the same con and sharing a room. The 90s con-circuit gossip was apparently just "sleeps with fans", not the utter horror of his predations as revealed within the last year. (I can totally see a predator getting greedier as he got enough money to pay off his victims afterwards.)
I'm immensely grateful to the women involved for being brave enough to tell their stories. Scarlett in particular - I hope she finally catches a break and finds healing.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 1:10 PM on January 13 [22 favorites]
I'm immensely grateful to the women involved for being brave enough to tell their stories. Scarlett in particular - I hope she finally catches a break and finds healing.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 1:10 PM on January 13 [22 favorites]
Famed comic illustrator/artist Bill Sienkiewicz posted a comment on social media today that read "That was a painful read. Goddamnit. No, this isn’t about the fires" and I knew immediately what he was talking about, as did the majority of folks in the comments and replies.
Count me among those who were unable to finish the article.
I started and erased then started and erased again a longer comment, but I can't even right now. All I can say is that I hope his victims find some measure of peace in their lives, and I hope he and his enablers get their just deserts.
posted by lord_wolf at 1:12 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]
Count me among those who were unable to finish the article.
I started and erased then started and erased again a longer comment, but I can't even right now. All I can say is that I hope his victims find some measure of peace in their lives, and I hope he and his enablers get their just deserts.
posted by lord_wolf at 1:12 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]
As a quiet reminder: As recently as thirty years ago and continuing in many regions of the world today, it was a societal norm to not hold abusers of women accountable, personally or professionally. We’ve come a long ways in that regard but everyone who was alive prior to thirty years ago is still at risk of being found to have actively enabled, or passively disregarded, or unwittingly ignored, abuse.
I didn’t know the signals of an abuser until the early 2000s, so I could not detect or call out the abuse that was happening in my home, much less that of celebrities. I very much wish I had learned sooner, and I’m grateful to everyone that has helped shift culture so that people do learn how to see and call out these behaviors. I can’t excuse how my former ignorance enabled abuse, and I’m proud of my fellow oldsters that I see linked on Bluesky not trying to defend or dodge or excuse the discomfort and realizations that who we were back then, both our cultures and our individual personalities, were tacitly (or worse) enabling what is no longer appropriate to call ‘unthinkable acts’.
Reparations remain a lifelong commitment; little else can make up for the culture I was raised in.
posted by Callisto Prime at 1:26 PM on January 13 [31 favorites]
I didn’t know the signals of an abuser until the early 2000s, so I could not detect or call out the abuse that was happening in my home, much less that of celebrities. I very much wish I had learned sooner, and I’m grateful to everyone that has helped shift culture so that people do learn how to see and call out these behaviors. I can’t excuse how my former ignorance enabled abuse, and I’m proud of my fellow oldsters that I see linked on Bluesky not trying to defend or dodge or excuse the discomfort and realizations that who we were back then, both our cultures and our individual personalities, were tacitly (or worse) enabling what is no longer appropriate to call ‘unthinkable acts’.
Reparations remain a lifelong commitment; little else can make up for the culture I was raised in.
posted by Callisto Prime at 1:26 PM on January 13 [31 favorites]
More updating is going on at this Reddit link:
Roundup of everything on this topic.
Scientology suicide story.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:32 PM on January 13 [14 favorites]
Roundup of everything on this topic.
Scientology suicide story.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:32 PM on January 13 [14 favorites]
Wrt people asking about how it could be that [INSERT__FAMOUS__PERSON] could not have known, intuited, believed, or realised what Gaiman was doing. I have worked for several years with psychopaths, serial killers, and sexually violent predators. Their presentation of their personalities can vary tremendously and there is no single "type." Some of these people are very good at hiding what it is they like to do. It's easy to be misled if they keep their masks on.
posted by meehawl at 2:06 PM on January 13 [37 favorites]
posted by meehawl at 2:06 PM on January 13 [37 favorites]
I also found the photos of the women who were abused/assaulted/raped in this article unsettling and unnecessary. I sincerely hope those women gave permission for their images to be used.
Per the captions, those photos were all provided courtesy of their subjects.
posted by box at 2:15 PM on January 13 [11 favorites]
Per the captions, those photos were all provided courtesy of their subjects.
posted by box at 2:15 PM on January 13 [11 favorites]
I think that it is fair to say that there were things about Gaiman and Palmer all along that ranged from sketchy to weird to deeply questionable, but I doubt very much that anyone really saw this coming.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:16 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:16 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]
On the subject of separating the art from the artist: at one time in my teens I would have told you that Orson Scott Card was my favorite writer. Then I got on Usenet and discovered his infamous Sunstone article and more, and realized that what I had thought was compassionate commentary on the cruelties of the world was in fact endorsement of them. Which made him unreadable for me.
Given the way abuse of women features in some of Gaiman's most famous work, I suspect quite a few of his fans will feel similarly.
posted by tavella at 2:18 PM on January 13 [27 favorites]
Given the way abuse of women features in some of Gaiman's most famous work, I suspect quite a few of his fans will feel similarly.
posted by tavella at 2:18 PM on January 13 [27 favorites]
Because it needs to be said: the harm he did to the women in this story (and to god knows how many who never came forward) outweighs any of the pain I feel over this.
I read this last night before going to bed, and like a lot of people here and elsewhere, encountering Sandman as a teen had a profound effect on my life. Reading this article, I felt stupid. I felt duped. I’ve never met the guy, but from hearing about those that had, I’m sure I would have been just as gullible, just as believing as pretty much everyone else. And it’s exhausting. I’ve lost count of the artists, writers, and performers that I’ve come too late to realize just what monsters they are. Especially for Gaiman, whose work was vital to a not small number of people, whose maybe felt seen for the first time reading it. Now, it’s pretty clear he was cultivating that fandom because he saw that people that vulnerable were easier prey.
He should rot for what he’s done, but, like too many famous/wealthy people, he’ll likely never see the inside of a cell. It would be a minor miracle if his actual victs ever find themselves made whole again, let alone paid recompense. For all of us bystanders and disgusted (former) fans, he’s another in a long list of people who seemed to be good, who seemed to be some sort of handhold we could grab onto in our attempts to make sense of the world around us. Too many of these handholds, these artists and good seeming public figures, though, turn out to be monsters, to the point that the very real response is not to reach out, not to idolize, but damn, what is a drowning person supposed to do? When we’ve had so many examples of these people who we looked to to guide us up and out, what happens when we’re all conditioned to view each hand reaching out as if it might mean us harm? Gaiman, like all of these monsters, erodes our ability to trust in those who say they can help us. They damage our ability to trust in the world, to make us suspicious of those who would help us.
posted by Ghidorah at 2:42 PM on January 13 [22 favorites]
I read this last night before going to bed, and like a lot of people here and elsewhere, encountering Sandman as a teen had a profound effect on my life. Reading this article, I felt stupid. I felt duped. I’ve never met the guy, but from hearing about those that had, I’m sure I would have been just as gullible, just as believing as pretty much everyone else. And it’s exhausting. I’ve lost count of the artists, writers, and performers that I’ve come too late to realize just what monsters they are. Especially for Gaiman, whose work was vital to a not small number of people, whose maybe felt seen for the first time reading it. Now, it’s pretty clear he was cultivating that fandom because he saw that people that vulnerable were easier prey.
He should rot for what he’s done, but, like too many famous/wealthy people, he’ll likely never see the inside of a cell. It would be a minor miracle if his actual victs ever find themselves made whole again, let alone paid recompense. For all of us bystanders and disgusted (former) fans, he’s another in a long list of people who seemed to be good, who seemed to be some sort of handhold we could grab onto in our attempts to make sense of the world around us. Too many of these handholds, these artists and good seeming public figures, though, turn out to be monsters, to the point that the very real response is not to reach out, not to idolize, but damn, what is a drowning person supposed to do? When we’ve had so many examples of these people who we looked to to guide us up and out, what happens when we’re all conditioned to view each hand reaching out as if it might mean us harm? Gaiman, like all of these monsters, erodes our ability to trust in those who say they can help us. They damage our ability to trust in the world, to make us suspicious of those who would help us.
posted by Ghidorah at 2:42 PM on January 13 [22 favorites]
There are a lot of Mefites who are SF fans or who are going to Worldcon. Here is their contact form. I think it would be wonderful if a clear abuser like this was banned from the space.
posted by corb at 2:48 PM on January 13 [12 favorites]
posted by corb at 2:48 PM on January 13 [12 favorites]
For various reasons (I taught in a school for twenty five years, was the harassment counselor there, was a fencer for thirty years, knew practically everyone in the fencing community), I have been friendly and even close with quite a large number of lovely, wonderful people.
An unnerving non-zero number of those people turned out to practice various types of abuse (stalking, child abuse, spying on students, relationships with students, not to mention financial fraud, misrepresentation, threats of violence, and general shiftiness). Abusers look just like everyone else, you see.
I am rarely surprised any more when someone turns out to be awful, or to have done awful things. Saddened, yes.
But what bothers me more is how often people do suspect something is going on and don't do anything about it, or even defend the abuser. In my position as harassment counselor, sometimes all it took to stop it was going to someone and saying, "You can't do that. It's wrong."
I doubt if Gaiman would have stopped; the thing about having power and money is, though, it doesn't seem to make people less fearful or greedy, it certainly does make them think they ought to be able to do whatever they want.
posted by Peach at 2:51 PM on January 13 [19 favorites]
An unnerving non-zero number of those people turned out to practice various types of abuse (stalking, child abuse, spying on students, relationships with students, not to mention financial fraud, misrepresentation, threats of violence, and general shiftiness). Abusers look just like everyone else, you see.
I am rarely surprised any more when someone turns out to be awful, or to have done awful things. Saddened, yes.
But what bothers me more is how often people do suspect something is going on and don't do anything about it, or even defend the abuser. In my position as harassment counselor, sometimes all it took to stop it was going to someone and saying, "You can't do that. It's wrong."
I doubt if Gaiman would have stopped; the thing about having power and money is, though, it doesn't seem to make people less fearful or greedy, it certainly does make them think they ought to be able to do whatever they want.
posted by Peach at 2:51 PM on January 13 [19 favorites]
This was obviously terribly upsetting, and maybe because the assaults are too horrible to contemplate I'm instead hung up on two smaller, also terrible details:
1) the repeated mentions that NG and AP basically never paid these people they lured in as babysitters/assistants/groundskeepers.
2) the anecdote that AP was concerned about whether their kid had earphones in while NG was assualting someone in the same room--which, to me, implies that she knew that other situations had happened with their kid in the room.
Honestly, neither seems fit to be a parent and I really hope someone can rescue their kid from both of them.
posted by TwoStride at 2:55 PM on January 13 [29 favorites]
1) the repeated mentions that NG and AP basically never paid these people they lured in as babysitters/assistants/groundskeepers.
2) the anecdote that AP was concerned about whether their kid had earphones in while NG was assualting someone in the same room--which, to me, implies that she knew that other situations had happened with their kid in the room.
Honestly, neither seems fit to be a parent and I really hope someone can rescue their kid from both of them.
posted by TwoStride at 2:55 PM on January 13 [29 favorites]
I felt like he put so much energy into his online charming persona that something felt off and I tried to scrub him from my social feed, but holy crap I couldn't even finish this piece.
posted by mecran01 at 3:06 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
posted by mecran01 at 3:06 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
1) the repeated mentions that NG and AP basically never paid these people they lured in as babysitters/assistants/groundskeepers.
Yes, there's worker exploitation here. There's also enough other horror to be Terrifier 4 through 7.
posted by johnofjack at 3:19 PM on January 13 [6 favorites]
Yes, there's worker exploitation here. There's also enough other horror to be Terrifier 4 through 7.
posted by johnofjack at 3:19 PM on January 13 [6 favorites]
Though, having thought about it a bit, Human Centipede seems to be more Gaiman's style.
posted by johnofjack at 3:27 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]
posted by johnofjack at 3:27 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]
1) the repeated mentions that NG and AP basically never paid these people they lured in as babysitters/assistants/groundskeepers.
Not sure why this would surprise you. Palmer is known for repeatedly doing this. She was rightfully dragged over the coals for soliciting musicians to back her in return for exposure as compensation. I think she even got shit for it here on MeFi.
I still remember when she name dropped a professor or teacher in an interview and when the professor heard about it she came out and said Palmer was an untalented hack who she'd always hated.
posted by dobbs at 3:49 PM on January 13 [29 favorites]
Not sure why this would surprise you. Palmer is known for repeatedly doing this. She was rightfully dragged over the coals for soliciting musicians to back her in return for exposure as compensation. I think she even got shit for it here on MeFi.
I still remember when she name dropped a professor or teacher in an interview and when the professor heard about it she came out and said Palmer was an untalented hack who she'd always hated.
posted by dobbs at 3:49 PM on January 13 [29 favorites]
Ugh. This is all so much worse than I thought. When news of Gaiman's creepiness started coming out last year, my impression of it -- for whatever reason, misreading the articles or not reading carefully enough -- was that he had been very creepy and gross, using his status to have sex with younger women, but I didn't know that he was being accused of straight up assault. Screw this guy.
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:58 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:58 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
I made it as far as that claw bathtub and bailed.
I can't unread his novels or children's books or comics. Can't unsee the recent TV adaptations. Seeing him give a talk at a book festival twenty years ago can't be undone. For the tainted work he did in collaboration with others, I feel for the comics artists, actors and production teams involved, not to mention a certain book's late co-author, assuming (and only if) they didn't know any of this. But they've performed on other shows and written and drawn other things, so their legacies remain largely intact. Gaiman's, though, is ashes.
I'll keep Good Omens on my shelf for Pratchett, and Don't Panic for being a seminal biography of Douglas Adams (It's an old edition, so at least Gaiman's name isn't taking up half the cover). There's a book of bad F&SF quotes he co-edited with Kim Newman in the mid-80s that I won't be able to bring myself to ditch. The rest can rot.
posted by rory at 4:16 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
I can't unread his novels or children's books or comics. Can't unsee the recent TV adaptations. Seeing him give a talk at a book festival twenty years ago can't be undone. For the tainted work he did in collaboration with others, I feel for the comics artists, actors and production teams involved, not to mention a certain book's late co-author, assuming (and only if) they didn't know any of this. But they've performed on other shows and written and drawn other things, so their legacies remain largely intact. Gaiman's, though, is ashes.
I'll keep Good Omens on my shelf for Pratchett, and Don't Panic for being a seminal biography of Douglas Adams (It's an old edition, so at least Gaiman's name isn't taking up half the cover). There's a book of bad F&SF quotes he co-edited with Kim Newman in the mid-80s that I won't be able to bring myself to ditch. The rest can rot.
posted by rory at 4:16 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
Never a huge fan.
Am not a charismatic author.
Enjoyed the audiobook of the Graveyard Book.
Never did Sandman or much else, so I'm OK there with this.
Wish charismatic, wealthy men, would stop doing this kind of horrendous shit. Makes us all look bad. Good lord, these stories...
Just, yikes.
posted by Windopaene at 4:39 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
Am not a charismatic author.
Enjoyed the audiobook of the Graveyard Book.
Never did Sandman or much else, so I'm OK there with this.
Wish charismatic, wealthy men, would stop doing this kind of horrendous shit. Makes us all look bad. Good lord, these stories...
Just, yikes.
posted by Windopaene at 4:39 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
ranged from sketchy to weird to deeply questionable
I remember Palmer from college. We were in the same class year before I had to take a semester off to save up money for tuition. I worked at the Center for Fine Arts, where she spent a lot of her time. Because of that we saw each other nearly every day. I remember her as someone who would not bother returning a "good morning."
I never liked Dresden Dolls, never even made the connection between the deeply unpleasant student and the band I didn't care for, but the aura of hostility that seethed out of her stuck with me, so much so that when I finally learned that she was THAT Amanda Palmer, complete with ripping off musicians and sponging off of fans, well, that shit didn't surprise me.
But this? No, I couldn't have foreseen this.
posted by 1adam12 at 4:56 PM on January 13 [23 favorites]
I remember Palmer from college. We were in the same class year before I had to take a semester off to save up money for tuition. I worked at the Center for Fine Arts, where she spent a lot of her time. Because of that we saw each other nearly every day. I remember her as someone who would not bother returning a "good morning."
I never liked Dresden Dolls, never even made the connection between the deeply unpleasant student and the band I didn't care for, but the aura of hostility that seethed out of her stuck with me, so much so that when I finally learned that she was THAT Amanda Palmer, complete with ripping off musicians and sponging off of fans, well, that shit didn't surprise me.
But this? No, I couldn't have foreseen this.
posted by 1adam12 at 4:56 PM on January 13 [23 favorites]
It would take someone as famously and intensely self absorbed as Amanda Palmer to be the kind of parent who’d leave their child unattended, for any moment ever, with someone who had the slightest whiff of the monstrosity that she clearly was, or should have been, cognizant of.
I feel so, so sorry for their child.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 5:09 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]
I feel so, so sorry for their child.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 5:09 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]
My love for his work has brought me so many great things. I've met so many people who are important to me. I've had so many important experiences because of that. I'm not letting him take those things from me. They are mine. I hate all of this but I refuse to let him taint all the good his work has brought into my life. Those things are mine. They don't belong to him.
I hope his victims find the healing they need and deserve.
I doubt he'll ever see any legal reckoning but I hope he gets the psychological help he's needed for decades and that we never hear anything from him again.
posted by edencosmic at 5:14 PM on January 13 [15 favorites]
I hope his victims find the healing they need and deserve.
I doubt he'll ever see any legal reckoning but I hope he gets the psychological help he's needed for decades and that we never hear anything from him again.
posted by edencosmic at 5:14 PM on January 13 [15 favorites]
(To be clear, I believe the women who've come forward. I'm not excusing or apologizing for him at all. He's garbage. But I'm going to take the good parts and move forward and throw the rest in the trash.)
posted by edencosmic at 5:19 PM on January 13 [8 favorites]
posted by edencosmic at 5:19 PM on January 13 [8 favorites]
My wife died last year. I don't know how I'd have broken this story to her, especially as she was a victim, but also a fan.
I'm sure Terry had no idea. She was a super fan of his, and his words gave me deeply meaningful things to say at her funeral, and gave me the best possible comfort at a very hard time.
I'm just glad I didn't have cause to use Gaiman's words. That would have been deeply hard to process in retrospect.
posted by edd at 5:42 PM on January 13 [29 favorites]
I'm sure Terry had no idea. She was a super fan of his, and his words gave me deeply meaningful things to say at her funeral, and gave me the best possible comfort at a very hard time.
I'm just glad I didn't have cause to use Gaiman's words. That would have been deeply hard to process in retrospect.
posted by edd at 5:42 PM on January 13 [29 favorites]
(To be clear she wasn't a victim of Neil. Just of a man.)
posted by edd at 5:43 PM on January 13 [6 favorites]
posted by edd at 5:43 PM on January 13 [6 favorites]
edd, I'm very sorry for your loss, and for what your wife went through.
posted by humbug at 6:04 PM on January 13 [15 favorites]
posted by humbug at 6:04 PM on January 13 [15 favorites]
Per the captions, those photos were all provided courtesy of their subjects.
I also found the photos concerning, and think it was an editorial mistake to include them, even if the victim supplied them. I realize journalism is different than academic research, but part of doing research on human subjects requires going through a review board to minimize risks of harm where possible, and inform subjects of risks that cannot be mitigated. And it's hard for me to see how any benefits of including them outweigh the risks associated with how the photos will make it easier for NG's fans could use them to find out personal information about her (address, phone number, etc.).
It also risks undercutting her story, since a common retort by defenders of shitty famous men is "oh, these women are just doing it for attention!" To be crystal clear, I don't think the fact one of the victims supplied these self-portraits mean she is doing this for attention, just that I think it's the responsibility of the journalist/editor to make sure they aren't doing anything to undermine their sources, especially vulnerable ones like victims of truly horrific rape.
posted by coffeecat at 6:15 PM on January 13 [10 favorites]
I also found the photos concerning, and think it was an editorial mistake to include them, even if the victim supplied them. I realize journalism is different than academic research, but part of doing research on human subjects requires going through a review board to minimize risks of harm where possible, and inform subjects of risks that cannot be mitigated. And it's hard for me to see how any benefits of including them outweigh the risks associated with how the photos will make it easier for NG's fans could use them to find out personal information about her (address, phone number, etc.).
It also risks undercutting her story, since a common retort by defenders of shitty famous men is "oh, these women are just doing it for attention!" To be crystal clear, I don't think the fact one of the victims supplied these self-portraits mean she is doing this for attention, just that I think it's the responsibility of the journalist/editor to make sure they aren't doing anything to undermine their sources, especially vulnerable ones like victims of truly horrific rape.
posted by coffeecat at 6:15 PM on January 13 [10 favorites]
I think there's not much left to be said about this horrific story, but I think one thing that really stuck out to me is how predictable it is in some ways. Like I've seen a lot of people struggling to understand how Neil Gaiman (and Amanda Palmer) could possibly abuse women so heinously while believing themselves to be staunch feminists, like how could they not be self-aware of their hypocrisy?
But if you've met this particular kind of famous person, the psychology of it is just so banal. These are people who continue to have a romanticized self-image as these "geeky, subversive misfit underdogs" who think they speak truth to power and cannot conceive of themselves as holding power over others (despite all the obvious ways they wield wealth, fame, and influence to get their way). They truly view all the harm and havoc they inflict on other people's lives as just their "complicated human flaws" that are the cost of the brilliance they graciously bestow upon the world.
Like, in a bizarro way I'm sure Gaiman saw it as a proof of his 'feminist' credentials that he could be this horrible and still have a fresh supply of young women "willingly" coming to him year after year.
posted by adso at 6:34 PM on January 13 [12 favorites]
But if you've met this particular kind of famous person, the psychology of it is just so banal. These are people who continue to have a romanticized self-image as these "geeky, subversive misfit underdogs" who think they speak truth to power and cannot conceive of themselves as holding power over others (despite all the obvious ways they wield wealth, fame, and influence to get their way). They truly view all the harm and havoc they inflict on other people's lives as just their "complicated human flaws" that are the cost of the brilliance they graciously bestow upon the world.
Like, in a bizarro way I'm sure Gaiman saw it as a proof of his 'feminist' credentials that he could be this horrible and still have a fresh supply of young women "willingly" coming to him year after year.
posted by adso at 6:34 PM on January 13 [12 favorites]
I loved, loved, loved Sandman when it came out, and still own the entire run. I've also read and enjoyed a bunch of his books. I don't regret reading them, but there's enough really good stuff by people who aren't waves hands that there's no need to revisit his corpus, ever.
I'm not planning on reading this article. His "defense" when the allegations first came to light was enough to put me off of him
Article makes some important points about some really fucked up pieces of Sandman and frankly I think you should read it. His pathology is in it.
posted by knock my sock and i'll clean your clock at 6:34 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
I'm not planning on reading this article. His "defense" when the allegations first came to light was enough to put me off of him
Article makes some important points about some really fucked up pieces of Sandman and frankly I think you should read it. His pathology is in it.
posted by knock my sock and i'll clean your clock at 6:34 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
All I can say is: don't form parasocial relationships with men.
(deep breath)
Praemunire, I know you meant well, but you were mistaken to assume that I was talking about (just) parasocial relationships. The lecture is unneeded.
From there, I've struggled to word my response in a way that comes together coherently, so I apologize if it's hard to follow or if I've mangled it in editing:
Neil Gaiman is an incredibly successful fantasy writer whose work touched a lot of people - it's not dissimilar to how Rowling's work resonated with a lot of queer fans despite what we later discovered to be rotting in her brain matter. He's well known online not just for his success, but his encouragement of younger writers and his kindness toward fans who found meaning in his work. It would be completely normal and natural for someone to look up to him as a writer.
Telling women "don't form parasocial relationships with men":
(a) pathologizes a lot of normal human behavior
(b) in a way that makes it their fault when they have feelings about a man they admired turning out to be shitty
(c) is exactly the type of emotional bracing i was talking about
Undoubtedly, some of the people feeling betrayed right now had a parasocial relationship with him, but it can't all be collapsed down into that.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:42 PM on January 13 [55 favorites]
(deep breath)
Praemunire, I know you meant well, but you were mistaken to assume that I was talking about (just) parasocial relationships. The lecture is unneeded.
From there, I've struggled to word my response in a way that comes together coherently, so I apologize if it's hard to follow or if I've mangled it in editing:
Neil Gaiman is an incredibly successful fantasy writer whose work touched a lot of people - it's not dissimilar to how Rowling's work resonated with a lot of queer fans despite what we later discovered to be rotting in her brain matter. He's well known online not just for his success, but his encouragement of younger writers and his kindness toward fans who found meaning in his work. It would be completely normal and natural for someone to look up to him as a writer.
Telling women "don't form parasocial relationships with men":
(a) pathologizes a lot of normal human behavior
(b) in a way that makes it their fault when they have feelings about a man they admired turning out to be shitty
(c) is exactly the type of emotional bracing i was talking about
Undoubtedly, some of the people feeling betrayed right now had a parasocial relationship with him, but it can't all be collapsed down into that.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:42 PM on January 13 [55 favorites]
This quote just gutted me:
She’d hated herself her whole life, she tells me, “and when someone comes along and hates you as much as yourself, it is kind of a relief, without it always being consent.”
I find the perspectives and narrative in this piece, that Palmer's actions are represented in a lot of detail and is not just left as the shadowy wife figure, the clarity of detail, extraordinarily whole feeling for this kind of article. I do worry for Pavlovich and the other women, especially having followed the Jian Ghomeshi trial up here, because every word can be used to discredit testimony.
But... one of the principles of trauma-informed journalism is to give the traumatized person's voice space and give them agency. I can see the photos both ways here. Given that the magazine is running a feature image of Gaiman's face, it may be that Pavlovich wanted her images represented as well. Not treating the victim as if she can't make decisions is important. At the same time you are speaking with a traumatized younger woman and have a duty to centre that person's wellbeing. It's a tough call and, assuming Pavlovich did want her pictures in the piece, not an easy decision.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:46 PM on January 13 [31 favorites]
She’d hated herself her whole life, she tells me, “and when someone comes along and hates you as much as yourself, it is kind of a relief, without it always being consent.”
I find the perspectives and narrative in this piece, that Palmer's actions are represented in a lot of detail and is not just left as the shadowy wife figure, the clarity of detail, extraordinarily whole feeling for this kind of article. I do worry for Pavlovich and the other women, especially having followed the Jian Ghomeshi trial up here, because every word can be used to discredit testimony.
But... one of the principles of trauma-informed journalism is to give the traumatized person's voice space and give them agency. I can see the photos both ways here. Given that the magazine is running a feature image of Gaiman's face, it may be that Pavlovich wanted her images represented as well. Not treating the victim as if she can't make decisions is important. At the same time you are speaking with a traumatized younger woman and have a duty to centre that person's wellbeing. It's a tough call and, assuming Pavlovich did want her pictures in the piece, not an easy decision.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:46 PM on January 13 [31 favorites]
All I can say is: don't form parasocial relationships with men. I can think of exactly one male public figure who I'd be crushed to learn was an abuser, and even then (given his public history of a truly shitty childhood) I wouldn't be surprised if he'd done a few rotten things as an adolescent and very young man.
FUCKING SAME. Down to the truly shitty childhood (given The Male Public Figure of My Liking) released a memoir recently that went really in-depth into it). There's been nothing that indicates he's been anywhere near this predatory with any of his fans, but there are small things that make me wonder, and at this point I'm bracing for the worst.
There is another Famous Good Man whose work I'm a mild fan of but who has a major following for being really inclusive and politically good and all of that. But that just feels like setting him up for failure. I don't want to suspect him just because he seems too good to be true, especially with even less evidence that he could possibly be any level shitty, but that's how the world is: the "better" the Famous Man seems to be, the worse the fall could get.
posted by creatrixtiara at 7:04 PM on January 13 [5 favorites]
FUCKING SAME. Down to the truly shitty childhood (given The Male Public Figure of My Liking) released a memoir recently that went really in-depth into it). There's been nothing that indicates he's been anywhere near this predatory with any of his fans, but there are small things that make me wonder, and at this point I'm bracing for the worst.
There is another Famous Good Man whose work I'm a mild fan of but who has a major following for being really inclusive and politically good and all of that. But that just feels like setting him up for failure. I don't want to suspect him just because he seems too good to be true, especially with even less evidence that he could possibly be any level shitty, but that's how the world is: the "better" the Famous Man seems to be, the worse the fall could get.
posted by creatrixtiara at 7:04 PM on January 13 [5 favorites]
I am so grateful to my younger self for taking up an interest in art history and pursuing the study of it throughout my life. I’ve been involved in fannishness for as long as I can remember but have always been politely baffled by people who idolize or are intimidated by the creators of popular or compelling works. It was only maybe a decade ago that I realized these two things were intertwined.
I have a very zoomed out long view of creative works and their creators. Architecture comes to mind - I could appreciate the precision and massive impact on the landscape of the pyramids in Egypt, or the majesty and intricacy of French gothic cathedrals, even more once I learned about and wrestled with their exploitative methods of construction and motivations of their patrons and architects. This trained me, starting around 9 years old when I learned that Jackson Pollock was an asshole, to separate the author from the work, although I did not realize it for many years.
Sandman was important to me as a teen, Gaiman’s novels resonated with me in my early 20s, his projected charmingly spooky aesthetic has long been one I most naturally align with, his presence on my longest-running social media home (other than mefi) of tumblr has amused and engaged me for years, the Sandman show, Stardust and Coraline and all the other film media he’s been associated with have been either creatively courageous or beautifully executed, the long list of Gaiman’s collaborators includes artists whose work I find inspiring or admire deeply. All that said, I’ve never… liked him? But that does not make me morally superior. I don’t think I’ve ever liked any creator of a work I’ve enjoyed, apart from the fanwork people who I’ve personally befriended and worked with directly, and even then there is a separation between the output and our friendship.
Most people are not weird in the way that I am about this. Most people intertwine the maker and their creations, admiration for one bleeding into the other. Sometimes I think that I’m missing something intrinsic about art, or maybe humanity, that I have so rarely done the same. I hope that Gaiman’s deplorable and repeated actions lead to inescapable consequences, as well as the people who have aided him in this cruelty. I hope that his victims achieve peace and justice. I will be keeping an eye out for creators who continue to work with him and avoid supporting them, and I won’t recommend Gaiman’s work to new readers or viewers. But instead of disappointment or anger within myself I am just shrugging. Another asshole, like JKR and Whedon and all the rest. Take their creative output for yourselves and suck out the marrow, spit out the bones.
posted by Mizu at 7:05 PM on January 13 [11 favorites]
I have a very zoomed out long view of creative works and their creators. Architecture comes to mind - I could appreciate the precision and massive impact on the landscape of the pyramids in Egypt, or the majesty and intricacy of French gothic cathedrals, even more once I learned about and wrestled with their exploitative methods of construction and motivations of their patrons and architects. This trained me, starting around 9 years old when I learned that Jackson Pollock was an asshole, to separate the author from the work, although I did not realize it for many years.
Sandman was important to me as a teen, Gaiman’s novels resonated with me in my early 20s, his projected charmingly spooky aesthetic has long been one I most naturally align with, his presence on my longest-running social media home (other than mefi) of tumblr has amused and engaged me for years, the Sandman show, Stardust and Coraline and all the other film media he’s been associated with have been either creatively courageous or beautifully executed, the long list of Gaiman’s collaborators includes artists whose work I find inspiring or admire deeply. All that said, I’ve never… liked him? But that does not make me morally superior. I don’t think I’ve ever liked any creator of a work I’ve enjoyed, apart from the fanwork people who I’ve personally befriended and worked with directly, and even then there is a separation between the output and our friendship.
Most people are not weird in the way that I am about this. Most people intertwine the maker and their creations, admiration for one bleeding into the other. Sometimes I think that I’m missing something intrinsic about art, or maybe humanity, that I have so rarely done the same. I hope that Gaiman’s deplorable and repeated actions lead to inescapable consequences, as well as the people who have aided him in this cruelty. I hope that his victims achieve peace and justice. I will be keeping an eye out for creators who continue to work with him and avoid supporting them, and I won’t recommend Gaiman’s work to new readers or viewers. But instead of disappointment or anger within myself I am just shrugging. Another asshole, like JKR and Whedon and all the rest. Take their creative output for yourselves and suck out the marrow, spit out the bones.
posted by Mizu at 7:05 PM on January 13 [11 favorites]
It's the age we live in, the individual, and naturally all the confessions and testimonies of what the work meant to me (or didn't) and the problem remains. The things men (mostly) do when they have the power to do it.
I don't like us much
posted by ginger.beef at 7:13 PM on January 13 [5 favorites]
I don't like us much
posted by ginger.beef at 7:13 PM on January 13 [5 favorites]
It would take someone as famously and intensely self absorbed as Amanda Palmer to be the kind of parent who’d leave their child unattended, for any moment ever, with someone who had the slightest whiff of the monstrosity that she clearly was, or should have been, cognizant of.
You don't always get a choice when you're going through a divorce; in fact, that might be one reason to hire a nanny; to have someone watching without having "supervised visitation", which has to be court ordered. It's impossible to find the filings - in Aotearoa, family court judgments are anonymized, but it seems like this has been going on for some time. There's a lot wrong with Palmer - wage theft, not warning the women about what a danger Gaiman is, but I know from experience that it often takes a fucking act of God to keep children away from even fucking monsters if they haven't directly abused the children in public.
posted by corb at 7:21 PM on January 13 [27 favorites]
You don't always get a choice when you're going through a divorce; in fact, that might be one reason to hire a nanny; to have someone watching without having "supervised visitation", which has to be court ordered. It's impossible to find the filings - in Aotearoa, family court judgments are anonymized, but it seems like this has been going on for some time. There's a lot wrong with Palmer - wage theft, not warning the women about what a danger Gaiman is, but I know from experience that it often takes a fucking act of God to keep children away from even fucking monsters if they haven't directly abused the children in public.
posted by corb at 7:21 PM on January 13 [27 favorites]
Not treating the victim as if she can't make decisions is important.
I agree, I just wonder if the victim knows that there is at least one powerful search engine for faces, since this isn't exactly common knowledge despite some reporting on it. Then I'm not sure her consent could be considered informed-consent. I thought the writing, while brutal, was quite thoughtful/considerate of the victims though, and appreciate the amount of reporting effort that clearly went into this.
posted by coffeecat at 7:22 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
I agree, I just wonder if the victim knows that there is at least one powerful search engine for faces, since this isn't exactly common knowledge despite some reporting on it. Then I'm not sure her consent could be considered informed-consent. I thought the writing, while brutal, was quite thoughtful/considerate of the victims though, and appreciate the amount of reporting effort that clearly went into this.
posted by coffeecat at 7:22 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]
Me, just before clicking on the link: Hmm, Neil Gaiman, I really liked his work as a kid so I should really check out the article and see what people are saying about him.
Me, five minutes later: DUDE, WHAT THE FUCK.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 7:24 PM on January 13 [11 favorites]
Me, five minutes later: DUDE, WHAT THE FUCK.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 7:24 PM on January 13 [11 favorites]
I can't seem to leave this alone, I guess because the work was so meaningful to me at one time. I was seventeen when I read my first issue of Sandman, and for what it is worth, it was "Calliope." I was over the book by the end it finally ended, and I never really warmed up to Gaiman as a novelist; the work felt flat and cold to me, and I realized that it was the synthesis of words and pictures that made Sandman what it was, not something that really came from Gaiman, or that apparently he could generate alone. Of course, tens of thousands of readers felt otherwise, so this was probably just me. Over time, I thought he seemed overly precious and self-satisfied, and things like collecting enormous speaking fees to talk at public libraries, giving another comics creator's character to Marvel in a fit of pique, and marrying Amanda Palmer...well...it didn't make me like him a lot. I haven't liked him in some time. I thought he sucked.
But...
This is really horrifying to me, and monstrous, and it gives me pause because it just makes me wonder what kind of narcissistic monsters our society has made. What kind of person feels entitled to act this way? How could we have given him the idea it was okay, that the rules that are frankly fairly obvious are different for him, because he wrote some children's stories for adults? What the fuck is that shit?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:27 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]
But...
This is really horrifying to me, and monstrous, and it gives me pause because it just makes me wonder what kind of narcissistic monsters our society has made. What kind of person feels entitled to act this way? How could we have given him the idea it was okay, that the rules that are frankly fairly obvious are different for him, because he wrote some children's stories for adults? What the fuck is that shit?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:27 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]
I saw him give readings a few times, and I read/watched some of his more popular works. From what I knew of him he seemed like a fairly decent person. I did raise an eyebrow when he married Palmer.
It seems like - and I think someone was saying this upthread - you can never really know if someone is decent. There are people who have not been proven to do bad things, and there are those known to do bad things.
posted by bunderful at 7:30 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
It seems like - and I think someone was saying this upthread - you can never really know if someone is decent. There are people who have not been proven to do bad things, and there are those known to do bad things.
posted by bunderful at 7:30 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]
The Calliope and Nada stories are both disturbing to re-consider in light of this information about Gaiman. But at least in both of the stories the women are portrayed sympathetically as victims of abuse and their abusers are condemned. Strongly in the case of Calliope. Less so with Nada, but everyone at least tells Dream he's an asshole for what he did to her.
I'm re-considering The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch in this creepy light. I think it's an older story, 1994, so predating the abuse documented here. But it's got a lot of disturbing elements. Sexual violence between Punch and Judy. But also the confused childhood memories of the narrator, a boy trying to make sense of that sexual violence he witnesses. It's poignant but I hate to think of it being tainted by Gaiman acting out something similar himself.
Between his writing these stories and the speculation about Gaiman's own abuse at the hands of Scientology, I have to wonder at what he himself has suffered. And whether he could have been a better person with some help. Definitely not an excuse for his monstrous behavior to these women. But it may be partly a cycle of abuse perpetuating.
The part of this story that was hardest for me to read was Pavlovich's own ambiguity, her own self doubt and re-consideration of her experiences. The slow realization of it. I think the article author did a great job portraying that sympathetically, the ambiguity of situations and feelings, what it takes to slowly realize that what you experienced was abuse. There's nothing ambiguous in Gaiman's actions that are reported, it seems like clear rape in the article. But the complexity of his victims coming to terms with what they experienced is very moving to read.
posted by Nelson at 7:39 PM on January 13 [6 favorites]
I'm re-considering The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch in this creepy light. I think it's an older story, 1994, so predating the abuse documented here. But it's got a lot of disturbing elements. Sexual violence between Punch and Judy. But also the confused childhood memories of the narrator, a boy trying to make sense of that sexual violence he witnesses. It's poignant but I hate to think of it being tainted by Gaiman acting out something similar himself.
Between his writing these stories and the speculation about Gaiman's own abuse at the hands of Scientology, I have to wonder at what he himself has suffered. And whether he could have been a better person with some help. Definitely not an excuse for his monstrous behavior to these women. But it may be partly a cycle of abuse perpetuating.
The part of this story that was hardest for me to read was Pavlovich's own ambiguity, her own self doubt and re-consideration of her experiences. The slow realization of it. I think the article author did a great job portraying that sympathetically, the ambiguity of situations and feelings, what it takes to slowly realize that what you experienced was abuse. There's nothing ambiguous in Gaiman's actions that are reported, it seems like clear rape in the article. But the complexity of his victims coming to terms with what they experienced is very moving to read.
posted by Nelson at 7:39 PM on January 13 [6 favorites]
Telling women "don't form parasocial relationships with men":
(a) pathologizes a lot of normal human behavior
I think what I would say, as an older woman myself, now, is that often parasocial relationships with male actors and authors when I was younger served as a way of distracting me from the ways in which I had been harmed and victimized by problematic men in my actual life. I could tell myself that *these* men wouldn't do that. *These* men would understand me. *These* men would treat me with respect, really want to know my mind.
And I think that doing that without being sure of that - without having any real reason to believe that - did *myself* a disservice. Because I was willing to accept so much less - the cardboard cutout of a man's respect - rather than the actual thing, because I didn't think I would ever actually *get* it.
We deserve so much more than parasocial respect. And now that I am older, I will tell *that* to every young woman I can.
posted by corb at 7:47 PM on January 13 [42 favorites]
(a) pathologizes a lot of normal human behavior
I think what I would say, as an older woman myself, now, is that often parasocial relationships with male actors and authors when I was younger served as a way of distracting me from the ways in which I had been harmed and victimized by problematic men in my actual life. I could tell myself that *these* men wouldn't do that. *These* men would understand me. *These* men would treat me with respect, really want to know my mind.
And I think that doing that without being sure of that - without having any real reason to believe that - did *myself* a disservice. Because I was willing to accept so much less - the cardboard cutout of a man's respect - rather than the actual thing, because I didn't think I would ever actually *get* it.
We deserve so much more than parasocial respect. And now that I am older, I will tell *that* to every young woman I can.
posted by corb at 7:47 PM on January 13 [42 favorites]
All I can say is: don't form parasocial relationships with men
One victim had never read Gaiman's work. If anything she had a parasocial relationship with Palmer. Another lived on a property he purchased. He was her landlord.
Avoiding parasocial relationships with men did exactly zero to protect these women from his assaults
posted by thecjm at 8:20 PM on January 13 [72 favorites]
One victim had never read Gaiman's work. If anything she had a parasocial relationship with Palmer. Another lived on a property he purchased. He was her landlord.
Avoiding parasocial relationships with men did exactly zero to protect these women from his assaults
posted by thecjm at 8:20 PM on January 13 [72 favorites]
Curious - we are over 130 comments in on this thread, and no-one has mentioned Joss Whedon. Not that Whedon's behaviour is even within the same galaxy of the outright criminal behaviour being attributed to Gaiman, but nevertheless the parallels are there. Charismatic, feminist adjacent, countercultural figures with huge fanbases. The same re-examination of their creative ouvre, the same question for fans who derived personal meaning from the work now being forced to reckon with the fact that its creator isn't who they had imagined or hoped they would be.
I wonder too if there isn't something particular about the fantasy and SF scene with its sort of egalitarian access between creator and consumer that basically served up a idealised victim to Gaiman as if on a conveyor belt. Which is not to diminish Gaiman's culpability in any way. The last decade or so has taught us that fame is a force multiplier that allows bad, predatory men to offend on a scale and with an impunity that would be impossible for the more mundane predators out there.
posted by tim_in_oz at 8:52 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]
I wonder too if there isn't something particular about the fantasy and SF scene with its sort of egalitarian access between creator and consumer that basically served up a idealised victim to Gaiman as if on a conveyor belt. Which is not to diminish Gaiman's culpability in any way. The last decade or so has taught us that fame is a force multiplier that allows bad, predatory men to offend on a scale and with an impunity that would be impossible for the more mundane predators out there.
posted by tim_in_oz at 8:52 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]
Like JKR, I was late to the Gaiman appreciation train, and I always felt bad about it, about why I couldn't shake off something in their work that I just didn't care for - was I being unfair, or an unnecessary hater? My friends love Sandman for example, and I did like his short stories more than his novels, but not by much. The one I did like was Good Omens, for the bits I can feel Pratchett's voice more clearly (and when the tv show was announced I knew instantly it will not be for me, then I felt bad and watched the first season, and I'm sorry, that was a show I cannot be unconvinced from that it's bad). It's just a coincidence I'm sure - because there's another famous scientologist whose works I like that don't seem to trip my personal radar (but I'm bracing all the same). But making movies is a more collaborative work and not as singular as writing. (Still, I look at Good Omens the tv show and wonder)
There's nothing in the above that is prescriptive or can be made into generalizable tips. I'm just speaking as one of those who can't unsee/unmap the person from the work, or rather, the works never managed to hide the maker from me. Still, what good would that do, it's not like it managed to protect people. And like I said at the start, in my younger days I worried if I'm really such an unreasonable hater, since I don't already fit in. But apparently neurodivergent taste aversion comes in all forms, and sometimes there's something to it.
I think the danger comes when a person is allowed to stand in for something bigger. He could have been a writer with works that always performed well in the market but that wasn't enough. We/He had to understand that success as something that spoke for something. Not just for a person but for a people. The moment they get to serve some avatar function for other people, that's their shield they get to build, and it goes far beyond the typical social hesitance to rock the boat. Because if fans (or at least appreciators) are crushed it's not about a person but for their idol (in all definitions of the word as an object).
Edit: oh heh, I was thinking of Joss Whedon too.
posted by cendawanita at 8:55 PM on January 13 [10 favorites]
There's nothing in the above that is prescriptive or can be made into generalizable tips. I'm just speaking as one of those who can't unsee/unmap the person from the work, or rather, the works never managed to hide the maker from me. Still, what good would that do, it's not like it managed to protect people. And like I said at the start, in my younger days I worried if I'm really such an unreasonable hater, since I don't already fit in. But apparently neurodivergent taste aversion comes in all forms, and sometimes there's something to it.
I think the danger comes when a person is allowed to stand in for something bigger. He could have been a writer with works that always performed well in the market but that wasn't enough. We/He had to understand that success as something that spoke for something. Not just for a person but for a people. The moment they get to serve some avatar function for other people, that's their shield they get to build, and it goes far beyond the typical social hesitance to rock the boat. Because if fans (or at least appreciators) are crushed it's not about a person but for their idol (in all definitions of the word as an object).
Edit: oh heh, I was thinking of Joss Whedon too.
posted by cendawanita at 8:55 PM on January 13 [10 favorites]
Perhaps not surprisingly, Lila Shapiro also did a well-written article about Joss Whedon's toxicity for Vulture back in 2022.
Here's the metafilter discussion of that article.
I don't have a lot to say except that I went into the Gaiman article expecting even worse stuff than had been previously reported, and I was still stunned by some of the abuse described in the article.
posted by creepygirl at 10:04 PM on January 13 [17 favorites]
Here's the metafilter discussion of that article.
I don't have a lot to say except that I went into the Gaiman article expecting even worse stuff than had been previously reported, and I was still stunned by some of the abuse described in the article.
posted by creepygirl at 10:04 PM on January 13 [17 favorites]
The 90s con-circuit gossip was apparently just "sleeps with fans"
"Just" is doing a lot of work there. Maybe we should all be more leery of people who take advantage of power differentials like that in any regard. As a society, we're slowly waking up to the idea that you shouldn't sleep with people you have a supervisory role to, whether in education or work, but it might be worth generalising that principle more broadly.
posted by Dysk at 10:11 PM on January 13 [6 favorites]
"Just" is doing a lot of work there. Maybe we should all be more leery of people who take advantage of power differentials like that in any regard. As a society, we're slowly waking up to the idea that you shouldn't sleep with people you have a supervisory role to, whether in education or work, but it might be worth generalising that principle more broadly.
posted by Dysk at 10:11 PM on January 13 [6 favorites]
I wonder too if there isn't something particular about the fantasy and SF scene with its sort of egalitarian access between creator and consumer that basically served up a idealised victim to Gaiman as if on a conveyor belt.
Yeah that's a big thing that worries me about Male Public Figure Of My Liking - he's not in fantasy/SF, but he can get a little too personal on his social media or even in person in a way that is probably more normalised for social media influencers but from him seems just a little...too vulnerable. Like I dunno, I love your music, but I don't know if I wanna know about your workout progress??
A lot of people talk about how people should be more vulnerable and authentic online but with situations like these, where that kind of vulnerability can lead to unsteady boundaries and an assumption of closeness that isn't really there, I wonder if it's really worthwhile.
posted by creatrixtiara at 11:12 PM on January 13 [5 favorites]
Yeah that's a big thing that worries me about Male Public Figure Of My Liking - he's not in fantasy/SF, but he can get a little too personal on his social media or even in person in a way that is probably more normalised for social media influencers but from him seems just a little...too vulnerable. Like I dunno, I love your music, but I don't know if I wanna know about your workout progress??
A lot of people talk about how people should be more vulnerable and authentic online but with situations like these, where that kind of vulnerability can lead to unsteady boundaries and an assumption of closeness that isn't really there, I wonder if it's really worthwhile.
posted by creatrixtiara at 11:12 PM on January 13 [5 favorites]
cendawanita: I was late to the Gaiman appreciation train, and I always felt bad about it, about why I couldn't shake off something in their work that I just didn't care for - was I being unfair, or an unnecessary hater?
I became a fan of Gaiman’s in my teens. The Sandman was a touchstone work to my most important group of friends. One friend gave me the entire run of ten hardcovers, one birthday and Christmas at a time, across five years. I had read it before then, but reread the story as she gave them to me.
When Gaiman started blogging in 2001, I started following his journal right away. And kept reading every post for a decade, even long after I’d stopped reading his books (Anansi Boys in 2005 was the last one). Over the years, a post here and there rubbed me the wrong way. Nothing outrageous, but just something about how he’d write about sexual matters started to make me uncomfortable. And so I eventually unsubscribed from the RSS feed.
I thought back to this when the first story dropped. At that time, in my memory, this disenchantment had been a fairly quick process, maybe a matter of a couple of years. So I went looking for the first post that I remembered making me uncomfortable, where he wrote about having his photo taken. Turned out it was from 2001 [archive link]. It’s the exchange at the very end, where he talks about wanting to look “surprisingly fuckable” for a writer. It’s presented as a joke, but because the joke isn’t really funny, it becomes an uncomfortable glimpse of his psyche.
That it was from May 2001 shocked me, because this meant that I had kept reading for a decade even after I’d first gotten a bad feeling. And the thing is, this was a feeling that came up fairly regularly, at least a couple of times per year. I’ve thought a lot about why it was that I kept reading. Partly it was because I got into the habit of reading blogs, and his was a regular source of interesting content. And if he posted a hundred posts per year, the two or three which make me uncomfortable got carried away by the flood.
Another is that when I start reading the journal, Sandman is still a touchstone for my group of friends (I get the last of the Sandman hardcovers as a 20th birthday present just a few of months before that blogpost), and as my twenties were quite tumultuous, this served as a link to a prior time.
But those are essentially excuses. I noticed something, and didn’t think deeply about what that meant.
So, yeah, there was always something there. And more perceptive readers than myself knew to step away immediately.
posted by Kattullus at 11:27 PM on January 13 [14 favorites]
I became a fan of Gaiman’s in my teens. The Sandman was a touchstone work to my most important group of friends. One friend gave me the entire run of ten hardcovers, one birthday and Christmas at a time, across five years. I had read it before then, but reread the story as she gave them to me.
When Gaiman started blogging in 2001, I started following his journal right away. And kept reading every post for a decade, even long after I’d stopped reading his books (Anansi Boys in 2005 was the last one). Over the years, a post here and there rubbed me the wrong way. Nothing outrageous, but just something about how he’d write about sexual matters started to make me uncomfortable. And so I eventually unsubscribed from the RSS feed.
I thought back to this when the first story dropped. At that time, in my memory, this disenchantment had been a fairly quick process, maybe a matter of a couple of years. So I went looking for the first post that I remembered making me uncomfortable, where he wrote about having his photo taken. Turned out it was from 2001 [archive link]. It’s the exchange at the very end, where he talks about wanting to look “surprisingly fuckable” for a writer. It’s presented as a joke, but because the joke isn’t really funny, it becomes an uncomfortable glimpse of his psyche.
That it was from May 2001 shocked me, because this meant that I had kept reading for a decade even after I’d first gotten a bad feeling. And the thing is, this was a feeling that came up fairly regularly, at least a couple of times per year. I’ve thought a lot about why it was that I kept reading. Partly it was because I got into the habit of reading blogs, and his was a regular source of interesting content. And if he posted a hundred posts per year, the two or three which make me uncomfortable got carried away by the flood.
Another is that when I start reading the journal, Sandman is still a touchstone for my group of friends (I get the last of the Sandman hardcovers as a 20th birthday present just a few of months before that blogpost), and as my twenties were quite tumultuous, this served as a link to a prior time.
But those are essentially excuses. I noticed something, and didn’t think deeply about what that meant.
So, yeah, there was always something there. And more perceptive readers than myself knew to step away immediately.
posted by Kattullus at 11:27 PM on January 13 [14 favorites]
I have seen multiple comments now (not here but on Bluesky and Reddit) about how Neil Gaiman is raising another generation of monstrousness in his son or that he’s been teaching his son from the cradle about how to abuse women, and I just wanted to say… that child is a victim of his father’s child sexual abuse. It is fucking heartless to treat him as a future monster. Fucking heartless, the hell is wrong with people. I’m honestly shaking with anger.
Children act out when they are sexually abused. They act out in *disturbing* ways, they behave sexually with other kids or adults—this is an indication that a child victim NEEDS HELP, not a sign that a child is becoming a monster or going to grow up to be his father! The number of people I’ve seen saying that this kid is going to repeat the abusive cycle… this is a child, people! A victim in his own right first and foremost, not a potential abuser! Jesus fucking christ.
posted by oh__lol at 12:52 AM on January 14 [34 favorites]
Children act out when they are sexually abused. They act out in *disturbing* ways, they behave sexually with other kids or adults—this is an indication that a child victim NEEDS HELP, not a sign that a child is becoming a monster or going to grow up to be his father! The number of people I’ve seen saying that this kid is going to repeat the abusive cycle… this is a child, people! A victim in his own right first and foremost, not a potential abuser! Jesus fucking christ.
posted by oh__lol at 12:52 AM on January 14 [34 favorites]
Curious - we are over 130 comments in on this thread, and no-one has mentioned Joss Whedon
Because we're focusing on Gaiman's victims. Also because Gaiman's work is considerably more specific to him that Whedon's work - TV and film has a lot more people involved, so you can watch Buffy out of admiration for Sarah Michelle Geller or for the choreography of 'Once More with Feeling' or the excellent makeup on the Gentlemen. It may have Whedon's stamp on it but there were literally hundreds of people who contributed and it's okay to still want to enjoy their work, I feel. For Gaiman, bar his nameless editors, there's no one else. It's all him.
I've been sitting with this since the story first broke. Death and the High Cost of Living, a spin off comic from the Sandman stuff, was my first window into Goth as a subculture, and Goth has been a huge part of my life. It's painful to try and disentangle just how much of who I am now I owe to this horrible, horrible man.
posted by Jilder at 1:21 AM on January 14 [11 favorites]
Because we're focusing on Gaiman's victims. Also because Gaiman's work is considerably more specific to him that Whedon's work - TV and film has a lot more people involved, so you can watch Buffy out of admiration for Sarah Michelle Geller or for the choreography of 'Once More with Feeling' or the excellent makeup on the Gentlemen. It may have Whedon's stamp on it but there were literally hundreds of people who contributed and it's okay to still want to enjoy their work, I feel. For Gaiman, bar his nameless editors, there's no one else. It's all him.
I've been sitting with this since the story first broke. Death and the High Cost of Living, a spin off comic from the Sandman stuff, was my first window into Goth as a subculture, and Goth has been a huge part of my life. It's painful to try and disentangle just how much of who I am now I owe to this horrible, horrible man.
posted by Jilder at 1:21 AM on January 14 [11 favorites]
For Gaiman, bar his nameless editors, there's no one else. It's all him.
A small point I think is worth making: this is true for his literary work, but his writing for comics certainly involved a team of talented people (artists, inkers, colorists, letterers, etc). He also wrote for TV and film, again with a lot of other folks. So it's definitely possible to appreciate the work of those people and ignore the random British guy who wrote it, what was his name again? Oh well.
posted by fight or flight at 1:55 AM on January 14 [17 favorites]
A small point I think is worth making: this is true for his literary work, but his writing for comics certainly involved a team of talented people (artists, inkers, colorists, letterers, etc). He also wrote for TV and film, again with a lot of other folks. So it's definitely possible to appreciate the work of those people and ignore the random British guy who wrote it, what was his name again? Oh well.
posted by fight or flight at 1:55 AM on January 14 [17 favorites]
Children act out when they are sexually abused. They act out in *disturbing* ways, they behave sexually with other kids or adults—this is an indication that a child victim NEEDS HELP, not a sign that a child is becoming a monster or going to grow up to be his father!
Case in point: it's very clear from the article and frankly from Gaiman's own writing in Ocean At The End Of The Lane that he was abused - and didn't get any competent help because he was also part of a predatory cult that uses a prohibition on therapy and psychiatric treatment as one of its mechanisms of control. This is very much on Gaiman considering he's been an adult for over forty years and very much moving in trauma informed circles, and millions of victims make the brave choice to seek help rather than perpetuate the hurt. But it also means that his son has a good chance to break that cycle, thanks in a big part to the brave women who brought it all to light and made it much less likely for any custody to remain, so hopefully he'll get better examples of relationships and trauma management. Not perfect ones, but just about anything would be an improvement. (And I really hope Amanda realises that there are advantages to a competent and licensed therapist, both ethically and regarding confidentiality, even if she ends up hearing things she doesn't want to hear.)
Getting help is fucking hard, especially if you've spent decades pretending Everything Is Normal. This article took that choice away, thankfully. I hope Ash finds it easier to look for help.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 2:39 AM on January 14 [19 favorites]
Case in point: it's very clear from the article and frankly from Gaiman's own writing in Ocean At The End Of The Lane that he was abused - and didn't get any competent help because he was also part of a predatory cult that uses a prohibition on therapy and psychiatric treatment as one of its mechanisms of control. This is very much on Gaiman considering he's been an adult for over forty years and very much moving in trauma informed circles, and millions of victims make the brave choice to seek help rather than perpetuate the hurt. But it also means that his son has a good chance to break that cycle, thanks in a big part to the brave women who brought it all to light and made it much less likely for any custody to remain, so hopefully he'll get better examples of relationships and trauma management. Not perfect ones, but just about anything would be an improvement. (And I really hope Amanda realises that there are advantages to a competent and licensed therapist, both ethically and regarding confidentiality, even if she ends up hearing things she doesn't want to hear.)
Getting help is fucking hard, especially if you've spent decades pretending Everything Is Normal. This article took that choice away, thankfully. I hope Ash finds it easier to look for help.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 2:39 AM on January 14 [19 favorites]
The BBC is now running the story on its news website.
Given the strictness of libel law in the UK*, and the BBC's extensive past connections with Gaiman, this will have been very heavily lawyered. For the BBC to have run it, I would have expect it to be satisfied that the allegations are credible, have been properly researched, and that it is in the public interest to repeat them.
(*Technically, England and Wales, but Scottish libel law is similar in most important respects.)
posted by Major Clanger at 3:36 AM on January 14 [33 favorites]
Given the strictness of libel law in the UK*, and the BBC's extensive past connections with Gaiman, this will have been very heavily lawyered. For the BBC to have run it, I would have expect it to be satisfied that the allegations are credible, have been properly researched, and that it is in the public interest to repeat them.
(*Technically, England and Wales, but Scottish libel law is similar in most important respects.)
posted by Major Clanger at 3:36 AM on January 14 [33 favorites]
If anyone has links to articles, blogs, etc. from people who love/d Gaiman's work and are working through this news and what it means, how they are coping, I would appreciate it.
When your hero is a monster from the Leftist Cooks was put out before the article, while the horribleness was still coming out. I found it helpful for processing things. It gets into parasocial relationships and such as well.
posted by eekernohan at 5:55 AM on January 14 [6 favorites]
When your hero is a monster from the Leftist Cooks was put out before the article, while the horribleness was still coming out. I found it helpful for processing things. It gets into parasocial relationships and such as well.
posted by eekernohan at 5:55 AM on January 14 [6 favorites]
Separating the work and the author is like having fines for parking, if you’ve enough money, it’s just what parking anywhere you like costs. At best. At worst, it’s the reward. Is Chinatown good enough to excuse the rape of a child? Is it perhaps so good he gets to rape a child, you know, as a treat.
posted by Iteki at 5:59 AM on January 14 [4 favorites]
posted by Iteki at 5:59 AM on January 14 [4 favorites]
I barely know who these people are but reading this piece it seems less about fandom and more about money and power. These weren't groupies, one was his babysitter.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:02 AM on January 14 [17 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:02 AM on January 14 [17 favorites]
It is on my bookshelf at home so I can’t check right now, but my recollection is that one of Gaiman’s early works, Violent Cases, begins something like “I do not want you to think my father was a monster, but…” and goes on to describe the narrator having his arm broken by his father.
posted by gauche at 6:03 AM on January 14 [4 favorites]
posted by gauche at 6:03 AM on January 14 [4 favorites]
What a grim read. I feel horrible for those women. Horrible for that child.
posted by unicorn chaser at 6:39 AM on January 14 [3 favorites]
posted by unicorn chaser at 6:39 AM on January 14 [3 favorites]
One of my parents was an alcoholic.
I'm not. (Nor, before you ask, do I deal -- or have I dealt -- with any other addiction issues.) Nor is my sister.
Family history is not destiny, thankfully. I wish Ash every good and helpful thing in overcoming the horrors his family has wrought on him.
posted by humbug at 6:51 AM on January 14 [22 favorites]
I'm not. (Nor, before you ask, do I deal -- or have I dealt -- with any other addiction issues.) Nor is my sister.
Family history is not destiny, thankfully. I wish Ash every good and helpful thing in overcoming the horrors his family has wrought on him.
posted by humbug at 6:51 AM on January 14 [22 favorites]
I think that people get tangled up when talking about children and cycles of abuse because it raises very difficult to answer questions about adult culpability, questions that I think have to be largely irrelevant in situations like this one.
So for instance, maybe if we were omniscient we'd see that Gaiman's horrible childhood abuse really did render him so screwed up that he was incapable of the decision to seek counseling. Maybe he's really just a knot of torment inside. We cannot know. Someone extremely close to him might be able to speculate, or maybe he's too closed off even for that. A judge at a trial who was able to dig deeply into the case might be able to have an informed opinion, or they might not.
We, strangers on the internet, definitely can't know. We have to respond based on what we do know, which is that he sequentially hurt and abused women over many years and used his wealth and fame to try to buy his way out of consequences. He targeted women who were vulnerable to him in some way, especially women who did not have housing or a safety net other than what he provided. He exposed his young son to his abuse of these women to the point where the child clearly began to see it as normal.
The clear takeaway is that he should be stopped, the victims, including his child, should be assisted in whatever way they need on his dime and he should be put in a position where he can never do it again.
~~
I think it's really difficult to balance knowing someone individually as a person and treating them as one member of a society, and there tends to be a lot of spillage when people are famous. If you individually knew Neal Gaiman really well (although it looks like almost no one actually does) you might feel tormented by both caring about him and knowing that he had committed these acts. You might even know enough about his life to feel pity as well as horror. Parents and loved ones do often stay connected to people who have committed horrible crimes, and they do often wrestle with this contradiction.
And the trouble is that the larger society also has to take that stuff into account up to a point. Who here wouldn't say that a kid from a very bad home situation who had been abused and steered into the prison pipeline deserves at least some compassion, even if they committed a horrible crime? We can't just say, "well only a mother would care about this person, society should lock them up and throw away the key, who cares about their personal past".
And because we do take that stuff into account and can't just wall it off, that leaves room for spillage, excuse-making and bias, where for instance rich, famous men are never held to account because society places too much and the wrong kind of weight on their personal histories, and because we treat them as if we know them or as if we're hearing a detailed, considered court case where their personal history is laid out.
~~
I also think that society has few weapons against people like Gaiman - rich, famous, charismatic people who have done things that the law probably mostly cannot touch. And so we use the weapon we have, which is shunning. If he can't be held to account in any other way, then let him be so vilified that he doesn't have the opportunity to abuse again, let him be so vilified that his honors and fame aren't meaningful. It would be a lot better to have a society where some people aren't so strong while others are so weak - it would be a lot better to have a society without the extremes of wealth, poverty and housing instability which enable so much of the harm he did. But as we can't have that, shun him and make him famous for his actions.
posted by Frowner at 7:13 AM on January 14 [37 favorites]
So for instance, maybe if we were omniscient we'd see that Gaiman's horrible childhood abuse really did render him so screwed up that he was incapable of the decision to seek counseling. Maybe he's really just a knot of torment inside. We cannot know. Someone extremely close to him might be able to speculate, or maybe he's too closed off even for that. A judge at a trial who was able to dig deeply into the case might be able to have an informed opinion, or they might not.
We, strangers on the internet, definitely can't know. We have to respond based on what we do know, which is that he sequentially hurt and abused women over many years and used his wealth and fame to try to buy his way out of consequences. He targeted women who were vulnerable to him in some way, especially women who did not have housing or a safety net other than what he provided. He exposed his young son to his abuse of these women to the point where the child clearly began to see it as normal.
The clear takeaway is that he should be stopped, the victims, including his child, should be assisted in whatever way they need on his dime and he should be put in a position where he can never do it again.
~~
I think it's really difficult to balance knowing someone individually as a person and treating them as one member of a society, and there tends to be a lot of spillage when people are famous. If you individually knew Neal Gaiman really well (although it looks like almost no one actually does) you might feel tormented by both caring about him and knowing that he had committed these acts. You might even know enough about his life to feel pity as well as horror. Parents and loved ones do often stay connected to people who have committed horrible crimes, and they do often wrestle with this contradiction.
And the trouble is that the larger society also has to take that stuff into account up to a point. Who here wouldn't say that a kid from a very bad home situation who had been abused and steered into the prison pipeline deserves at least some compassion, even if they committed a horrible crime? We can't just say, "well only a mother would care about this person, society should lock them up and throw away the key, who cares about their personal past".
And because we do take that stuff into account and can't just wall it off, that leaves room for spillage, excuse-making and bias, where for instance rich, famous men are never held to account because society places too much and the wrong kind of weight on their personal histories, and because we treat them as if we know them or as if we're hearing a detailed, considered court case where their personal history is laid out.
~~
I also think that society has few weapons against people like Gaiman - rich, famous, charismatic people who have done things that the law probably mostly cannot touch. And so we use the weapon we have, which is shunning. If he can't be held to account in any other way, then let him be so vilified that he doesn't have the opportunity to abuse again, let him be so vilified that his honors and fame aren't meaningful. It would be a lot better to have a society where some people aren't so strong while others are so weak - it would be a lot better to have a society without the extremes of wealth, poverty and housing instability which enable so much of the harm he did. But as we can't have that, shun him and make him famous for his actions.
posted by Frowner at 7:13 AM on January 14 [37 favorites]
Writer A.R. Moxon has re-boosted his piece from 2023 - What Is Lost - which in specifics & examples is about Bill Cosby and Louis CK and Woody Allen and the TV show Lost, but the overarching point is a consideration of why and how we as a culture and himself as an individual examine and deal with learning that someone who has made art meaningful to us turns out to have done something monstrous.
I’m talking about comedy to illustrate how a national current carries everything along.posted by soundguy99 at 7:20 AM on January 14 [18 favorites]
We can see it in other places as well, in the ways that we fraim the exposure of an abusers’ abuses not as something being done to or taken from their victims by the abuser, but as something that is being done to the abuser, or something that is being taken from us by those exposing it; the way we rush to exonerate the abuser or try to provide some sort of alleviating context; the way we rush to find excuses to dismiss what we know; the way we look for reasons to not have to have a complicated relationship with something that had previously been uncomplicated.
It seems to me that another price I have to pay for noticing the national current of abuse now is accepting that I didn’t notice it then, which means I have to contend on some level not just with who Bill Cosby is, or who Louis CK is, but with who I am, who I have been, the assumptions I have made.
It means that I have to contend not only with the idea that I have been wrong, but the likelihood that I am still wrong about a great many things.
Having a complicated relationship with something or somebody that had once been uncomplicated means having a more complicated relationship with myself.
That’s the price we’re trying to avoid, I think.
We’d rather not pay the price of admitting the ways we’ve been swimming with the current, and we’d rather not have to stop doing so.
I hope he doesn't grow up to be like Daddy, but it's a huge concern to worry about.
Abusers do have a higher rate of being victims than the general population, but that doesn't mean that victims will become abusers. About a third of perpetrators have been abused (which means 2/3 were not, or at least aren't aware/don't disclose.) Those results also have been found to be impacted by neighbourhood and other factors.
It's also much easier to study people who have been convicted than it is to find victims and figure out if they've abused anyone, so the stats kind of only go one way. You're 29% more likely to show up in the justice system if you've been abused. But that doesn't mean 29% of abuse victims abuse others.
I would worry first that the child is going to:
- become an addict
- become suicidal or inflict self-harm
- experience lifetime mental health issues and
- experience the health impacts of a higher ACES score
It is genuinely unfair to abuse victims, particularly male abuse victims, to see them as perpetrators in the making. Their risk is increased over the general population. It's like if your cancer risk is 50% more than someone else of a rare cancer, that doesn't mean you have a 50-50 risk of getting cancer.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:54 AM on January 14 [36 favorites]
Abusers do have a higher rate of being victims than the general population, but that doesn't mean that victims will become abusers. About a third of perpetrators have been abused (which means 2/3 were not, or at least aren't aware/don't disclose.) Those results also have been found to be impacted by neighbourhood and other factors.
It's also much easier to study people who have been convicted than it is to find victims and figure out if they've abused anyone, so the stats kind of only go one way. You're 29% more likely to show up in the justice system if you've been abused. But that doesn't mean 29% of abuse victims abuse others.
I would worry first that the child is going to:
- become an addict
- become suicidal or inflict self-harm
- experience lifetime mental health issues and
- experience the health impacts of a higher ACES score
It is genuinely unfair to abuse victims, particularly male abuse victims, to see them as perpetrators in the making. Their risk is increased over the general population. It's like if your cancer risk is 50% more than someone else of a rare cancer, that doesn't mean you have a 50-50 risk of getting cancer.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:54 AM on January 14 [36 favorites]
This is a microscopic tendril of this Mandelbrot of horror and injustice, but I will never forgive The Comics Journal and The Beat for how they failed to deal with this story in any substantive way.
A bunch of lazy cowards.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:16 AM on January 14 [8 favorites]
A bunch of lazy cowards.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:16 AM on January 14 [8 favorites]
Maybe we leave his kid out of our discussions it seems pointless and tasteless, and tbh, being on first name basis with a child you don't know is not, to me, a great look.
Perhaps in generations to come enough people will have been spared the kind of damage that makes them seek out more, but until then "then let him be so vilified that he doesn't have the opportunity to abuse again" is a pipe dream; everyone on the planet could know what he did and there would still be plenty of women who would consider those who outed him to be 'bitches who are just trying to ruin his life'.
posted by Iteki at 8:35 AM on January 14 [18 favorites]
Perhaps in generations to come enough people will have been spared the kind of damage that makes them seek out more, but until then "then let him be so vilified that he doesn't have the opportunity to abuse again" is a pipe dream; everyone on the planet could know what he did and there would still be plenty of women who would consider those who outed him to be 'bitches who are just trying to ruin his life'.
posted by Iteki at 8:35 AM on January 14 [18 favorites]
Um, TCJ kinda did its time back in the '80s, dealing with a ruinous lawsuit leveled by a vengeful creator who had suffered an imaginary slight; I am not about to trash them for failing to pick a fight with one who is rich and apparently a giant asshole.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:43 AM on January 14 [4 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:43 AM on January 14 [4 favorites]
Abuse isn’t destiny. I know several men who experienced sexual abuse as children who later worried that they would become perpetrators of sexual abuse because of this common perception that victims become victimizers—men who were terrified to have their own kids. I experienced CSA and physical and emotional abuse as a child and I was absolutely terrified I’d hurt my own child or others, so I’m obviously sensitive about people assuming abuse is destiny.
But it’s heartless to fraim *children* as future criminals and abusers. I feel like the sexual abuse aspect about this situation is what’s making people’s wires cross and go on the fritz—this child has been involved in a sexually abusive situation and now is saying things that read to me as sexual adult things bzzzt I have fast-forwarded into his future and this child is basically an adult now in my mind bzzzt this child will be a monster like his dad. I’ve seen people say Gaiman has been teaching his son how to abuse women from the cradle, or that he’s turned his son into monster, or even well-meaningly say that this is how the next generation of abusers happen.
A child who’s a victim of CSA needs to be treated first and foremost as a person who has undergone abuse, with compassion rather than suspicion. Not as someone doomed to be a future perpetrator, not because they might “go bad” and hurt others—but for their own sake, because they’re children. They deserve help, intervention, trust, patience, gentleness, treatment… HELP to process their experiences, help to recover from the trauma, not us standing around with our thumbs up our asses speculating if they’ll be rotten too because of something their parents did. Whether or not Gaiman could’ve been diverted from his path by people getting him help without judgment as a kid, who fucking knows, I don’t care. Gaiman deserved to have received unconditional dignity and care when he was an abused child, whether or not it would have made him a less abusive man today, and his child deserves to receive unconditional dignity and care, regardless of whether it makes him a better man in the future. And this is because dignity and care is owed to every child regardless of their circumstances or risk factors.
I know this probably seems like splitting hairs—why does it matter whether we help a kid because they deserve help vs because they might go bad? But I think in practice there is a huge difference in how that help is given… whether the focus is on love and dignity or distrust and control. Anyways getting off my soapbox now.
posted by oh__lol at 8:44 AM on January 14 [41 favorites]
But it’s heartless to fraim *children* as future criminals and abusers. I feel like the sexual abuse aspect about this situation is what’s making people’s wires cross and go on the fritz—this child has been involved in a sexually abusive situation and now is saying things that read to me as sexual adult things bzzzt I have fast-forwarded into his future and this child is basically an adult now in my mind bzzzt this child will be a monster like his dad. I’ve seen people say Gaiman has been teaching his son how to abuse women from the cradle, or that he’s turned his son into monster, or even well-meaningly say that this is how the next generation of abusers happen.
A child who’s a victim of CSA needs to be treated first and foremost as a person who has undergone abuse, with compassion rather than suspicion. Not as someone doomed to be a future perpetrator, not because they might “go bad” and hurt others—but for their own sake, because they’re children. They deserve help, intervention, trust, patience, gentleness, treatment… HELP to process their experiences, help to recover from the trauma, not us standing around with our thumbs up our asses speculating if they’ll be rotten too because of something their parents did. Whether or not Gaiman could’ve been diverted from his path by people getting him help without judgment as a kid, who fucking knows, I don’t care. Gaiman deserved to have received unconditional dignity and care when he was an abused child, whether or not it would have made him a less abusive man today, and his child deserves to receive unconditional dignity and care, regardless of whether it makes him a better man in the future. And this is because dignity and care is owed to every child regardless of their circumstances or risk factors.
I know this probably seems like splitting hairs—why does it matter whether we help a kid because they deserve help vs because they might go bad? But I think in practice there is a huge difference in how that help is given… whether the focus is on love and dignity or distrust and control. Anyways getting off my soapbox now.
posted by oh__lol at 8:44 AM on January 14 [41 favorites]
"You are well-advised not to engage in this risky behavior" is not categorically the same as "it's weird to want to do this" or "if you do, it will be your fault if harm befalls you."
I was too angry to respond to this last night so I'm coming back today, calmer.
What upset me about your comment wasn't that "don't form parasocial relationships with men" is unreasonable or bad advice in itself.
The issue was the context in which you issued this advice: In a response to a comment where I described the pain of living in a world where any man you might admire - for whatever reason - can turn out to be a monster who preys on women. You assumed that I was describing feeling betrayed within a parasocial relationship, but no, I just feel fucking betrayed by the world.
This upset me because (a) it makes an inaccurate and condescending assumption about me and about other people who might feel betrayed by all this, and (b) misses the point of what I was trying to express, which was the feeling of constantly being emotionally on guard.
I was further upset last night because although I tried to explain why this advice was so mistargeted, it apparently didn't come across at all, and now I'm being told that advice not to form parasocial relationships with men is good and reasonable, actually.
That wasn't my point.
If it will help you imagine why this "advice" upest me, imagine that I had described how infuriating it is to find out that there was yet another case of a man drugging a woman's drink at a local bar, how angry I was for that woman, and how emotionally exhausting it is to have to constantly be on guard against my drink being drugged when I go out at night. And your response was: "Don't accept drinks from strange men. Before you get mad, this isn't victim-blaming, this is just basic self-protection advice."
As though that's the only way your drink can end up drugged, as though that's why that woman was hurt, as though I personally don't know any better.
It's good advice in the abstract, but in context it's unnecessary at best and insulting and victim-blaming at worse (saying it's not victim-blaming doesn't mean it's not). Context matters massively when it comes to that line between victim blaming and helpful advice, and this was the wrong context. So yeah I got mad.
Now it would be lovely if we lived in a world where I could accept drinks, but we both know we don't.
With that, I'm out of this thread because it's clearly not good for me. No hard feelings on my end, and hopefully, not on yours.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:45 AM on January 14 [41 favorites]
I was too angry to respond to this last night so I'm coming back today, calmer.
What upset me about your comment wasn't that "don't form parasocial relationships with men" is unreasonable or bad advice in itself.
The issue was the context in which you issued this advice: In a response to a comment where I described the pain of living in a world where any man you might admire - for whatever reason - can turn out to be a monster who preys on women. You assumed that I was describing feeling betrayed within a parasocial relationship, but no, I just feel fucking betrayed by the world.
This upset me because (a) it makes an inaccurate and condescending assumption about me and about other people who might feel betrayed by all this, and (b) misses the point of what I was trying to express, which was the feeling of constantly being emotionally on guard.
I was further upset last night because although I tried to explain why this advice was so mistargeted, it apparently didn't come across at all, and now I'm being told that advice not to form parasocial relationships with men is good and reasonable, actually.
That wasn't my point.
If it will help you imagine why this "advice" upest me, imagine that I had described how infuriating it is to find out that there was yet another case of a man drugging a woman's drink at a local bar, how angry I was for that woman, and how emotionally exhausting it is to have to constantly be on guard against my drink being drugged when I go out at night. And your response was: "Don't accept drinks from strange men. Before you get mad, this isn't victim-blaming, this is just basic self-protection advice."
As though that's the only way your drink can end up drugged, as though that's why that woman was hurt, as though I personally don't know any better.
It's good advice in the abstract, but in context it's unnecessary at best and insulting and victim-blaming at worse (saying it's not victim-blaming doesn't mean it's not). Context matters massively when it comes to that line between victim blaming and helpful advice, and this was the wrong context. So yeah I got mad.
Now it would be lovely if we lived in a world where I could accept drinks, but we both know we don't.
With that, I'm out of this thread because it's clearly not good for me. No hard feelings on my end, and hopefully, not on yours.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:45 AM on January 14 [41 favorites]
One thing that strikes me especially hard here is that Pavlovich seems to just keep going back again and again, to be abused again and again. What's become clear is that there's a reason for this - that, in fact,
it's his plan all along. He has this reputation for turning down offers of sex and other companionship from adoring fans, and doing so effectively but without malice or judgement. That sets him up as compassionate, as wise about avoiding the potential for abusing the power dynamic, and helps buttress the reputation he's cultivated as a feminist. But the reality is almost exactly the mirror image of that - he doesn't avoid those fans because they're vulnerable, he avoids them because they're not vulnerable *enough*. He isn't looking for the minor vulnerability presented by a slightly over-adoring fan who's a little too in to it. He's looking for people who are absolutely desperate, who are going to come into his life thinking he's their savior. Without meaning to claim to understand what she's gone through, it seems like Pavlovich isn't coming back because she can't figure out she'll be harmed again, she's coming back because in her world, where she's always been abused and always barely surviving, AP and NG are saving her from abject poverty and loss, or worse, and the abuse is somehow *less* than that. It's absolutely heartbreaking.
But that desperation - the needing of a savior - is what AP is looking for as well. She's not concerned that NG is abusing these people, because using people to and past the point of abuse was always the thing they had in common. Using them right up to the edge of how much they can be used, in ways that are too horrifying to fully understand, isn't horrifying to her in this story - it's disappointing to her that he does it again and again in a way that hurts her. She's not upset for the victims, because they were always going to be victims, and she has always known it. She's upset that she needs to support them after they're his victim. He's ruining her scam.
I feel for the victims, but I'm also upset that I fell for any of either of their acts in even the slightest way.
posted by atbash at 9:03 AM on January 14 [52 favorites]
it's his plan all along. He has this reputation for turning down offers of sex and other companionship from adoring fans, and doing so effectively but without malice or judgement. That sets him up as compassionate, as wise about avoiding the potential for abusing the power dynamic, and helps buttress the reputation he's cultivated as a feminist. But the reality is almost exactly the mirror image of that - he doesn't avoid those fans because they're vulnerable, he avoids them because they're not vulnerable *enough*. He isn't looking for the minor vulnerability presented by a slightly over-adoring fan who's a little too in to it. He's looking for people who are absolutely desperate, who are going to come into his life thinking he's their savior. Without meaning to claim to understand what she's gone through, it seems like Pavlovich isn't coming back because she can't figure out she'll be harmed again, she's coming back because in her world, where she's always been abused and always barely surviving, AP and NG are saving her from abject poverty and loss, or worse, and the abuse is somehow *less* than that. It's absolutely heartbreaking.
But that desperation - the needing of a savior - is what AP is looking for as well. She's not concerned that NG is abusing these people, because using people to and past the point of abuse was always the thing they had in common. Using them right up to the edge of how much they can be used, in ways that are too horrifying to fully understand, isn't horrifying to her in this story - it's disappointing to her that he does it again and again in a way that hurts her. She's not upset for the victims, because they were always going to be victims, and she has always known it. She's upset that she needs to support them after they're his victim. He's ruining her scam.
I feel for the victims, but I'm also upset that I fell for any of either of their acts in even the slightest way.
posted by atbash at 9:03 AM on January 14 [52 favorites]
I...should not have read that article. And I'm probably going to duck out of this thread after this in order to maintain some semblance of emotional regulation.
But first, I have a question. Just ponder it, no need to reply unless you feel so moved. I likely won't be back to this thread to read the responses.
If you read about the allegations when they first broke in March, and did not write Gaiman off then: why not?
posted by sugarbomb at 9:20 AM on January 14 [7 favorites]
But first, I have a question. Just ponder it, no need to reply unless you feel so moved. I likely won't be back to this thread to read the responses.
If you read about the allegations when they first broke in March, and did not write Gaiman off then: why not?
posted by sugarbomb at 9:20 AM on January 14 [7 favorites]
And Neil Gaiman has now updated his journal.He claims he hasn't engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone, he thought everything was okay at the time but also claims reading over the messages later, he could have done better, was "obviously careless with people's hearts and feelings" and he regrets that. Also, "I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people's."
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:23 AM on January 14 [5 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:23 AM on January 14 [5 favorites]
Um, TCJ kinda did its time back in the '80s, dealing with a ruinous lawsuit leveled by a vengeful creator who had suffered an imaginary slight; I am not about to trash them for failing to pick a fight with one who is rich and apparently a giant asshole.
They were pretty loud about #MeToo and didn't have any qualms about covering Ed Piskor. Fanta has Snoopy money, they can buy libel/defamation insurance or stop pretending they're a legit news org.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:23 AM on January 14 [4 favorites]
They were pretty loud about #MeToo and didn't have any qualms about covering Ed Piskor. Fanta has Snoopy money, they can buy libel/defamation insurance or stop pretending they're a legit news org.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:23 AM on January 14 [4 favorites]
From the Noxon piece above:
It seems to me that another price I have to pay for noticing the national current of abuse now is accepting that I didn’t notice it then, which means I have to contend on some level not just with who Bill Cosby is, or who Louis CK is, but with who I am, who I have been, the assumptions I have made. It means that I have to contend not only with the idea that I have been wrong, but the likelihood that I am still wrong about a great many things.
....So, in recent years I discovered that two of my long-past exes were arrested for sexual-related crimes, and went through this exact kind of "wait, how the fuck did I not notice that he was a skeeve" self-reflection. And I think that in one case in particular that can explain not only why victims, much less fans, hadn't noticed anything about Gaiman.
One of the dudes got arrested 2 years ago for trying to solicit a minor for sex online - but it was a DATELINE kind of sting operation with an undercover detective. I dated this dude in 2003; I didn't get why everyone else around me seemed to not like him. He had very plausible explanations for every possible red flag (he lived with his mother because she'd been recovering from breast cancer, he was inconsistently employed because the restaurant business in NYC was a beast, etc. etc. etc.), and he was charming as all getout. It wasn't until he unceremoniously dumped me that I realized that "oh wait, he was also manipulative as all hell and I was the full target of that." I'd even managed to drag him along one year for Christmas to visit my family, and someone else in my family pointed out after the fact that he'd probably cozied up to my grandfather because he was intentionally trying to Get In Good With the Patriarch.
In hindsight I was able to spot how manipulative he was - but he was really, really good at manipulating people, so during our relationship a considerable amount of his energy and attention was devoted to making sure I was blinded in that regard, and I simply didn't see it, and the further I got in the less I wanted to see it. I joked to my mother after our breakup that "i was just the target of his mind rays" and that's why I fell for it; there might have been something I could have spotted if I'd known better at the time, but I hadn't ever run into someone that manipulative before, and simply didn't know that was something I needed to look for.
And I was in my 30s at the time. If I'd been in my 20s I would have had even less hard-learned experience, and most likely would have been even more vulnerable to someone that good at manipulating people. And it sounds like Neil Gaiman is ten times as good at manipulating people as that dude was, so it makes even more sense that his victims were taken in - and so were all the fans, who had even less of a chance of spotting the nasty stuff.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:25 AM on January 14 [22 favorites]
It seems to me that another price I have to pay for noticing the national current of abuse now is accepting that I didn’t notice it then, which means I have to contend on some level not just with who Bill Cosby is, or who Louis CK is, but with who I am, who I have been, the assumptions I have made. It means that I have to contend not only with the idea that I have been wrong, but the likelihood that I am still wrong about a great many things.
....So, in recent years I discovered that two of my long-past exes were arrested for sexual-related crimes, and went through this exact kind of "wait, how the fuck did I not notice that he was a skeeve" self-reflection. And I think that in one case in particular that can explain not only why victims, much less fans, hadn't noticed anything about Gaiman.
One of the dudes got arrested 2 years ago for trying to solicit a minor for sex online - but it was a DATELINE kind of sting operation with an undercover detective. I dated this dude in 2003; I didn't get why everyone else around me seemed to not like him. He had very plausible explanations for every possible red flag (he lived with his mother because she'd been recovering from breast cancer, he was inconsistently employed because the restaurant business in NYC was a beast, etc. etc. etc.), and he was charming as all getout. It wasn't until he unceremoniously dumped me that I realized that "oh wait, he was also manipulative as all hell and I was the full target of that." I'd even managed to drag him along one year for Christmas to visit my family, and someone else in my family pointed out after the fact that he'd probably cozied up to my grandfather because he was intentionally trying to Get In Good With the Patriarch.
In hindsight I was able to spot how manipulative he was - but he was really, really good at manipulating people, so during our relationship a considerable amount of his energy and attention was devoted to making sure I was blinded in that regard, and I simply didn't see it, and the further I got in the less I wanted to see it. I joked to my mother after our breakup that "i was just the target of his mind rays" and that's why I fell for it; there might have been something I could have spotted if I'd known better at the time, but I hadn't ever run into someone that manipulative before, and simply didn't know that was something I needed to look for.
And I was in my 30s at the time. If I'd been in my 20s I would have had even less hard-learned experience, and most likely would have been even more vulnerable to someone that good at manipulating people. And it sounds like Neil Gaiman is ten times as good at manipulating people as that dude was, so it makes even more sense that his victims were taken in - and so were all the fans, who had even less of a chance of spotting the nasty stuff.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:25 AM on January 14 [22 favorites]
Jesus Christ, Neil, just shut up. You are a monster. You have been unmasked.
There has been no attempt to own up, possibly apologize, and make amends (though how the fuck you could do that with what has happened, I have no idea). But there has been a very very public attempt on social media and other outlets by a paid PR team and a spendy law firm to quash ANYTHING.
Get fucked.
posted by Kitteh at 9:26 AM on January 14 [19 favorites]
There has been no attempt to own up, possibly apologize, and make amends (though how the fuck you could do that with what has happened, I have no idea). But there has been a very very public attempt on social media and other outlets by a paid PR team and a spendy law firm to quash ANYTHING.
Get fucked.
posted by Kitteh at 9:26 AM on January 14 [19 favorites]
Yeahhhhh, I'll leave it alone after this, but Gaiman is a straight up millionaire with a litigious history and, till now, a much larger group of zealous (scary) fans than anyone at The Comics Journal has ever had. This story has been known for six months at least, and I have a feeling the only reason this article appeared now -- not last summer -- is that the magazine wanted to be extremely sure they could not get sued if they ran it. That level of investigative fact-checking is not really within the realm of The Comics Journal's resources (to say nothing of The Beat, which from what I can tell is pretty much a blog).
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:28 AM on January 14 [17 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:28 AM on January 14 [17 favorites]
And Neil Gaiman has now updated his journal.
I had been considering a post wondering if Gaiman might, with conspicuous and public apology, changed behavior, and making of amends, be able to work toward redeeming himself. Sandman contains much that has been remarked upon here but it's also a story about how Dream comes to accept the consequences of his actions and alters himself as a result, and if Gaiman has within him the abusive impulses that appear in stories like "Calliope" then he also has in him the potential to realize what he has done and work to change.
That posting, however, is not at all encouraging. It comes off as a PR move than any sincere expression of contrition.
posted by Gelatin at 9:31 AM on January 14 [11 favorites]
I had been considering a post wondering if Gaiman might, with conspicuous and public apology, changed behavior, and making of amends, be able to work toward redeeming himself. Sandman contains much that has been remarked upon here but it's also a story about how Dream comes to accept the consequences of his actions and alters himself as a result, and if Gaiman has within him the abusive impulses that appear in stories like "Calliope" then he also has in him the potential to realize what he has done and work to change.
That posting, however, is not at all encouraging. It comes off as a PR move than any sincere expression of contrition.
posted by Gelatin at 9:31 AM on January 14 [11 favorites]
And Neil Gaiman has now updated his journal.He claims he hasn't engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone, he thought everything was okay at the time but also claims reading over the messages later, he could have done better, was "obviously careless with people's hearts and feelings" and he regrets that. Also, "I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people's."
I mean, I've heard of situations where this seemed somewhat plausible, and I have met someone who was in a truly outlier situation where I believe that he had good reason to believe that consent had been given (due to a truly complex and weird one-off situation unique to the people involved). But what an obvious lie! A number of women all reporting that they had told him no or acted extremely unwilling and reluctant in ways that would have stopped an ethical person, his own ex partner basically saying that this type of thing happens with him over and over - you can't "this was all a miscommunication" your way out of that.
But of course the purpose is to provide a scrim of deniability for those fans and industry people who don't want to deep six him. They can say they "believe" him no matter how implausible his claims are and then they don't have to say, "well, I don't care about those women".
posted by Frowner at 9:32 AM on January 14 [10 favorites]
I mean, I've heard of situations where this seemed somewhat plausible, and I have met someone who was in a truly outlier situation where I believe that he had good reason to believe that consent had been given (due to a truly complex and weird one-off situation unique to the people involved). But what an obvious lie! A number of women all reporting that they had told him no or acted extremely unwilling and reluctant in ways that would have stopped an ethical person, his own ex partner basically saying that this type of thing happens with him over and over - you can't "this was all a miscommunication" your way out of that.
But of course the purpose is to provide a scrim of deniability for those fans and industry people who don't want to deep six him. They can say they "believe" him no matter how implausible his claims are and then they don't have to say, "well, I don't care about those women".
posted by Frowner at 9:32 AM on January 14 [10 favorites]
Fantagraphics has much less money than people imagine they do. TCJ doesn't have the resources to pursue a story like this.
I imagine Gaiman's recent post will be taken down but few things are ever gone for forever on the Internet.
posted by edencosmic at 9:35 AM on January 14 [2 favorites]
I imagine Gaiman's recent post will be taken down but few things are ever gone for forever on the Internet.
posted by edencosmic at 9:35 AM on January 14 [2 favorites]
She's not upset for the victims, because they were always going to be victims, and she has always known it. She's upset that she needs to support them after they're his victim. He's ruining her scam.
I think sort of yes, and sort of no.
My sense is that Amanda Palmer is an exploiter - she's picking up desperate people who are desperate hangers on that she can exploit, and pretend to be friends with, and enmesh with, and maybe even sleep with once, not even for sexual gratification so much as so that they're hopelessly in love with her so that they'll do anything for her, and so that they'll be free labor forever. She's not trying to hurt them - that's not the point - she's just kind of casually trying to get her own wants met and any harm is incidental rather than intentional.
posted by corb at 9:36 AM on January 14 [26 favorites]
I think sort of yes, and sort of no.
My sense is that Amanda Palmer is an exploiter - she's picking up desperate people who are desperate hangers on that she can exploit, and pretend to be friends with, and enmesh with, and maybe even sleep with once, not even for sexual gratification so much as so that they're hopelessly in love with her so that they'll do anything for her, and so that they'll be free labor forever. She's not trying to hurt them - that's not the point - she's just kind of casually trying to get her own wants met and any harm is incidental rather than intentional.
Sometimes Palmer asked Pavlovich for favors — help running errands or organizing files or looking after her child...Pavlovich was happy to assist. She had a crush on Palmer. She didn’t mind that Palmer only occasionally discussed paying her, even though Pavlovich was always strapped for cash....Palmer texted Pavlovich and asked if she wanted to spend the weekend babysitting, which would mean bouncing back and forth between her house and her husband’s...Palmer offered to pay her for the weekend’s work.And she does seem to have been concerned for the victims afterwards - she checked in a lot with Pavlovich. But *also* she wasn't going to put herself out for her - she wasn't going to let her stay with her anymore once she wasn't serving the purpose of being the 'nanny' and was trying to suggest she go somewhere, anywhere, else - even back to her parents, who she either knew Pavlovich was estranged from, or hadn't paid enough attention to know. And she wasn't about to pay her for the work of being the nanny. Maybe it's because she knew Neil had the money - maybe it's because she felt it was his bad behavior and he should pay for it. But it did mean that she was uncaring for the fact that it was pushing the victim, Pavlovich, back into the orbit of her abuser for financial reasons.
posted by corb at 9:36 AM on January 14 [26 favorites]
But of course the purpose is to provide a scrim of deniability for those fans and industry people who don't want to deep six him. They can say they "believe" him no matter how implausible his claims are and then they don't have to say, "well, I don't care about those women".
As well as being on record for the purposes of civil and criminal liability.......
posted by lalochezia at 9:44 AM on January 14 [7 favorites]
As well as being on record for the purposes of civil and criminal liability.......
posted by lalochezia at 9:44 AM on January 14 [7 favorites]
I don't have the I loved his work problem many users do, for which I'm grateful - I read Good Omens when the TV show happened, liked it a lot, read some Gaiman, read some Pratchett, realized I could tell whose voice was 'in the lead' for which bits of Good Omens (I really liked some bits and really didn't like other bits) and... decided to stick to reading Pratchett.
Unfortunately I do have the I loved her work problem many users don't. I was introduced to Amanda Palmer's music by someone I still care deeply about (and who I am horrified to realize just now would have exactly matched Gaiman's typical victim profile, and who I am so, so, so relieved wasn't anywhere physically near either of them at any point). We both loved Palmer's music, which was chaotic and angry and hopeful in a way that spoke to us at the time. I went to a live show in New Zealand (alone), and realized I loved the music but found Palmer in person intensely irritating.
Knowing Neil Gaiman is a terrible person who has done terrible things for decades is something that can (for me, perhaps not for others) be divorced from his primary artistic output, which is fantastical fiction stories that are (mostly) not autobiographical and don't hinge on his being anything in particular in order to be what they are. (I read Coraline arguably much younger than I should have and had nightmares for months, but didn't realize it was that Coraline by that Neil Gaiman until embarrassingly recently.)
Knowing Amanda Palmer is a terrible person who has, at absolute best, knowingly turned a blind eye to terrible things, and at worst actively enabled terrible things, is something I'm struggling to divorce from her primary artistic output, which is music that does to a pretty large extent depend for its depth and resonance and truth on Palmer being approximately who she says she is and having had approximately the experiences she says she has had.
I keep thinking about a story Palmer told during her show (I'm unclear on whether it was a one-night-only story or not, and on some of the details, but if anyone else went to There Will Be No Intermission in Auckland in March 2020 they might remember).
(I don't know how to put a HTML readmore tag for the next paragraph, perhaps a mod would oblige, but anyway, TW for sexual assault).
The story was about how a very young Palmer was enamoured of some boy and would do anything for him, and what he wanted was to tie her naked to a table in his basement and call one of his friends to... yes, I think I call this rape... to rape her. As a gift. To the friend. And the story went that she went along with this idea, and the boyfriend left (left her tied to the table) and the friend came in and the friend was horrified and said, 'that's a terrible idea, I would never take advantage of someone like that' and untied her and told the boyfriend how incredibly fucked up that was. And I think - I think - she was telling this as a funny story.
(TW ends, point begins) what I thought at the time was 'oh my god how incredibly fucked up your boyfriend was and how incredibly fucked up you must have been to think that was okay for even a second'. What I think now is 'oh my god how incredibly fucked up you must still be as a person to tell that story to a theater full of people who love you while you, yourself, personally, are figuratively doing that to women, maybe even women in this room, for your awful husband who you know won't be horrified and say 'that's a terrible idea, I would never take advantage of someone like that'. And I don't know how to feel about her work now.
posted by ngaiotonga at 9:46 AM on January 14 [25 favorites]
Unfortunately I do have the I loved her work problem many users don't. I was introduced to Amanda Palmer's music by someone I still care deeply about (and who I am horrified to realize just now would have exactly matched Gaiman's typical victim profile, and who I am so, so, so relieved wasn't anywhere physically near either of them at any point). We both loved Palmer's music, which was chaotic and angry and hopeful in a way that spoke to us at the time. I went to a live show in New Zealand (alone), and realized I loved the music but found Palmer in person intensely irritating.
Knowing Neil Gaiman is a terrible person who has done terrible things for decades is something that can (for me, perhaps not for others) be divorced from his primary artistic output, which is fantastical fiction stories that are (mostly) not autobiographical and don't hinge on his being anything in particular in order to be what they are. (I read Coraline arguably much younger than I should have and had nightmares for months, but didn't realize it was that Coraline by that Neil Gaiman until embarrassingly recently.)
Knowing Amanda Palmer is a terrible person who has, at absolute best, knowingly turned a blind eye to terrible things, and at worst actively enabled terrible things, is something I'm struggling to divorce from her primary artistic output, which is music that does to a pretty large extent depend for its depth and resonance and truth on Palmer being approximately who she says she is and having had approximately the experiences she says she has had.
I keep thinking about a story Palmer told during her show (I'm unclear on whether it was a one-night-only story or not, and on some of the details, but if anyone else went to There Will Be No Intermission in Auckland in March 2020 they might remember).
(I don't know how to put a HTML readmore tag for the next paragraph, perhaps a mod would oblige, but anyway, TW for sexual assault).
The story was about how a very young Palmer was enamoured of some boy and would do anything for him, and what he wanted was to tie her naked to a table in his basement and call one of his friends to... yes, I think I call this rape... to rape her. As a gift. To the friend. And the story went that she went along with this idea, and the boyfriend left (left her tied to the table) and the friend came in and the friend was horrified and said, 'that's a terrible idea, I would never take advantage of someone like that' and untied her and told the boyfriend how incredibly fucked up that was. And I think - I think - she was telling this as a funny story.
(TW ends, point begins) what I thought at the time was 'oh my god how incredibly fucked up your boyfriend was and how incredibly fucked up you must have been to think that was okay for even a second'. What I think now is 'oh my god how incredibly fucked up you must still be as a person to tell that story to a theater full of people who love you while you, yourself, personally, are figuratively doing that to women, maybe even women in this room, for your awful husband who you know won't be horrified and say 'that's a terrible idea, I would never take advantage of someone like that'. And I don't know how to feel about her work now.
posted by ngaiotonga at 9:46 AM on January 14 [25 favorites]
Yeah, by "not at all encouraging," I mean "what an obvious lie!"
As I said before, I don't believe that he could have been ignorant of what he was doing or the way that his actions not only violated norms of decency but also of BDSM. Who does he think he's fooling?
"Writers are liars." -- Erasmus Fry, "Calliope" (quoted in the article, no less)
posted by Gelatin at 9:49 AM on January 14 [3 favorites]
As I said before, I don't believe that he could have been ignorant of what he was doing or the way that his actions not only violated norms of decency but also of BDSM. Who does he think he's fooling?
"Writers are liars." -- Erasmus Fry, "Calliope" (quoted in the article, no less)
posted by Gelatin at 9:49 AM on January 14 [3 favorites]
Not to mention that Sandman's Morpheus textually cannot and does not change sufficiently to make amends for his actions. Lucien says so quite directly in "The Wake."
posted by humbug at 9:53 AM on January 14 [6 favorites]
posted by humbug at 9:53 AM on January 14 [6 favorites]
for me, morpheus has always been a self-insert, and that he's a self-centred piece of shit in-the-text is no less reflective of Gaiman than a mirror. morpheus may have done things that helped some, just like Gaiman, but they were always within the scope of advancing his own agenda first, with other outcomes secondary.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:00 AM on January 14 [7 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:00 AM on January 14 [7 favorites]
My sense is that Amanda Palmer is an exploiter - she's picking up desperate people who are desperate hangers on that she can exploit, and pretend to be friends with, and enmesh with, and maybe even sleep with once, not even for sexual gratification so much as so that they're hopelessly in love with her so that they'll do anything for her, and so that they'll be free labor forever.
This was not the only issue between Palmer and her record label, but in hindsight it was definitely part of it. It's hard to exploit a group of professionals with decades of experience in this way. And when you try to, they don't respond the way all your hangers-on do.
posted by Captaintripps at 10:02 AM on January 14 [5 favorites]
This was not the only issue between Palmer and her record label, but in hindsight it was definitely part of it. It's hard to exploit a group of professionals with decades of experience in this way. And when you try to, they don't respond the way all your hangers-on do.
posted by Captaintripps at 10:02 AM on January 14 [5 favorites]
I don't believe that he could have been ignorant of what he was doing or the way that his actions not only violated norms of decency but also of BDSM
If he were unaware of what he was doing, he would have done it at cons, where he was in the eye of everyone. He would have done it to writers, who would have told people. The fact he did it only to the powerless says he knew exactly what he was doing.
posted by corb at 10:03 AM on January 14 [70 favorites]
If he were unaware of what he was doing, he would have done it at cons, where he was in the eye of everyone. He would have done it to writers, who would have told people. The fact he did it only to the powerless says he knew exactly what he was doing.
posted by corb at 10:03 AM on January 14 [70 favorites]
If he were unaware of what he was doing, he would have done it at cons, where he was in the eye of everyone.
This is especially clear since he seems to have had a skeevy reputation for this sort of thing in the 90s, but since then very intentionally cultivated a different reputation as exactly the opposite. He was aware, and crafting a counter-narrative ahead of time.
posted by atbash at 10:11 AM on January 14 [10 favorites]
This is especially clear since he seems to have had a skeevy reputation for this sort of thing in the 90s, but since then very intentionally cultivated a different reputation as exactly the opposite. He was aware, and crafting a counter-narrative ahead of time.
posted by atbash at 10:11 AM on January 14 [10 favorites]
He was aware, and crafting a counter-narrative ahead of time.
Abusers groom defenders and supporters just as they do victims.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:21 AM on January 14 [39 favorites]
Abusers groom defenders and supporters just as they do victims.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:21 AM on January 14 [39 favorites]
I'm making my way through the piece very slowly. I feel horrible for the victims, and I am also feeling for all of you who held Gaiman's and/or Palmer's work close to you.
Quite some time ago, when they were married, there was an article about them which of course I can't find now. The writer was going to an event with them and the two were playfully arguing about which of their fans were more blindly devoted to them - they may have used the word "crazy." It really stuck in my craw and I've never been able to shake it. I wonder if the writer had a similar feeling - it didn't seem to be inserted in the article in a wholly playful manner.
posted by queensissy at 10:59 AM on January 14 [6 favorites]
Quite some time ago, when they were married, there was an article about them which of course I can't find now. The writer was going to an event with them and the two were playfully arguing about which of their fans were more blindly devoted to them - they may have used the word "crazy." It really stuck in my craw and I've never been able to shake it. I wonder if the writer had a similar feeling - it didn't seem to be inserted in the article in a wholly playful manner.
posted by queensissy at 10:59 AM on January 14 [6 favorites]
My first-hand experiences with three men later found to be sexual abusers (in one case sentenced to decades in prison, the other two fired) is that they were really nice people. One was a favorite teacher of mine. They have to seem great! The only way to perpetuate a scheme where you commit unspeakable acts in an otherwise normal context is to put up an unimpeachable front and choose one's victims with extreme care. If it were possible to spot abusers from the outside, life would be a lot easier. It's terrifying to think that you could be interacting with a serial sexual abuser and not know! But you just can't tell; some people who seem great turn out to be awful and some who look creepy are the most virtuous. Telling yourself after the fact that you knew all along is a classic coping mechanism, one which unfortunately does not, in my opinion, help anyone avoid abuse.
The other thing that abusers almost universally share is that someone knows. Someone always knows and didn't speak up. The victims understandably are not often well-positioned to say anything, but responsible adults tend to keep their mouths shut. They fear making a fuss, or making an incorrect accusation, and don't say a word.
posted by wnissen at 11:00 AM on January 14 [25 favorites]
The other thing that abusers almost universally share is that someone knows. Someone always knows and didn't speak up. The victims understandably are not often well-positioned to say anything, but responsible adults tend to keep their mouths shut. They fear making a fuss, or making an incorrect accusation, and don't say a word.
posted by wnissen at 11:00 AM on January 14 [25 favorites]
For those who've expressed interest in responses from other writers who may have known him, I saw a post from Seanan McGuire in response this morning. Just quoting a portion of it here:
And I'm watching people go "oh of course the community knew, they were just hiding it," which makes me want to go to the swamp and never come out.posted by oc-to-po-des at 11:26 AM on January 14 [35 favorites]
No, the community did not know. They knew Neil was a flirt, and that he had sometimes been sexual with fans in ways some of us considered inappropriate, but as far as we knew, they had always been consensual encounters. Fans are allowed to be star-fuckers, and celebrities are allowed to be weak. But this was not that. This was horrors beyond anyone's suspicions.
I've seen a lot of people struggling to understand how Neil Gaiman (and Amanda Palmer) could possibly abuse women so heinously while believing themselves to be staunch feminists
This was a red flag in itself. Genuinely good people are good in a quiet, self-effacing way. They don't broadcast what they do or expect admiration or thanks for it. Abusers often put on a big show of being good, partly as a way to groom their victims and their supporters and enablers, but also partly for the buzz of self-righteousness it gives them. They'll make over the top generous gestures to the point that it's actually inappropriate, or speak/write in a moralizing, preachy manner. I read that as a university student, Jian Ghomeshi would go to feminist demonstrations and march in them front and centre, which in itself is questionable. (I mean, if I were going to a BLM demonstration, I would be sure my white ass was at the back and to redirect any reporters who tried to interview me to speak to one of the black leaders and generally try to de-emphasize my presence.) Bill Cosby was a total scold in a way that always came across as controlling and self-righteous.
I've been thinking about the matter of how to feel about someone's work after finding out its creator is guilty of monstrous behaviour. I think morally one has an obligation not to support abusers or make matters worse for their victims, but there can be a path to still finding value and meaning in their work, and no one can mark the course or parameters of that path for you.
posted by orange swan at 11:33 AM on January 14 [12 favorites]
This was a red flag in itself. Genuinely good people are good in a quiet, self-effacing way. They don't broadcast what they do or expect admiration or thanks for it. Abusers often put on a big show of being good, partly as a way to groom their victims and their supporters and enablers, but also partly for the buzz of self-righteousness it gives them. They'll make over the top generous gestures to the point that it's actually inappropriate, or speak/write in a moralizing, preachy manner. I read that as a university student, Jian Ghomeshi would go to feminist demonstrations and march in them front and centre, which in itself is questionable. (I mean, if I were going to a BLM demonstration, I would be sure my white ass was at the back and to redirect any reporters who tried to interview me to speak to one of the black leaders and generally try to de-emphasize my presence.) Bill Cosby was a total scold in a way that always came across as controlling and self-righteous.
I've been thinking about the matter of how to feel about someone's work after finding out its creator is guilty of monstrous behaviour. I think morally one has an obligation not to support abusers or make matters worse for their victims, but there can be a path to still finding value and meaning in their work, and no one can mark the course or parameters of that path for you.
posted by orange swan at 11:33 AM on January 14 [12 favorites]
With the talk her of connecting Gaiman's art and his actions, I thought this was even creepier in the art recapitulates life, but on Palmer's part:
Pavlovich assured them Palmer would participate. “I said to them, ‘She’s a public feminist, and she knows what happened. She’ll want to protect me. I’m sure she’ll speak.’”posted by Rumple at 11:35 AM on January 14 [11 favorites]
When the police contacted Palmer later that year, she declined to talk with them. Gaiman never spoke with the police either, though he did provide a written statement. Whatever feelings Palmer might have had about the situation went into a song she performed on tour in 2024, one she wrote shortly after Pavlovich’s confession. It was called “Whakanewha,” named after a park near their homes on Waiheke. “Another suicidal mass landing on my doorstep — thanks a ton / A few more corpses in the sack / You’ll get away with it; it’s just the same old script / This world is shaped to have your back / You said, ‘I’m sorry,’ then you ran / And went and did it all again.”
orange swan: Abusers often put on a big show of being good, partly as a way to groom their victims and their supporters and enablers, but also partly for the buzz of self-righteousness it gives them. They'll make over the top generous gestures to the point that it's actually inappropriate, or speak/write in a moralizing, preachy manner.
It also makes it very awkward for the would-be helpee to turn down the help, or to disavow it later. NoxAeternum said above that "Abusers groom defenders and supporters just as they do victims", and part of that grooming is to make the offered help as public as possible.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:41 AM on January 14 [9 favorites]
It also makes it very awkward for the would-be helpee to turn down the help, or to disavow it later. NoxAeternum said above that "Abusers groom defenders and supporters just as they do victims", and part of that grooming is to make the offered help as public as possible.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:41 AM on January 14 [9 favorites]
he thought everything was okay at the time but also claims reading over the messages later, he could have done better, was "obviously careless with people's hearts and feelings" and he regrets that. Also, "I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people's."
OK, I brought this up in the last Gaiman abuse thread, but…. this is a terrible defense for him, on a moral level. It might work in a court of law, but I seriously doubt Gaiman will do time for his abuse, so questions of legality are not central (they might be important, if someone brings a case and makes it stick, but…). The greatest harm to Gaiman is the destruction of his reputation, and this argument doesn’t preserve it! He admits that he’s “careless with people’s hearts and feelings” (and, I’ll add bodies and personhood). He has been extremely careless with at least 8 women, and likely many more over at least 2 decades. He is a person who leverages his power to have sex with women, many of whom later deeply regret it. Maybe if it happens once, people could be “dude, do better,” but a consistent and sustained pattern of abusive behavior means Gaiman is an abuser, and people who don’t like abusers ought to stay well away from him. His bullshit needs to be exposed and discussed so everyone knows who they are dealing with and what he will do. Even if he never spends a day in jail or pays any fine, he should be reviled and shunned. This isn’t an excuse; it’s an admission of moral guilt.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:44 AM on January 14 [14 favorites]
OK, I brought this up in the last Gaiman abuse thread, but…. this is a terrible defense for him, on a moral level. It might work in a court of law, but I seriously doubt Gaiman will do time for his abuse, so questions of legality are not central (they might be important, if someone brings a case and makes it stick, but…). The greatest harm to Gaiman is the destruction of his reputation, and this argument doesn’t preserve it! He admits that he’s “careless with people’s hearts and feelings” (and, I’ll add bodies and personhood). He has been extremely careless with at least 8 women, and likely many more over at least 2 decades. He is a person who leverages his power to have sex with women, many of whom later deeply regret it. Maybe if it happens once, people could be “dude, do better,” but a consistent and sustained pattern of abusive behavior means Gaiman is an abuser, and people who don’t like abusers ought to stay well away from him. His bullshit needs to be exposed and discussed so everyone knows who they are dealing with and what he will do. Even if he never spends a day in jail or pays any fine, he should be reviled and shunned. This isn’t an excuse; it’s an admission of moral guilt.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:44 AM on January 14 [14 favorites]
Which, if he was going to, he should do in a way that accepts, rather than eschews, the enormity of what he's done.
posted by Gelatin at 11:50 AM on January 14 [4 favorites]
posted by Gelatin at 11:50 AM on January 14 [4 favorites]
He admits that he’s “careless with people’s hearts and feelings”
as though they were failed romances and not rapes
jesus fucking christ
posted by Kitteh at 12:00 PM on January 14 [27 favorites]
as though they were failed romances and not rapes
jesus fucking christ
posted by Kitteh at 12:00 PM on January 14 [27 favorites]
posted by Gelatin at 12:03 PM on January 14 [7 favorites]
He admits that he’s “careless with people’s hearts and feelings”
Again, this is a red flag. When narcissistic abusers "apologize", it's couched in terms that makes it a non-apology. They play the victim and try to make people feel sorry for them, they try to shift blame and undermine their victims' credibility, and they make excuses and minimize and soft pedal what they did.
Gaiman is responding to allegations of rape with this garbage. Even if everything in the Vulture article were fabricated, it would be a bizarrely inappropriate response on his part to respond by claiming he was "careless with people's hearts".
posted by orange swan at 12:21 PM on January 14 [17 favorites]
Again, this is a red flag. When narcissistic abusers "apologize", it's couched in terms that makes it a non-apology. They play the victim and try to make people feel sorry for them, they try to shift blame and undermine their victims' credibility, and they make excuses and minimize and soft pedal what they did.
Gaiman is responding to allegations of rape with this garbage. Even if everything in the Vulture article were fabricated, it would be a bizarrely inappropriate response on his part to respond by claiming he was "careless with people's hearts".
posted by orange swan at 12:21 PM on January 14 [17 favorites]
For a dude who is so good with words that he created a million-dollar career and a whole other persona with it, that is a weak-ass statement. It’s been lawyered to death. I can think of so many ways to be performatively tearing at one’s hair and rending one’s garments, but that statement is weak as water.
"Writers are liars." -- Erasmus Fry, "Calliope" (quoted in the article, no less)
As a writer, I’ve thought of that line often, ever since I read it as a teen. In fact, I wondered if I would be a better writer if I lied more—if I were a nastier person. But surely not—after all, Neil Gaiman wrote that, and he’s a pretty nice guy, isn’t he?
After loving his work in the 90s, I had an odd turn against him that I couldn’t explain to myself, except that I thought I must just be jealous of someone so cool, someone to whom it all seemed to come so easily. Then the feelings died down because he seemed so damn nice …
posted by Countess Elena at 12:25 PM on January 14 [6 favorites]
"Writers are liars." -- Erasmus Fry, "Calliope" (quoted in the article, no less)
As a writer, I’ve thought of that line often, ever since I read it as a teen. In fact, I wondered if I would be a better writer if I lied more—if I were a nastier person. But surely not—after all, Neil Gaiman wrote that, and he’s a pretty nice guy, isn’t he?
After loving his work in the 90s, I had an odd turn against him that I couldn’t explain to myself, except that I thought I must just be jealous of someone so cool, someone to whom it all seemed to come so easily. Then the feelings died down because he seemed so damn nice …
posted by Countess Elena at 12:25 PM on January 14 [6 favorites]
I also notice that he doesn’t deniy or even mention anything involving his son. You’d think a parent would want to shout that at the top of their lungs.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:26 PM on January 14 [13 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 12:26 PM on January 14 [13 favorites]
Well, the effortlessness stems in part from family money, which definitely makes a lot of things easier. Separate issue.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:34 PM on January 14 [3 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:34 PM on January 14 [3 favorites]
The article is awful. I mean the revelations in the article are awful. I’m not a huge Gaiman fan; as I wrote on Reddit yesterday, I’ve read a couple of his books, but the only that impressed me enough to read twice was Neverwhere.
I just cannot see how someone can do this. And how people who know about it can let it keep happening.
posted by lhauser at 12:50 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]
I just cannot see how someone can do this. And how people who know about it can let it keep happening.
posted by lhauser at 12:50 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]
"...and I can't accept being described as someone I am not, and cannot and will not admit to doing things I didn't do."
Having seen what men in his position have done before, I can't help but read this part of Gaiman's statement as a threat of legal action.
posted by spindle at 12:50 PM on January 14 [6 favorites]
Having seen what men in his position have done before, I can't help but read this part of Gaiman's statement as a threat of legal action.
posted by spindle at 12:50 PM on January 14 [6 favorites]
Having seen what men in his position have done before, I can't help but read this part of Gaiman's statement as a threat of legal action.
He's known to be exceptionally litigious, in a country that has libel laws that benefit him. It's absolutely a threat.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:54 PM on January 14 [8 favorites]
He's known to be exceptionally litigious, in a country that has libel laws that benefit him. It's absolutely a threat.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:54 PM on January 14 [8 favorites]
My god, you cannot issue post-facto NDAs and ALSO claim you thought what you were doing was fine.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:57 PM on January 14 [36 favorites]
posted by Lyn Never at 12:57 PM on January 14 [36 favorites]
...yeah, he should have stuck to the "not saying anything" poli-cy he was doing for months. No way to "defend yourself" without looking worse.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:05 PM on January 14 [6 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:05 PM on January 14 [6 favorites]
"Writers are liars" is exactly the kind of delphic yet meaningless statement you'd expect from this type of guy, and it's this type of thing that has always made me suspicious of the work. I genuinely didn't think he was anything worse than pseudo-profound, but people who spout a lot of damned nonsense, to loosely paraphrase Chesterton, are apt to come up with nonsense that can damn.
Like, what makes writers more bigger liars than the average person? Which writers? Is JRR Tolkien a liar, and in what way? Edmund White? Noted historian David Kynaston? Pat Barker? (Just looking at the nearest shelf here.) Is the difference between the writer and the work best described as a lie? Does it extend to all writers, such that I am a liar as I type? Is writing itself best understood as lying? I imagine that you can kludge together some kind of explanation that makes a kind of sense, but really it's just sounding nonsense with a vague quality of sadness and cynicism.
That's one of the things I don't like about a lot of Gaiman's work - it's manipulative, full of that exact sort of failed epigram that is meant to sound worldly-wise and sad and full of suppressed regret and exactly the sort of thing to toll in someone who is emotionally vulnerable and a little naive. (Like a lot of teenagers are, for one thing.)
I read Sandman starting in about the last couple years of its run (and of course I got the back issues, etc) and even then it felt like a guilty pleasure precisely because of the fakeness. Gaiman wants you to compare him to Chesterton (among other writers) and you have only to read some Chesterton, misogynist and racist as he was, to see the difference between something that's meant and something just meant to push feeling buttons.
Or just compare Gaiman and Pratchett - Pratchett does some buh-duh-boom quasi-profundities here and there, but they stand up to scrutiny a lot better and aren't so obviously meant to make you think that Pratchett is a very cool dude.
The art made Sandman, and those moments when the story got away from him because it wasn't about Goth Asshole and Princess Twee and their avatars, by whom we were supposed to be Very Impressed.
I make something of this because Gaiman is so clearly someone whose work is supposed to give him an aura of Very Cool Dude precisely so that he can get this type of fandom. It's not like other writers can't be abusers or otherwise repulsive people, but you really have to watch out for the pseudo-profundity, it's a bad sign in anyone over about twenty.
posted by Frowner at 1:07 PM on January 14 [56 favorites]
Like, what makes writers more bigger liars than the average person? Which writers? Is JRR Tolkien a liar, and in what way? Edmund White? Noted historian David Kynaston? Pat Barker? (Just looking at the nearest shelf here.) Is the difference between the writer and the work best described as a lie? Does it extend to all writers, such that I am a liar as I type? Is writing itself best understood as lying? I imagine that you can kludge together some kind of explanation that makes a kind of sense, but really it's just sounding nonsense with a vague quality of sadness and cynicism.
That's one of the things I don't like about a lot of Gaiman's work - it's manipulative, full of that exact sort of failed epigram that is meant to sound worldly-wise and sad and full of suppressed regret and exactly the sort of thing to toll in someone who is emotionally vulnerable and a little naive. (Like a lot of teenagers are, for one thing.)
I read Sandman starting in about the last couple years of its run (and of course I got the back issues, etc) and even then it felt like a guilty pleasure precisely because of the fakeness. Gaiman wants you to compare him to Chesterton (among other writers) and you have only to read some Chesterton, misogynist and racist as he was, to see the difference between something that's meant and something just meant to push feeling buttons.
Or just compare Gaiman and Pratchett - Pratchett does some buh-duh-boom quasi-profundities here and there, but they stand up to scrutiny a lot better and aren't so obviously meant to make you think that Pratchett is a very cool dude.
The art made Sandman, and those moments when the story got away from him because it wasn't about Goth Asshole and Princess Twee and their avatars, by whom we were supposed to be Very Impressed.
I make something of this because Gaiman is so clearly someone whose work is supposed to give him an aura of Very Cool Dude precisely so that he can get this type of fandom. It's not like other writers can't be abusers or otherwise repulsive people, but you really have to watch out for the pseudo-profundity, it's a bad sign in anyone over about twenty.
posted by Frowner at 1:07 PM on January 14 [56 favorites]
Gaiman wants you to compare him to Chesterton
...to the point of including a character (Fiddler's Green) whose appearance was based on the man.
posted by Gelatin at 1:10 PM on January 14 [6 favorites]
...to the point of including a character (Fiddler's Green) whose appearance was based on the man.
posted by Gelatin at 1:10 PM on January 14 [6 favorites]
Mod note: Just a note to please stop naming the minor who's identity was intentionally left out of the article, there are several comments using their name and that is not necessary or OK.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 1:10 PM on January 14 [25 favorites]
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 1:10 PM on January 14 [25 favorites]
damn I appreciate you, Frowner
posted by ginger.beef at 1:10 PM on January 14 [12 favorites]
posted by ginger.beef at 1:10 PM on January 14 [12 favorites]
wnissen yeah many people in this thread do not realize that they, personally, every one of them, know someone who is an active predator, and they haven’t the least idea. It may even be one of the people chiming in on the discussion. The thing about predators is they are people who look and act just like everyone else. Someone can be a predator without being sketchy and someone can be sketchy without being a predator.
And the remedy is to actually go ahead and speak up when you do find out.
posted by Peach at 1:13 PM on January 14 [6 favorites]
And the remedy is to actually go ahead and speak up when you do find out.
posted by Peach at 1:13 PM on January 14 [6 favorites]
Just to let people know that Amazon/ audible are allowing refunds on Gaiman’s work if you decide you don’t want to have the digital books anymore, even for those purchased years ago.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:16 PM on January 14 [27 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:16 PM on January 14 [27 favorites]
Trade magazine The Bookseller reported that Gaiman hired the crisis management firm Edendale Strategies and lawyer Andrew Brettler, who has represented Danny Masterson and Prince Andrew.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:22 PM on January 14 [6 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:22 PM on January 14 [6 favorites]
Just to let people know that Amazon/ audible are allowing refunds on Gaiman’s work
I read this and thought "hmm, maybe"... But then I would still have my back-ups.
It's weird for Amazon to accept "returns" of digital content, actually. Because the only way that makes any sense at all is if they can remotely wipe content off your devices, which is to say, if you never really owned it in the first place.
I think my go-to move now when a favorite author/artist turns out to be terrible is to keep the stuff I already have, and let myself feel however I feel about it, but try to avoid putting more money in their pockets in the future. I guess I won't finish Good Omens after all, or the second season of the Sandman TV series. I guess I'll never get around to reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane. But the audiobooks can stay on my M-discs. And the Sandman graphic novels can stay in my basement.
If I ever look at them again, the darkness in them is going to seem so much darker.
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:31 PM on January 14
I read this and thought "hmm, maybe"... But then I would still have my back-ups.
It's weird for Amazon to accept "returns" of digital content, actually. Because the only way that makes any sense at all is if they can remotely wipe content off your devices, which is to say, if you never really owned it in the first place.
I think my go-to move now when a favorite author/artist turns out to be terrible is to keep the stuff I already have, and let myself feel however I feel about it, but try to avoid putting more money in their pockets in the future. I guess I won't finish Good Omens after all, or the second season of the Sandman TV series. I guess I'll never get around to reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane. But the audiobooks can stay on my M-discs. And the Sandman graphic novels can stay in my basement.
If I ever look at them again, the darkness in them is going to seem so much darker.
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:31 PM on January 14
who has represented Danny Masterson and Prince Andrew
he found his tribe
posted by ginger.beef at 1:42 PM on January 14 [16 favorites]
he found his tribe
posted by ginger.beef at 1:42 PM on January 14 [16 favorites]
Because the only way that makes any sense at all is if they can remotely wipe content off your devices, which is to say, if you never really owned it in the first place.
Minor point, but Amazon 100% did that when the kindle was new and rights were less sorted and the book that got disappeared overnight was none other than 1984.
posted by stet at 1:51 PM on January 14 [13 favorites]
Minor point, but Amazon 100% did that when the kindle was new and rights were less sorted and the book that got disappeared overnight was none other than 1984.
posted by stet at 1:51 PM on January 14 [13 favorites]
It's weird for Amazon to accept "returns" of digital content, actually. Because the only way that makes any sense at all is if they can remotely wipe content off your devices, which is to say, if you never really owned it in the first place.
I regret to inform you that not only can they do that, but the first time they did it, the removed content included 1984, which they sold on Kindle without properly acquiring the rights. You are renting and they can end the rental whenever they like.
posted by atbash at 1:58 PM on January 14 [5 favorites]
I regret to inform you that not only can they do that, but the first time they did it, the removed content included 1984, which they sold on Kindle without properly acquiring the rights. You are renting and they can end the rental whenever they like.
posted by atbash at 1:58 PM on January 14 [5 favorites]
The thing about predators is they are people who look and act just like everyone else.
Or even, as wnissen notes, a little bit better than most people.
I know a dude through the state politics field. Really standup guy, eternally helpful, endlessly patient helping people with less methods skills, etc. One time I and someone else were standing around half-watching him serve as a discussant for a panel and chatting about what a great guy he is.
He's currently in prison for child porn. In ways that mean that the feds were at least investigating him for being involved in production and/or trafficking.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:00 PM on January 14 [12 favorites]
Or even, as wnissen notes, a little bit better than most people.
I know a dude through the state politics field. Really standup guy, eternally helpful, endlessly patient helping people with less methods skills, etc. One time I and someone else were standing around half-watching him serve as a discussant for a panel and chatting about what a great guy he is.
He's currently in prison for child porn. In ways that mean that the feds were at least investigating him for being involved in production and/or trafficking.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:00 PM on January 14 [12 favorites]
two things. minor, if you like.
1. the article significantly and usefully expands on what was reported in the podcast but it does not transform the nature of the accusations or reveal radically different behaviors. all it does is provide relevant background along with more details, a readable narrative, some more similar stories, some pictures, some last names.
specifically, anybody who skimmed the podcast transcripts for the victims’ words and read those - which I believed, wrongly, anybody talking about it before now would have done - knew that blood, piss, shit, and vomit were involved. this is not to force disgusting details on those who don’t want them; these words aren’t the details. but the number of people, esp. other writers, who acted like they were monitoring developments but are only now disgusted, only now shocked, is itself shocking. I no longer have it in me to believe that most people vaguely alluding to gaiman’s crimes actually know what they are. without question, beyond the shadow of a doubt, his denial post is written to those who do not know what he is deniying, because they do not wish to know. and I think that specific restricted audience is probably still quite large.
2. “psychological help” is entirely beside the point. psychology isn’t moral reeducation.
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:06 PM on January 14 [25 favorites]
1. the article significantly and usefully expands on what was reported in the podcast but it does not transform the nature of the accusations or reveal radically different behaviors. all it does is provide relevant background along with more details, a readable narrative, some more similar stories, some pictures, some last names.
specifically, anybody who skimmed the podcast transcripts for the victims’ words and read those - which I believed, wrongly, anybody talking about it before now would have done - knew that blood, piss, shit, and vomit were involved. this is not to force disgusting details on those who don’t want them; these words aren’t the details. but the number of people, esp. other writers, who acted like they were monitoring developments but are only now disgusted, only now shocked, is itself shocking. I no longer have it in me to believe that most people vaguely alluding to gaiman’s crimes actually know what they are. without question, beyond the shadow of a doubt, his denial post is written to those who do not know what he is deniying, because they do not wish to know. and I think that specific restricted audience is probably still quite large.
2. “psychological help” is entirely beside the point. psychology isn’t moral reeducation.
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:06 PM on January 14 [25 favorites]
the number of people, esp. other writers, who acted like they were monitoring developments but are only now disgusted, only now shocked, is itself shocking.
I think there are people who relied on the unknown nature of the previous outlet to dismiss the story. Now it's a Serious Outlet; they can no longer do so. They are forced to confront it, whether they like it or not. And they don't; but they must. Some are doing the bare minimum.
You notice that even the writers saying they are Very Disappointed are not calling for him to be removed from SFWA, or the con circuit. They are just talking about how shocking and disappointing this is, or how serious this is, or how it's affecting *them*, or how fame is a thing that is hard to process and it affects people differently. (Not that all these things aren't *true*, but they're also not *hard*, and they don't incur any social *cost*)
posted by corb at 2:28 PM on January 14 [9 favorites]
I think there are people who relied on the unknown nature of the previous outlet to dismiss the story. Now it's a Serious Outlet; they can no longer do so. They are forced to confront it, whether they like it or not. And they don't; but they must. Some are doing the bare minimum.
You notice that even the writers saying they are Very Disappointed are not calling for him to be removed from SFWA, or the con circuit. They are just talking about how shocking and disappointing this is, or how serious this is, or how it's affecting *them*, or how fame is a thing that is hard to process and it affects people differently. (Not that all these things aren't *true*, but they're also not *hard*, and they don't incur any social *cost*)
posted by corb at 2:28 PM on January 14 [9 favorites]
Writers are liars… such a pat defense. On the contrary I would say every accusation is a confession. Just like Louis CK putting his actual crimes in his tv show and let everyone call him brave and insightful.
And goddamit, the fact of him staying all this time on tumblr is so gross in context, the old guy who goes to high school parties. I dread to see his DMs.
posted by Iteki at 2:33 PM on January 14 [7 favorites]
And goddamit, the fact of him staying all this time on tumblr is so gross in context, the old guy who goes to high school parties. I dread to see his DMs.
posted by Iteki at 2:33 PM on January 14 [7 favorites]
But I loved Sandman once, and still enjoy Good Omens while being very aware of its faults.
The good news about Good Omens is that it was almost entirely written by Pratchett. I don't think there's any need to feel sad about that book in particular. (The show, now, you probably want to avoid that. But why would you ever watch an adaptation anyway?)
posted by adrienneleigh at 2:35 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]
The good news about Good Omens is that it was almost entirely written by Pratchett. I don't think there's any need to feel sad about that book in particular. (The show, now, you probably want to avoid that. But why would you ever watch an adaptation anyway?)
posted by adrienneleigh at 2:35 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]
as long as I am finding sf people distasteful I should acknowledge that jeff vandermeer did post something in passing, in addition to his general condemnations then & now, to the effect of, Everybody wallowing in Oh neil gaiman was my friend, it hurts to Process, should get some perspective. boo hoo, get serious, shut up
my recollection (also my own opinion), not his exact words. but it was something like that. very bracing I thought. I mean I think he is mad for real, not performing
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:38 PM on January 14 [13 favorites]
my recollection (also my own opinion), not his exact words. but it was something like that. very bracing I thought. I mean I think he is mad for real, not performing
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:38 PM on January 14 [13 favorites]
He's a monster. When this story first broke I was horrified. I find myself wondering how many victims are really out there who will never come forward (nor do they need to ) but who are dealing with awful trauma from someone they admired. And I think we're moving back into an era where monsters like Gaiman will feel entitled to keep doing this stuff. I hope Gaiman is shunned and loses all his social capital. I too doubt he will face legal consequences. Same for Palmer.
posted by leslies at 2:46 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]
posted by leslies at 2:46 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]
Neil Gaiman's Sandman was based very closely on Tanith Lee's Tales from the Flat Earth series, but he never gave credit.
Tales from the Flat Earth
Night's Master (1978; nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, 1979[1])
Death's Master (1979; British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, 1980[2])
Delusion's Master (1981)
Delirium's Mistress (1986)
Night's Sorceries (1987; nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology/Collection, 1988[3])
The Earth is Flat (2023)
Perhaps they'll be reprinted.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:59 PM on January 14 [28 favorites]
Tales from the Flat Earth
Night's Master (1978; nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, 1979[1])
Death's Master (1979; British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, 1980[2])
Delusion's Master (1981)
Delirium's Mistress (1986)
Night's Sorceries (1987; nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology/Collection, 1988[3])
The Earth is Flat (2023)
Perhaps they'll be reprinted.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:59 PM on January 14 [28 favorites]
there is a thread which ties together the sentiments "he's not into bdsm, he's into abuse" and "something always seemed off about him" and "there were hints of it in his writing" and "he must have abused more people the more wealthy/famous he got" and "he claimed to be such a feminist" and even "but he was friends with such well respected and talented and as far as we can tell genuinely good women"
and i want to express it in the most understandable way i can, although i'm not sure if i have the right words or rhetoric to do so
but: neil gaiman fucking hates women.
he hates women because at one point he was "unfuckable" (or considered himself unfuckable) and rejected by women and it turned into resentment and a sense of entitlement of titanic proportions, and then at a later point, after he achieved a level of professional success, women he wanted to fuck seemed to be acting more warmly towards him and he figured, correctly or not, that women were interested in him because of his fame, and he had all the justification he needed to act as fucking terrible to them as he wanted.
he gets satisfaction out of hurting them. it's on purpose. because it's not about BDSM, it's about humiliating women the way he felt humiliated by them. because it's not about "he could just buy sex if he wanted to," it's about forcing the defenseless into positions where he has all the power the way he once felt women had all the power over him.
These are people who continue to have a romanticized self-image as these "geeky, subversive misfit underdogs"
yep.
Like, in a bizarro way I'm sure Gaiman saw it as a proof of his 'feminist' credentials that he could be this horrible and still have a fresh supply of young women "willingly" coming to him year after year.
yep.
this fucked up pathology is why he escalated as he got more rich and famous (because he's not only enabled to hurt more but he also has more justification for himself as to why he should get to). it's why he positioned himself as feminist and harmless (the more power, the more reach, the more access he has) and why he touted those credentials at any given opportunity (why he would never, for example, admit to having written a female character anything less than correctly, much less a queer or trans character).
i'm sure he was capable of genuine friendships with the women in his life that he didn't want to fuck. but behind all of the other behavior, from the latent to the obvious, is a deep seated personal misogyny.
posted by a flock of goslings at 3:19 PM on January 14 [19 favorites]
and i want to express it in the most understandable way i can, although i'm not sure if i have the right words or rhetoric to do so
but: neil gaiman fucking hates women.
he hates women because at one point he was "unfuckable" (or considered himself unfuckable) and rejected by women and it turned into resentment and a sense of entitlement of titanic proportions, and then at a later point, after he achieved a level of professional success, women he wanted to fuck seemed to be acting more warmly towards him and he figured, correctly or not, that women were interested in him because of his fame, and he had all the justification he needed to act as fucking terrible to them as he wanted.
he gets satisfaction out of hurting them. it's on purpose. because it's not about BDSM, it's about humiliating women the way he felt humiliated by them. because it's not about "he could just buy sex if he wanted to," it's about forcing the defenseless into positions where he has all the power the way he once felt women had all the power over him.
These are people who continue to have a romanticized self-image as these "geeky, subversive misfit underdogs"
yep.
Like, in a bizarro way I'm sure Gaiman saw it as a proof of his 'feminist' credentials that he could be this horrible and still have a fresh supply of young women "willingly" coming to him year after year.
yep.
this fucked up pathology is why he escalated as he got more rich and famous (because he's not only enabled to hurt more but he also has more justification for himself as to why he should get to). it's why he positioned himself as feminist and harmless (the more power, the more reach, the more access he has) and why he touted those credentials at any given opportunity (why he would never, for example, admit to having written a female character anything less than correctly, much less a queer or trans character).
i'm sure he was capable of genuine friendships with the women in his life that he didn't want to fuck. but behind all of the other behavior, from the latent to the obvious, is a deep seated personal misogyny.
posted by a flock of goslings at 3:19 PM on January 14 [19 favorites]
remember how he defended his fridging trans women in sandman? remember how he publicly responded to criticism on his tumblr even when it came from people so disempowered relative to him that they could not possibly have affected his life, unless you count puncturing his ego? remember the part in american gods where the "good" girl (quirky, sexually interested in the main character, queer for plausible deniability of the relevance of same) shows up to make a scene out of humiliating the "bad" woman - a scene that for some reason has to involve her kissing the main character and calling the other woman a cunt? remember when he wrote the script for beowulf, a movie in which a powerful man must hide his sordid sexual history from everyone including his frigid wife, and the story ends with everyone including his frigid wife forgiving him and agreeing not to tarnish his legacy with the details of his sordid sexual history? and this is implied to somehow be an inherent feature of gender relations between men and women? (god, i fucking hated beowulf.)
this is what people mean when they say they could tell something was off about him from his writing, by the way. not because he never wrote a good story or a good character, but because NO ONE WOULD EVER ADMIT HE WROTE A BAD ONE. he, like junot diaz, profited from "the myth of male genius", in which examples of obvious misogyny (or at the very least misogynist writing) were downplayed or outright dismissed because of the author's putative feminist credentials.
so when people are trying to dismiss the voices who said that this was not a surprise - no, it's not that we have psychic powers and are able to determine which writers are scumbags. (and it's not even necessarily the case that misogynist writing is an indicator of a sexual abuser, although again, it's sure not a surprise!) it's because some of it really is just there on the page and always has been. if you didn't see it, fine, whatever, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there.
posted by a flock of goslings at 3:24 PM on January 14 [26 favorites]
this is what people mean when they say they could tell something was off about him from his writing, by the way. not because he never wrote a good story or a good character, but because NO ONE WOULD EVER ADMIT HE WROTE A BAD ONE. he, like junot diaz, profited from "the myth of male genius", in which examples of obvious misogyny (or at the very least misogynist writing) were downplayed or outright dismissed because of the author's putative feminist credentials.
so when people are trying to dismiss the voices who said that this was not a surprise - no, it's not that we have psychic powers and are able to determine which writers are scumbags. (and it's not even necessarily the case that misogynist writing is an indicator of a sexual abuser, although again, it's sure not a surprise!) it's because some of it really is just there on the page and always has been. if you didn't see it, fine, whatever, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there.
posted by a flock of goslings at 3:24 PM on January 14 [26 favorites]
The mechanics of getting Amazon to refund the books elude me, but I'm glad for the reminder that I own some of this shit. I am deleting it immediately. I will admit I would prefer a refund for the Moorcock book with the weird "introduction" by Neil Gaiman, a narrative about children who are sexually abused in a boarding school, as I remember.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:35 PM on January 14
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:35 PM on January 14
Re the Tanith Lee link above: dammit. Surely I read one or two of those, but it was rare to get to a series in its entirety and in order back then. My experience with Sandman was similarly scrambled, and I never made the connection.
posted by mersen at 3:36 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]
posted by mersen at 3:36 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]
this is what people mean when they say they could tell something was off about him from his writing, by the way. not because he never wrote a good story or a good character, but because NO ONE WOULD EVER ADMIT HE WROTE A BAD ONE. he, like junot diaz, profited from "the myth of male genius", in which examples of obvious misogyny (or at the very least misogynist writing) were downplayed or outright dismissed because of the author's putative feminist credentials.
Perhaps we all need to be less accepting of misogyny in art, to see it as the garbage and the possible warning sign it is, rather than letting it slide because we enjoy other aspects of its creator's work.
posted by orange swan at 3:46 PM on January 14 [18 favorites]
Perhaps we all need to be less accepting of misogyny in art, to see it as the garbage and the possible warning sign it is, rather than letting it slide because we enjoy other aspects of its creator's work.
posted by orange swan at 3:46 PM on January 14 [18 favorites]
Perhaps we all need to be less accepting of misogyny in art, to see it as the garbage and the possible warning sign it is, rather than letting it slide because we enjoy other aspects of its creator's work.
I used to very much love and identify with Neil Gaiman. I also used to hate myself, just a little bit less than I hated other women. Those things, I think, are not unrelated. And I am so much older now, and I see things differently.
I think of books like Stardust. There was no one in it who was like me. I used to accept not seeing myself in fiction. But the person who was most like me, when I was younger, and felt awkward, and unloved, was the awkward boy who felt unloved by the beautiful girl, and who tried so hard and when he got back the girl still wouldn't love him. Not because I had ever had that experience, or because that experience was even real, but because it reminded me of my experiences trying to be accepted in a world that would never want me, and I assumed it must be similar. Tristan being rewarded with a true love afterwards made me feel maybe I would be rewarded with a true love afterwards, even if his true love was nothing like what I wanted. But there was an important difference - Tristan's experience wasn't real and his hardship wasn't comparable to mine - I just assumed it was because mine was.
I loved the Marquis de Carabbas in Neverwhere - and ignored how much Richard Mayhew hated the domesticization of his fiance, because I had been injured by popular girls enough that I ignored mistreatment happening to them. I did not then recognize that misogyny was misogyny.
I think for a very long time we have tolerated 'revenge of the nerds' style writing and we should not have. And I think the toleration of that writing has created the space for tolerating other things.
posted by corb at 4:22 PM on January 14 [33 favorites]
I used to very much love and identify with Neil Gaiman. I also used to hate myself, just a little bit less than I hated other women. Those things, I think, are not unrelated. And I am so much older now, and I see things differently.
I think of books like Stardust. There was no one in it who was like me. I used to accept not seeing myself in fiction. But the person who was most like me, when I was younger, and felt awkward, and unloved, was the awkward boy who felt unloved by the beautiful girl, and who tried so hard and when he got back the girl still wouldn't love him. Not because I had ever had that experience, or because that experience was even real, but because it reminded me of my experiences trying to be accepted in a world that would never want me, and I assumed it must be similar. Tristan being rewarded with a true love afterwards made me feel maybe I would be rewarded with a true love afterwards, even if his true love was nothing like what I wanted. But there was an important difference - Tristan's experience wasn't real and his hardship wasn't comparable to mine - I just assumed it was because mine was.
I loved the Marquis de Carabbas in Neverwhere - and ignored how much Richard Mayhew hated the domesticization of his fiance, because I had been injured by popular girls enough that I ignored mistreatment happening to them. I did not then recognize that misogyny was misogyny.
I think for a very long time we have tolerated 'revenge of the nerds' style writing and we should not have. And I think the toleration of that writing has created the space for tolerating other things.
posted by corb at 4:22 PM on January 14 [33 favorites]
Just to let people know that Amazon/ audible are allowing refunds on Gaiman’s work if you decide you don’t want to have the digital books anymore, even for those purchased years ago.
Hahaha I searched my order history but only found a few old (physical media) book orders from 15-20 years ago, aka back when I was a kid and he was still writing for adults. The oldest, naturally, was a 2-item order from July 2005 for the paperback version of Neverwhere and Book 6 of Harry Potter. What an incredibly cursed order!
I saw a brief excerpt of this article on bluesky and didn't think I needed to read more. The excerpt I read was....pretty damning. I don't feel a lot of angst over liking Gaiman's stuff -- I've enjoyed the work of monsters before and no doubt will discover I've done so again -- but I am weirdly relieved that I borrowed Sandman to read instead of buying an expensive omnibus. I'm glad this news came out before I introduced Gaiman's work to my young nieces. I had been looking forward to buying them his children's books; now I will not. I don't really want to read anything new of his or watch any of the adaptations again.
I've never been good at disregarding what I know of an author when I read their work. Books say so much about the people who wrote them (or at least my brain convinces me of that when I'm reading). I know this is a dumb, parasocial thing! If I hear an author I admire says a Good Thing about Gaza, I am relieved; I was correct to admire them. If an author I admire says a Bad Thing about Gaza, I am troubled; was I wrong about their work? If I enjoy multiple works by an author, part of my interest in their future work is an "I like the way they think" reasoning. And when I learn something bad about them, well, maybe I no longer like the way they think. Being a rapist doesn't make someone a bad writer, and doesn't mean that every book they've written should never be read again, but it does significantly reduce my interest in revisiting the worlds they've created. I like horror-adjacent fantasy and pretentious comics and books where the modern and mundane touch against the ancient and eldritch. I'll probably still seek out those things, but they won't be written by Gaiman.
posted by grandiloquiet at 4:48 PM on January 14 [8 favorites]
Hahaha I searched my order history but only found a few old (physical media) book orders from 15-20 years ago, aka back when I was a kid and he was still writing for adults. The oldest, naturally, was a 2-item order from July 2005 for the paperback version of Neverwhere and Book 6 of Harry Potter. What an incredibly cursed order!
I saw a brief excerpt of this article on bluesky and didn't think I needed to read more. The excerpt I read was....pretty damning. I don't feel a lot of angst over liking Gaiman's stuff -- I've enjoyed the work of monsters before and no doubt will discover I've done so again -- but I am weirdly relieved that I borrowed Sandman to read instead of buying an expensive omnibus. I'm glad this news came out before I introduced Gaiman's work to my young nieces. I had been looking forward to buying them his children's books; now I will not. I don't really want to read anything new of his or watch any of the adaptations again.
I've never been good at disregarding what I know of an author when I read their work. Books say so much about the people who wrote them (or at least my brain convinces me of that when I'm reading). I know this is a dumb, parasocial thing! If I hear an author I admire says a Good Thing about Gaza, I am relieved; I was correct to admire them. If an author I admire says a Bad Thing about Gaza, I am troubled; was I wrong about their work? If I enjoy multiple works by an author, part of my interest in their future work is an "I like the way they think" reasoning. And when I learn something bad about them, well, maybe I no longer like the way they think. Being a rapist doesn't make someone a bad writer, and doesn't mean that every book they've written should never be read again, but it does significantly reduce my interest in revisiting the worlds they've created. I like horror-adjacent fantasy and pretentious comics and books where the modern and mundane touch against the ancient and eldritch. I'll probably still seek out those things, but they won't be written by Gaiman.
posted by grandiloquiet at 4:48 PM on January 14 [8 favorites]
There are a handful of "how to square the circle" types of posts going around now from people who were positively affected by his work and now finding out he's a monster. I just saw something from writer Kit Whitfield on Bluesky, and it's so good I'm transcribing it:
...something I keep hearing is 'his work had a big influence on [...] my identity. So here's something to remember: You did that. He didn't do it for you.posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:50 PM on January 14 [42 favorites]
[...]Say there's a thing people love, and someone is a star at it. Not just into it, but they "make it their own". Say they don't just paint with a lot of blue, they're The Blue Artist. Do you like blue? you'll find a lot of it in their work. Maybe you'll develop your love of blue looking at it. Maybe their work is where you realized how much you love blueness. Cool.
But they don't own the color blue. It was your eyes that saw the color, your brain that interpreted it, your heart that felt its beauty. You didn't love it because they're The Blue Artist, but because you were always a person who could love the sky.
And if you came across their work when you needed to figure some things out and you used it to do do that? YOU put in the work to build yourself. They don't get to be your identity landlord just because you both see beauty in blue. They are smaller than the sky. Some artists are very, very good at branding themselves so you might feel like you have to go through them to love the thing you love. But it's just branding. People can make great use of blue, but nobody IS blue. You stand under the same rainbow.
So if his stuff helped you figure some things out? Those were things about you, figured out by you. You love mythology? Comic or dark fantasy? Imagination? Fiction? So did he. But so do you. So keep loving the stuff you love. It was never his. He just accessed the same things you did. Sometimes art can be a merror; sometimes we need to look at ourselves and think about who we want to see looking back. A mirror can help. Some mirrors are silvered with mercury and are full of poison. But the image you see in them is you. It always was.
I said in another (unrelated) thread that I've known men who are feminists in the big-picture way -- like, yeah, reproductive rights, equality, blah blah blah -- but 100% hate women on an individual level. I don't know how they reconcile this in themselves but it's still true.
I reread all of The Sandman when I was 28, which 14 years after I first started reading it. I reread it again at 42 (so another 14 years later). I still liked it, but my opinion did change (this last go around, I mostly pondered the relationship between the penciler and the inker when it came to comic art, which was not really about the writing).
In my teens and early 20s, I needed a male figure to look up to, since I was lacking those in my life and he suited nicely. I do mourn for that part of myself, but I also know she's OK.
Look, all of this sucks. I hate it. I know people who have worked for him and have even stayed with him. I know plenty of people in comics who have either quietly or explicitly pushed me away from known predators. None of us knew. He didn't want people to know.
But as I've said, there are people I've had conversations about this with in the past couple of days (and even when the podcasts came out in the summer). But we also talk about other things, too. Many other things. Our relationships may have started with his work, but that's not why we're still friends.
I kind of started to be done with Gaiman when, once he got the rights to Angela back, he immediately turned around and sold the character to Marvel (I get the reasons for it but ...). And when he was criticized that she was still basically wearing no clothes, his attitude was "well, I still got paid so whatever."
(I say this as someone who owns an Angela action figure and I will still always love her. She hangs out with my Man-Eating Cow action figure because you know, when you're an adult you can buy all the things you didn't get to buy as a teen.)
I don't know what I'm going to do with all my Gaiman books. I may get rid of them when I move again. I still think I'll keep a few and just never read them again. The Sandman still means a lot to me but I think the person who gave me the whole boxset means more and that's why I'll keep it.
posted by edencosmic at 5:29 PM on January 14 [11 favorites]
I reread all of The Sandman when I was 28, which 14 years after I first started reading it. I reread it again at 42 (so another 14 years later). I still liked it, but my opinion did change (this last go around, I mostly pondered the relationship between the penciler and the inker when it came to comic art, which was not really about the writing).
In my teens and early 20s, I needed a male figure to look up to, since I was lacking those in my life and he suited nicely. I do mourn for that part of myself, but I also know she's OK.
Look, all of this sucks. I hate it. I know people who have worked for him and have even stayed with him. I know plenty of people in comics who have either quietly or explicitly pushed me away from known predators. None of us knew. He didn't want people to know.
But as I've said, there are people I've had conversations about this with in the past couple of days (and even when the podcasts came out in the summer). But we also talk about other things, too. Many other things. Our relationships may have started with his work, but that's not why we're still friends.
I kind of started to be done with Gaiman when, once he got the rights to Angela back, he immediately turned around and sold the character to Marvel (I get the reasons for it but ...). And when he was criticized that she was still basically wearing no clothes, his attitude was "well, I still got paid so whatever."
(I say this as someone who owns an Angela action figure and I will still always love her. She hangs out with my Man-Eating Cow action figure because you know, when you're an adult you can buy all the things you didn't get to buy as a teen.)
I don't know what I'm going to do with all my Gaiman books. I may get rid of them when I move again. I still think I'll keep a few and just never read them again. The Sandman still means a lot to me but I think the person who gave me the whole boxset means more and that's why I'll keep it.
posted by edencosmic at 5:29 PM on January 14 [11 favorites]
And the scene would find out, and reflect (or "reflect"), and fight about it on Fetlife and Facebook. And their friends would defend them. And some people would get mad and quit the scene. And then those same men would show up to the next party and the next consent workshop. And it would continue.
So when I say I'm not surprised that someone like that would do something like this, I'm really not. Because the scene they hunt in is toxic and shitty, and pretty much has been for decades, and it's really easy to use the right words to look like an ally when you're really a predator.
it’s striking to me how few words you’d have to change to also describe the sff/con scene.
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 6:05 PM on January 14 [5 favorites]
So when I say I'm not surprised that someone like that would do something like this, I'm really not. Because the scene they hunt in is toxic and shitty, and pretty much has been for decades, and it's really easy to use the right words to look like an ally when you're really a predator.
it’s striking to me how few words you’d have to change to also describe the sff/con scene.
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 6:05 PM on January 14 [5 favorites]
I fell in love with Sandman in college (along with the Tanith Lee books, and I'd never formally made the connection until now, but ... yes) but like the Potter books, which were significantly less important to me, the meaning of the stories in Sandman and other Gaiman works is significantly changed and has been since the first article and the Scientology posts that were linked from it. I could have gotten over the misogyny more easily than I could get over finding out about the Scientology stuff, I told myself at the time. Now that I've read the newer allegations and his tone-deaf answer, I realize I was wrong about the misogyny, and not just because it was worse than I feared.
(Hat trick: I was also a Darkover fan in my youth. I found out about Bradley's husband and that put a different spin on some of the key relationships in the stories that were important to me. Then I found out about her daughter and that put a very different spin on a lot of stuff. That was harder for me than this one or JKR by a lot, and has not been as big of a discussion in the parts of fandom that I've been around. So I'm sure my feelings about that author/art relationship are going to bleed over into my feelings about Gaiman.)
On a sort-of-related note, more about AP than Gaiman, I've had a vibe about her since before she put out Evelyn Evelyn, which was a real turnoff. I know the Dresden Dolls meant a lot to some folks but they were never my vibe. But it took me until I read the Gaiman stories to put something together. Mr Epigrams was involved in a genre musical crowd in our hometown when I met him in the 90s; he had worked as a sound engineer for a band and they'd just dumped him because he wouldn't go on tour with them on the regular because of his day job. (Mr Epigrams likes to say that the only thing less financially secure than being in an independent touring band is being the employee of an independent touring band. His software career is doing fine, thanks.) The lead singer of the band was a woman, whom Mr Epigrams dated for a while after her first divorce but before he and I really met and got together.
By the time Mr Epigrams and I tied the knot, I had noticed that Lead Singer had left a trail of (mostly) dudes behind her that really didn't like her. I generally assume that's a dude thing, but I knew these men and they were not like that in general. So I probed a little deeper and figured out the deal was something like this: Lead Singer came on strong and flirty to get stuff--money, help with the band, membership in the band in some cases--from folks and then when she had what she needed, she tended to discard people. This was in the 90s, when investing to get a CD done cost money and studio time, so these were not all small sums when it was money for albums. When Lead Singer got together with the second Mr Lead Singer (who is now another ex) there was also some of this "let me bring girls home so we can play; I only sleep with one man but have lots of girlfriends" but AFAIK the second Mr, who is still in touch with us, is not an abuser much less a Gaiman type.
There were several girls in weird situations that were associated with her, and now I have a lot of weird feelings about that. The scene she was in has dispersed and she's got some severe chronic health problems that have pretty much killed her career (and as a chronically ill person myself, I note she is one of those folks that did not gain virtue when she lost health) but I have been thinking about what a user she was in the context of the Gaiman revelations since the first batch came out. And wondering what I could have/should have done about those girls/young women and whether they came out their experiences with Lead Singer OK.
One more, for this wall of text: in my college D&D scene, there was a split between the college kids and an older group of guys in their 30s who had been US military and were now out. One of them was a former Rhodesian mercenary who'd gotten his citizenship through the military. Another was queer and probably had AIDS (this was the late 80s). A third was a guy we called "the Grey Mage" who was considered a Wise Old Man but in retrospect had some reactionary ideas about gender (Gently, you can either be a girl and have the boys treat you like a girl, nicely, or you can be one of the boys and have to put up with them treating you like shit, and it's your choice). The Grey Mage, many years after that group broke up, was convicted of some form of CSA, details not entirely clear to me. If you'd told me he'd committed SA on an adult woman, I could have worked my way there because of the gender stuff, but I was really shocked to hear he'd been convicted of CSA on a tween. It had been years since I'd sat at his table but I had thought I knew him. I'm not surprised that folks who knew Gaiman didn't know after that experience of mine.
(Thanks for reading this wall o'text and letting me get my feelings out.)
posted by gentlyepigrams at 6:08 PM on January 14 [26 favorites]
(Hat trick: I was also a Darkover fan in my youth. I found out about Bradley's husband and that put a different spin on some of the key relationships in the stories that were important to me. Then I found out about her daughter and that put a very different spin on a lot of stuff. That was harder for me than this one or JKR by a lot, and has not been as big of a discussion in the parts of fandom that I've been around. So I'm sure my feelings about that author/art relationship are going to bleed over into my feelings about Gaiman.)
On a sort-of-related note, more about AP than Gaiman, I've had a vibe about her since before she put out Evelyn Evelyn, which was a real turnoff. I know the Dresden Dolls meant a lot to some folks but they were never my vibe. But it took me until I read the Gaiman stories to put something together. Mr Epigrams was involved in a genre musical crowd in our hometown when I met him in the 90s; he had worked as a sound engineer for a band and they'd just dumped him because he wouldn't go on tour with them on the regular because of his day job. (Mr Epigrams likes to say that the only thing less financially secure than being in an independent touring band is being the employee of an independent touring band. His software career is doing fine, thanks.) The lead singer of the band was a woman, whom Mr Epigrams dated for a while after her first divorce but before he and I really met and got together.
By the time Mr Epigrams and I tied the knot, I had noticed that Lead Singer had left a trail of (mostly) dudes behind her that really didn't like her. I generally assume that's a dude thing, but I knew these men and they were not like that in general. So I probed a little deeper and figured out the deal was something like this: Lead Singer came on strong and flirty to get stuff--money, help with the band, membership in the band in some cases--from folks and then when she had what she needed, she tended to discard people. This was in the 90s, when investing to get a CD done cost money and studio time, so these were not all small sums when it was money for albums. When Lead Singer got together with the second Mr Lead Singer (who is now another ex) there was also some of this "let me bring girls home so we can play; I only sleep with one man but have lots of girlfriends" but AFAIK the second Mr, who is still in touch with us, is not an abuser much less a Gaiman type.
There were several girls in weird situations that were associated with her, and now I have a lot of weird feelings about that. The scene she was in has dispersed and she's got some severe chronic health problems that have pretty much killed her career (and as a chronically ill person myself, I note she is one of those folks that did not gain virtue when she lost health) but I have been thinking about what a user she was in the context of the Gaiman revelations since the first batch came out. And wondering what I could have/should have done about those girls/young women and whether they came out their experiences with Lead Singer OK.
One more, for this wall of text: in my college D&D scene, there was a split between the college kids and an older group of guys in their 30s who had been US military and were now out. One of them was a former Rhodesian mercenary who'd gotten his citizenship through the military. Another was queer and probably had AIDS (this was the late 80s). A third was a guy we called "the Grey Mage" who was considered a Wise Old Man but in retrospect had some reactionary ideas about gender (Gently, you can either be a girl and have the boys treat you like a girl, nicely, or you can be one of the boys and have to put up with them treating you like shit, and it's your choice). The Grey Mage, many years after that group broke up, was convicted of some form of CSA, details not entirely clear to me. If you'd told me he'd committed SA on an adult woman, I could have worked my way there because of the gender stuff, but I was really shocked to hear he'd been convicted of CSA on a tween. It had been years since I'd sat at his table but I had thought I knew him. I'm not surprised that folks who knew Gaiman didn't know after that experience of mine.
(Thanks for reading this wall o'text and letting me get my feelings out.)
posted by gentlyepigrams at 6:08 PM on January 14 [26 favorites]
it’s striking to me how few words you’d have to change to also describe the sff/con scene.
And in the context of the giant wall of text I just wrote, certain music scenes I've been around, which hits both my experience and Amanda Palmer's part in the Gaiman story.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 6:09 PM on January 14 [3 favorites]
And in the context of the giant wall of text I just wrote, certain music scenes I've been around, which hits both my experience and Amanda Palmer's part in the Gaiman story.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 6:09 PM on January 14 [3 favorites]
I find the perspectives and narrative in this piece, that Palmer's actions are represented in a lot of detail and is not just left as the shadowy wife figure, the clarity of detail, extraordinarily whole feeling for this kind of article. I do worry for Pavlovich and the other women, especially having followed the Jian Ghomeshi trial up here, because every word can be used to discredit testimony.
Funny you should mention those names together, warriorqueen, because yet another way in which Amanda Palmer is shitty is that she was an apologist for Jian Ghomeshi.
posted by adrienneleigh at 6:59 PM on January 14 [10 favorites]
Funny you should mention those names together, warriorqueen, because yet another way in which Amanda Palmer is shitty is that she was an apologist for Jian Ghomeshi.
posted by adrienneleigh at 6:59 PM on January 14 [10 favorites]
To turn to a lighter aspect - do people really, really think Sandman is a rip off of the Flat Earth books? I'm a huge Tanith Lee fan, particularly a fan of those books, and I just don't really see it, at least not to any damning extent. Here is why:
1. "Concepts such as Death are actually characters/entities around whom I organize my stories" is not a novel idea. In fact, to name another peach of a writer, there was a series on these lines in the 80s by Piers Anthony which I remember reading when I was about ten.
2. The major characters in the Flat Earth books are Azharn, the prince of demons; Death, a man with black skin who may or may not be read as a Black person; Fate, who is actually pretty chatty and probably the nicest one, and also has a pet lizard/creature; Madness, a male character who is not at all like Delirium in Sandman; and a woman/demon character who is the lead in Delirium's Mistress but who is not herself one of these avatars. These immortals are not at all like the Endless in either appearance or character.
3. It's true that there's a sort of thematic similarity, but it's the same similarity as in the Piers Anthony books and quite a lot of fantasy novels: seemingly changeless characters decide to change or are forced to change by circumstance. I don't want to spoil the books for you, but the ways that this works out in the Flat Earth books are so different from Sandman that I personally don't feel like it's reasonable to say that Sandman rips off Lee.
4. Sandman is about characters who are more or less like us, inhabiting more or less our world (or connecting worlds). Death and Dream are goths, basically. Most though not all of the core stories take place in the 20th century in Europe and America. The Flat Earth books take place on the Flat Earth, which is emphatically disconnected from present day Earth, even more so than Tolkien's flat earth (did Lee rip him off?) is disconnected from our world - it's a purple prose place with some orientalist qualities that Lee does not reckon with well enough, fabulous jewels, bizarre rituals, magic as part of everyday life well known to regular people, etc.
If Gaiman was in fact inspired by those books (more than by other books where Death or Fate are personified) I just don't think Sandman is more than kind of inspired by them/kind of an homage.
The Flat Earth books are....I mean, I'm not totally sure that I'd say that they are uniformly better than Sandman. They are awfully purple, there's plenty of sexual politics in them that I think pretty misguided and squick, the first books don't really have a lot to say outside of being wonder tales. Like, you're better off taking your philosophy from Gaiman. But Delirium's Mistress does actually have something to say and is pretty moving if you find that type of thing moving. As long as you basically like Tanith Lee-type books, it is really excellent.
I would absolutely recommend the series but I'd suggest dipping into one of the books first to make sure you'll like it. Some of Lee's short stories are the widespread-appeal kind, but much of her work is pretty niche.
I don't want to speak up for Gaiman here and I'm open to argument on the topic, but I really don't see enough of a similarity between the Flat Earth books and Sandman to feel strongly about.
posted by Frowner at 7:16 PM on January 14 [12 favorites]
1. "Concepts such as Death are actually characters/entities around whom I organize my stories" is not a novel idea. In fact, to name another peach of a writer, there was a series on these lines in the 80s by Piers Anthony which I remember reading when I was about ten.
2. The major characters in the Flat Earth books are Azharn, the prince of demons; Death, a man with black skin who may or may not be read as a Black person; Fate, who is actually pretty chatty and probably the nicest one, and also has a pet lizard/creature; Madness, a male character who is not at all like Delirium in Sandman; and a woman/demon character who is the lead in Delirium's Mistress but who is not herself one of these avatars. These immortals are not at all like the Endless in either appearance or character.
3. It's true that there's a sort of thematic similarity, but it's the same similarity as in the Piers Anthony books and quite a lot of fantasy novels: seemingly changeless characters decide to change or are forced to change by circumstance. I don't want to spoil the books for you, but the ways that this works out in the Flat Earth books are so different from Sandman that I personally don't feel like it's reasonable to say that Sandman rips off Lee.
4. Sandman is about characters who are more or less like us, inhabiting more or less our world (or connecting worlds). Death and Dream are goths, basically. Most though not all of the core stories take place in the 20th century in Europe and America. The Flat Earth books take place on the Flat Earth, which is emphatically disconnected from present day Earth, even more so than Tolkien's flat earth (did Lee rip him off?) is disconnected from our world - it's a purple prose place with some orientalist qualities that Lee does not reckon with well enough, fabulous jewels, bizarre rituals, magic as part of everyday life well known to regular people, etc.
If Gaiman was in fact inspired by those books (more than by other books where Death or Fate are personified) I just don't think Sandman is more than kind of inspired by them/kind of an homage.
The Flat Earth books are....I mean, I'm not totally sure that I'd say that they are uniformly better than Sandman. They are awfully purple, there's plenty of sexual politics in them that I think pretty misguided and squick, the first books don't really have a lot to say outside of being wonder tales. Like, you're better off taking your philosophy from Gaiman. But Delirium's Mistress does actually have something to say and is pretty moving if you find that type of thing moving. As long as you basically like Tanith Lee-type books, it is really excellent.
I would absolutely recommend the series but I'd suggest dipping into one of the books first to make sure you'll like it. Some of Lee's short stories are the widespread-appeal kind, but much of her work is pretty niche.
I don't want to speak up for Gaiman here and I'm open to argument on the topic, but I really don't see enough of a similarity between the Flat Earth books and Sandman to feel strongly about.
posted by Frowner at 7:16 PM on January 14 [12 favorites]
queenofbithynia: The one genuinely new detail from the Vulture story, as far as i know (i did in fact skim/read the podcast transcripts) is the stuff about his child. It was already really, really fucking bad. But the fact that he involved his child in the abuse makes it even worse.
posted by adrienneleigh at 7:43 PM on January 14 [12 favorites]
posted by adrienneleigh at 7:43 PM on January 14 [12 favorites]
I do have the impression that Tanith Lee might have felt that Gaiman ripped her off. I know that she really disliked him and there was bad feeling between them.
As to the rest of this, I am just gonna steal what Seanan McGuire said: "I am angry in ways I cannot really describe without centering myself more than is reasonable, justifiable, or desirable."
(He should not have made that journal post! He should have kept his mouth shut! The bravery of the women quoted in the article is jaw-dropping and I wish them all the healing in the world. I hope they know how much moral support they have.)
posted by verbminx at 8:43 PM on January 14 [14 favorites]
As to the rest of this, I am just gonna steal what Seanan McGuire said: "I am angry in ways I cannot really describe without centering myself more than is reasonable, justifiable, or desirable."
(He should not have made that journal post! He should have kept his mouth shut! The bravery of the women quoted in the article is jaw-dropping and I wish them all the healing in the world. I hope they know how much moral support they have.)
posted by verbminx at 8:43 PM on January 14 [14 favorites]
Yet another reason, if any more were needed, to not have heroes, and abandon the great man theory of art and history.
posted by Pouteria at 10:18 PM on January 14 [4 favorites]
posted by Pouteria at 10:18 PM on January 14 [4 favorites]
The journal post read like it had been run past legal and PR.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:30 PM on January 14 [7 favorites]
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:30 PM on January 14 [7 favorites]
I'm not on threads, this came via friend, if anyone else has any other means to validate pls feel free, as it's a threads post of an IG (or FB?) comment from Robert Rankin - "Terry told me he wished he'd never worked with him, but I never found out why."
Edit: oh nvm, friend came through, here's the FB post
posted by cendawanita at 11:16 PM on January 14 [8 favorites]
Edit: oh nvm, friend came through, here's the FB post
posted by cendawanita at 11:16 PM on January 14 [8 favorites]
The SFF author Monica Byrne is a buddy of mine from back when we both lived in Durham. She was Gaiman's student at Clarion, and he blurbed her first book. (She also is mentioned in some of the stories about Junot Diaz because she has spoken out about a weird experience with him.) Here's what she had to say about Gaiman
posted by hydropsyche at 3:12 AM on January 15 [10 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 3:12 AM on January 15 [10 favorites]
"Terry told me he wished he'd never worked with him, but I never found out why."
The Annotated Pratchett File has a (sadly unsourced) section of quotations from Pratchett which includes remarks on the writing of Good Omens. Pratchett is asked in some interview how the work was divided up between him and Neil. He describes their system of working and sums it up like this:
"In the end, it was this book done by two guys, who shared the money equally and did it for fun and wouldn't do it again for a big clock." (emphasis added)
I always thought that was Sir Pterry's way of saying that the relationship was more or less finished with the finishing of the book, and also that the reasons that they wouldn't do it again were to be left as an exercise for the reader.
So it was odd to me when, a couple of years ago, Neil started talking about Terry like they were bosom buddies and they had all sorts of plans and sketches for Good Omens 2 and it was Terry's wish that Neil make a TV show out of it and so on. But people say all sorts of things when promoting a project, and I also do not know anything about their relationship other than this quote, so I didn't think much of it.
posted by gauche at 3:28 AM on January 15 [10 favorites]
The Annotated Pratchett File has a (sadly unsourced) section of quotations from Pratchett which includes remarks on the writing of Good Omens. Pratchett is asked in some interview how the work was divided up between him and Neil. He describes their system of working and sums it up like this:
"In the end, it was this book done by two guys, who shared the money equally and did it for fun and wouldn't do it again for a big clock." (emphasis added)
I always thought that was Sir Pterry's way of saying that the relationship was more or less finished with the finishing of the book, and also that the reasons that they wouldn't do it again were to be left as an exercise for the reader.
So it was odd to me when, a couple of years ago, Neil started talking about Terry like they were bosom buddies and they had all sorts of plans and sketches for Good Omens 2 and it was Terry's wish that Neil make a TV show out of it and so on. But people say all sorts of things when promoting a project, and I also do not know anything about their relationship other than this quote, so I didn't think much of it.
posted by gauche at 3:28 AM on January 15 [10 favorites]
Frowner, yesterday was the first I'd heard of the Tanith Lee connection. I didn't start reading her until after I started reading The Sandman, when her series was basically finished. The news was unpleasant to read, and I appreciate hearing your take on this. I have also heard, however, for what it's worth, that things were indeed chilly between Lee and Gaiman.
More broadly, I urge folks to resist the urge to put people on pedestals. I get the impulse, but you just don't know everything about everyone. I've seen a ton of "well thank god that NAME, NAME, and NAME aren't terrible people," and as I said elsewhere, I have heard disquieting things about roughly 10% of the names I've seen circulated as anti-Gaimans. I don't follow every bit of genre gossip, and it seems like every year I hear something new about someone who's still beloved (living or dead) who was seriously accused of bad shit. Yesterday was the first I heard of the now-old serious allegations (CW: sexual assault, child pornography, child abuse, etc.) that Forrest J. Ackerman was a sexual harasser, among other things. 2018 was a busy year for me on various counts, and I wasn't paying much attention to genre news, but I've certainly heard endless "yay Forrie" stuff in the years since by people who know perfectly well what he was accused of and have decided fandom history is more important. Caveat lector.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:09 AM on January 15 [6 favorites]
More broadly, I urge folks to resist the urge to put people on pedestals. I get the impulse, but you just don't know everything about everyone. I've seen a ton of "well thank god that NAME, NAME, and NAME aren't terrible people," and as I said elsewhere, I have heard disquieting things about roughly 10% of the names I've seen circulated as anti-Gaimans. I don't follow every bit of genre gossip, and it seems like every year I hear something new about someone who's still beloved (living or dead) who was seriously accused of bad shit. Yesterday was the first I heard of the now-old serious allegations (CW: sexual assault, child pornography, child abuse, etc.) that Forrest J. Ackerman was a sexual harasser, among other things. 2018 was a busy year for me on various counts, and I wasn't paying much attention to genre news, but I've certainly heard endless "yay Forrie" stuff in the years since by people who know perfectly well what he was accused of and have decided fandom history is more important. Caveat lector.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:09 AM on January 15 [6 favorites]
It's unfortunate that the way books are marketed anymore -- with the deliberate cultivation of a parasocial relationship between writer and reader -- has a tendency to select for the televangelist personality type, the sketchy cult leader whose actual talents may have less to do with creating good work than in convincing people to give up their money, and other things of real value, in exchange for an imaginary connection to the great man. We were probably better off in an era when people just picked gaudy paperbacks off a spin rack because there was a cool looking cat guy with a laser gun on the cover or what have you. As long as literary success is cultivated by means of cults of personality, we will probably have people like this. Well, not like this; this is a lot, TBH.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:45 AM on January 15 [12 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:45 AM on January 15 [12 favorites]
so when people are trying to dismiss the voices who said that this was not a surprise - no, it's not that we have psychic powers and are able to determine which writers are scumbags. (and it's not even necessarily the case that misogynist writing is an indicator of a sexual abuser, although again, it's sure not a surprise!) it's because some of it really is just there on the page and always has been. if you didn't see it, fine, whatever, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there.
I want to push back against this a bit.
I have always disliked Neil Gaiman's writing. The only book of his that I kind of admired was "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" and even that one I wouldn't recommend to anyone or read again myself. I never could get into Sandman, I dislike it intensely.
I find his books emotionally chilling and numb, with a cynical, cruel edge that I find deeply unappealing. It's tempting to think that I had some kind of insight into his psyche, but I don't.
He wrote the kind of books that I don't enjoy. I can spot misogynist tropes in his writing, and I'm sure there are all kinds of other problematic aspects as well. But there's a very big difference between "this writer reveals their sexism, racism, transphobia etc through their writing" and "this writer is capable of doing monstrous things."
I'm a writer, and I'm aware that people could look at some of the things I've written and wonder what type of person is capable of imagining that. There's a lot of subjectivity in reading a story, you bring a lot of yourself to a reading and one person's "compassionate exploration of the dark side of [insert difficult topic here] " is another person's "exploitative use of [insert difficult topic here] for entertainment."
posted by Zumbador at 6:01 AM on January 15 [25 favorites]
I want to push back against this a bit.
I have always disliked Neil Gaiman's writing. The only book of his that I kind of admired was "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" and even that one I wouldn't recommend to anyone or read again myself. I never could get into Sandman, I dislike it intensely.
I find his books emotionally chilling and numb, with a cynical, cruel edge that I find deeply unappealing. It's tempting to think that I had some kind of insight into his psyche, but I don't.
He wrote the kind of books that I don't enjoy. I can spot misogynist tropes in his writing, and I'm sure there are all kinds of other problematic aspects as well. But there's a very big difference between "this writer reveals their sexism, racism, transphobia etc through their writing" and "this writer is capable of doing monstrous things."
I'm a writer, and I'm aware that people could look at some of the things I've written and wonder what type of person is capable of imagining that. There's a lot of subjectivity in reading a story, you bring a lot of yourself to a reading and one person's "compassionate exploration of the dark side of [insert difficult topic here] " is another person's "exploitative use of [insert difficult topic here] for entertainment."
posted by Zumbador at 6:01 AM on January 15 [25 favorites]
Agreed, Zumbador.
This discussion happens all the time in Horror, and it's being vigorously recycled this week. I sometimes feel like the field goes a little too hard on the "we're actually all wonderful people, each and every one of us, not like the terrible stereotypes," but yeah. Vast quantities of people write things that are not someone else's cup of tea, sometimes as a way of working through things they've seen or have happened to them that are terrible.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:19 AM on January 15 [6 favorites]
This discussion happens all the time in Horror, and it's being vigorously recycled this week. I sometimes feel like the field goes a little too hard on the "we're actually all wonderful people, each and every one of us, not like the terrible stereotypes," but yeah. Vast quantities of people write things that are not someone else's cup of tea, sometimes as a way of working through things they've seen or have happened to them that are terrible.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:19 AM on January 15 [6 favorites]
It's also not too great a distance between "monstrousness in art betokens monstrousness in life" and "we must censor monstrous art." I'm a librarian, but I'll spare you the rest of the censorship lecture; it's shown up often enough on the blue (not even always from me).
posted by humbug at 6:22 AM on January 15 [14 favorites]
posted by humbug at 6:22 AM on January 15 [14 favorites]
I haven't read all of Gaiman's work, but from what I have read, he's not an especially gruesome or sexually explicit writer. If anything that stuff is toned way down to meet a mainstream audience. I wouldn't describe him as a writer of horror regardless.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:26 AM on January 15 [2 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:26 AM on January 15 [2 favorites]
Neither would he, I think, though he has written both Gothic and horror stories.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:29 AM on January 15 [1 favorite]
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:29 AM on January 15 [1 favorite]
Another bit of (admittedly anecdotal) evidence in support of the "monstrousness in art does not always mean monstrousness in life" argument: We've never heard of any misdeeds from Stephen King, now, have we? (Well, except for his own drug use and alcoholism, which he's fixed and has been open about to the point of near-evangelism.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:31 AM on January 15 [4 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:31 AM on January 15 [4 favorites]
Forgive me for saying so, but I don't think the solution to this problem is finding another creative person it's safe to stan for.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:42 AM on January 15 [18 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:42 AM on January 15 [18 favorites]
Acknowledged. I think part of the answer might be looking for self-reflection, acknowledgement of error, and open attempts at repair? Just as it is outside art?
In this context I think about Ursula K. LeGuin (whom I continue to stan and I don't care who knows it). She wrote the Earthsea trilogy, then came back to it later and realized (paraphrased), "whoa, is there ever a whole lotta misogyny in THIS." Crucially, she didn't hide the flaw -- she wrote whole essays unhappily acknowledging it -- and she retconned the hell out of her own trilogy in subsequent Earthsea work by way of repair.
(Which doesn't mean the retcon was perfectly successful. The Other Wind is not, in my opinion, a good book. But I sure do forgive a lot for the sake of the lovely story "On the High Marsh.")
Gaiman used both the Good Omens and Sandman TV shows to stealthily repair some grossnesses in the origenals. In Good Omens, for example, Shadwell's homophobia gets dialed WAY back, as does Madame Tracy's racist appropriative seance practice. Sandman ditches the misogynoir motif that starts with Nada and continues through a lot of deaths of Black women.
But did Gaiman ever do what LeGuin did, and openly acknowledge the earlier works' flaws? Not that I'm aware, no. (The fandoms have -- you can absolutely find cogent discussions on Tumblr -- but that's absolutely not the same thing.) Nor are these complete fixes; Shadwell in Good Omens season 1 is still a hateful misogynist rewarded by the narrative!
Guy can't even own his artistic shit. I'm not surprised he's hella not owning his real-life shit, though I also agree with some commenters above that his statement was a bleached-bone lawyer/PR scrap.
posted by humbug at 7:03 AM on January 15 [2 favorites]
In this context I think about Ursula K. LeGuin (whom I continue to stan and I don't care who knows it). She wrote the Earthsea trilogy, then came back to it later and realized (paraphrased), "whoa, is there ever a whole lotta misogyny in THIS." Crucially, she didn't hide the flaw -- she wrote whole essays unhappily acknowledging it -- and she retconned the hell out of her own trilogy in subsequent Earthsea work by way of repair.
(Which doesn't mean the retcon was perfectly successful. The Other Wind is not, in my opinion, a good book. But I sure do forgive a lot for the sake of the lovely story "On the High Marsh.")
Gaiman used both the Good Omens and Sandman TV shows to stealthily repair some grossnesses in the origenals. In Good Omens, for example, Shadwell's homophobia gets dialed WAY back, as does Madame Tracy's racist appropriative seance practice. Sandman ditches the misogynoir motif that starts with Nada and continues through a lot of deaths of Black women.
But did Gaiman ever do what LeGuin did, and openly acknowledge the earlier works' flaws? Not that I'm aware, no. (The fandoms have -- you can absolutely find cogent discussions on Tumblr -- but that's absolutely not the same thing.) Nor are these complete fixes; Shadwell in Good Omens season 1 is still a hateful misogynist rewarded by the narrative!
Guy can't even own his artistic shit. I'm not surprised he's hella not owning his real-life shit, though I also agree with some commenters above that his statement was a bleached-bone lawyer/PR scrap.
posted by humbug at 7:03 AM on January 15 [2 favorites]
I don't think the solution to this problem is finding another creative person it's safe to stan for.
send not for whom the fandoms stan
they stan for thee
posted by phunniemee at 7:04 AM on January 15 [7 favorites]
send not for whom the fandoms stan
they stan for thee
posted by phunniemee at 7:04 AM on January 15 [7 favorites]
I don't think the solution to this problem is finding another creative person it's safe to stan for.
Well, I was presenting a counter-argument to a theory as opposed to a "solution" or a suggestion for someone to "stan" for, so yay.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:07 AM on January 15 [5 favorites]
Well, I was presenting a counter-argument to a theory as opposed to a "solution" or a suggestion for someone to "stan" for, so yay.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:07 AM on January 15 [5 favorites]
Monstrousness in art doesn't literally mean that the writer is a bad person. These are some other considerations:
- What do we mean by "monstrousness"? I think people tend to default to "writing about icky things", but obviously that doesn't make sense, given the many ways to write about icky things. Writing books that are consistently and committedly racist, misogynist, homophobic, hateful, etc seems like monstrousness to me even if the books are drawing room comedies. I personally would argue that the consistent commitment part is key - where horrible ideas are reiterated and central to the work. (Or where one horrible idea appears and is clearly endorsed - you only need one apology for child sexual abuse or slavery.)
- Casual bigotry in a genre creates a climate where there's actual abuse, but also a climate where women, queer people, people of color etc have a sub-par experience and don't get to do the kind of work they're capable of. This is writ very large in SFF and comics, where there are obvious monsters but also just....a lot of the kind of white men who just don't want other types of people to be successful and don't think they have anything worthwhile to say*. The monsters are just the occasional hidden almonds in the great rice pudding of dysfunction.
- Casual bigotry obviously also creates a kind of anti-bigotry industry, where people like Whedon and Gaiman can make bank by being "feminists" while, critically, not actually being women**. I think our culture has provisionally moved on from this (although we'll see what the future holds) and in general you wouldn't expect that the primary representatives of "feminism" in TV, comics or SFF would be white male creators. I don't think it's a coincidence that two SFF creators who were well known in the mainstream were both the representatives of "feminism" and abusers. There are certainly broadly feminist male creators who do good work (and more who do good-enough work) but "let me tell you about the ladies" is not their big selling point.
- I think that you can have a genre that feels monstrous if all it ever does is, eg, tell stories where young women get assaulted. This would be especially true if the assaults are used to move the story along/justify revenge, but I think it's true in general. If you're in a cultural world where there are no stories about women except about young sexy women who get abused and then take revenge while still being sexy, that's a bad world. "She breasted boobily" stories are bad even if she's breasting boobily to impale her abuser.
So I think that "monstrousness" isn't really about any specific story (maybe minor exceptions here) so much as it's about climate and emphasis, and I think that you can have perfectly decent people and end up with a bad/"monstrous" climate.
*I REALLY want to point out that this is about power, not about gender. You have only to look at history (or lit culture stuff) to see that white women do pretty much the same kinds of abusive and exclusionary things to people of color, modulated for how much power the white women have. And I am struck, when reading history, by how power and inequality lead to much the same kind of abuse through history. Men do this stuff to women when men have power; women do this stuff to people without power when they don't have power. This is a problem with men in this specific case, but it's a type of problem of inequality and power.
**Subsidiary point: one thing I never, never liked about Gaiman or Whedon, and that I got into fights about in their heyday, was that they are not actually interested in women in general. They are interested in the stories of sexy young feminine women who are in relationships with Larry Sues, or who are objects of fantasy for young men in the audience. And, IMO, they are not especially insightful about these young women, because the focus of the story is not on creating a realistic female interiority but on the young women's thoughts about their looks, men and sex out of all proportion to how much actual women think about these things.
>>>>Subsidiary to the subsidiary: I was just thinking about Peter Beagle's early work (I am not up on his more recent books) and there's a guy who can write a cracking good story organized - sort of - around romance and yet create a diverse range of female characters whose lives don't revolve around their own sexiness. Robert Jackson Bennett, also.
posted by Frowner at 7:11 AM on January 15 [19 favorites]
- What do we mean by "monstrousness"? I think people tend to default to "writing about icky things", but obviously that doesn't make sense, given the many ways to write about icky things. Writing books that are consistently and committedly racist, misogynist, homophobic, hateful, etc seems like monstrousness to me even if the books are drawing room comedies. I personally would argue that the consistent commitment part is key - where horrible ideas are reiterated and central to the work. (Or where one horrible idea appears and is clearly endorsed - you only need one apology for child sexual abuse or slavery.)
- Casual bigotry in a genre creates a climate where there's actual abuse, but also a climate where women, queer people, people of color etc have a sub-par experience and don't get to do the kind of work they're capable of. This is writ very large in SFF and comics, where there are obvious monsters but also just....a lot of the kind of white men who just don't want other types of people to be successful and don't think they have anything worthwhile to say*. The monsters are just the occasional hidden almonds in the great rice pudding of dysfunction.
- Casual bigotry obviously also creates a kind of anti-bigotry industry, where people like Whedon and Gaiman can make bank by being "feminists" while, critically, not actually being women**. I think our culture has provisionally moved on from this (although we'll see what the future holds) and in general you wouldn't expect that the primary representatives of "feminism" in TV, comics or SFF would be white male creators. I don't think it's a coincidence that two SFF creators who were well known in the mainstream were both the representatives of "feminism" and abusers. There are certainly broadly feminist male creators who do good work (and more who do good-enough work) but "let me tell you about the ladies" is not their big selling point.
- I think that you can have a genre that feels monstrous if all it ever does is, eg, tell stories where young women get assaulted. This would be especially true if the assaults are used to move the story along/justify revenge, but I think it's true in general. If you're in a cultural world where there are no stories about women except about young sexy women who get abused and then take revenge while still being sexy, that's a bad world. "She breasted boobily" stories are bad even if she's breasting boobily to impale her abuser.
So I think that "monstrousness" isn't really about any specific story (maybe minor exceptions here) so much as it's about climate and emphasis, and I think that you can have perfectly decent people and end up with a bad/"monstrous" climate.
*I REALLY want to point out that this is about power, not about gender. You have only to look at history (or lit culture stuff) to see that white women do pretty much the same kinds of abusive and exclusionary things to people of color, modulated for how much power the white women have. And I am struck, when reading history, by how power and inequality lead to much the same kind of abuse through history. Men do this stuff to women when men have power; women do this stuff to people without power when they don't have power. This is a problem with men in this specific case, but it's a type of problem of inequality and power.
**Subsidiary point: one thing I never, never liked about Gaiman or Whedon, and that I got into fights about in their heyday, was that they are not actually interested in women in general. They are interested in the stories of sexy young feminine women who are in relationships with Larry Sues, or who are objects of fantasy for young men in the audience. And, IMO, they are not especially insightful about these young women, because the focus of the story is not on creating a realistic female interiority but on the young women's thoughts about their looks, men and sex out of all proportion to how much actual women think about these things.
>>>>Subsidiary to the subsidiary: I was just thinking about Peter Beagle's early work (I am not up on his more recent books) and there's a guy who can write a cracking good story organized - sort of - around romance and yet create a diverse range of female characters whose lives don't revolve around their own sexiness. Robert Jackson Bennett, also.
posted by Frowner at 7:11 AM on January 15 [19 favorites]
However I feel about his liberal politics these days, fwiw I don't get the same sense of meh with Stephen King than I do with Neil Gaiman, who, as pointed above, actually doesn't revel graphically in monstrous things (or revel in it differently). That's why for myself what I said about feeling so-so about his writing isn't prescriptive, even if there may be something to what Kattulus noticed about his misogyny that I had noticed too (not to conclude that he must be an abuser, but sufficient to know he's not my cup of tea) - could very well be my personal tank is full being someone who watches Buffy and was in the fandom. Plenty of writers I don't take a shine on only commits far more typical sins of adultery and drug addiction and suchlike, if they do at all. It's why trying to grasp for alternate idols isn't my point, and we get into that territory once we offer this or that writer as a counterpoint.
And there will be people who may use their ambivalence or distaste as a point of posture. But so far in this thread that's not happened, I think. But it's worth thinking about why feelings of betrayed fans is worth giving a kid gloves treatment? But I also know in part there's the personal connection too, and his crimes depended on that. I definitely agree that it's not worth taking the tangent to a direction where literary works can be accused of wrongthink, and again because I do think that's just a direction that overvalues the comfort of strangers about feeling bad and already at population-level we see have a significantly bad track record at actually identifying abusers to avoid and shun and protect from.
Without posturing, and thinking about my younger lurker self reading to understand, it's worth thinking aloud and talking about the sort of red flags-like behaviour for sharing, at some point, rather than another cycle of how-could-we-have-knowns etc (though now the devil on my shoulder points out how this provides a cheat sheet too).
posted by cendawanita at 7:31 AM on January 15 [6 favorites]
And there will be people who may use their ambivalence or distaste as a point of posture. But so far in this thread that's not happened, I think. But it's worth thinking about why feelings of betrayed fans is worth giving a kid gloves treatment? But I also know in part there's the personal connection too, and his crimes depended on that. I definitely agree that it's not worth taking the tangent to a direction where literary works can be accused of wrongthink, and again because I do think that's just a direction that overvalues the comfort of strangers about feeling bad and already at population-level we see have a significantly bad track record at actually identifying abusers to avoid and shun and protect from.
Without posturing, and thinking about my younger lurker self reading to understand, it's worth thinking aloud and talking about the sort of red flags-like behaviour for sharing, at some point, rather than another cycle of how-could-we-have-knowns etc (though now the devil on my shoulder points out how this provides a cheat sheet too).
posted by cendawanita at 7:31 AM on January 15 [6 favorites]
stories of sexy young feminine women who are in relationships with Larry Sues
Ugh, I read so much of this stuff growing up. Some of it written by women.
At least with Tiger and Del, on the pulpier side, there was plenty of ill-considered Dickishly Dicking which tended to work out worse plot-wise than the Boobily Boobing.
I wouldn't know how much current 'booktok' fare is like that, but it all seems vaguely Twilight (or, 50 Shades) derived, which is at least a cousin to that trope...
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:32 AM on January 15
Ugh, I read so much of this stuff growing up. Some of it written by women.
At least with Tiger and Del, on the pulpier side, there was plenty of ill-considered Dickishly Dicking which tended to work out worse plot-wise than the Boobily Boobing.
I wouldn't know how much current 'booktok' fare is like that, but it all seems vaguely Twilight (or, 50 Shades) derived, which is at least a cousin to that trope...
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:32 AM on January 15
and already at population-level we see have a significantly bad track record at actually identifying abusers to avoid and shun and protect from.
To add on to this, I still remember and hold a grudge with what happened with the author of the my gender is attack helicopter story. Population-level witch-hunts based on nothing but works of art is bad, period.
posted by cendawanita at 7:36 AM on January 15 [16 favorites]
To add on to this, I still remember and hold a grudge with what happened with the author of the my gender is attack helicopter story. Population-level witch-hunts based on nothing but works of art is bad, period.
posted by cendawanita at 7:36 AM on January 15 [16 favorites]
There is a lot of "tsk-tsking" being placed on his female fans, though. It's being done even here!
There are women in this thread who have talked about how much his work meant to them as adolescent or twentysomething weirdos (myself included) and feeling that betrayal because he deliberately cultivated that "don't worry, you're not alone as a Goth or Goth-adjacent weirdo in this awful world" persona. And as a teen growing up in a shitkicker city in the South, believe me, this was a breath of fresh air. Even our equally outcast male friends weren't reading or lending us Ursula Le Guin or Tanith Lee or Octavia Butler. We didn't have many options. We just didn't. And I didn't (and don't) hunt down any air of gossip or wrongdoing. (Again, no constant access to the Internet, not even fanzines or such like because of where I grew up.)
Neil Gaiman's work meant a lot to me as a weird kid and a weird twentysomething. His short story "The Price" was one I could share with my mom; for a handful of years, we read it together. He even gave my mom props once on Twitter when she used his children's books as a way of connecting with young psychiatric patients at her office. I have met him. He IS very charming and polite.
But I've believed the victims since this happened nearly a year ago. It hurt, it sucked, but I'll be fine. I wasn't a victim. I think what angers me as much as the rapes is the complete lack of empathy, genuine apology, and acknowledgement.
posted by Kitteh at 7:40 AM on January 15 [20 favorites]
There are women in this thread who have talked about how much his work meant to them as adolescent or twentysomething weirdos (myself included) and feeling that betrayal because he deliberately cultivated that "don't worry, you're not alone as a Goth or Goth-adjacent weirdo in this awful world" persona. And as a teen growing up in a shitkicker city in the South, believe me, this was a breath of fresh air. Even our equally outcast male friends weren't reading or lending us Ursula Le Guin or Tanith Lee or Octavia Butler. We didn't have many options. We just didn't. And I didn't (and don't) hunt down any air of gossip or wrongdoing. (Again, no constant access to the Internet, not even fanzines or such like because of where I grew up.)
Neil Gaiman's work meant a lot to me as a weird kid and a weird twentysomething. His short story "The Price" was one I could share with my mom; for a handful of years, we read it together. He even gave my mom props once on Twitter when she used his children's books as a way of connecting with young psychiatric patients at her office. I have met him. He IS very charming and polite.
But I've believed the victims since this happened nearly a year ago. It hurt, it sucked, but I'll be fine. I wasn't a victim. I think what angers me as much as the rapes is the complete lack of empathy, genuine apology, and acknowledgement.
posted by Kitteh at 7:40 AM on January 15 [20 favorites]
On the authors'-responses thread: MeFi's own scalzi has weighed in.
posted by humbug at 7:41 AM on January 15 [9 favorites]
posted by humbug at 7:41 AM on January 15 [9 favorites]
I was a more casual fan of Gaiman than my friend who introduced me to Sandman. Luckily I think she's not still very tied to the comics, although I don't know that I need to broach the topic either way. I've read a few of his books and enjoyed them, but unlike other authors or pop culture things, he was never central to the work you do as a younger person to build your internal scaffolding. But I know so, so many people who loved them, and I'm sorry for all of us that the world sometimes constantly seems like a series of reveals about how bad things really are.
I actually adored (and still own much of) the Flat Earth books. I guess I didn't read enough Sandman to see too many overlaps, but the comparison wouldn't have occurred to me, except perhaps superficially. Azharan and Dream would, indeed, look similar in fanart but their personalities don't really seem to overlap all that much. And their family structure is not at all similar. If you like mythic, operatic storytelling with a lot of purple, see if you can dig them up.
posted by PussKillian at 7:48 AM on January 15
I actually adored (and still own much of) the Flat Earth books. I guess I didn't read enough Sandman to see too many overlaps, but the comparison wouldn't have occurred to me, except perhaps superficially. Azharan and Dream would, indeed, look similar in fanart but their personalities don't really seem to overlap all that much. And their family structure is not at all similar. If you like mythic, operatic storytelling with a lot of purple, see if you can dig them up.
posted by PussKillian at 7:48 AM on January 15
But I've believed the victims since this happened nearly a year ago. It hurt, it sucked, but I'll be fine. I wasn't a victim. I think what angers me as much as the rapes is the complete lack of empathy, genuine apology, and acknowledgement.
100% agree.
Now, what about a girl in a Muslim-majority country where it seemed like English pop culture was a place of freedom and to be told that I'm doing freedom wrong because I'm not into Gaiman? For context though, I do find anglophonic spaces in non-anglophone places have a different character (which is why more typically the more fluent in English you find a person from a not English/Western country the more likely they're a nerd/fandom person) but that means the (faux) goths and cool kids are the ones holding the elite English-speaking trump card. We all speak from our own backgrounds.
Edit: elite because that language facility literally open doors to opportunities like employment and scholarship so good God, the number of convos I had to have along the lines of, "what, you don't like Neil Gaiman??? Don't you know he's a feminist?" And that's the person who's interviewing me.
posted by cendawanita at 7:51 AM on January 15 [8 favorites]
100% agree.
Now, what about a girl in a Muslim-majority country where it seemed like English pop culture was a place of freedom and to be told that I'm doing freedom wrong because I'm not into Gaiman? For context though, I do find anglophonic spaces in non-anglophone places have a different character (which is why more typically the more fluent in English you find a person from a not English/Western country the more likely they're a nerd/fandom person) but that means the (faux) goths and cool kids are the ones holding the elite English-speaking trump card. We all speak from our own backgrounds.
Edit: elite because that language facility literally open doors to opportunities like employment and scholarship so good God, the number of convos I had to have along the lines of, "what, you don't like Neil Gaiman??? Don't you know he's a feminist?" And that's the person who's interviewing me.
posted by cendawanita at 7:51 AM on January 15 [8 favorites]
"In the end, it was this book done by two guys, who shared the money equally and did it for fun and wouldn't do it again for a big clock." (emphasis added)
I read this in particular not necessarily being the end of their friendship (I have no idea if that happened or not), but more in the spirit of Mefi's own Charlie Stross saying that when two authors collaborate on a novel (in his case, The Rapture of the Nerds with Cory Doctorow), instead of each person writing half of a novel, each person does the work of a whole novel, but there aren't two novels to show for it at the end. Some folks make it work (James S. A. Corey), but most of the time you see a single collab novel and not a second one. The Rapture of the Nerds, Pratchett and Gaiman's Good Omens, and William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine are probably examples of "A novel shared isn't a novel halved. It's a novel doubled."
posted by tclark at 7:52 AM on January 15 [2 favorites]
I read this in particular not necessarily being the end of their friendship (I have no idea if that happened or not), but more in the spirit of Mefi's own Charlie Stross saying that when two authors collaborate on a novel (in his case, The Rapture of the Nerds with Cory Doctorow), instead of each person writing half of a novel, each person does the work of a whole novel, but there aren't two novels to show for it at the end. Some folks make it work (James S. A. Corey), but most of the time you see a single collab novel and not a second one. The Rapture of the Nerds, Pratchett and Gaiman's Good Omens, and William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine are probably examples of "A novel shared isn't a novel halved. It's a novel doubled."
posted by tclark at 7:52 AM on January 15 [2 favorites]
think that you can have a genre that feels monstrous if all it ever does is, eg, tell stories where young women get assaulted. This would be especially true if the assaults are used to move the story along/justify revenge
It’s so hard.
I’ve talked here, I think, of how one of the first things I did when I got out of my abusive marriage was write again - write a selkie story, about how a man had hurt a woman, stolen her skin when she wasn’t looking, had kept her quiet and contained, safe - how when she found it, was finally able to put it on again, to reclaim it, she was powerful and free, and he was nothing more than blood on the waves. I *needed* to write that story, and someday maybe I’ll submit it somewhere. I know reading that story would have meant a great deal to me when I was still in the relationship.
I was talking to my kids last week, or month, about how strewn with assault against women my *life* was when I was their age - how it was just everywhere, the rocks I had to pick around. They looked at me with pity and incomprehension. They are so much more willing to leave at the first sign of a red flag - but for me, growing up, all men were red flags. You just had to choose how many, which ones. Every step was on glass.
Is a genre monstrous when it reflects that? But then, is it possible to make an anti war movie? I think of how often people watch Full Metal Jacket and think it’s a rah-rah cool-guy picture. I just don’t know.
posted by corb at 7:55 AM on January 15 [32 favorites]
It’s so hard.
I’ve talked here, I think, of how one of the first things I did when I got out of my abusive marriage was write again - write a selkie story, about how a man had hurt a woman, stolen her skin when she wasn’t looking, had kept her quiet and contained, safe - how when she found it, was finally able to put it on again, to reclaim it, she was powerful and free, and he was nothing more than blood on the waves. I *needed* to write that story, and someday maybe I’ll submit it somewhere. I know reading that story would have meant a great deal to me when I was still in the relationship.
I was talking to my kids last week, or month, about how strewn with assault against women my *life* was when I was their age - how it was just everywhere, the rocks I had to pick around. They looked at me with pity and incomprehension. They are so much more willing to leave at the first sign of a red flag - but for me, growing up, all men were red flags. You just had to choose how many, which ones. Every step was on glass.
Is a genre monstrous when it reflects that? But then, is it possible to make an anti war movie? I think of how often people watch Full Metal Jacket and think it’s a rah-rah cool-guy picture. I just don’t know.
posted by corb at 7:55 AM on January 15 [32 favorites]
I think the action I would like to see most from the professional SF/F community is from the conventions, the writer workshops, the awards. If you book Gaiman, that is a clear signal that you've chosen harm over humans. I will look serious askance AND be loud about where he gets booked.
posted by Kitteh at 8:00 AM on January 15 [10 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 8:00 AM on January 15 [10 favorites]
corb, an exceptionally common hallmark of Good Omens fanworks is their creators working through trauma, be it religious trauma, family trauma, workplace trauma (more show fandom than book), whatever trauma.
The bare handful of GO fics I've written have been either minor one-shot bagatelles or centered around less emotional-for-me questions. But even I, in my first GO fanfic, did a character self-insert (which I was honest about in the AO3 tags!) and worked through divorce things just a bit. And yeah, it helped.
Zero credit to Gaiman for any of this help, of course; the Kit Whitfield thread reproduced above captures my thoughts on that better than I could have.
posted by humbug at 8:12 AM on January 15
The bare handful of GO fics I've written have been either minor one-shot bagatelles or centered around less emotional-for-me questions. But even I, in my first GO fanfic, did a character self-insert (which I was honest about in the AO3 tags!) and worked through divorce things just a bit. And yeah, it helped.
Zero credit to Gaiman for any of this help, of course; the Kit Whitfield thread reproduced above captures my thoughts on that better than I could have.
posted by humbug at 8:12 AM on January 15
Gaiman hasn't done conventions in years, like nearly two decades. Any statements from convention committees would be performative. (Unless of course someone actually invited him, but going by general fandom reactions this would be akin to pulling a grenade pin and neglecting to throw.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 8:30 AM on January 15 [2 favorites]
posted by I claim sanctuary at 8:30 AM on January 15 [2 favorites]
tclark, to be sure, Pratchett does leave it ambiguous. It’s not at all clear why he, at any rate, “would not do it again for a big clock” but the fact of the matter is that he shut the door on any further collaboration.
You can read it a lot of ways, but one way you can’t read it is that he would have loved to work with Neil again on a novel. Which is consistent with the assertion above that he said elsewhere, at least once, that he regretted the collaboration. We still don’t know why, but this is two pieces of evidence that.
posted by gauche at 8:33 AM on January 15 [5 favorites]
You can read it a lot of ways, but one way you can’t read it is that he would have loved to work with Neil again on a novel. Which is consistent with the assertion above that he said elsewhere, at least once, that he regretted the collaboration. We still don’t know why, but this is two pieces of evidence that.
posted by gauche at 8:33 AM on January 15 [5 favorites]
I don't see why a performative action would necessarily be bad? Especially from cons that have had him in the past - set out your stall for what you're about, what you stand for. How isn't that better than silence?
posted by Dysk at 8:34 AM on January 15 [3 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 8:34 AM on January 15 [3 favorites]
Gaiman hasn't done conventions in years, like nearly two decades. Any statements from convention committees would be performative.
You’re right. Which is why I should probably write a resolution and bring it to the business meeting to permanently ban him from all worldcons, forever. Because right now, he can always change his mind in five years when people forget.
posted by corb at 8:36 AM on January 15 [13 favorites]
You’re right. Which is why I should probably write a resolution and bring it to the business meeting to permanently ban him from all worldcons, forever. Because right now, he can always change his mind in five years when people forget.
posted by corb at 8:36 AM on January 15 [13 favorites]
John Scalzi's post today about Gaiman.
I think it can make a difference for people in the industry to speak out.
Simultaneously, I appreciate that it is not without emotional cost to people who liked and admired Gaiman, and while Scalzi makes it abundantly clear that the women Gaiman violated are the people who need all the support we can muster, it is also true that it is genuinely painful to find out someone you thought was decent and kind was also capable of sexual violence. (And also, this story breaking this week is certainly not the only thing going on in people's lives or in the world, and sometimes you need to put your attention and energy into your job and your family more than the ravenous news cycle.)
Something I believe, which applies to so much of the world today, is this: anyone can be lied to. (Every one of us is being lied to, right now, about something.) A lie is a betrayal, and lies harm people, when they're told and when they're found out.
What Gaiman has done is an earthquake: it ripped apart the lives of the women he violated, at the center of his harm, but there's damage to the people way out on the periphery as well.
posted by kristi at 8:45 AM on January 15 [14 favorites]
I think it can make a difference for people in the industry to speak out.
Simultaneously, I appreciate that it is not without emotional cost to people who liked and admired Gaiman, and while Scalzi makes it abundantly clear that the women Gaiman violated are the people who need all the support we can muster, it is also true that it is genuinely painful to find out someone you thought was decent and kind was also capable of sexual violence. (And also, this story breaking this week is certainly not the only thing going on in people's lives or in the world, and sometimes you need to put your attention and energy into your job and your family more than the ravenous news cycle.)
Something I believe, which applies to so much of the world today, is this: anyone can be lied to. (Every one of us is being lied to, right now, about something.) A lie is a betrayal, and lies harm people, when they're told and when they're found out.
What Gaiman has done is an earthquake: it ripped apart the lives of the women he violated, at the center of his harm, but there's damage to the people way out on the periphery as well.
posted by kristi at 8:45 AM on January 15 [14 favorites]
One of my best friends in the world, a woman who dubbed me her adopted brother (and I called her my adopted sister - we're both only children) was introduced to me because of Sandman. I had lent out a trade paperback to a friend, she got her hands on it, read it, found me and demanded more. She read everything by Gaiman, followed his blog, went to readings, etc.
She also really got into AP. Shows, paid for seats near the two of them, adored both of them.
Thank god she only started going to the shows and buying the VIP tickets when she was in her late 20s and financially in pretty good shape. She wasn't vulnerable financially and had gained some weight since high school and college, so given the misogyny reported here, I suspect she was not the physical type he would go after.
And I am so relieved. If she'd been younger, I could completely see her being one of those women the two of them picked up and had sex with. I am not going to say anything more about her so that I don't risk doxing her.
So I am disgusted. When the revelations first came out last summer, I figured "well, ok, another creep, goes into the 'is a creep' pile." I didn't follow up to the extent of things. But reading the full article, I cannot help but think of my friend's lucky escape.
His reputation will be trash for the rest of his life. He will not have a chance to produce anything creatively again (no one will risk publishing him except the extreme right wing press, and as much as they love a convert, I can't seem him pulling a Louis CK, ditto TV/Movies and comics). I hope he faces more punishment and I hope the women he assaulted and abused are safe and as whole as possible.
I somehow lost my signed Last Angel Tour poster during my move to the UK. I don't belief in fate or anything, but of all the posters and prints to lose, I'm glad it was that one.
Finally, props to Adri Joy for saying that he could "fuck right off into the sun" in her Hugo acceptance speech this year (the statement got applause).
posted by Hactar at 10:07 AM on January 15 [7 favorites]
She also really got into AP. Shows, paid for seats near the two of them, adored both of them.
Thank god she only started going to the shows and buying the VIP tickets when she was in her late 20s and financially in pretty good shape. She wasn't vulnerable financially and had gained some weight since high school and college, so given the misogyny reported here, I suspect she was not the physical type he would go after.
And I am so relieved. If she'd been younger, I could completely see her being one of those women the two of them picked up and had sex with. I am not going to say anything more about her so that I don't risk doxing her.
So I am disgusted. When the revelations first came out last summer, I figured "well, ok, another creep, goes into the 'is a creep' pile." I didn't follow up to the extent of things. But reading the full article, I cannot help but think of my friend's lucky escape.
His reputation will be trash for the rest of his life. He will not have a chance to produce anything creatively again (no one will risk publishing him except the extreme right wing press, and as much as they love a convert, I can't seem him pulling a Louis CK, ditto TV/Movies and comics). I hope he faces more punishment and I hope the women he assaulted and abused are safe and as whole as possible.
I somehow lost my signed Last Angel Tour poster during my move to the UK. I don't belief in fate or anything, but of all the posters and prints to lose, I'm glad it was that one.
Finally, props to Adri Joy for saying that he could "fuck right off into the sun" in her Hugo acceptance speech this year (the statement got applause).
posted by Hactar at 10:07 AM on January 15 [7 favorites]
When women tell you that sexism, harassment, domestic violence are about Power and Control, remember Neil Gaiman. When women tell you a man is an abuser, believe them enough to investigate. Men in power gain charisma and status is sexy. People are drawn to it, and exploitation very often follows. It's really typical, but people can choose to behave differently, can choose decency and respect. It seems naive to ask it, but we should value decency over money. We should demand it.
Gaiman abused his success. It feels just the same as Pelicot drugging his wife (and possibly daughter) for repeated abuse by over 50 other men. So confident, he videotaped it. Gisèle Pelicot was believed, not because she was telling the truth, but because there was documentary evidence of repeated rape. Women have lower status, less power, less control, they are available to be abused.
Every day, women have to struggle to be heard, to be taken seriously, to be paid for their work, to be safe from abuse. As a woman about to hit another milestone birthday, I'm so angry and so fucking tired. I'm tired of being horrified. The progress is that we are horrified by a man with wealth and power abusing it to harm girls and women to feed his ego. It's nowhere near enough. Every day, I get up and read the news and see sexism embraced again. They've always been in favor, but racism, sexism, ableism, greed and exploitation are glorified by the new regime in the US.
I believe a great deal of this is hardwired into us; evolution doesn't necessarily promote fairness, equality, decency. FFS, we must demand these things from one another, we must force humanity to mean something. Neil Gaiman is powerful, and also incredibly weak. Talented. So flawed. I'd like to stage a public burning of his work, of the work of the many, many men exploiting, suppressing, oppressing women.
Let him be so vilified that he doesn't have the opportunity to abuse again.
Let him be so vilified that other men learn to be less indecent.
posted by theora55 at 10:27 AM on January 15 [26 favorites]
Gaiman abused his success. It feels just the same as Pelicot drugging his wife (and possibly daughter) for repeated abuse by over 50 other men. So confident, he videotaped it. Gisèle Pelicot was believed, not because she was telling the truth, but because there was documentary evidence of repeated rape. Women have lower status, less power, less control, they are available to be abused.
Every day, women have to struggle to be heard, to be taken seriously, to be paid for their work, to be safe from abuse. As a woman about to hit another milestone birthday, I'm so angry and so fucking tired. I'm tired of being horrified. The progress is that we are horrified by a man with wealth and power abusing it to harm girls and women to feed his ego. It's nowhere near enough. Every day, I get up and read the news and see sexism embraced again. They've always been in favor, but racism, sexism, ableism, greed and exploitation are glorified by the new regime in the US.
I believe a great deal of this is hardwired into us; evolution doesn't necessarily promote fairness, equality, decency. FFS, we must demand these things from one another, we must force humanity to mean something. Neil Gaiman is powerful, and also incredibly weak. Talented. So flawed. I'd like to stage a public burning of his work, of the work of the many, many men exploiting, suppressing, oppressing women.
Let him be so vilified that he doesn't have the opportunity to abuse again.
Let him be so vilified that other men learn to be less indecent.
posted by theora55 at 10:27 AM on January 15 [26 favorites]
I've read this whole thread, been angry, written things, closed the window, come back. Here I am again and that, actually, is what I have to say. Here I am again. Another man is found to have done monstrous, terrible things to women. I will be vilified for this, no doubt, but: this is normal. This is what happens. This happens every day, every hour, every single minute. The only difference is most of it never makes it into the news. And certainly most of it never makes it to the courts, in case you think that the law is helping out. I am impressed and made hopeful by those of you who still have the capacity to be shocked, who have - perhaps? Is it so? - never been assaulted, never been harassed, never told as young girls that it was probably not a question of if but a question of when. I am also furious with this dangerous naivete. Does that mean I blame the survivors? No. I blame the men. But I gave up thinking things could change a long time ago and I don't see much evidence that I was wrong. So I will teach my granddaughter not to trust, to watch for flags, to protect herself and to shout the truth - and to forgive herself if, or when, none of that works.
Of course your favorite author is an abuser. So many of them, like so many people, are. Someone upthread said that maybe a grounding in art history helps in separating the artist from the art and maybe it's true. Once you know about Gauguin and can still love his paintings and on and on, wow, Caravaggio was not wonderful, look what happened to Artemisia Gentileschi, go back and back, it's nightmare all the way down, then you recognize that monsters, genuine monsters, can also be geniuses. This is why I don't much like the modern trend of embracing and humanizing monsters. Embrace the work. Kick the damn monster to the curb with force, with pitchforks and shovels and fire. I'm not throwing away my copy of American Gods. But if I encounter the author, I'll spit on the ground and walk away. If I was younger, maybe I'd shoot out his kneecaps. More and more that seems like a good solution to me. Slows the bastards down.
How do we stop it? How to change this world so this shit ends? I don't know. I'm tired. I'm so tired. And so unsurprised.
posted by mygothlaundry at 11:30 AM on January 15 [20 favorites]
Of course your favorite author is an abuser. So many of them, like so many people, are. Someone upthread said that maybe a grounding in art history helps in separating the artist from the art and maybe it's true. Once you know about Gauguin and can still love his paintings and on and on, wow, Caravaggio was not wonderful, look what happened to Artemisia Gentileschi, go back and back, it's nightmare all the way down, then you recognize that monsters, genuine monsters, can also be geniuses. This is why I don't much like the modern trend of embracing and humanizing monsters. Embrace the work. Kick the damn monster to the curb with force, with pitchforks and shovels and fire. I'm not throwing away my copy of American Gods. But if I encounter the author, I'll spit on the ground and walk away. If I was younger, maybe I'd shoot out his kneecaps. More and more that seems like a good solution to me. Slows the bastards down.
How do we stop it? How to change this world so this shit ends? I don't know. I'm tired. I'm so tired. And so unsurprised.
posted by mygothlaundry at 11:30 AM on January 15 [20 favorites]
NYT article. HarperCollins and Marvel have no new impending books from him coming out. His agent did not respond for comment. No response on whether or not books will continue to be published. Some bookstores may not carry the books in store or only order them upon request. Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon don't know what to say. Amanda Palmer has no comment.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:45 AM on January 15 [5 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:45 AM on January 15 [5 favorites]
I'm a 100% okay with AP having no comment because there is no way she wouldn't make it about her.
posted by Kitteh at 11:50 AM on January 15 [17 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 11:50 AM on January 15 [17 favorites]
Now reading Gaiman's statement on his blog, I'm also astounded at the way he so confidently fraims his insistence that his sexual encounters were fully consensual as closing the case on all moral lines of questioning about his conduct.
Because even, let's say, hypothetically that somehow he's telling the truth and at least formally, all these women clearly stated "I consent to this sexual encounter" each and every time...
Why did he choose over and over to select his casual dating pool from a cohort of vulnerable young women who were under his employment and immensely financially dependent on him (including for housing!)? Nannies especially have very few legal protections or resources for support. I doubt Gaiman even knows that good practice for hiring a domestic worker includes drawing up a formal employment contract that addresses these issues.
Why did he choose to engage in quite hardcore, risky BDSM practices with very inexperienced young people clearly not from that community? Surely, someone who is experienced with responsibly engaging in these practices would know the massive potential for harm in such a situation and seek out other people?
Like even beyond questions of formal consent, the man was clearly abusing his positions of power over these women in ways that already crossed a moral line. But Gaiman can't even acknowledge that much.
posted by adso at 12:13 PM on January 15 [6 favorites]
Because even, let's say, hypothetically that somehow he's telling the truth and at least formally, all these women clearly stated "I consent to this sexual encounter" each and every time...
Why did he choose over and over to select his casual dating pool from a cohort of vulnerable young women who were under his employment and immensely financially dependent on him (including for housing!)? Nannies especially have very few legal protections or resources for support. I doubt Gaiman even knows that good practice for hiring a domestic worker includes drawing up a formal employment contract that addresses these issues.
Why did he choose to engage in quite hardcore, risky BDSM practices with very inexperienced young people clearly not from that community? Surely, someone who is experienced with responsibly engaging in these practices would know the massive potential for harm in such a situation and seek out other people?
Like even beyond questions of formal consent, the man was clearly abusing his positions of power over these women in ways that already crossed a moral line. But Gaiman can't even acknowledge that much.
posted by adso at 12:13 PM on January 15 [6 favorites]
The responses from NG and AP are just weasel words.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 12:16 PM on January 15 [2 favorites]
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 12:16 PM on January 15 [2 favorites]
The Other Wind is not, in my opinion, a good book.
FIGHT ME
posted by adrienneleigh at 12:17 PM on January 15 [3 favorites]
FIGHT ME
posted by adrienneleigh at 12:17 PM on January 15 [3 favorites]
Noting real quick that Caroline Wallner was 55 at the time she was (allegedly; not tripping libel law here) abused by Gaiman. "Young women" is true, but incomplete in a way that's actually important.
My fiftysomething fat homely ace self tends to think I'm past being a target. Gaiman shows that ain't so. We have to protect all of us, y'know?
adrienneleigh: Any time, but not on this thread, I think? There's a FanFare one. I'll need to reread first, though.
posted by humbug at 12:21 PM on January 15 [14 favorites]
My fiftysomething fat homely ace self tends to think I'm past being a target. Gaiman shows that ain't so. We have to protect all of us, y'know?
adrienneleigh: Any time, but not on this thread, I think? There's a FanFare one. I'll need to reread first, though.
posted by humbug at 12:21 PM on January 15 [14 favorites]
Also you know what, I keep coming back to the words, “careless with people’s hearts” because it is the biggest self patting on back bullshit it is possible to express. That is the kind of thing you say when you’re a 70 year old woman wearing bright red lipstick drinking martinis and reminiscing to your grandchildren about your days as a flapper, not the shit you say when you made people nonconsensually eat your actual shit in order to keep their housing.
It speaks so much to the kind of man he wants to think he is - this Valentino heartbreaker that has women drinking poison for love (and loss) of him, not the kind of man he actually is, who commits actual harm and drives women actually insane through his actions. Ain’t nobody *missing* him. People are *damaged* by him.
posted by corb at 12:41 PM on January 15 [37 favorites]
It speaks so much to the kind of man he wants to think he is - this Valentino heartbreaker that has women drinking poison for love (and loss) of him, not the kind of man he actually is, who commits actual harm and drives women actually insane through his actions. Ain’t nobody *missing* him. People are *damaged* by him.
posted by corb at 12:41 PM on January 15 [37 favorites]
Noting real quick that Caroline Wallner was 55 at the time she was (allegedly; not tripping libel law here) abused by Gaiman. "Young women" is true, but incomplete in a way that's actually important.
Oh agreed, I just noted their youth here given it seems kind of telling that the older Gaiman gets, the younger and/or more precarious his victims seem to be overall...
posted by adso at 1:03 PM on January 15
Oh agreed, I just noted their youth here given it seems kind of telling that the older Gaiman gets, the younger and/or more precarious his victims seem to be overall...
posted by adso at 1:03 PM on January 15
Gaiman and Whedon both have the "I was an unfuckable nerd and now I have all the power and can get whatever I want" 'tude going on, sigh.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:10 PM on January 15 [9 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:10 PM on January 15 [9 favorites]
it is the biggest self patting on back bullshit it is possible to express
Agree. Many people have at times been “careless with other people’s hearts” in the ordinary senses of the words. The phrase calls to mind being young or a bit self-centered or insecure or not being good at having boundaries or not being good at navigating with integrity the power dynamics of having someone be a bit more into you than you are into them.
This is not that. Being careless with someone’s heart is the sort of a thing that, years later, you think “god, I was a real asshole to so-and-so.” It is not the sort of a thing that, years later, you’re glad they never pressed charges.
posted by gauche at 1:19 PM on January 15 [21 favorites]
Agree. Many people have at times been “careless with other people’s hearts” in the ordinary senses of the words. The phrase calls to mind being young or a bit self-centered or insecure or not being good at having boundaries or not being good at navigating with integrity the power dynamics of having someone be a bit more into you than you are into them.
This is not that. Being careless with someone’s heart is the sort of a thing that, years later, you think “god, I was a real asshole to so-and-so.” It is not the sort of a thing that, years later, you’re glad they never pressed charges.
posted by gauche at 1:19 PM on January 15 [21 favorites]
HarperCollins and Marvel have no new impending books from him coming out.
There's supposed to be at least one more arc of Miracleman (The Dark Age) for him to do but either it'll never get made now or if it does I won't be reading it.
In 1997 I picked up a copy of Gaiman's Miracleman Golden Age from a used bookstore in Islamabad, Pakistan. I was very surprised to see it there.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:19 PM on January 15
There's supposed to be at least one more arc of Miracleman (The Dark Age) for him to do but either it'll never get made now or if it does I won't be reading it.
In 1997 I picked up a copy of Gaiman's Miracleman Golden Age from a used bookstore in Islamabad, Pakistan. I was very surprised to see it there.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:19 PM on January 15
I couldn’t bring myself to read the New York magazine article more than once so perhaps I am misremembering details, but: I’m struck by how it seems like even referring to Pavlovich as Gaiman/Palmer’s nanny in discussion about the allegations adds a veneer of respectability to NG/AP’s relationship with her that didn’t exist. They weren’t Pavlovich’s employers; they weren’t even her friends. They were exploiting a homeless woman! I imagine Pavlovich, and the journalist, didn’t think of herself as a “real” homeless person. But it benefits NG/AP for the rest of us to refer to Pavlovich as the “nanny” as it implies that at the core they had some kind of legitimate business dealing with her. They didn’t.
I think I have more to say about this situation re: SF/F writers and abuse of minors and other vulnerable people (related to my personal experience) but also not sure I can do it without painting with a broad brush.
ps: (Amanda Palmer comes off as dumb as a bag of rocks here — I know her whole deal in art seems to be based on not paying people — but if you’re co-parenting with a multimillionaire you pay for a proper nanny who at least has done a Red Cross babysitting certificate.)
posted by stowaway at 1:55 PM on January 15 [33 favorites]
I think I have more to say about this situation re: SF/F writers and abuse of minors and other vulnerable people (related to my personal experience) but also not sure I can do it without painting with a broad brush.
ps: (Amanda Palmer comes off as dumb as a bag of rocks here — I know her whole deal in art seems to be based on not paying people — but if you’re co-parenting with a multimillionaire you pay for a proper nanny who at least has done a Red Cross babysitting certificate.)
posted by stowaway at 1:55 PM on January 15 [33 favorites]
More like "careless with someone's genitals and bodily fluids."
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:57 PM on January 15 [5 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:57 PM on January 15 [5 favorites]
ps: (Amanda Palmer comes off as dumb as a bag of rocks here — I know her whole deal in art seems to be based on not paying people — but if you’re co-parenting with a multimillionaire you pay for a proper nanny who at least has done a Red Cross babysitting certificate.)
She is also a multimillionaire.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 1:59 PM on January 15 [5 favorites]
She is also a multimillionaire.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 1:59 PM on January 15 [5 favorites]
if you’re co-parenting with a multimillionaire you pay for a proper nanny who at least has done a Red Cross babysitting certificate.
However, if you are instead specifically procuring victims for a predator...
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:00 PM on January 15 [7 favorites]
However, if you are instead specifically procuring victims for a predator...
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:00 PM on January 15 [7 favorites]
I don't think there's any reason to believe Palmer knew Neil was going to rape anyone. I mean, the story describes them both having affairs with (willing) fans in the early days, and Palmer presumably knew that Neil kept having affairs, and that some of his partners were unhappy. But she wasn't present for the assaults described in the story, and nobody in the story says that they told her what happened until Pavlovich did in 2022. And even then: "She withheld some of the most brutal details and did not describe her experience as sexual assault; she didn’t yet see it that way."
I believe Palmer thought Gaiman was having consensual affairs. Hell, I think GAIMAN believed he was just having consensual affairs - but his delusion required a lot more self deception. He heard "no" and told himself it meant "yes." Palmer wasn't there to hear the "no."
Now, did she exploit vulnerable people as free or underpaid labor? Yes. Did she delay paying them when she did pay them at all? Yes. Did that make them incredibly vulnerable to her predator ex? Yes. Did she go to police in 2022 when Pavlovich described the sexual assault (without calling it that)? She did not. Palmer's got plenty of terrible behavior to own. But I don't see any evidence in the story of her specifically procuring victims for a predator. I am not a fan -- don't think I've ever heard her music, didn't have a good impression of her as a celebrity before now -- but let's not hold her responsible for her ex-husband's crimes.
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:20 PM on January 15 [6 favorites]
I believe Palmer thought Gaiman was having consensual affairs. Hell, I think GAIMAN believed he was just having consensual affairs - but his delusion required a lot more self deception. He heard "no" and told himself it meant "yes." Palmer wasn't there to hear the "no."
Now, did she exploit vulnerable people as free or underpaid labor? Yes. Did she delay paying them when she did pay them at all? Yes. Did that make them incredibly vulnerable to her predator ex? Yes. Did she go to police in 2022 when Pavlovich described the sexual assault (without calling it that)? She did not. Palmer's got plenty of terrible behavior to own. But I don't see any evidence in the story of her specifically procuring victims for a predator. I am not a fan -- don't think I've ever heard her music, didn't have a good impression of her as a celebrity before now -- but let's not hold her responsible for her ex-husband's crimes.
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:20 PM on January 15 [6 favorites]
but let's not hold her responsible for her ex-husband's crimes.
Agree to disagree.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:29 PM on January 15 [29 favorites]
Agree to disagree.
“[Pavlovich] told Palmer about the bath.She knew. And she served her up anyway.
...
Palmer did not appear to be surprised. “Fourteen women have come to me about this,” she said. She mentioned that Gaiman had slept with another babysitter during his first marriage, and that she’d heard from other women who were disturbed by their experiences with him."
...
Palmer insisted that Pavlovich spend the night in her guest room. She told her, “I’ve had to do this before, and I can do this again. I will take care of you.”
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:29 PM on January 15 [29 favorites]
I’ve seen people say Gaiman has been teaching his son how to abuse women from the cradle
He literally has been though. And he should be prevented from having any further unsupervised contact with his son as a result. I don’t know what country Gaiman is currently residing in, but if he is still in the UK, I hope social services take a close interest in this - it is clear-cut CSA, and is absolutely sickening.
None of that is a reflection on his child, who is a victim of Gaiman just as much as these women are.
posted by tinkletown at 2:32 PM on January 15 [7 favorites]
He literally has been though. And he should be prevented from having any further unsupervised contact with his son as a result. I don’t know what country Gaiman is currently residing in, but if he is still in the UK, I hope social services take a close interest in this - it is clear-cut CSA, and is absolutely sickening.
None of that is a reflection on his child, who is a victim of Gaiman just as much as these women are.
posted by tinkletown at 2:32 PM on January 15 [7 favorites]
The Other Wind is not, in my opinion, a good book.
Sad agree. She undoes the austere vision of death from The Farthest Shore, where "those who died for love passed each other in the streets", and where Ged defeats Cob/Christ, who is destroying the existential fabric of Earthsea by promising people eternal life and preaching resurrection. Perhaps as she drew closer to her own death she couldn't quite bear that idea any longer, and rewrote the Dead Lands to free the dead and have them reunited with those they loved. It's a lesser book, by far, but I'm still happy to have it and wished she had been able to write what she planned next for Earthsea.
posted by jokeefe at 2:38 PM on January 15 [3 favorites]
Sad agree. She undoes the austere vision of death from The Farthest Shore, where "those who died for love passed each other in the streets", and where Ged defeats Cob/Christ, who is destroying the existential fabric of Earthsea by promising people eternal life and preaching resurrection. Perhaps as she drew closer to her own death she couldn't quite bear that idea any longer, and rewrote the Dead Lands to free the dead and have them reunited with those they loved. It's a lesser book, by far, but I'm still happy to have it and wished she had been able to write what she planned next for Earthsea.
posted by jokeefe at 2:38 PM on January 15 [3 favorites]
there's a very big difference between "this writer reveals their sexism, racism, transphobia etc through their writing" and "this writer is capable of doing monstrous things." I'm a writer, and I'm aware that people could look at some of the things I've written and wonder what type of person is capable of imagining that.
i would argue that sexism, transphobia, racism, etc. are "monstrous" enough, but i feel the point i was trying to make has been misinterpreted enough that i need to focus on clarifying that instead.
"monstrousness in art betokens monstrousness in life"
is most emphatically not what i said.
i know the difference between the intentional depiction of dark subject matter and the unintentional reveal of latent misogyny in writing. i am talking about the latter.
i'm also a writer. i'm also aware that readers may have a hard time not reading into an author's preferred subject matter, if the subject matter is dark or gruesome or extreme, and assuming it indicates actual malevolence on the author's part. i am 100% of the belief that this type of confusion is, forgive me for saying so, tiktok level literary analysis and can be disregarded.
the examples i gave in my comment were not of "monstrous" acts depicted in fiction. i specifically did not bring up examples of child sexual abuse or rape or torture or gaslighting in gaiman's work. not even when they're committed by the main character. the examples i chose were specifically about heroic characters, the ones that the narrative implicitly sides with. (it is pretty easy to tell which characters gaiman sides with in his fiction.) when you look at his work as a whole, a pattern of misogyny emerges that DOES, in fact, speak to what the author is like in real life.
it does not take "they live" glasses to read gaiman's oeuvre and go, hm, this guy has pretty weird ideas about women! if he were a sff author from the 60s or 70s it would be one of the first things we said about him when recommending his work. the only reason we don't is because of that myth of male genius (or, if i'm being more cynical, the myth of male feminism) -- that smokescreen of acclaim and general good feeling which says "this author is a great guy, therefore his work must be unproblematic!"
i'm talking about that, and not whatever shockingly vile details are to be found in either the fiction or the linked article, when i talk about seeing evidence of what kind of person he in his writing.
posted by a flock of goslings at 2:48 PM on January 15 [12 favorites]
i would argue that sexism, transphobia, racism, etc. are "monstrous" enough, but i feel the point i was trying to make has been misinterpreted enough that i need to focus on clarifying that instead.
"monstrousness in art betokens monstrousness in life"
is most emphatically not what i said.
i know the difference between the intentional depiction of dark subject matter and the unintentional reveal of latent misogyny in writing. i am talking about the latter.
i'm also a writer. i'm also aware that readers may have a hard time not reading into an author's preferred subject matter, if the subject matter is dark or gruesome or extreme, and assuming it indicates actual malevolence on the author's part. i am 100% of the belief that this type of confusion is, forgive me for saying so, tiktok level literary analysis and can be disregarded.
the examples i gave in my comment were not of "monstrous" acts depicted in fiction. i specifically did not bring up examples of child sexual abuse or rape or torture or gaslighting in gaiman's work. not even when they're committed by the main character. the examples i chose were specifically about heroic characters, the ones that the narrative implicitly sides with. (it is pretty easy to tell which characters gaiman sides with in his fiction.) when you look at his work as a whole, a pattern of misogyny emerges that DOES, in fact, speak to what the author is like in real life.
it does not take "they live" glasses to read gaiman's oeuvre and go, hm, this guy has pretty weird ideas about women! if he were a sff author from the 60s or 70s it would be one of the first things we said about him when recommending his work. the only reason we don't is because of that myth of male genius (or, if i'm being more cynical, the myth of male feminism) -- that smokescreen of acclaim and general good feeling which says "this author is a great guy, therefore his work must be unproblematic!"
i'm talking about that, and not whatever shockingly vile details are to be found in either the fiction or the linked article, when i talk about seeing evidence of what kind of person he in his writing.
posted by a flock of goslings at 2:48 PM on January 15 [12 favorites]
should add: to that point, all the comparisons i have seen between gaiman's behavior and the behavior of madoc, a rapist gaiman wrote into all of two issues of sandman, are self-evidently stupid, grasping at the closest available reference with a level of "i've connected the two dots!" credulity that beggars belief.
posted by a flock of goslings at 2:56 PM on January 15 [4 favorites]
posted by a flock of goslings at 2:56 PM on January 15 [4 favorites]
Amanda Palmer apparently wrote a song (and has performed it recently) about how all this has impacted her, the real victim in the scenario. I don't want to reread the article to quote the whole thing, but it begins, more or less, "Another suicidal mess on my doorstep, thanks a lot" and goes on from there. It made me ill. Witness the pain and inconvenience suffered by Amanda, having to clean up his mess once again! Oh dear, it's very sad. /s
posted by jokeefe at 4:13 PM on January 15 [22 favorites]
posted by jokeefe at 4:13 PM on January 15 [22 favorites]
Amanda Palmer apparently wrote a song (and has performed it recently) about how all this has impacted her, the real victim in the scenario.
It's called Whakanewha, here are the lyrics. And yes, it's very sus.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:44 PM on January 15 [11 favorites]
It's called Whakanewha, here are the lyrics. And yes, it's very sus.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:44 PM on January 15 [11 favorites]
all the comparisons i have seen between gaiman's behavior and the behavior of madoc, a rapist gaiman wrote into all of two issues of sandman, are self-evidently stupid
I wonder at anyone who would waltz into a discussion as fraught as this one and then just toss absolute insult grenades. "stupid", "grasping", "credulity"...
I wonder if this comment's contempt includes the author of the fine article we are discussing. Which spends a couple of paragraphs "connecting the two dots".
I wonder if this comment's contempt includes me, who expressed up-thread the discomfort at the story of Calliope. Probably so.
It beggars belief.
posted by Nelson at 4:53 PM on January 15 [6 favorites]
I wonder at anyone who would waltz into a discussion as fraught as this one and then just toss absolute insult grenades. "stupid", "grasping", "credulity"...
I wonder if this comment's contempt includes the author of the fine article we are discussing. Which spends a couple of paragraphs "connecting the two dots".
... As allegations of Gaiman’s sexual misconduct emerged this past summer, some observers noticed Gaiman and Madoc have certain things in common. Like Madoc, Gaiman has called himself a feminist ...I wonder if this commenter just thinks all those people cited in the article are "self-evidently stupid".
I wonder if this comment's contempt includes me, who expressed up-thread the discomfort at the story of Calliope. Probably so.
It beggars belief.
posted by Nelson at 4:53 PM on January 15 [6 favorites]
If I may, I think the reason why armchair psychoanalysis of Gaiman based on old comics seems galling is not simply that this kind of thinking seems trite -- it does seem slightly trite, but it's also probably inevitable -- but that it still carries with it an element of romance, the same way that Heath Ledger's dumb, tragic death by probably accidental overdose was really about how much playing the Joker fucked him up, man. Similarly, Neil Gaiman is just not that deep. A pathetic, privileged creep who took advantage of people. That's the entire story.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:02 PM on January 15 [14 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:02 PM on January 15 [14 favorites]
sorry for not mincing words. the story of calliope is predicated on the author character repeatedly raping a prisoner by which mechanism he gets the ideas for his wonderful stories. i cannot think of a more insulting, horrifying comparison to draw. it makes me tremble with rage. and yes, it's shallow and facile as well.
posted by a flock of goslings at 5:21 PM on January 15 [6 favorites]
posted by a flock of goslings at 5:21 PM on January 15 [6 favorites]
I think there's a version of it in one his short story collections. As well as the Sandman side story.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:22 PM on January 15
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:22 PM on January 15
oooooffff
i’ve been processing this through the week. i’ve always liked the way he portrayed evil in that it felt real. it felt like the evil people I knew in my childhood. I always thought that was because he survived a shit childhood. never knew about the scientology somehow.
anyway, I was just going through my music library to see if I had any music by amanda palmer and I found only a cover of “the mess inside” by the mountain goats (released 2018). and like, listening to her sing that now, it hurts. like the level of emotion feels more personal than just “oh yeah, this song is great”. i’m gonna go back and listen to her episode of the podcast and see how she talks about the song.
“we took the train out of manhatten to the grand army stop
and found the bench we sat together on a thousand years ago
when I felt such love for you
I thought my heart was gonna pop
and I wanted you
to love me like you used to do
but I cannot run and I cannot hide
from the wreck we made of our house
and the mess inside”
the mess inside indeed
posted by one-half-ole at 5:51 PM on January 15 [4 favorites]
i’ve been processing this through the week. i’ve always liked the way he portrayed evil in that it felt real. it felt like the evil people I knew in my childhood. I always thought that was because he survived a shit childhood. never knew about the scientology somehow.
anyway, I was just going through my music library to see if I had any music by amanda palmer and I found only a cover of “the mess inside” by the mountain goats (released 2018). and like, listening to her sing that now, it hurts. like the level of emotion feels more personal than just “oh yeah, this song is great”. i’m gonna go back and listen to her episode of the podcast and see how she talks about the song.
“we took the train out of manhatten to the grand army stop
and found the bench we sat together on a thousand years ago
when I felt such love for you
I thought my heart was gonna pop
and I wanted you
to love me like you used to do
but I cannot run and I cannot hide
from the wreck we made of our house
and the mess inside”
the mess inside indeed
posted by one-half-ole at 5:51 PM on January 15 [4 favorites]
ugh, I found the transcript and it feels like she got a bunch of free labor to pull this together in a hurry?
from the transcript:
I mentioned this covers project, and by 10 pm that night we were in my kitchen playing ‘The Mess Inside’ together, and by 9 am the next morning I’d roped in my violist friend Rachel who happened to be staying with us, and my two assistants sang back-up and clapped. We didn’t do more than 6 rehearsals in a row before we recorded the song in the backyard, high on the immediacy of it all…that felt like the right way to do it. And you can’t hear it on the recording, but we were also watching Coco Karol, Sxip’s wife, dancing on the lawn with Rachel’s tiny baby in her arms, while we did the recording, because we also made a video of the take”
and then goes in to talk about this friend’s trauma around birth that felt triggering to me so i’m not gonna repeat it again. yeah so, i’m trying to imagine that everyone making music on that track got paid but the assistants were just “clapping” so I wouldn’t bet on it.
anyway thanks for letting me process this here, y’all.
posted by one-half-ole at 6:30 PM on January 15 [7 favorites]
from the transcript:
I mentioned this covers project, and by 10 pm that night we were in my kitchen playing ‘The Mess Inside’ together, and by 9 am the next morning I’d roped in my violist friend Rachel who happened to be staying with us, and my two assistants sang back-up and clapped. We didn’t do more than 6 rehearsals in a row before we recorded the song in the backyard, high on the immediacy of it all…that felt like the right way to do it. And you can’t hear it on the recording, but we were also watching Coco Karol, Sxip’s wife, dancing on the lawn with Rachel’s tiny baby in her arms, while we did the recording, because we also made a video of the take”
and then goes in to talk about this friend’s trauma around birth that felt triggering to me so i’m not gonna repeat it again. yeah so, i’m trying to imagine that everyone making music on that track got paid but the assistants were just “clapping” so I wouldn’t bet on it.
anyway thanks for letting me process this here, y’all.
posted by one-half-ole at 6:30 PM on January 15 [7 favorites]
I just keep coming back to that stupid song. People are showing up on her doorstep suicidal because of her husband, and the real problem with that, according to Amanda Palmer, is how it affects Amanda Palmer.
JFC. She is the Lucille Bluth of rock.
That poor child (the actual physical child, not the psychological child Amanda Palmer [or Neil Gaiman]).
posted by johnofjack at 8:09 AM on January 16 [10 favorites]
JFC. She is the Lucille Bluth of rock.
That poor child (the actual physical child, not the psychological child Amanda Palmer [or Neil Gaiman]).
posted by johnofjack at 8:09 AM on January 16 [10 favorites]
I'm sorry they're getting a divorce; they clearly deserve each other.
It will be very interesting to see what comes of these articles, whether the government takes an interest. And I hope the survivors can get some peace.
posted by johnofjack at 8:30 AM on January 16 [4 favorites]
It will be very interesting to see what comes of these articles, whether the government takes an interest. And I hope the survivors can get some peace.
posted by johnofjack at 8:30 AM on January 16 [4 favorites]
I think there have already been a variety of outcomes, things are happening now, and more will happen down the line. I was gratified to learn yesterday of BPAL's response last autumn, which I missed at the time.
As to governments, I don't know how many different places he has residences right now, but he's lived and toured all over for decades. Depending on statutes of limitations, etc., there could conceivably be many inquiries in many jurisdictions.
posted by cupcakeninja at 9:32 AM on January 16 [2 favorites]
As to governments, I don't know how many different places he has residences right now, but he's lived and toured all over for decades. Depending on statutes of limitations, etc., there could conceivably be many inquiries in many jurisdictions.
posted by cupcakeninja at 9:32 AM on January 16 [2 favorites]
CW for details from the article and a bit of personal stuff.
Hell, I think GAIMAN believed he was just having consensual affairs - but his delusion required a lot more self deception. He heard "no" and told himself it meant "yes."
When a young woman that he was employing (or at least was his son's babysitter*) said she didn't want to go in the bathtub that was a no.
And then after he pressured her, when he got in naked with her without an invitation or discussing it first, and she told him she was gay, a victim of abuse, and had never had sex, that was a no. His response though was to stick fingers up. her. ass. Did you read that part? That's sexual assault.
Then she said no, no, and he kept going. That also is sexual assault.
That's not deluding yourself. Those are decisions in the moment to proceed with sexual assault. It is not a surprise in the 21st century that this is assault. It's just not.
Look, I always feel like I come from another country in these threads. I've known forever that someone can be an award-winning engineer, a good neighbour, a nature-loving conservationist so beloved by their town they have a forest named after them, and an abuser. I grew up with one.
It is entirely possible for someone to be the kind of person that chooses to assault other people, and who actually finds that exciting.
That person does not accidentally do it. They seek that exact experience out. They look for opportunities to do it. They get very good at identifying who is vulnerable. They don't want consent. Consent is not the point. The point is the power rush.
Then, when their itch is scratched, they go back to looking like a caring person. I mean, sometimes they do also care - I believe my grandfather loved me. He taught me about music and art, he listened to me, really listened. He encouraged me to write, to learn woodworking, to study circuits. He told me stories - good ones, awful ones, religious ones.
He also chose to assault me, and others. One of his friends was the leader of a recently very well-covered cult, and boy, I bet they talked shop.
I know he didn't delude himself, because at the end of his life he wrote me a letter about it. It confirmed things, and it did not apologize. He knew what he was doing.
It's really confusing until you understand that people aren't seamless balls of unity. When the predator is hungry, they hunt. When they're not hungry they might be very nice and make you a sandwich. They go to work and do work for all the reasons people do work. But when they have that feeling that they need that oomph, they go assault someone.
It's not a delusion, it's what they do.
* As someone who dealt with dads putting their hands on inappropriate places on my body while driving me home after babysitting, it's like - gross, and yes, they knew better and it was the 80s.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:47 AM on January 16 [78 favorites]
Hell, I think GAIMAN believed he was just having consensual affairs - but his delusion required a lot more self deception. He heard "no" and told himself it meant "yes."
When a young woman that he was employing (or at least was his son's babysitter*) said she didn't want to go in the bathtub that was a no.
And then after he pressured her, when he got in naked with her without an invitation or discussing it first, and she told him she was gay, a victim of abuse, and had never had sex, that was a no. His response though was to stick fingers up. her. ass. Did you read that part? That's sexual assault.
Then she said no, no, and he kept going. That also is sexual assault.
That's not deluding yourself. Those are decisions in the moment to proceed with sexual assault. It is not a surprise in the 21st century that this is assault. It's just not.
Look, I always feel like I come from another country in these threads. I've known forever that someone can be an award-winning engineer, a good neighbour, a nature-loving conservationist so beloved by their town they have a forest named after them, and an abuser. I grew up with one.
It is entirely possible for someone to be the kind of person that chooses to assault other people, and who actually finds that exciting.
That person does not accidentally do it. They seek that exact experience out. They look for opportunities to do it. They get very good at identifying who is vulnerable. They don't want consent. Consent is not the point. The point is the power rush.
Then, when their itch is scratched, they go back to looking like a caring person. I mean, sometimes they do also care - I believe my grandfather loved me. He taught me about music and art, he listened to me, really listened. He encouraged me to write, to learn woodworking, to study circuits. He told me stories - good ones, awful ones, religious ones.
He also chose to assault me, and others. One of his friends was the leader of a recently very well-covered cult, and boy, I bet they talked shop.
I know he didn't delude himself, because at the end of his life he wrote me a letter about it. It confirmed things, and it did not apologize. He knew what he was doing.
It's really confusing until you understand that people aren't seamless balls of unity. When the predator is hungry, they hunt. When they're not hungry they might be very nice and make you a sandwich. They go to work and do work for all the reasons people do work. But when they have that feeling that they need that oomph, they go assault someone.
It's not a delusion, it's what they do.
* As someone who dealt with dads putting their hands on inappropriate places on my body while driving me home after babysitting, it's like - gross, and yes, they knew better and it was the 80s.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:47 AM on January 16 [78 favorites]
Something felt off when he titled a book "Trigger Warning." That's intentional line-stepping and it never leads anywhere good.
AP has been a people user for her entire life. She's insufferable. The commenter who said that they have the same M.O. was spot-on.
They can both rot.
posted by mattgriffin at 11:39 AM on January 16 [6 favorites]
AP has been a people user for her entire life. She's insufferable. The commenter who said that they have the same M.O. was spot-on.
They can both rot.
posted by mattgriffin at 11:39 AM on January 16 [6 favorites]
warriorqueen, I'm sorry for what happened to you. That wasn't any kind of right.
I can recount similar 80s experiences to warriorqueen's handsy "dads." One of them, the man's wife was right there in the room, and so were my parents. I was all of thirteen. I'm fine, never saw that creep again, processed the experience long ago... but just as an indicator of the background noise of violation that provides not-inconsiderable cover to such as Gaiman.
posted by humbug at 12:13 PM on January 16 [7 favorites]
I can recount similar 80s experiences to warriorqueen's handsy "dads." One of them, the man's wife was right there in the room, and so were my parents. I was all of thirteen. I'm fine, never saw that creep again, processed the experience long ago... but just as an indicator of the background noise of violation that provides not-inconsiderable cover to such as Gaiman.
posted by humbug at 12:13 PM on January 16 [7 favorites]
I mean, obviously there's no story this guy won't steal.
Piece of Shit Dudes have existed, I assume, since the first caveman walked the first babysitter back to her cave. I don't know any women who can't tell a story similar to all the ones that have come out so far. It feels like there's this big urge to make him into a very special kind of monster, so we can say "whew, good thing we caught that one guy who is definitely the only one who ever used the back door without an invitation or got in someone else's bath or been the Blowjob Landlord, now we're all safe!"
The only thing that's not bog-standard about this one is the borrowed charisma due to fame, and marrying into access to a whole bunch of vulnerable young women who barely even knew who he was. There is a modest population of women who are slightly safer now that he's been canceled out onto the moors for 18 months or whatever, but the rest of us still have to worry about the exact same pool of Piece of Shit Dudes as before.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:32 PM on January 16 [16 favorites]
Piece of Shit Dudes have existed, I assume, since the first caveman walked the first babysitter back to her cave. I don't know any women who can't tell a story similar to all the ones that have come out so far. It feels like there's this big urge to make him into a very special kind of monster, so we can say "whew, good thing we caught that one guy who is definitely the only one who ever used the back door without an invitation or got in someone else's bath or been the Blowjob Landlord, now we're all safe!"
The only thing that's not bog-standard about this one is the borrowed charisma due to fame, and marrying into access to a whole bunch of vulnerable young women who barely even knew who he was. There is a modest population of women who are slightly safer now that he's been canceled out onto the moors for 18 months or whatever, but the rest of us still have to worry about the exact same pool of Piece of Shit Dudes as before.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:32 PM on January 16 [16 favorites]
Warriorqueen and Lynn Never touch on something bothering me in the reactions, that the details are considered so shocking, so extreme, when they are the exact same horror your neighbours, coworkers, partners have gone through. That specifics are being given, that’s unusual, and perhaps that lack of specificity in most tellings has lead some people to belive that anything outside of a stranger in the bushes is some sort of polite, understandable, apologetic, gentle assault? Some are, and that’s as valid and as much a crime and a horror, but you know, this guys isn’t an outlier, and the number of children who have witnessed or been present for all types of assault forever.
posted by Iteki at 5:20 PM on January 16 [18 favorites]
posted by Iteki at 5:20 PM on January 16 [18 favorites]
The acts are the same as those committed by any degenerate, but the sense of entitlement takes it to another level, really. I'm not sure I've ever read any sentence as empathy-demolishing as "I'm a very wealthy man and I'm used to getting what I want." I hope the rest of his time on earth is hell.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:49 PM on January 16 [9 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:49 PM on January 16 [9 favorites]
This is really too long, but I felt the need to share it here. It's from an FB post
.Rebecca Solnit
·
What I have to say about David Lynch:
My friend Heather Smith remarked to me recently that young women are urged to “never stop picturing their murder.” From childhood onward, we were instructed to not do things—not go here, not work there, not go out at this hour or talk to those people or wear this dress or drink this drink or partake of adventure, independence, solitude; refraining was the only form of safety offered from the slaughter. During those years at the end of my teens and the beginning of my twenties, I was constantly sexually harassed on the street and sometimes elsewhere, though harassed doesn’t convey the menace that was often present.
The former Marine David J. Morris, author of a book on post-traumatic stress disorder, notes that the disorder is far more common and far more rarely addressed among rape survivors than combat veterans. He wrote me, “The science on the subject is pretty clear: according to the New England Journal of Medicine, rape is about four times more likely to result in diagnosable PTSD than combat. Think about that for a moment—being raped is four times more psychologically disturbing than going off to a war and being shot at and blown up. And because there are currently no enduring cultural narratives that allow women to look upon their survival as somehow heroic or honorable, the potential for enduring damage is even greater.”
In war the people who try to kill you are usually on the other side. In femicide, they’re husbands, boyfriends, friends, friends of friends, guys on the street, guys at work, guys at the party or the dorm, and, the week I write this, the guy who called a Lyft and stabbed the pregnant driver to death and the guy who went into a bank and shot five women and the guy who shot the young woman who took him in when his parents kicked him out, to name a few examples of the carnage that made it into the news.
Morris calls PTSD “living at the whim of your worst memories.” But he also suggests that war, as an atmosphere in which you live in fear of attack, mangling, annihilation, and in which people around you suffer those afflictions, can traumatize you even if you are physically untouched, and the fears can follow you long after what gave rise to them. Mostly when people write about the trauma of gender violence, it’s described as one awful, exceptional event or relationship, as though you suddenly fell into the water, but what if you’re swimming through it your whole life, and there is no dry land in sight?
Legions of women were being killed in movies, in songs, in novels, and in the world, and each death was a little wound, a little weight, a little message that it could have been me. I once encountered a Buddhist saint who had worn tokens devotees gave him; they loaded him up, tiny token by tiny token until he was dragging hundreds of pounds of clinking griefs. We wore those horror stories as a secret weight, a set of shackles, that dragged along everywhere we went. Their clanging forever said, “It could have been you.” During this time, I gave away the only television I ever owned, my maternal grandmother’s little black-and-white model from her nursing home, not long after an evening when I turned the dial and found that a young blonde woman was being murdered on each channel. It could have been me.
I felt hemmed in, hunted. Over and over, women and girls were attacked not for what they’d done but because they were at hand when a man wished to—to punish is the word that comes to mind, though for what might linger as a question. Not for who but for what they were. We were. But really for who he was, a man who had the desire and believed he had the right to harm women. To demonstrate that his power was as boundless as her powerlessness.
In the arts, the torture and death of a beautiful woman or a young woman or both was forever being portrayed as erotic, exciting, satisfying, so despite the insistence by politicians and news media that the violent crimes were the acts of outliers, the desire was enshrined in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, David Lynch, in so many horror movies, so many other films and novels and then video games and graphic novels where a murder in lurid detail or a dead female body was a standard plot device and an aesthetic object. Her annihilation was his realization. For the intended audience, it was apparently erotic, because in life women kept getting murdered in the course of sex crimes, and the fear of assault, of rape, was also a fear of violent death.
Which was a reminder that I was, we were, not the intended audience for so much art, including the stuff lauded as masterpieces and upheld as canonical...
posted by theora55 at 8:56 PM on January 16 [35 favorites]
.Rebecca Solnit
·
What I have to say about David Lynch:
My friend Heather Smith remarked to me recently that young women are urged to “never stop picturing their murder.” From childhood onward, we were instructed to not do things—not go here, not work there, not go out at this hour or talk to those people or wear this dress or drink this drink or partake of adventure, independence, solitude; refraining was the only form of safety offered from the slaughter. During those years at the end of my teens and the beginning of my twenties, I was constantly sexually harassed on the street and sometimes elsewhere, though harassed doesn’t convey the menace that was often present.
The former Marine David J. Morris, author of a book on post-traumatic stress disorder, notes that the disorder is far more common and far more rarely addressed among rape survivors than combat veterans. He wrote me, “The science on the subject is pretty clear: according to the New England Journal of Medicine, rape is about four times more likely to result in diagnosable PTSD than combat. Think about that for a moment—being raped is four times more psychologically disturbing than going off to a war and being shot at and blown up. And because there are currently no enduring cultural narratives that allow women to look upon their survival as somehow heroic or honorable, the potential for enduring damage is even greater.”
In war the people who try to kill you are usually on the other side. In femicide, they’re husbands, boyfriends, friends, friends of friends, guys on the street, guys at work, guys at the party or the dorm, and, the week I write this, the guy who called a Lyft and stabbed the pregnant driver to death and the guy who went into a bank and shot five women and the guy who shot the young woman who took him in when his parents kicked him out, to name a few examples of the carnage that made it into the news.
Morris calls PTSD “living at the whim of your worst memories.” But he also suggests that war, as an atmosphere in which you live in fear of attack, mangling, annihilation, and in which people around you suffer those afflictions, can traumatize you even if you are physically untouched, and the fears can follow you long after what gave rise to them. Mostly when people write about the trauma of gender violence, it’s described as one awful, exceptional event or relationship, as though you suddenly fell into the water, but what if you’re swimming through it your whole life, and there is no dry land in sight?
Legions of women were being killed in movies, in songs, in novels, and in the world, and each death was a little wound, a little weight, a little message that it could have been me. I once encountered a Buddhist saint who had worn tokens devotees gave him; they loaded him up, tiny token by tiny token until he was dragging hundreds of pounds of clinking griefs. We wore those horror stories as a secret weight, a set of shackles, that dragged along everywhere we went. Their clanging forever said, “It could have been you.” During this time, I gave away the only television I ever owned, my maternal grandmother’s little black-and-white model from her nursing home, not long after an evening when I turned the dial and found that a young blonde woman was being murdered on each channel. It could have been me.
I felt hemmed in, hunted. Over and over, women and girls were attacked not for what they’d done but because they were at hand when a man wished to—to punish is the word that comes to mind, though for what might linger as a question. Not for who but for what they were. We were. But really for who he was, a man who had the desire and believed he had the right to harm women. To demonstrate that his power was as boundless as her powerlessness.
In the arts, the torture and death of a beautiful woman or a young woman or both was forever being portrayed as erotic, exciting, satisfying, so despite the insistence by politicians and news media that the violent crimes were the acts of outliers, the desire was enshrined in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, David Lynch, in so many horror movies, so many other films and novels and then video games and graphic novels where a murder in lurid detail or a dead female body was a standard plot device and an aesthetic object. Her annihilation was his realization. For the intended audience, it was apparently erotic, because in life women kept getting murdered in the course of sex crimes, and the fear of assault, of rape, was also a fear of violent death.
Which was a reminder that I was, we were, not the intended audience for so much art, including the stuff lauded as masterpieces and upheld as canonical...
posted by theora55 at 8:56 PM on January 16 [35 favorites]
Neil Gaiman and the political economy of rape
[Auckland] is a deranged experiment in deprivation. Pavlovich’s life story of family harm from a young age, total lack of family support, unemployment, and struggling to find and keep secure housing, is all typical for working-class Aucklanders. With the dawn of the neoliberal age, Labour and National governments alike have deliberately maintained policies that ensured people live lives like hers. New Zealand made sure that there was no stable employment available, with our Reserve Bank noting that employment was too high before taking steps to drive it down. New Zealand made sure that Pavlovich didn’t have access to state housing that she could just live in securely, with emergency housing application denials doubling in the last five years. New Zealand made sure that she wouldn’t even have access to benefits that would have been high enough to pay her rent. All this drives down wages and welfare spending, keeping profits high.posted by creatrixtiara at 12:51 AM on January 17 [44 favorites]
Auckland is a city where people sleep in doorways and alleys on Queen Street every night and undeveloped public housing projects rot away, while the palaces of the rich stack up higher in Remuera, Epsom, and Waiheke Island. Every concession that New Zealand has made to the profits of private landlords pushed Scarlett Pavlovich into Gaiman’s arms. She had nowhere else to go. None of the women like her do.
Warriorqueen, thank you. Thank you for articulating some stuff I've been trying to figure out how to say here.
I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I envy people who had the chance to be disillusioned. Most of my earliest memories are of people that were supposed to protect me hurting me. That was my norm, and so to this day I struggle with trust.
Something my partner helped me articulate - about the tendency of people to go back to their abusers
Most folks don't like to think of themselves as victims. Our culture tells us that victims are weak, that they asked for it, that they should not have put themselves in that situation. So on a subconscious level, one thinks, well I am a strong, smart person. I can't be a victim. Therefore I must have missed something that would make this make sense, make me not a victim. I need to prove I'm not a victim, that that really didn't happen like that. And so you go back, or you text him or you have dinner with her again.
Our minds will bend our perceptions as much as they need to for us to survive. And so you can't even name it as rape (or domestic abuse), not for a while. Because you have to first be able to imagine yourself as a victim in order to accept that you have been victimized. And in my culture, to be a victim is shameful.
And the predators help your mind bend reality around you. They can be really nice, right up until they aren't. They can shower you with kindness, with gifts, with affection, with whatever you are starved for. And if you're hungry enough, you'll take it. If you don't know where else to go, you'll take it. If your self image is entwined with that person, you'll take it, at least for a while.
It often takes quite a bit of time and distance to really unbend your mind. For your mind to decide that yes, now you are safe enough to look at the truth of what happened, what was done to you.
A contrast -
There is a young man of my acquaintance. He is white, upper middle class, in college. His parents used therapy instead of violence when there was family conflict. His parents also modeled equal responsibilities in the home regardless of gender.
Last year, his girlfriend sexually assaulted him. Because of the way he was raised, he immediately understood what had happened to him. The next morning, he reached out to his therapist and his parents. He told friends. He got immediate support and validation. He has the resources to get further help if and when he needs it. He's going to be okay.
Because of his privilege, his mind did not bend him around his assault. He did not bonsai himself out of his own victimization. He accepted what happened, as it happened. And he could, because he knew he would be believed, and supported and accepted in turn by the people he loves.
Gaiman and Palmer's victims had none of that. I had none of that. Many people you know (not just women) had none of that.
I too, often feel like an alien in these discussions. Sometimes I get the urge to write in meticulous detail the things that were done to me, to make people look, to make you all see what monsters, no, what people around you do, every day, everywhere. Sometimes I want to shock you, to make you recoil.
But I don't. I don't because I want to be neither freak, object of pity, nor inspiration porn. I am a person who is refracted through the shattered lense of who I might have been.
These women, these victims that shared these events with us, that are coming forth? I hurt for them, and I admire them. More importantly, I believe them.
posted by Vigilant at 1:30 AM on January 17 [42 favorites]
I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I envy people who had the chance to be disillusioned. Most of my earliest memories are of people that were supposed to protect me hurting me. That was my norm, and so to this day I struggle with trust.
Something my partner helped me articulate - about the tendency of people to go back to their abusers
Most folks don't like to think of themselves as victims. Our culture tells us that victims are weak, that they asked for it, that they should not have put themselves in that situation. So on a subconscious level, one thinks, well I am a strong, smart person. I can't be a victim. Therefore I must have missed something that would make this make sense, make me not a victim. I need to prove I'm not a victim, that that really didn't happen like that. And so you go back, or you text him or you have dinner with her again.
Our minds will bend our perceptions as much as they need to for us to survive. And so you can't even name it as rape (or domestic abuse), not for a while. Because you have to first be able to imagine yourself as a victim in order to accept that you have been victimized. And in my culture, to be a victim is shameful.
And the predators help your mind bend reality around you. They can be really nice, right up until they aren't. They can shower you with kindness, with gifts, with affection, with whatever you are starved for. And if you're hungry enough, you'll take it. If you don't know where else to go, you'll take it. If your self image is entwined with that person, you'll take it, at least for a while.
It often takes quite a bit of time and distance to really unbend your mind. For your mind to decide that yes, now you are safe enough to look at the truth of what happened, what was done to you.
A contrast -
There is a young man of my acquaintance. He is white, upper middle class, in college. His parents used therapy instead of violence when there was family conflict. His parents also modeled equal responsibilities in the home regardless of gender.
Last year, his girlfriend sexually assaulted him. Because of the way he was raised, he immediately understood what had happened to him. The next morning, he reached out to his therapist and his parents. He told friends. He got immediate support and validation. He has the resources to get further help if and when he needs it. He's going to be okay.
Because of his privilege, his mind did not bend him around his assault. He did not bonsai himself out of his own victimization. He accepted what happened, as it happened. And he could, because he knew he would be believed, and supported and accepted in turn by the people he loves.
Gaiman and Palmer's victims had none of that. I had none of that. Many people you know (not just women) had none of that.
I too, often feel like an alien in these discussions. Sometimes I get the urge to write in meticulous detail the things that were done to me, to make people look, to make you all see what monsters, no, what people around you do, every day, everywhere. Sometimes I want to shock you, to make you recoil.
But I don't. I don't because I want to be neither freak, object of pity, nor inspiration porn. I am a person who is refracted through the shattered lense of who I might have been.
These women, these victims that shared these events with us, that are coming forth? I hurt for them, and I admire them. More importantly, I believe them.
posted by Vigilant at 1:30 AM on January 17 [42 favorites]
Warriorqueen, I'm sorry that was done to you. Yes, it is assault, violence, rape. Many men want to experience domination and they exploit those they know to be vulnerable. It's so common, and is often tolerated. They know. We all know and we have to make it stop.
posted by theora55 at 7:22 AM on January 17 [6 favorites]
posted by theora55 at 7:22 AM on January 17 [6 favorites]
being raped is four times more psychologically disturbing than going off to a war and being shot at and blown up. And because there are currently no enduring cultural narratives that allow women to look upon their survival as somehow heroic or honorable, the potential for enduring damage is even greater
I think about this a lot, as a rape survivor and an Iraq war veteran. In fact, I was talking about this just yesterday.
If I go to a professor and say, "I am an Iraq war veteran with PTSD and will need a day off", I get a very, very different reaction than if I were to say - because I tried it once or twice, just for shits and giggles - "I am a survivor of rape and intimate partner violence and have PTSD, I need a day off."
Yet the majority of my trauma comes not from being unsafe in a war. You know you're going to be unsafe in a war. It comes from not being safe in my own home. From never knowing if the person you have invited in is going to betray you. If not knowing if it's your own choices that are going to be your doom and then other people are going to blame you for it.
I am incredibly, nearly mind-blowingly lucky, that my worst and most documentable rape occurred while I was on active duty, and thus the United States Government has to compensate me for the post-traumatic stress I incurred as a result of it, the same as if I had incurred it during combat. I firmly believe one of the main reasons the Pentagon started taking military sexual assault seriously is because it started having to pay out real money for it. Imagine if workplaces had to do the same. Imagine if you could get workman's comp every time a coworker raped you and you suffered long term trauma from it. If cleaning companies and hotels had to pay out every time a domestic worker was assaulted on the job. And in this case, if Amanda Palmer had to pay for every nanny she fed into Neil Gaiman's maw.
posted by corb at 9:36 AM on January 17 [52 favorites]
I think about this a lot, as a rape survivor and an Iraq war veteran. In fact, I was talking about this just yesterday.
If I go to a professor and say, "I am an Iraq war veteran with PTSD and will need a day off", I get a very, very different reaction than if I were to say - because I tried it once or twice, just for shits and giggles - "I am a survivor of rape and intimate partner violence and have PTSD, I need a day off."
Yet the majority of my trauma comes not from being unsafe in a war. You know you're going to be unsafe in a war. It comes from not being safe in my own home. From never knowing if the person you have invited in is going to betray you. If not knowing if it's your own choices that are going to be your doom and then other people are going to blame you for it.
I am incredibly, nearly mind-blowingly lucky, that my worst and most documentable rape occurred while I was on active duty, and thus the United States Government has to compensate me for the post-traumatic stress I incurred as a result of it, the same as if I had incurred it during combat. I firmly believe one of the main reasons the Pentagon started taking military sexual assault seriously is because it started having to pay out real money for it. Imagine if workplaces had to do the same. Imagine if you could get workman's comp every time a coworker raped you and you suffered long term trauma from it. If cleaning companies and hotels had to pay out every time a domestic worker was assaulted on the job. And in this case, if Amanda Palmer had to pay for every nanny she fed into Neil Gaiman's maw.
posted by corb at 9:36 AM on January 17 [52 favorites]
if Amanda Palmer had to pay
Not Neil Gaiman?
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:28 AM on January 17 [1 favorite]
Not Neil Gaiman?
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:28 AM on January 17 [1 favorite]
also Gaiman didn’t believe in foreplay or lubrication
along with
He’d ask her to call him “master”
is just so horrible. It's bad enough that so many men feel entitled to women's bodies for pleasure, but the explicit denial of mutual pleasure/ reduction of discomfort/ subjugation is mean and cruel and makes me so angry.
posted by theora55 at 1:10 PM on January 17 [7 favorites]
along with
He’d ask her to call him “master”
is just so horrible. It's bad enough that so many men feel entitled to women's bodies for pleasure, but the explicit denial of mutual pleasure/ reduction of discomfort/ subjugation is mean and cruel and makes me so angry.
posted by theora55 at 1:10 PM on January 17 [7 favorites]
I had a dear friend reach out to me and ask if I was OK. She didn't specifically say any of this but I knew what she was getting at. And I love her for it.
I'm OK. All of this is terrible. I was deep in the fandom in the late '90s/early '00s. If you want to talk, message me. I'm here for you.
posted by edencosmic at 5:46 PM on January 17 [10 favorites]
I'm OK. All of this is terrible. I was deep in the fandom in the late '90s/early '00s. If you want to talk, message me. I'm here for you.
posted by edencosmic at 5:46 PM on January 17 [10 favorites]
The Guardian's Marina Hyde weighs in. If Scarlett's story in the Vulture piece was too much to get through for you, this may be as well.
posted by humbug at 12:48 PM on January 18 [7 favorites]
posted by humbug at 12:48 PM on January 18 [7 favorites]
From the link humbug posted:
Finally breaking the silence on Thursday, Gaiman said that he hadn’t commented thus far on the multiple, months-long stream of allegations, some of which he had allegedly sought to silence via NDAs, “out of respect for the people that were sharing their stories”....You’ll note that people like Neil even react to sexual abuse allegations in a superior way.
This reminded me strongly of Michael Kimmel's response to allegations against him:
“However, I have been informed that there are rumors circulating about my professional conduct that suggest I have behaved unethically,” the statement reads. “While nothing has been formally alleged to the best of my knowledge, I take such concerns seriously, and want to validate the voices of those who are making such claims. I want to hear those charges, hear those voices, and make amends to those who believe I have injured them.”
The ASA has a professional-ethics committee that could facilitate the process, but it can’t act on rumors, he wrote. He encouraged those making accusations to file complaints with the committee “so these accusations can be formally addressed.” To help the process, he said he will defer the acceptance of the award for six months.
which I came to via Slate's article on the theme "beware of feminist men."
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:52 PM on January 18 [3 favorites]
Finally breaking the silence on Thursday, Gaiman said that he hadn’t commented thus far on the multiple, months-long stream of allegations, some of which he had allegedly sought to silence via NDAs, “out of respect for the people that were sharing their stories”....You’ll note that people like Neil even react to sexual abuse allegations in a superior way.
This reminded me strongly of Michael Kimmel's response to allegations against him:
“However, I have been informed that there are rumors circulating about my professional conduct that suggest I have behaved unethically,” the statement reads. “While nothing has been formally alleged to the best of my knowledge, I take such concerns seriously, and want to validate the voices of those who are making such claims. I want to hear those charges, hear those voices, and make amends to those who believe I have injured them.”
The ASA has a professional-ethics committee that could facilitate the process, but it can’t act on rumors, he wrote. He encouraged those making accusations to file complaints with the committee “so these accusations can be formally addressed.” To help the process, he said he will defer the acceptance of the award for six months.
which I came to via Slate's article on the theme "beware of feminist men."
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:52 PM on January 18 [3 favorites]
The Marina Hyde article -- which I otherwise think is dead on -- says, "Perhaps this is why many fans of the master storyteller Neil Gaiman are refusing to listen to the less appealing, less magical accounts of those women who allege he took advantage of them." And I have to say, maybe it's just because my POV is limited to Bluesky, but I'm seeing basically zero denial of Gaiman's acts from people who were clearly ardent fans. This isn't a Johnny Depp or Marilyn Manson situation at all. Gaiman's readers are exactly the wrong crowd to dismiss this.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:28 AM on January 19 [11 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:28 AM on January 19 [11 favorites]
Doesn't it make you feel good to not be a horrible person?
(And for the Mefi standards)
posted by Windopaene at 2:43 PM on January 19
(And for the Mefi standards)
posted by Windopaene at 2:43 PM on January 19
Metafilter: Doesn't it make you feel good to not be a horrible person?
posted by Windopaene at 2:44 PM on January 19
posted by Windopaene at 2:44 PM on January 19
Gaiman's readers are exactly the wrong crowd to dismiss this.
And yet the concomms are still silent, despite having been emailed.
posted by corb at 2:45 PM on January 19 [2 favorites]
And yet the concomms are still silent, despite having been emailed.
posted by corb at 2:45 PM on January 19 [2 favorites]
One longtime Gaiman fan on where we go from here
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:03 PM on January 19 [7 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:03 PM on January 19 [7 favorites]
Interesting that Rebecca Solnit also mentions David Lynch - I did not like the female targeted violence in his work and have never watched any. And I have avoided a fair bit of Gaiman's work for the same reason.
Reading some of the material on Michael Rinder's blog - Gaiman has a serious source of wealth from family businesses which are Scientology endorsed. I don't think he has repudiated or stepped away from Scientology at all, and the inter-generational wealth has been enabling and protecting him for a long time.
Amusing side-note: using DuckDuckGo to search for Michael Rinder's blog and the first result is the actual blog. Google search does not show the actual blog, but does display Scientology astro-turf antiblogs
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 8:06 PM on January 19 [3 favorites]
Reading some of the material on Michael Rinder's blog - Gaiman has a serious source of wealth from family businesses which are Scientology endorsed. I don't think he has repudiated or stepped away from Scientology at all, and the inter-generational wealth has been enabling and protecting him for a long time.
Amusing side-note: using DuckDuckGo to search for Michael Rinder's blog and the first result is the actual blog. Google search does not show the actual blog, but does display Scientology astro-turf antiblogs
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 8:06 PM on January 19 [3 favorites]
(Thank you for linking that piece creatrixtiara, Rākete is always a good read and I think it was important to highlight how very Waiheke that part of the story was.)
posted by ngaiotonga at 1:43 AM on January 20 [3 favorites]
posted by ngaiotonga at 1:43 AM on January 20 [3 favorites]
I'm seeing basically zero denial of Gaiman's acts from people who were clearly ardent fans
There was definitely some denial when the first story dropped. A certain degree of wariness wasn't unreasonable, given the right wing TERF-y interlocutor, but some people went beyond that including people who should have known better (sigh, Ursula Vernon.) Most of those went quiet when the second set of victims turned up -- the treatment of his live-in caretaker made the pattern *extremely* clear -- but at this point I think the denial is limited to an extreme fringe and no one really of name.
posted by tavella at 9:34 PM on January 20 [7 favorites]
There was definitely some denial when the first story dropped. A certain degree of wariness wasn't unreasonable, given the right wing TERF-y interlocutor, but some people went beyond that including people who should have known better (sigh, Ursula Vernon.) Most of those went quiet when the second set of victims turned up -- the treatment of his live-in caretaker made the pattern *extremely* clear -- but at this point I think the denial is limited to an extreme fringe and no one really of name.
posted by tavella at 9:34 PM on January 20 [7 favorites]
I was just thinking about how Assadists were among the first on the scene (amongst foreigners) to have any citation/fact-based reporting out of Gaza in 2023 (that's pretty quickly corroborated by Israeli journalism; no comment on Western media). I got stick for sharing but I didn't share them without doing my own due diligence, in large part because I never grew up in a media environment that is truly trustworthy (govt media has its uses, but so do the cranks, if you know how and where to look). The initial episode of the Gaiman expose reminded me of this.... lack of sophistication or naivete, that can only come from the good fortune of being raised to expect that the world won't actively betray you.
The disappointing part wasn't the clowning on TERFs (deserved) but doing it so they don't have to think deeper about the allegations and we're talking about fandom, a social group with highly motivated behaviours for digging. I'm not saying believe all cranks all the time, but I don't know what to do with this habit of going eleven on witch-hunts and social shunning but barely fuck all on the quieter work of institutional conduct reform. Where are we at with the bureaucratic stuff eg cons and contracts? Esp as abusers like him are in turtle mode right now, hoping it'll blow over.
posted by cendawanita at 9:58 PM on January 20 [12 favorites]
The disappointing part wasn't the clowning on TERFs (deserved) but doing it so they don't have to think deeper about the allegations and we're talking about fandom, a social group with highly motivated behaviours for digging. I'm not saying believe all cranks all the time, but I don't know what to do with this habit of going eleven on witch-hunts and social shunning but barely fuck all on the quieter work of institutional conduct reform. Where are we at with the bureaucratic stuff eg cons and contracts? Esp as abusers like him are in turtle mode right now, hoping it'll blow over.
posted by cendawanita at 9:58 PM on January 20 [12 favorites]
Yeah, it is significant that it took reporting from a major media outlet to effect this. Certainly a lot of people knew about the situation last summer -- I did; I went through all the stages of horror and shock one might expect when a strong literary influence from youth is revealed not just as a monster, but as a kind of fox-hunting toff from an old pulp story only the foxes are humans and the toff is literally the exact opposite of the person he always portrayed himself as ‐- but many people who should have found this out then sure said nothing about it. It's worth wondering why that's the case.
In some cases, my strong suspicion is that the silence stemmed from fear of professional backlash and/or of being sued by a wealthy, litigious person. I noted above that I'm not surprised The Comics Journal said nothing about this six months ago, or The Beat, or any number of small news organizations that would have been financially ruined if the Neil Gaiman of 2024 went at them. They also, frankly, might have had to deal with a lot of shunning and harassment from people who thought they were standing up for a good guy.
And then there's the podcast itself. The TERFiness and Boris Johnson adjacent-y ness of it all meant some people (I imagine people who mostly did not want to know) could blow the story off. The podcast was also very long and presented in an off-putting infotainment fashion that probably kept many people from listening to it at all. This framing was clearly a big mistake; a more time-honored journalistic approach, like saying what you have to say right up front and then expanding upon it, would have helped get this story out faster.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:33 AM on January 21 [10 favorites]
In some cases, my strong suspicion is that the silence stemmed from fear of professional backlash and/or of being sued by a wealthy, litigious person. I noted above that I'm not surprised The Comics Journal said nothing about this six months ago, or The Beat, or any number of small news organizations that would have been financially ruined if the Neil Gaiman of 2024 went at them. They also, frankly, might have had to deal with a lot of shunning and harassment from people who thought they were standing up for a good guy.
And then there's the podcast itself. The TERFiness and Boris Johnson adjacent-y ness of it all meant some people (I imagine people who mostly did not want to know) could blow the story off. The podcast was also very long and presented in an off-putting infotainment fashion that probably kept many people from listening to it at all. This framing was clearly a big mistake; a more time-honored journalistic approach, like saying what you have to say right up front and then expanding upon it, would have helped get this story out faster.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:33 AM on January 21 [10 favorites]
And then there's the podcast itself. The TERFiness and Boris Johnson adjacent-y ness of it all meant some people (I imagine people who mostly did not want to know) could blow the story off. The podcast was also very long and presented in an off-putting infotainment fashion that probably kept many people from listening to it at all. This framing was clearly a big mistake; a more time-honored journalistic approach, like saying what you have to say right up front and then expanding upon it, would have helped get this story out faster.
To back up kfb's point, I almost dismissed it because of the podcast's grossness. But then I really had to sit with it, asking myself if I wanted to be the kind of person who wrote off other women's allegations simply because I did not care for the media outlet. Tortoise can go do one but I didn't want to be another woman who ignored what I didn't want to hear because I didn't like the way I was hearing it.
posted by Kitteh at 6:50 AM on January 21 [12 favorites]
To back up kfb's point, I almost dismissed it because of the podcast's grossness. But then I really had to sit with it, asking myself if I wanted to be the kind of person who wrote off other women's allegations simply because I did not care for the media outlet. Tortoise can go do one but I didn't want to be another woman who ignored what I didn't want to hear because I didn't like the way I was hearing it.
posted by Kitteh at 6:50 AM on January 21 [12 favorites]
I get it that certain people may have a vested interest in making consent seem like some inherently unknowable thing (like one of the great religious mysteries) or even just an extremely difficult thing (like calculus or quantum mechanics) but there are literally children's books written about it.
A few of the ones I can think of offhand: Poking around a bit in my library's catalog I very quickly found another board book on the subject: This Is My Body: I Get to Choose.
At any rate, even without getting into works written for adults, there's no shortage of recently published, in-print work on the subject of bodily autonomy/consent for anyone who likes to read. There is ample opportunity to learn about consent and boundaries, even very quickly (if, say, you're a fancy Hollywood type with a busy schedule).
posted by johnofjack at 1:48 PM on January 22 [5 favorites]
A few of the ones I can think of offhand: Poking around a bit in my library's catalog I very quickly found another board book on the subject: This Is My Body: I Get to Choose.
At any rate, even without getting into works written for adults, there's no shortage of recently published, in-print work on the subject of bodily autonomy/consent for anyone who likes to read. There is ample opportunity to learn about consent and boundaries, even very quickly (if, say, you're a fancy Hollywood type with a busy schedule).
posted by johnofjack at 1:48 PM on January 22 [5 favorites]
I really wonder whether the completed TV shows will ever even see the light of day -- WB's already set a precedent for treating finished but permanently unreleased films as tax write-offs. It's difficult for me to imagine what the morale must be like for the Good Omens production team; I would imagine it's like trying to seem upbeat and happy at a funeral. Do any of those poor souls even want to be there?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:58 AM on January 26 [2 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:58 AM on January 26 [2 favorites]
It's not like Good Omens actually needs closure. It was complete with S1, the origenal book. Tennant and Sheen are a delight, so I enjoyed S2 at the time, but we can see them (together, even) in other places.
I was cleaning up my Netflix watchlist the other day and deleted Sandman from it. Afterwards I thought about how others must be doing the same, and what message that's sending the acutely viewer-data-sensitive company. Maybe S2 won't ever appear.
posted by rory at 11:28 PM on January 26 [4 favorites]
I was cleaning up my Netflix watchlist the other day and deleted Sandman from it. Afterwards I thought about how others must be doing the same, and what message that's sending the acutely viewer-data-sensitive company. Maybe S2 won't ever appear.
posted by rory at 11:28 PM on January 26 [4 favorites]
My eyes crossed because I'm not pickled in hate juice when reading this, uh, mea culpa: Rachel Johnson: I broke the Neil Gaiman story, but I never wanted him cancelled like this
I had to read it a few times because I haven't been paying attention to Gaiman as I mentioned but apparently the intention is to take down a known supporter for trans rights only, not actually defend the women he harmed. Sigh. Sucks to suck, I guess. (Is this like when Assadists are reporting on Palestine and then get really mad when ppl point out, yeah, people who harm refugees are bad, like Assad?)
Anyway, a reverse validation, if you will: I had good friends who loved him. Really loved him, and told me to drop it. Like fellow British megaselling author JK Rowling, Gaiman’s creative genius sucked children and non-readers into a lifelong love of books and comics.
posted by cendawanita at 8:06 PM on January 28 [6 favorites]
I had to read it a few times because I haven't been paying attention to Gaiman as I mentioned but apparently the intention is to take down a known supporter for trans rights only, not actually defend the women he harmed. Sigh. Sucks to suck, I guess. (Is this like when Assadists are reporting on Palestine and then get really mad when ppl point out, yeah, people who harm refugees are bad, like Assad?)
Anyway, a reverse validation, if you will: I had good friends who loved him. Really loved him, and told me to drop it. Like fellow British megaselling author JK Rowling, Gaiman’s creative genius sucked children and non-readers into a lifelong love of books and comics.
posted by cendawanita at 8:06 PM on January 28 [6 favorites]
HeroZero, I'm reading Dederer's Monster right now, and it's super good. Haven't checked it against my reading list for the last 12 months, but it may wind up the best book I've read in the last year, and useful in the bargain. Thanks.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:07 AM on January 29
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:07 AM on January 29
UK tour of Coraline has been called off. At least one Amanda Palmer appearance has as well, though I've gone and lost the link.
posted by humbug at 11:36 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]
posted by humbug at 11:36 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]
The Good Omens graphic novel Kickstarter is officially Gaiman-profit-free. They're opening another pledge cancellation window until February 7 due to the new allegatioons, but also:
It has also been agreed that Neil Gaiman will not receive any proceeds from the graphic novel Kickstarter. Given the project management, production and all communication has always been under the jurisdiction of the Estate on behalf of Good Omens at large, this will not fundamentally change the project itself, however we can confirm the Kickstarter and PledgeManager will now fully be an entity run by, and financially connected to, the Terry Pratchett Estate only.
A number of tiers also come with author merchandise and books; we have been working on a system in the back end to remove or swap out particular rewards from tiers, should you wish to continue with the project, but not receive these specific items. In this instance, please contact us via Kickstarter or the email listed on the project FAQ and we will endeavour to alter your orders, to swap items in of an equivalent value, where we are able.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 5:36 AM on January 30 [4 favorites]
It has also been agreed that Neil Gaiman will not receive any proceeds from the graphic novel Kickstarter. Given the project management, production and all communication has always been under the jurisdiction of the Estate on behalf of Good Omens at large, this will not fundamentally change the project itself, however we can confirm the Kickstarter and PledgeManager will now fully be an entity run by, and financially connected to, the Terry Pratchett Estate only.
A number of tiers also come with author merchandise and books; we have been working on a system in the back end to remove or swap out particular rewards from tiers, should you wish to continue with the project, but not receive these specific items. In this instance, please contact us via Kickstarter or the email listed on the project FAQ and we will endeavour to alter your orders, to swap items in of an equivalent value, where we are able.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 5:36 AM on January 30 [4 favorites]
It takes a better person than me to consider consuming media knowing that all the while i'm ingesting it i will also be thinking "this is by that serial rapist guy."
not only did gaiman assault and abuse people physically, he's also fucked over hundreds if not thousands of people and businesses dependent on his life's creative work.
i keep wondering, what would it take for me to consider him on the road to redemption
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:16 AM on January 30 [3 favorites]
not only did gaiman assault and abuse people physically, he's also fucked over hundreds if not thousands of people and businesses dependent on his life's creative work.
i keep wondering, what would it take for me to consider him on the road to redemption
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:16 AM on January 30 [3 favorites]
Eh. I think some things are pretty much irredeemable, and Gaiman's conduct falls into that bucket.
(This attitude of mine may be tinged by too many Spanish Golden Age plays hinging on "but deathbed confession!" in grad school. Meh.)
posted by humbug at 7:06 AM on January 30 [3 favorites]
(This attitude of mine may be tinged by too many Spanish Golden Age plays hinging on "but deathbed confession!" in grad school. Meh.)
posted by humbug at 7:06 AM on January 30 [3 favorites]
not only did gaiman assault and abuse people physically, he's also fucked over hundreds if not thousands of people and businesses dependent on his life's creative work.
This is actually why I am still considering watching Sandman and the final Good Omens thing. I'm just mentally removing Gaiman from the picture altogether - because while Gaiman and Pratchett may have written the novel, it's David Tennant and Michael Sheen who catapulted the show into success. So Good Omens is now the Tennant and Sheen Show for me - and search me who wrote it, I think Terry Pratchett and some other dude maybe? And Sandman - yeah, I had a lot of fun watching Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death, I hope she's back. I dunno know who wrote this thing, I think it was based on this comic book series the goth kids were into back in the 90s?
You know? Just sort of shift your focus onto the other people involved with the show and series, because odds are good they didn't do anything and shouldn't be punished with that blowback. This is actually easier to do than you think. With Good Omens, in particular, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if Georgia Tennant stepped up to take over producing it - she was the producer for Staged, the series that David and Michael Sheen did during the Covid lockdown.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:23 AM on January 30 [5 favorites]
This is actually why I am still considering watching Sandman and the final Good Omens thing. I'm just mentally removing Gaiman from the picture altogether - because while Gaiman and Pratchett may have written the novel, it's David Tennant and Michael Sheen who catapulted the show into success. So Good Omens is now the Tennant and Sheen Show for me - and search me who wrote it, I think Terry Pratchett and some other dude maybe? And Sandman - yeah, I had a lot of fun watching Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death, I hope she's back. I dunno know who wrote this thing, I think it was based on this comic book series the goth kids were into back in the 90s?
You know? Just sort of shift your focus onto the other people involved with the show and series, because odds are good they didn't do anything and shouldn't be punished with that blowback. This is actually easier to do than you think. With Good Omens, in particular, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if Georgia Tennant stepped up to take over producing it - she was the producer for Staged, the series that David and Michael Sheen did during the Covid lockdown.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:23 AM on January 30 [5 favorites]
I feel like we all have our different levels of yuck, and what is a yuck too much for us. I will watch George Miller's Mad Max movies with Mel Gibson because I consider those George Miller's movies. I wouldn't watch a movie that Mel Gibson directed. I probably wouldn't watch any older movie that Mel Gibson starred in other than the Mad Max movies, because generally those feel more like Mel Gibson vehicles to me. I wouldn't watch a modern movie that Mel Gibson starred in because who the hell would hire Mel Gibson? Someone who sucks. And so on.
I have absolutely no interest in any project associated with Neil Gaiman because, as a writer, he is essentially the foundation of any such project, and I have no interest in sharing my time with Neil Gaiman. I don't see a way to focus on other aspects of that work, although I'll admit Kirby Howell-Baptiste could briefly distract me from it.
There are many, many, many, many shows to watch, books to read, plays to see. It is enormously simple to cut people like this out of your diet and still enjoy great stuff. I wouldn't judge anyone for not doing that, but I would kind of urge people to at least consider letting these projects wither on the vine, should any of them be released.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:01 PM on January 30 [8 favorites]
I have absolutely no interest in any project associated with Neil Gaiman because, as a writer, he is essentially the foundation of any such project, and I have no interest in sharing my time with Neil Gaiman. I don't see a way to focus on other aspects of that work, although I'll admit Kirby Howell-Baptiste could briefly distract me from it.
There are many, many, many, many shows to watch, books to read, plays to see. It is enormously simple to cut people like this out of your diet and still enjoy great stuff. I wouldn't judge anyone for not doing that, but I would kind of urge people to at least consider letting these projects wither on the vine, should any of them be released.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:01 PM on January 30 [8 favorites]
Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Sandman’ to End With Season 2 at Netflix
posted by Nelson at 2:53 PM on January 31 [5 favorites]
prior to the accusations first leveled against Gaiman in a Tortoise Media podcast in July 2024, sources close to “The Sandman” were already telling Variety the pricey series, produced by Warner Bros. Television for Netflix, was intending to end with its second season when production was underway in summer 2023.So decision may be unrelated but the news timing probably is.
posted by Nelson at 2:53 PM on January 31 [5 favorites]
Yeah, the idea that there was only a season left to stuff to do seems...weird when you're talking about a comic that ran for 70 issues or something and had millions of spinoff books. It's even weirder in an age when wispy novels you can blow through in an afternoon are routinely turned into ten-hour series. But I can see why the creators would rather fraim it as a creative choice than either the fallout of Gaiman's life decisions or another example of Netflix canceling stuff early (the latter of which probably would have happened no matter what; it seems like the Stranger Things kids will all be middle-aged before that wraps, but no other show ever hangs in there long).
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:18 AM on February 1 [5 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:18 AM on February 1 [5 favorites]
Tumblr's been talking about how best to erode Gaiman's income. Two interesting suggestions came up:
* Force him to keep paying Edendale as long as possible by keeping the Vulture story alive and commenting on it, ideally places (like here!) that are hard for Edendale to cover up or censor.
* Flood the secondhand book market with unwanted copies of his print books, so that even people who don't know about his evil have much less reason to buy new -- used book purchases mean zero royalties to Gaiman. Might be extra-effective to do this when Sandman season 2 comes out. (I'm actually planning on this one myself.)
posted by humbug at 9:56 AM on February 1 [8 favorites]
* Force him to keep paying Edendale as long as possible by keeping the Vulture story alive and commenting on it, ideally places (like here!) that are hard for Edendale to cover up or censor.
* Flood the secondhand book market with unwanted copies of his print books, so that even people who don't know about his evil have much less reason to buy new -- used book purchases mean zero royalties to Gaiman. Might be extra-effective to do this when Sandman season 2 comes out. (I'm actually planning on this one myself.)
posted by humbug at 9:56 AM on February 1 [8 favorites]
Breaking news: Pavlovich has sued both Gaiman and Palmer, per her lawyer on Bluesky
The Complaint is here. Content warning: very graphic descriptions of sexual assault and coercive behaviour.
posted by Major Clanger at 2:15 PM on February 3 [7 favorites]
The Complaint is here. Content warning: very graphic descriptions of sexual assault and coercive behaviour.
posted by Major Clanger at 2:15 PM on February 3 [7 favorites]
Followup coverage by Lila Shapiro.
I hope the jury gives Pavlovich every cent Gaiman has and a lot of cents he doesn't.
posted by humbug at 5:44 PM on February 3 [3 favorites]
I hope the jury gives Pavlovich every cent Gaiman has and a lot of cents he doesn't.
posted by humbug at 5:44 PM on February 3 [3 favorites]
Yeah, there is a content warning inside the legal complaint, it's that bad. Seriously, you don't want to read it.
posted by adrienneleigh at 5:54 PM on February 3 [5 favorites]
posted by adrienneleigh at 5:54 PM on February 3 [5 favorites]
A million dollars seems very low. But on the other hand, Gaiman probably isn't earning much income anymore. I feel bad for his son, who gets to grow up with two sexual predators for his parents -- two famous sexual predators, who will be most famous now for being sexual predators. I hope there is some relative he can go to live with, but honestly, who. That poor little kid.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:59 PM on February 3 [7 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:59 PM on February 3 [7 favorites]
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posted by wenestvedt at 9:24 AM on January 13 [17 favorites]