Warning, this story is really horrific and will be heartbreaking for any fans of his, but Neil Gaiman is a sadistic [not in the BDSM sense] sexual predator with a predilection for very young women.
Paywall bypass: https://archive.is/dfXCj
That’s some sad reading. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion, from the point where the train crashes back to where the company forces an engineer to cut corners on the design.
Legal classification: probably rape, definitely sexual assault.
An enabling factor: wealth (he was in a position to influence other’s well-being economically, offer hush money and sign non-disclosure agreements).
“‘I’m a very wealthy man,’” she remembers him saying, “‘and I’m used to getting what I want.’”
An excuse: BDSM. The author of the article is correct to note:
BDSM is a culture with a set of long-standing norms, the most important of which is that all parties must eagerly and clearly consent
As for the search for the origin of his behaviour… I think they’re on the right track. Like a former child soldier who carries a war inside them, Gaiman has probably been carrying a lot inside.
In 1965, when Neil was 5 years old, his parents, David and Sheila, left their jobs as a business executive and a pharmacist and bought a house in East Grinstead, a mile away from what was at that time the worldwide headquarters for the Church of Scientology. Its founder, the former science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, lived down the road from them from 1965 until 1967, when he fled the country and began directing the church from international waters, pursued by the CIA, FBI, and a handful of foreign governments and maritime agencies. David and Sheila were among England’s earliest adherents to Scientology.
/…/
Palmer began asking Gaiman to tell her more about his childhood in Scientology. But he seemed unable to string more than a few sentences together. When she encouraged him to continue, he would curl up on the bed into a fetal position and cry. He refused to see a therapist.
Reading this, it seems obvious that Gaiman developed his behaviour due to trauma during childhood and youth - and has been exhibiting behaviour patterns that became normalized for him during time in the cult.
As for people whom he assaulted, it seems that they too carry a pattern - they were vulnerable at the time. Some had already experienced violence on themselves. Which, it seems - often hadn’t been resolved, but had become normalized. They were not the kind of people whose “no” is followed by physical self-defense or the full weight of legal options - and Gaiman understood enough to recognize: with them, he could get away with doing things.
She didn’t consider reaching out to her own family. Her parents had divorced when she was 3, and Pavlovich had grown up splitting time between their households. Violence, Pavlovich tells me, “was normalized in the household.”
Well, what can I say about it…
…it is customary that accusations be investigated by cops (who hopefully cannot be bought) and presented as charges to a court of law. The defendant should have a chance to deny or excuse their actions, but if deemed guilty, is required to give up time or resources either as compensation or punishment. A court could make lesser or greater punishment dependent on taking action to fix one’s behaviour traits - seeking assistance and not offending again. Those harmed should be offered assistance by their societies.
We have to remember that Bill Cosby was praised for decades because he genuinely made the world a better place while being an utter sack of shit.
This explains so much. Read a book written by his very young wife. Now I get it and how fucked up he is.
It sounds like (at best) some of Gaiman’s victims consented to some form of foreplay or sex and then rapidly found themselves on the receiving end of some brutal BDSM without consenting to it. If I were a woman reading this I would find it hard to ever trust any man, going into sex, even if I wanted to have sex with him. When the world’s most harmless-seeming man can suddenly become a punishing torturer in the sack, how can you ever know that a guy is safe until after the fact? Jesus.
This is why women choose the bear…
I’ve never heard it articulated quite like this before, but you phrase it well.
Men like this absolutely deserve to be condemned and shunned for what they have done, but that doesn’t also erase the good that they did before – nor does it preclude them from ever doing good again.
At the same time, any good they do does not erase or counterbalance the harm. Jimmy Savile, the UK’s worst celebrity paedophile who abused hundreds of children, conspicuously did a lot for charities throughout his career. He said that he knew God would look at all the good he had done and it would make up for the bad things. There was a calculus in which he only had to do more good each time he did bad, and it would cancel it out. It’s a twisted view. Harm is harm and is not changed by any independent “good” act a person does. But apparent goodness can change its significance in the light of the harm that accompanies it.
Savile’s apparent selfless good acts were actually a calculated attempt to win license to do harm, and a psychological coping mechanism to allow him to believe in his own basic goodness before God. Plus the reputation for selfless goodness served as a smokescreen to prevent people seeing clearly what was really going on, and to win the support and protection of powerful people. Seen this way, while the charitable works may have had some helpful effects, these were not genuinely good actions but in large part self-serving and an integral part of the dynamics of this man’s abuse.
I think the same applies to men like Cosby and Gaiman: the overt charity or the overt feminism changes its meaning when you see how it serves them psychologically and reputationally, amd how it may be a functional part of the whole abusive operation.
Matt Bernstein in a recent video (it’s long) discusses men who act as outspoken self-avowed feminists but then abuse their power to treat women terribly. The feminism may be genuine, but it may also be their smokescreen, or a mix of each, and when a man is very loud about being a feminist you have to look carefully to see which is the case. Some are genuine, but you have to ask. Maybe Gaiman was doing the feminist smokescreen, or maybe he’s just so messed up that these two sides of his life - the feminism and the abuse - just didn’t really encounter each other.
Why do people get so concerned about what artists do in their personal lives? Authors are fucking weirdos, I don’t let it affect my reading choices. I’m sure Chaucer was a dickhole, but whatever
I mean I keep hearing that Roman Polanski is a good director but I’ll never know, cause I refuse to watch anything made by a convicted pedo. It’s easy to live without a book or movie
Is this some shit-tier trolling or do you really think it’s OK to financial support someone who anally rapes women and fucks in front of his kids?
Ask any living successful creative of any kind. They will all tell you the same thing ‘‘I am truly sorry this is so, but the biggest factor in your success is going to be how well you manage social media accounts’’
That’s depressing.
I have a giant flatulant zombie alligator in my living room. Of course I’m going to feed it regularly.
If you need to be blocked this badly, OK.
First, people love to burn witches. Screw any moral, logical or aesthetic implications. They can’t even spell it. They just want a witch to burn.
Second, people love to cut down anybody taller then them. And Neil Gaiman is a very tall fellow.
All that love, it’s inevitable.
will be heartbreaking for any fans of his
ISHYGDDT
YAAS.
Your Acronyms Are Shit.
I’m just going to assume all authors are creeps from outset from now on.
No clue what he did (have not yet read the article). Haven’t really consumed any of his media. But I did buy a coloring book based on some TV show he did?
Anyway, I bought that book because of how fucking weird it was. I remember thinking at the time the artist behind it seemed like a pretty twisted up dude.
I’m surprised everyone else is surprised, but my perspective is fairly unique - not having experienced/enjoyed any of his art beyond some crazy coloring book without the context to understand the pictures.
Cool. This is about a rapist who enjoys inflicting pain on very young women, but I’m glad you enjoyed the coloring book of someone else’s art based on his stories.
(He’s a writer, not an artist.)
No clue what he did (have not yet read the article). Haven’t really consumed any of his media.
I’m surprised everyone else is surprised
This comment didn’t need to be made.
You really, really should use this as an example for yourself in the future to read the room. That means read the article before making a thoughtless comment on something you obviously didn’t fully grasp.
As if the comment section is some sacred place where only somber reflection can occur.
I genuinely liked the other person’s thoughtful response.
You just seem bitter.
sombre reflection
You apparently still haven’t read the article. Given the reactions to your comment, you may want to go see why the comments are “sombre”, as you put it.
It’s behind a paywall for me. Did you read it?
I did. It’s a culture vulture article, you just need to use an incognito tab.
As unpleasant as the content is, just read the article. And remember that lots of folks have trusted Neil Gaiman for a long time (I’m 50) to tell stories they connect with, especially in the 90s when there were fewer writers to do so.
You may have liked the thoughtful response but you clearly didn’t heed any of it.
Every comment after the first has been a response to someone else’s comment to me. You’re saying I didn’t heed any of that comment because I … responded to other comments?
This is probably one of those perspectives that’s best kept to yourself - or at least not shouted through a megaphone, as is the effect of posting your thoughts online. Please don’t take my tone as harsh or judgemental there, just friendly advice. I know you mean well, but your unique perspective really doesn’t give you the opportunity to grasp just how much Gaiman seemed to genuinely be a good person. He wrote the kind of stories that were powerful and meaningful to marginalized people in particular. He focused on voices and perspectives rarely given the spotlight at the times when he was writing, and he wrote sensitively and thoughtfully about issues facing women, queer people and people of colour despite being, to my knowledge, none of those things himself.
For a lot of people this is genuinely heart breaking. It’s easy to say that you should never put anyone on a pedestal, but Neil was one of his rare people who really seemed like he deserved the acclaim and the trust that he was given. While I absolutely get that you mean no harm by what you’re saying here, it unfortunately comes across as very smug and self-serving in a situation where a lot of people are dealing with a very real and very justified sense of abject betrayal.
I agree. I am hearing what you’re saying, and I feel the loss of finding this out about him. However I’ve had a similar experience of wanting to like Gaiman because he checked all the right boxes, and just feeling put off by something in his writing. And thinking it was a problem with me. It’s easy for the mind to see this news and say, aha, that’s why I didn’t like him. But that’s the benefit of hindsight. Who knows if things like this, the hidden part of people’s personality, are actually detectable in their writing. Anyone feeling like I do is just trying to make sense of it all the same as everybody else. And it’s important to recognize that he was a role model for so many and did good work with his fiction, and not trying to say it was obvious, because it wasn’t.
That’s a good point. Not to be rude but most people are not good writers. Well-meaning attempts to rationalize for oneself can easily deform into reading like “smug” attempts to incorporate hindsight into somehow prophetic vibes. I try to give people a bit of grace because the consciousness to (attempt to) perceive how your text might be read by others is not a trait oft emphasized.
I… don’t understand why you felt the need to share this. You didn’t read the article and aren’t familiar with his work? What is it that you are contributing? What are you saying that others should hear?
Respectfully, it sounds like you are talking to hear yourself talk. Not every memory or thought I’d worth sharing, in fact, most are better left unsaid.
Especially when it’s about coloring books in a thread about systemic and repeated rape.
I found it interesting to think about his darker side hidden in plain view all along. Didn’t seem like the sort of thing that would be offensive.
It’s clearly a bad faith statement to characterize my comment as being about “coloring books” in a thread about “systemic and repeated rape”.
Read the comments. People are upset they don’t get to like one of their favorite authors anymore. That’s what the thread is about.
You evoked rape to strengthen your argument? That’s fucking gross.
You evoked rape to strengthen your argument? That’s fucking gross.
It’s literally what the article is about. Which would’ve been a faster read than you arguing with pointing at your out of place comment. Not informing yourself is a very odd thing to get defensive over.
There’s a lot of good books written by awful people. I guess Gaiman might be one of those awful people
Jesus fucking Christ.
I have not read anything from Gaiman, but I can see that lots of People really liked his books and the Person he showed the world.
So I just want to say, I’m really sorry for all of you. Even though Gaiman can rot in Hell, I feel sad for people who just got their favorite Books and stories poisoned.
Why though? He is a sack of shit and can rot in hell for all I care… his art can still be enjoyed. Having him take that way means he has even more power.
I would suggest obtaining it in ways that do not give him new money… Like buying books second hand.
If you can do that more Power to you!
But I can understand that some People now look with diffrent eyes on his work or simply can’t make that cut between Author and his work.
Yeah I can imagine for some people his work is tainted…
That’s the case for me. Same as watching anything with Kevin Spacey in it now. I just can’t separate the man from from his reported actions.
In this specific case, it’s really difficult because, as the article talks about in the beginning, his stories were often viewed as being feminist (and progressive in other ways), but when you re-read them, you can start getting a sense of the monster that was hiding.
if you want to spend time re-reading those books, might I suggest spending that time finding new authors that are more deserving of your time and attention? Yes the books were pretty great; yes this situation is awful.
Just, find new good books.
I’ve been a fan of his for a very long time - decades. I enjoyed the dark part of the dark humour and the commentaey on humanity.
He has an excellent book called the sleeper and the spindle. It is a beautifully crafted and illustrated book clearly targeted at young women. It feels like art, and I genuinely celebrate it for what it is, a feminist retelling of Cinderella, where the celebrated main character is…how do I put it - both good, and effective. Not empowered, or brave, or glossy, but competent and certain. It is a version of feminism I see in those pragmatic, excellent women who do valuable, notable and productive things.
I don’t see any echoes of a monster any moreso than any fantasy writer who holds up a chipped and scratched mirror to the human condition. And that is the profoundly sad thing here. I believe you can be two things at once and that as a story, without his name attached to it, sleeper and the spindle should be something young people can read and enjoy and make them think a bit differently.
This isn’t a shoulder shrug and wave off of his actions. I can’t forgive him his cruel treatment of vulnerable people who cared for him, trusted him and wanted to please him. It is abhorrent.
What I’m trying to say is mud and gold come from the same hole.
Well for example, all of the sexual (and other) violence in the 24-Hour Diner part of The Sandman takes on a very different connotation now. Because now I know he’s responsible for such things. He was writing from experience.
I dunno, I thought it was pretty fucked up first time around too.
It was fucked up, but within the context of the comic, it was fucked up because a horrific and insane person was doing it.
Now it turns out, Gaiman was also doing it. But he didn’t need magic powers because he had real power.
He did have a Sandman story where a a writer who claimed to be a male feminist is raping a muse to be a good writer. Even the first time I read that years ago seemed a little on the nose, but I thought Gaiman was just making fun of himself in a dark way, and yeah I guess I wasn’t wrong.
I don’t see any echoes of a monster
I think it’s not possible to see that far. Ability to write good stories and ability to maintain ethical behaviour, they’re probably unrelated abilities.
For example, Yevgeni Prigozhin actually wrote decent children’s stories, but alas, his personal ethics didn’t prevent becoming Putin’s accomplice with a private military company.
I mentioned this above, I don’t think I’ve ever noticed anything feminist (or even particularly progressive or political at all) in Gaiman’s writing. But maybe there’s things I missed… Do you know of any examples of him presenting something clearly feminist?
Edit: I see someone post an example below, it’s not something I’ve read.
This is way worse than the J.K. Rowling turned TERF bit. These are actual crimes committed against women.
I legit really enjoyed many of his works, Good Omens, written with Terry Pratchett, is an all time classic, and I used to be proud of the fact that I actually met the man, as did one of my oldest friends as well as my brother in law.
Now it’s all like “What the fuck?”
That must be creepy³ :0
Is it awful that a part of me is glad Terry Pratchett is gone and doesn’t have to face this about someone who was a friend and co-writer?
Given how progressive Pratchett’s stories were I would have a hard time believing he was a bad person or could support bad people, and I imagine this would be hard on him. Then again perhaps I’m just selfishly glad that I don’t have to know if he didn’t respond appropriately by distancing himself.
Don’t know if I’m even making sense. This is just so disheartening given how many people I know absolutely loved Gaiman.
I really hope he didn’t know anything about it. Not awful at all, my first reaction when the gf mentioned this headline to me was “oh god please tell me Terry (GNU) wasn’t involved.”
It does raise the spectre of “how much did Terry know?” I really hope he was blissfully ignorant of all of it because, frankly, it’s more than I personally ever wanted to know.
The article seems to argue that Neil was able to pull the wool over a lot of people’s eyes, and it’s perfectly reasonable for a lot of people close to him to be in the dark about all of this.
Pratchett had a deep sense of justice, and was driven by a righteous rage - as described (ironically) by Gaiman in the introduction to Pratchett’s “A Slip of the Keyboard”.
Pratchett also has multiple books with a primary focus on feminism (Equal Rights, Monstrous Regiment), and lots of his other books have feminist takes sprinkled through them.
I’ve read a bit of Gaiman (not as much as of Pratchett), and I don’t think I remember reading anything explicitly feminist. He seems much more obsessed with fantastic mythology than anything with sociopolitical relevance.
Anyway, who knows how Pratchett would have reacted, but I kind of wish he WAS here to see it, because I suspect he would have said something really good about it…
Yeah, that’s occurred to me as well. For context I haven’t brought myself to read the specifics yet, so I don’t know all the details. I don’t like to comment when I’ve only read the title, but I’ve seen enough trigger warnings to put this one off until I’m ready.
I’ll just say this, I DID read the details and it is incredibly, deeply fucked up. Fucked up to the point I’m not ashamed to say I’d like to see Gaiman criminally charged. If you do not know, then you’re better off for not knowing.
Tori Amos commented on the allegations:
And if the allegations are true, that’s not the Neil that I knew, that’s not the friend that I knew, nor a friend that I ever want to know. So in some ways it’s a heartbreaking grief. I never saw that side of Neil. Neither did my crew. And my crew has seen a lot.
Gaiman is the godfather to one of her kids and apparently she was pretty close to him. If she didn’t know, I feel like Terry Pratchett wouldn’t have known either. This isn’t like with Epstein where association implies knowledge of what was going on. After reading all that I have on the allegations, I’m comfortable believing that Pratchett wouldn’t have known anything about the alleged sexual assault and if he knew anything, it was that Gaiman was known to sleep around… consensually… with adults. (Because apparently this seems to be known among people close to him… including that he and Palmer allegedly had an open marriage)
So unless further info comes out that indicates otherwise, I will continue to enjoy Pratchett’s works.
You really should. Sandman and American Gods are incredible, and he also occasionally dipped into trashy comic fare, also enjoyable. He’s one trait I guess comes from the comics he used to do, his best stories are all with other people’s characters. I don’t think he’s ever used a original character, they’re all like mythological tropes. Even supposedly original protagonists turn out to be Balder or some shit.
I think Mirrormask and Coraline were fairly original?
Not really up on his “kid” stuff, I could be completely wrong
Sandman was my teenage years. The series got me into the goth subculture which led to such great experiences in my life. Finding out Gaiman is a monstrous piece of shit has been gut punch.
I never liked his books. Just kept trying and trying to get into them, seemed like everyone was reading Sandman and American gods and I was just struggling to finish Neverwhere. Like there was something just…wrong about it. Now I’m thinking I saw something under those words he wrote. Something I didn’t like.
Before I knew any of the horrible stuff about him I still couldn’t get into his books. There is a focus on style and tone at the expense of narrative and plot. That just doesn’t work for me at all.
This is true for me too. I liked a few of his books, and The Sandman, but I didn’t love anything, not enough to recommend them to others. Except Good Omens, which has always been a favourite (but then, Pratchett IS one of my favourite authors.
Also the film Mirrormask and Coraline were great - his work seems better in film than in writing.
I’ve always been told I’d enjoy Sandman, but… I never really did more than dip my toes in because there was just this “vibe” to it…
My partner and I are right there with you. Could never understand why so many people were so enamored. I tried really hard to like his writing, and there were a few that were ok, and some had a neat concept, but that was the best I could dredge up to say about them.
I doubt I was subconsciously seeing something in them, but I do think there’s a stylistic thing that never resonated with me. And now I’m glad. I am grateful to not feel the grief of losing an artist who meant something to me.
The sandman tv show was pretty good
I have enjoyed Gaiman’s writing, also the Sandman show was excellent, but I am glad that in this era that I’m not the type of person to be a fan of anybody. I guess it is natural to ascribe virtue and look up to people who create thing you resonate with, but there’s no reason to think someone who wrote a book is worth praising or emulating other than in the book you liked.
This article from 2017 is worth a read for anyone trying to figure out whether/how to separate the art from the artist.
What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? By Claire Dederer, Paris Review, November 20, 2017 https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11/20/art-monstrous-men/
I never read this and I really appreciate the share.
Some parts that spoke to me:
This, I think, is what happens to so many of us when we consider the work of the monster geniuses—we tell ourselves we’re having ethical thoughts when really what we’re having is moral feelings.
Yeah. Guilty.
“The heart wants what it wants.” (Steve Allen when discussing Soon-Yi)
It was one of those phrases that never leaves your head once you’ve heard it: we all immediately memorized it whether we wanted to our not. Its monstrous disregard for anything but the self. Its proud irrationality. Woody goes on: “There’s no logic to those things. You meet someone and you fall in love and that’s that.”
I moved on her like a bitch.
I found this fascinating. While I was confused by Allen’s statement and why women found it so disgusting, the Trump parallel made it click.
A great work of art brings us a feeling. And yet when I say Manhattan makes me feel urpy, a man says, No, not that feeling. You’re having the wrong feeling. He speaks with authority: Manhattan is a work of genius. But who gets to say?
Going back to Gaiman, his work is held to a very high standard. But to say you dislike it, you will be met with confusion or even anger. And this is where this piece really spoke to me.
She mentioned a short story she’d just written and published. “Oh, you mean the most recent occasion for your abandoning me and the kids?” asked the very smart, very charming husband. The wife had been a monster, monster enough to finish the work. The husband had not.
A tangent in the essay about women writers. I found it fascinating that when a fuckface like Elon Musk abandoning his more than dozen kids can still rise the ranks. but God forbid a woman does the same.
There really is no answer to this that the author provides.
The tangent I shared is her last thought: does great art only come from monsters? I think a lot about other creative works, painters, comedians film makers… Who does some wild shit but not nearly to the level of Gaiman’s accusations.
Also, like all summaries, read it yourself and find your own takeaways. It’s the nuance, not the summary, that has value.
The tangent I shared is her last thought: does great art only come from monsters? I think a lot about other creative works, painters, comedians film makers… Who does some wild shit but not nearly to the level of Gaiman’s accusations.
Nah. It’s well known that power corrupts and being a great artist is a form of power, so that skews things perhaps, but I really don’t think there’s a direct correlation.
I’m not convinced that power corrupts, I believe it reveals.
The sandman audiobooks were so good. I don’t expect they’ll be finished now, if they were, I don’t expect I’d be buying them.
I have no evidence, but I believe Orson Scott Card has a thing for little boys. I devoured his books when I was a tween, but began to feel uneasy over time. There was a reoccurring theme of young boys being put in graphic situations that just, I don’t know, but I’ve never been able to shake that feeling. Song Master pushed me over the edge. A ‘beautiful young boy’ being castrated so he doesn’t go through puberty was when I stopped reading. My Spidey sense had never stopped going off about him since then.
Aaaand I just googled. I’m not the only one who picked up on that. Ew
Huh. I never noticed, but that actually explains Ender’s Game.
Felt that way about luc besson films, Leon is great but has deep pedo vibes, then I find out besson wanted a sex scene between Leon and the kid. Also the fifth element, liloo is essentially a baby, but she’s the one everyone wants.
Card is also a giant piece of shit in other ways, which is unfortunate because he is a good writer and his essays on the methodology of writing are excellent.
I find it difficult to reconcile how the writer of Speaker for the Dead is such a bigot. Dude took a hard swerve at some point.
You’re not alone in your confusion there, friend. Reading Speaker for the Dead and finding out about who the author was as a person blows my mind as to how such a bigot could even conceive of the ideas in that book.
yeah some of those authors…Like Heinlein’s later novels, what was with the fucking incest?
Gross. I’m glad this particular milkshake duck wasn’t one I cared about. I still won’t spend any more money on JK Rowling’s stuff ever again.
Milkshake duck?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkshake_Duck
Copy/paste- pixelatedboat @pixelatedboat Twitter logo, a stylized blue bird
The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! 5 seconds later We regret to inform you the duck is racist
Today I learned!
Well, guess I’ll never be getting around to finishing ocean at the end of the lane now, just sickening. And I like his narration so much too, and now it’s just all ruined.
Disgusting
Great book no reason not to enjoy it just because he’s a pos
For me, nah. I’d have trouble separating the artist in this instance, it’s just so fresh. Maybe in a few decades. Regardless, there’s more great media than I could consume in a lifetime, so no loss
