Neil Gaiman accused of sexual assault

[WandsOut]

www.yahoo.com/entertainment/sandman-writer-neil-gaiman-denies-142813982.html

Story still unfolding in the news

This is why Julie Bindel maintains that Feminism is the most optimistic political movement in the world on the basis that feminists dont believe men are hardwired to violence, abuse and self obsession, and what is learned from peers can be unlearnt.
Although tbf what are all these blokes doing on Mumsnet.
Is there nowhere we can go anymore without the intrusion of your sex?

i appreciate this is osteniably for families, but still, its Mumsnet, and there is nowhere else thanks to Tra/men

Interesting how there appears to be far more traction in the stories about abuse enabler Alice Munro (and she was, and abuse enabling is appalling, so she fully deserves the opprobrium, imo) but just so very little directly from the usual suspects about their hero Gaiman, a man whose sexual behaviour is overtly abusive, rapey and coercive.

Yes, I noted that on the thread about Alice Munro @hihelenhi

What's that Rule of Misogyny? Whatever a man has done, it's a woman's fault.

@hihelenhi God I've struggled so much with the fact that they've been lumped together/handled so differently.

I'm gutted about the news and obviously can't believe that anyone could do that to their daughter (and to themselves).

On the other hand, we have a clear conflict between a woman being judged for the actions of a man (I know it's not quite as simple as that), and a man not being judged for his abhorrent behaviour.

I'd say I'm shocked, but... 🤷🏻‍♀️

I think you have to take into account the fact that a lot of people just don't know about Neil Gaiman. The Alice Munro stuff has been all over the news and in every outlet. If you're remotely interested in reading and writing, then you'll know about it.

Meanwhile, a lot of people haven't heard anything about Neil Gaiman because it's only been reported in 'terf' press and they don't read that and don't know anyone who does. It's not been reported in the guardian or on the bbc and people just don't know.

The guy in the podcast I linked above says "he is too big to fail" and I think that's probably true - netflix, the bbc, his big publishing deals - a lot of people have a lot of money invested in him.

Plus the Munro information is way more clear cut. There's no question of blurry lines around consent. It's clear what happened and who was responsible for what.

So I don't think it's just a case of women being treated worse than men for the same thing. It's not the same thing and the context around it is completely different. But I do think the Neil Gaiman accusations will come out. He can't hide forever. What's he going to do? Never make a public appearance again?

I think you have to take into account the fact that a lot of people just don't know about Neil Gaiman. The Alice Munro stuff has been all over the news and in every outlet. If you're remotely interested in reading and writing, then you'll know about it.

But that's sort of the point @taylorswift1989 - isn't it "interesting" (I can think of other words) that the allegations about Gaiman is not all over the mainstream press, but the allegations about Alice Munro are?

Well as has been discussed, he's paying a lot of money to suppress the news and there are people financially invested in him doing so. AM also managed to keep the information about her suppressed while she was alive.

I don't really think comparing the two situations tells us much about gender politics since it's not comparing like for like. But of course I do agree that the stuff about NG should be all over the news and at a basic level it's not fair to tell us about some situations and not others.

Ahhhh, AP being friends with Tori Amos makes so much sense in a weird way. I like Tori Amos' music, but I stumbled across APs more recent output and it sounds like a really really bad Tori Amos pastiche in a lot of places. Incredibly self regarding/cringey. I know this is nothing to do with the allegations (good people can make bad art, bad people can make good art) but it does explain that. Clearly she was "influenced".

I don’t think they are friends are they? I’d heard they disliked each other.

I’ve just had a listen to some songs on AP’s recent There Will Be No Intermission album out of curiosity. I’m not sure about Tori but it definitely sounds like she’s been heavily influenced by Regina Spektor.

Alice Munro is dead and cannot be libelled. NG is, observably, a wealthy white man with free-flowing lawyers to hand. Thus the difference in press coverage.

Heading into week 3...

Not sure I like trial by media. Innocent until proved guilty.

It's not trial by media. It's news that's in the public interest. It should be reported by all the outlets that normally report news.

Or do you think that no cases of any kind should be reported in the news unless there's a criminal conviction first?

"Not sure I like trial by media. Innocent until proved guilty."

Trial by media would imply he's allowing it to reach the media, instead of paying the vast swathes of money to Evendale Strategies to suppress it.

*Edendale

I was about to say the same thing! Not going to deny we have double standards for men and women, but NG can afford the best lawyers. The press have to tread very carefully.

Another thing to remember:

"... Compelled because, as a journalist who has written extensively about sexual assault, I know how difficult it is to report on. I had never heard it covered quite like this before, and by a company I had never heard of — Tortoise Media. I was stunned by what was revealed — in far more detail than what has been permitted by the lawyers I’ve worked with when covering stories of this nature — and was incredulous that so much of what is traditionally withheld out of extreme legal prudence was divulged."

It is SO HARD for journalists to report on situations like this - for this much to get past the lawyers indicates that a lot will have been left out. If this is what was allowed, his silence only leads the public to fill in the gaps.

Additionally, as a vocal 'feminist' and advocate of believing victims, his silence is particularly damning.

(Sorry, not sure how some of that text ended up struck out)

I wonder about NG's social media.

If memory serves, he used to have a forum where he interacted with fans. This was a very late 90s, early 00s way for writers to raise their profile by being accessible in the online age. His contemporary Warren Ellis, who I've talked about upthread, did the same, and used his forum to pick up women - though I believe Warren's behaviour fell into the sleazy but not rapey category.

It would be interesting if stories began to emerge from Neil Gaiman forum members. After all, some Warren Ellis forum members were salty enough 20 years after sleeping with him to torpedo his Netflix deal.

For a long time, NG didn't use Twitter except to generically post promos for his work. Then at a certain point (I fancy this was around Gamergate, but may be wrong) he started proclaiming his feminist credentials and very ostentatiously white knighting for women facing abuse online. Sometimes that was abuse and sometimes that was his protegee Laurie Penny being fairly criticised for saying something stupid.

In retrospect, a man who is so incredibly keen for everyone to know he's an ally to women is a massive red flag.

Maybe his online ubiquity - for a long time I was being spammed with ads for his writing masterclass - is part of what protects him. For even moderately online people, he's part of the furniture. He might be in his sixties now, but that makes him a good 30 years younger than Alice Munro was.

@StainlessSteelMouse He used to interact with fans on his forum/website, then moved over to Tumblr and then Twitter, where he caried on interacting. Then he dropped Twitter for anything but publicity announcements (so it's probably maintained by his publicist now) and moved to Bluesky where he was actively interacting until this broke. I don't use Tumblr, but I imagine the same there? I also got spammed on Facebook with adverts for his writing masterclass.

The forum was (publicly at least) a Q&A effect - unless there's a more interactive one I'm not aware of. I can't remember if you had to input contact details when you posted something or not. He did reply to me once, but only in as much as quoting my post in his blog and commenting on it. I'm not sure I'd adding anything to the discussion here, but it's bloody depressing to have someone I thought well of turn up to be a rapey sleaze bag.

a man who is so incredibly keen for everyone to know he's an ally to women is a massive red flag.

This deserves restating.

That is a very difficult question. Whilst one wants accusations to be heard, airing them all over the media makes the likelihood of a fair trial, if the matter comes to court, remote. I am not sure allegations of sexual abuse - the abuse being left unexplained so I don't know if I am looking at rape, pinching someone's bum, or touching someone up - are in the public interest. I want the evidence that these things happened to be aired, rather than the allegations. They certainly sell newspapers, podcasts, cause X-storms etc and make money for someone, which is the reason they are publicised.
More to the point is the cover-up over humiliating women and girls who made complaints of domestic violence, rape, etc by Greater Manchester Police - who seem to have used strip-searching as a weapon - which does need to be in the public eye and which has plenty of evidence to back up that it happened.

@AnotherHelenB many thanks - I was never on Neil's forum, so that's useful context.

I had been revisiting the Ellis stuff in light of Ed Piskor's death, which I don't really want to get into, but knowing the details of Ellis, Gaiman is an interesting compare and contrast.

One of the sad things is that it can be really great when writers make themselves accessible to fans or aspiring writers. There have been so many cases of predators that I don't know if an established male writer without predatory intent would want to take the risk of mentoring a younger woman.

That accessibility being a big part of the NG brand, at least until this broke.

Someone’s working hard to delete any mention of the allegations from Gaiman’s Wikipedia page. I just looked through and could see no mention of it, then checked the edits.