Neil Gaiman accused of sexual assault

[WandsOut]

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

Story still unfolding in the news

Yes, absolutely - the YA scene has a lot of sympathy for those who are misgendered. And particular sympathy for menfolk who “just want to pee” while the angry mob of bigoted terven women are unreasonably trying to turf them out.

It’s not very on trend to care about women’s rights. At least not the old-fashioned kind of biological woman anyway. The new types of women with penises though, they’re very deserving of the sympathy within the #BeKind crowd.

And when there are situations which are more nuanced, such as coercive control and/or abuse of power leading to sexual assault - well, it’s not a big leap to seek for reasons to believe the trans-ally rapey man while simultaneously seeking to pick holes in the story of the (clearly deceitful) woman who’s unfairly trying to bring him down….

Not saying those views are shared by all, but there’s certainly a stubborn proportion.

I honestly am so sick of the patriarchy and shitty cultural attitudes towards women. I really fucking am.

I promise it's coming...

Lalalalalalalaaaaaaa...

Thanks for keeping count! He has to say something soon, surely?!

While we're waiting, we can amuse ourselves with some vintage Garth Ennis.

I have it on good authority that it's coming. There are lots of excuses as to why it's taking so long. None of them bear any weight as far as I can tell. No matter what angle he chooses, I hope everyone remains as furious as has been present thus far.

That's good (sort-of) to hear @notathenabutcassandra (hope you don't live up to your name on this one!)

Watching and waiting! And looking forward to the BBC and Guardian giving it some coverage at last. They won’t be able to look the other way for much longer.

Ha, I remember laughing about that with DH and wondering what Gaiman thought of it. Ennis being an example of a writer who doesn’t (to my knowledge) prey on his female fanbase.

I have a 14 yr old DD who’s autistic/ADHD and never bloody sleeps.

On Friday night she was up with me til 4am. As it was just me and her, I had a long chat about abuse of power and coercive control (in simple terms) and I used this thread and Neil Gaiman as an example. She’s still a fair bit behind developmentally and struggles with nuance so obviously I left out graphic details and chose selected posts.

But she actually got the concept and was horrified. Today she mentioned Neil Gaiman to her dad, so the conversation clearly sunk in. I’d previously discussed this thread and Gaiman with DP so he was already clued up.

I wanted her to understand that true consent isn’t just about someone saying “yes” - and that the absence of saying “no” isn’t consent.

The really awful reality of this situation and Gaiman’s behaviour have been the perfect way to show DD what abuse dressed up as consent can look like.

@notathenabutcassandra - I showed her your daily graphic- she thought it was very powerful.

Still shrouding his Scorpionic self in silence.
Probably waiting for a very bad news day to disguise his sorry or not sorry tale.

I get cheap book emails like Bookbub and I've noticed a real rise in nanny/father relationship ones. They tend to be passion at first sight according to the blurb. Naughty Nanny as always been a trope but I can't help wondering if it has helped fuel this? Not suggesting by any means that they are responsible but has NG spent his life surrounded by fiction and forgotten where the lines are?

That reads a little as if I excusing him - I'm not. Just trying to understand how it gets to this.

...

Just read an interesting comment on a r/neilgaimanuncovered thread, about what he would need to say if there was to be any chance of redemption:

“I’m devastated to have learned—to have finally let myself learn—how badly I’ve hurt the people I’ve used.

“I told myself that I was justified in taking what I wanted because I wanted it. Because I deserved it. And I let myself look past differences in age, power, and status.

“But it’s worst than that. I wanted those differences. I wanted the hurt. An awful part of me still does.

“At first I told myself I had to be silent because not being silent would imperil not only my reputation, career, and legacy, but the work of so many others. But let’s not kid ourselves: I was worried for me.

“It’s not an easy thing to finally look yourself in the mirror. But the price I’ve paid and will pay for my actions pales in comparison to the price paid by the women I’ve hurt. And by my family.

“And for that I’m sorrier than I can say.”

I mean, I can't see that ever happening. But I thought it was a good way of framing what would be required of him.

Nah. It's bollocks. There's nothing he can say that will make things right. If he said something like that it would be completely self serving and insincere anyway. It's gross.

I'm sure any statement he makes will be some stupid story about wolves and little girls and how you can't always tell which you are, or some other bullshit.

The only thing he could say that would mean anything is actually: "The allegations against me are true." But he won't do that.

I get cheap book emails like Bookbub and I've noticed a real rise in nanny/father relationship ones. They tend to be passion at first sight according to the blurb. Naughty Nanny as always been a trope but I can't help wondering if it has helped fuel this?

There've always been fictions using this structure - go back to one of the early novelists in English, Samuel Richardson, and his novels Pamela and Clarissa. I think it's a plot structure/trope that is embedded in patriarchy, really - young woman/older man, servant/master.

It's icky.

It's also something which happened a lot.

What a weird thing for a poster to have hypothesised about on a thread.

Indeed @biscuitandcake - I know in my own family, a famous (and illegitimate) person is my great-great uncle, because my great-great-great uncle got one of the maids pregnant.

Is that aimed at me? Because i wasn't suggesting that it's new, just that it is popular literature right now (and agree re the ick!) and wondered if being surrounded by that as he must be in a book world, is another layer of NG thinking it's OK and normal. It has always been about but there does seem to be a big resurgence.

No not aimed at anyone on this thread. I was responding to what notathenabutcassandra copied from a different forum on how someone had written their version of an apology Gaiman could write that would be acceptable to them. The manufactured contriteness is bizarre.

His Facebook cover has been updated on August 9th with an announcement of new paperback editions of all his books.

https://www.facebook.com/neilgaiman

Except that when you look a little closer, the original post was from 3 years ago.

So it looks like he's announcing all new covers, but it's not actually true.

Hmmmm. Bit desperate.

There is nothing he can write to erase what he’s done. It may appease some people’s conflict about continuing to consume his work, but they would have been likely to have done so eventually anyway.

However every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. I would very much like just one day to see a man in his circumstance just once make it about the survivors. Not to put them through the ringer publicly, admit what he’s done.

I’m not sure this will be the one to do it however. What I once saw in him as virtue was really a hubristic self righteous smokescreen. The level of arrogance to maintain that must have been colossal, but I’m not going to psychoanalyse him. I’m not qualified.

I dunno why, but I feel inclined to point out the seminal novel that kickstarted the whole literary movement that became the modern science fiction/ fantasy genre is considered to be Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. So to counteract his bullshit metaphor of little girls only having significance by stint of the predators that stalk them. I say not only are we gifted our very existence to the women who brought us into this world, we still owe a debt to whole creative universes gifted to us by the women who birthed them.

I think they were saying that he would need to absolutely do a full confession and apology without hope for redemption, almost.

But I agree. There is genuinely no coming back from this, for me.

Ugh, that absolutely feels like another Edendale bot move, aiming to flood the internet with non-related content…