Neil Gaiman Accused Of Sexual Assault Pt III

[hihelenhi]

A continuation of threads 1 & 2 now that things have moved on considerably, what with further episodes on the Tortoise podcast and the Vulture Article which blew the story out further into the mainstream

Previous Threads:

Thread 1: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5112128-neil-gaiman-accused-of-sexual-assault

Thread 2: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5150957-neil-gaiman-accused-of-sexual-assault-pt-ii

Podcasts & Vulture Article:
Tortoise:https://www.tortoisemedia.com/listen/master-the-allegations-against-neil-gaiman

Am I Broken? https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s4-ep2-claire-i-ignored-it-and-i-believed-him-because/id1491575384?i=1000663604978

Vulture Article (archive): https://archive.is/HJtxW

Not just brought up in. His father was HEAD of the uk branch. He tried to sue the charity MIND. Neil grew up in the very grounds of the HQ.

And actually his own father was binned off by the Scientologists in the end… for allegations of some kind. True or untrue, suing people is certainly the standard response. I actually took all my books of his to the dump instead of the charity shop, as I didn’t want anyone else to read them and just wanted them off this earth. His name is everywhere, it must be awful for the victims.

Watching a doc on Netflix about Waco, interesting how much I think NG looks like David Koresh.

The lawsuit is classic DARVO isn't it? Scumbag

I’ve been listening to true crime podcasts while out for my evening walk. I realised that I never actually listened to the podcasts from Tortoise Media about Neil Gaiman, I only read the articles.

So I started listening and got almost to the end of the first episode before I had to turn it off.

I don’t know why, but I’ve had such a visceral reaction to listening to it. I knew the contents already but hearing Scarlett describe what happened to her was utterly sickening.

I honestly don’t think I can listen to the rest. I have listened to and watched all sorts of gruesome things, but there’s something about this that is just stomach-churning.

I knew it already but hearing it really underlines what a vile man he is.

I couldn't get through it either, @SpidersAreShitheads. Absolutely evil.

Season 3 of Good Omens is due soon, but all the wittering on social media seems to be about the new Harry Potter series (as far as I'm aware, JK Rowling has not been accused of raping anyone). But perhaps that's just due to the popularity of the franchises.

@JazzyJelly - it really is awful, isn't it? She was so young and vulnerable. I'm at a loss for words to describe how the podcast made me feel.

I saw the new Good Omens advertised on TV - no dates IIRC, just reference to it. This was before I had attempted to listen to the podcast. I loved season 1, didn't like season 2. I'm not going to watch season 3. I am deeply disappointed that the very established actors within have remained resolutely silent about Gaiman. Complicit with their silence. They can get fucked too.

I love Harry Potter anyway, so I'm all in for the new series. Not sure about some of the castings but we'll see when it starts!

Is there a Venn diagram of the actors boycotting Potter stuff and an overlap with the ones boycotting Gaiman works, or are they mutually exclusive

The kids on the Gaiman subreddit have been quite good about denouncing him, and lots are now boycotting his works.

But they still have this compulsion to (somehow) make JKR a bigger villain, and a bunch of them are hallucinating that David Tennant, while being silent about Gaiman in public, has been quietly working againt him behind the scenes.

Because that's much easier for them to handle than the idea that Tennant keeps finding himself working with these really dodgy men and never seems to notice what they're up to.

I suspect a lot of Gaiman's fanbase are former HP fans, and him making a big show of being a trans ally was a selling point.

Gaiman clearly has a fantastic imagination (lots of frankly dodgy people do in my experience). He’s created work people enjoy, and I’m leery of somehow trying to say that people shouldn’t read books they enjoy

but organisations choosing to work with him when it’s 100% clear he’s engaged in abusive behaviour over a very long time, and could possibly find himself in court? Different kettle of fish I think

not quite sure where I’m going with this other than to say he’s a repellent human being but I don’t agree with ‘cancellation’

Hmm, that’s a tricky one.

I don’t normally agree with cancel culture but when there’s a man who’s used his reputation, power, and success as a means to prey on vulnerable women, I find it very hard to argue that we should continue to enjoy his future work.

Because if people continue to watch his productions/buy his books/support him personally, he’ll inevitably start to weasel his way back in. He clearly has lots of heavyweight people behind him who are willing to turn a blind eye so it really wouldn’t take much for him to insidiously creep back. And we know he does insidious very well.

So I think it’s different than consuming content by other artists who don’t have the same power, or the same potential to use their platform to commit more abuse.

Gaiman’s books are 100% my genre but I don’t want to play any part in his rehabilitation because I think that would directly jeopardise more women.

"locked post"

https://www.reddit.com/r/neilgaiman/comments/1lemy7q/has_this_already_been_posted/

Goes onto musing how weird Harry Potter fans are, unlike fantasy Gaiman fans. This reminds me of the fight that broke out at the comic convention between Doctor Who fans and Star Wars nerds

Well, that turned out as well as could be expected...

This is the problem I have with certain NG fans - they felt they were superior for liking NG, and building a whole cult of personality around him, and now they feel they're superior for not liking him. It's all performance.

(I mean it's true that there are some people who have never read anything but HP, and are weirdly obsessed with it into adulthood, but I feel they're a smaller proportion of the HP fandom)

Sorry to sound old fashioned but if I went to a house where I was supposed to babysit kids and the Dad told me to get in a bathtub naked, I'd high tail it out of there or call the police.

Good for you.

A young woman with a troubled history, no money, nowhere else to go and a much older and very famous man pressuring her shouldn't be judged for not being you, though, right?

She's an adult.

Perhaps you should listen to the podcast rather than looking for reasons to criticise her.

Also, I don't know about you, but I generally do take a bath naked.

Gaiman asked Scarlett if she wanted to take a bath. She assumed he meant did she want a bath - not that he'd get in the bath with her. She'd been travelling to the island, and it was the evening, the child was out, perfectly reasonable to have a bath to freshen up.

It's an extremely complicated situation which is why Gaiman got away with it for so long. Coerced consent is a completely different situation from being attacked by a stranger. It's complex, desperately under-reported, and many women fear being disbelieved.

Scarlett was a very young adult, a lesbian with no experience of sexual contact with men, estranged from her family, living with Gaiman/Palmer with no where else to go, and just for good measure, they never paid her for the work she was doing for them. She literally had no escape.

An extremely famous man with a reputation for being a kind, trustworthy soul reassures her that it's all perfectly fine and natural, and that she has no cause for concern.

It's absolutely sickening. She was lulled into a false sense of security and he picked on her precisely because she was so vulnerable and had nowhere to go, and no one to protect her.

I have listened to the podcast and am going back in time to when I was a 22 year old and would have told him to do one or kicked him in the balls. Beside this podcast describes her sending "sexy" messages to him.

I'm glad you're so confident, and secure in your immigration and economic status@YourAmplePlumPoster

Lots of women and girls are not.

Why the focus on the young woman who was raped not saying 'no' enough and not the 'alleged' rapist old enough to be her grandfather?

Someone called him Comics Jimmy Savile. The way he abused his showbiz connections and access to young fans is very similar.

I remember your previous posts @YourAmplePlumPoster - IIRC you won’t countenance any criticism of Gaiman.

You were a confident, young, assertive woman. Great.

Now imagine a young virgin, stuck on an island with no money to travel home, no family to support her, and actually no “home” either because she’s living with her abuser. Quite literally no escape.

And if you have actually listened to the podcast you’ll know that it was a softly softly approach - as is often the case with sexual abuse.

If you can’t imagine a very young adult feeling utterly trapped in this situation, then you really are devoid of compassion.

I couldn't care less about Neil Gaiman. He can get fkd, But women have a duty of care to themselves to walk away from a situation like this. The posts suggest that a grown woman doesn't know how to take care of themselves.

Mm. You'd say that to Scarlett if she were your daughter, would you?

Do you hold similar views about young women attacked after they've gone out and had a few drinks/worn a revealing outfit?

Your lack of empathy says a great deal
... About you.

Yes, I remember similar sentiments from this poster before on this issue. A complete lack of understanding of abuse dynamics and victim-blaming. One might even say misogynist.

I think NG, as the infinitely more powerful, wealthy person here, had a responsibility not to serially, over years, groom and coerce mainly young women into what seems to be frequent violent and often non-consensual or at best shakily consensual sex, get them to sign NDAs which are clearly an abuse of power, fail to pay them when they are "employed" by him, put them in situations where the power dynamics are clearly coercive. But maybe that's just me.

There’s no point engaging with that poster tbh.

They’re all over other threads defending the poor menz and criticising women. Misogynist to the core. Plus a Trump supporter, which checks out.

Blaming women for being raped is pretty much on brand.

The thing to remember about Gaiman, as with all abusers, is he deliberately targeted vulnerable women who it would be easy to exploit. Men like him don't pick on self-confident women at ease with themselves, they pick on kids who have grown up in foster care, or whose parents are dead, or who have a troubled history of mental illness or self-harm. In Gaiman's case, if I'm allowed to say this, he seems to have entrusted his wife with the job of finding these girls and bring them home to him.