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

As for the idea that there was a calculated hit on Gaiman to take him out of public discourse in the runup to the Supreme Court ruling in FWS

That's hilarious. Unless Neil was going to be the one person who could articulate what a woman was and expose the whole thing as logical and not at all sexist and homophobic.

I expect that’s it 🤣

I can see some kind of fresh bullshittery about him claiming there’s been a ‘smear campaign’ today in a professional publication that sends me emails, but I can’t click through as it’s paywalled. Does anyone here happen to know more?

oh wait hang on, I just saw the link to X in a post above — that must be it. Sorry.

Sorry to reanimate this thread (I'm a watcher not a user of this site until now) but there's been a few interesting revelations about Gaiman's obsessive fan defender that you might find interesting if you're following this case still.
The guy is not shockingly not Gaiman in disguise but rather every stereotype of an egocentric misogynist who uses left leaning principles to seem sympathetic.

The Reveal: https://shootingthemessenger.blog/2026/02/05/revealed-neil-gaimans-anonymous-substack-defender-is-an-activist-monk

Some Choice screenshots from his confirmed username Donovan_Volk plastered across a few different social media accounts (not his real name just a pseudonym) that really put it all into perspective (not my account just something i found while researching):
https://bsky.app/profile/drawthetardis.bsky.social/post/3mdxte7pmg224

Makes Gaiman look somehow even more pathetic he uses this guy as evidence.

Activist monk?!

Some new variant of incel?

On further reading, he appears to be an activist turned pretendy monk.

Monk is one of those titles you can just give yourself to sound more important, it's not issued, recognised or protected by any regulatory body.

That was my thought.

There’s so bloody many of them…

Didn’t know that!

Oh God now I'm doubting myself! I don't actually have a citation... not sure but it seems to be like you can just declare yourself a non-specific monk. There's seemingly no overarching authority at all, just a bunch of organisations that are self governing. As long as you're not pretending to have the title of monk in a specific order when you're not... seems like you're able self identify

Interesting, he claims his vows came from the 12th Chagzampa - a Bhutanese, Mahayana Rinpoche, but his robes are Hinayana. Far be it for me to "sow division in the Sangha" but that lad looks like one more Western fake "Buddhist" among so many. (Genuine Buddhists of Western extraction, like the delightful & very learned Ven. Lama Jampa Thaye, do exist but they're not as easy to find as one might hope).

Becoming a Buddhist monk requires long study under a teacher who received their teachings directly from another teacher, who received their teachings from another teacher & so on, all in a direct, unbroken lineage right back to the Buddha Sakayamuni. You cannot self-declare, you have to be trained & ordained, & in the Vajrayana tradition (a subset of Mahayana to which the 12th Chagzampa belongs) you must learn about crucial texts in oral form directly from the teacher. There's a thing called "lung" pertaining to the person of the teacher & the mode of transmission that would take far too long to even attempt to explain, but suffice to say, you have to learn some stuff directly from your lama or not at all.

In UK legal terms monk's not a protected title but it has very specific meaning in Buddhism.

Are monks supposed to go around bringing their faith into disrepute by calling women liars?

I honestly suspect his "monk" phase is a way to get people off his case for something he's done. His reddit post about being accused of something bothers me (so does his general weird comments on women). It makes sense someone with his views would be a Neil Gaiman Shield.

Thanks. Yes I was generally aware of various traditions and orders but don't have very specific experience, just a lot of chats and various friends involved at different levels (triggered lost memories of Tim who we affectionately called the mad monk, cracking fellow)

Had a lovely chat with a young lad in Edinburgh who had devoted himself to the HK faith. "I used to smoke skunk, now I'm a monk" he memorably said to me!

Leonard Cohen ended up a Buddhist monk didn't he. I'm not aware of any allegations #metoo wise about him but he was such an absolute shit to his girlfriend Marianne, with their relationship inexplicably being spun as they one of the great romances of rock. I remember being particularly unimpressed by him finally dumping her because "he had the soul of a poet" or something.

Anyway he ended up being bullied and having the piss taken out of him by the other monks. Positively karmic

Great romances of rock rarely are that in real life. I think Pattie Boyd concluded, after her marriage to Eric Clapton, that Eric just wanted what George Harrison had, and once he'd stolen her away from George he lost interest.

Gaiman was always one of those male writers who wanted to be a rock star but never had the charisma or musical talent. That whole image he cultivated, the way he befriended musicians like collecting Pokemon.

Even without the rapey stuff, most male writers are self-aware enough to know how ridiculous it would be for them to pose as pseudo rock stars. I can't imagine George RR Martin striking poses like Gaiman did.

There's a bunch of crime writers who fessed up to that rock god pining & used to "murder songs for fun" at book festivals & crime fiction events under the lugubrious name, "Fun Lovin' Crime Writers". IDK if they're still a thing, the always disappointing Val McDermid's participation (vocals, as if you couldn't guess) means I don't maake any effort to keep abreast.

Thete used to be a "sister" in Lincoln that would periodically have the church(s) confirm she wasn't connected to them. She wanted to be a nun and reality wasn't going to stop her!