It is unclear if I will have a Saturday Note next week–I hope to, but I may not be able to, as I will be busy most of Friday, which is when I usually write these. We will see!
Camp NaNoWriMo continues to go on okay, and I expect that soon I’ll have to start wrapping up this story.
This is a bit more serious than other Notes, so I apologize for it not being as fun. And there are a couple of not-fun links. Sorry.
The Neil Gaiman Situation
Based off of a July 3rd podcast, headlines erupted in the next two days that fantasy author Neil Gaiman, writer of Sandman, American Gods, Stardust, Coraline, and co-author of Good Omens, among other things, was accused of sexual assault by two women. Since those initial headlines in the first few days, the news has been mostly silent on the topic. As of Friday, those allegations are no longer mentioned on his Wikipedia page, despite being the kind of thing you’d think would be important to know about a fantasy author beloved around the world. Most of the news stories you’ll find about it are from the first days of the allegations, instead of anything that’s developed in the past two weeks this story has been out there.
Mind you, it’s also been a busy news month. A presidential candidate and former president was nearly shot, the Republican National Convention happened, outlets and prominent Democrats are questioning Biden’s capability as a candidate and President, and for us religious folk, there’s the National Eucharistic Congress happening this week.
Yeah, it’s a lot going on. That doesn’t mean this story should be buried, though.
This is difficult for me to write about, to the point that I’ve been putting it off. Historically, I’ve been a Gaiman fan. He’s got half a shelf in my room (the other half of that shelf is Sir Terry Pratchett). You can probably tell I’m a fan from past Notes, and also my reading history if you have me on Facebook or Goodreads. I’m not going to burn all of my Gaiman books, or write a Note about how you can or cannot enjoy the work of a writer or artist who has done bad things. I don’t know how to answer that, and much better people than me have tried writing those sorts of things.
I will write, however, on how garbage some of the reactions I’ve seen have been.
There is a contingent of the Internet which holds that the man is guilty based on the headline alone. I’m sorry, but we live in a system that says, “Innocent until proven Guilty.” That does not mean that I think him innocent, or that the evidence suggests that, but it does mean that allegations are not themselves evidence, especially if you haven’t actually read the whole story. Looking at a headline and deciding that you know what happened is not forming an opinion, it’s feeding rage and building an ignorant society.
Even more frustrating is the presumption of innocence and dismissing the evidence. One of the reporters that’s been investigating the story is Boris Johnson’s sister, who has made comments offensive to the trans community. I’ve seen a few people suggest that because Neil Gaiman is an ally and advocate, that the allegations investigated by a right-wing reporter must be false. This is a very stupid thing to say; it’s like if we declared that every time someone published a story about a priest who was a sexual predator, we dismissed it because the liberal journalists are anti-Catholic (and sadly, some people do exactly that, but it’s still stupid). The allegations deserve full investigation, regardless of whether one of the reporters involved is a massive jerk.
And even if Gaiman is as innocent as he says he is… that doesn’t actually come off making him look that good. The two women he had encounters with were a fan and his son’s nanny, both significantly younger than himself at the time. Even if they are consensual encounters–and I want to emphasize if, as one of Gaiman’s defenses is that one of the women had a condition that created false memories which sounds sketchy as fudge–the involve massive power imbalances that I feel anyone with sense would at least classify as ‘unhealthy’. If your only marker of whether something is okay is whether something is mutually consensual, it’s fine, I guess, but we’re talking about a massive power imbalance, one of which is with an employee that means you need more than ‘consent’ as your measuring stick of what is and isn’t okay.
[Also, who the fudge decides it’s perfectly okay to cuddle and make out naked in the tub with your son’s nanny?]
Some people are also acting like Amanda Palmer, Gaiman’s ex-wife, is being blindsided and caught up in this without knowledge. Which, uh… for starters, one of the accusers claimed that Palmer told her she was the fourteenth woman to come to her with complaints about Neil. She’s also deleted questions or comments about the entire thing from her social media, without addressing it.
Look, this is not going to go away if it’s buried. If Gaiman is really innocent, then fine–but that should be the result of an actual investigation. I’ve seen some people claim in comments that it’s an open secret that Gaiman slept with fans at events, or made inappropriate comments or gestures, though I have seen no actual citations of sources other than, “I heard about it somewhere,” which is even less reliable on the Internet than it is at the office water cooler. If there is more out there, though, there needs to be a reckoning with this. There needs to be someone addressing this for the sake of victims. How is anyone supposed to build any amount of trust if someone comes and speaks out about something horrible that a powerful figure in pop culture has done, and we all pretend it didn’t happen?
“But he’s done so much good! This shouldn’t cancel out that good.” I agree! He’s done a lot of good. I remember him making videos from Syrian refugee camps promoting aid for them long before it was a major news story everyone was talking about. However, the reverse is also true: the good someone does cannot also cancel out the evil actions taken.
Take this seriously. Don’t forget this story. And someone (and by that I mean a journalist and the appropriate authorities), please, investigate further.
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