Our Monsters
I’m not sure I have anything to say about Neil Gaiman, but I’m going to say it anyway.
Yesterday, as I write this, Vulture dropped a huge story about Neil Gaiman and a long history of sexually abusing women. It's also the cover story on New York Magazine, Vulture’s parent publication. It’s a well written, well researched story.
It is also absolutely sickening.
I mean that literally. If you’re familiar with my work or me as a person, it probably wouldn’t be a surprise that I’m not generally squeamish. But this story and the things Gaiman did were unsettling to the point of physical discomfort. It’s a worthwhile read, but it is a brutally hard read.
I am also pretty kink friendly. Whatever people want to do, within the bounds of safety and consent, I am cool with. I mention this because the things Gaiman did and made his victims do is tinged with BDSM overtones, and is not out of bounds for stuff that people do consensually. But very crucially, it is not that.
It’s monstrous and sadistic, and it’s not kink, it’s torture.
This isn’t the first time a dude in comics has been a shitty asshole. It’s not even remotely close. But it’s perhaps the worst, and it’s one of the most jarring. The Warren Ellis thing, for instance, was not a huge surprise and while it made those who were around the WEF take a long hard look at our actions, Ellis’ public persona and, hell, his work was such that it wasn’t quite the hit that Gaiman was.
But Gaiman, man, Gaiman had this persona of kindness and decency, of caring. I remember he had a Livejournal thing where he talked about how to seduce a writer, where he joked that he needed to write them a note saying that they would like to schedule a seduction, because writers tend to be clueless about picking up on signals.
It was funny and it was relatable, because writers often are like this, and it displayed a kind of insight humor and empathy. It was, I think, a very Neil Gaiman sort of joke, if you’d read his work, which are filled with this sort of thing.
Gaiman’s work was almost always tinged with darkness and horror, but behind all that it still felt, at the end of the day, cozy. It felt safe. And reading that article (there’s also a somewhat less horrifying but no less damning podcast from Tortoise Media) I can’t help but think this, too, was the essence of Gaiman’s public persona.
He wore black clothes, had dark hair, but under the darkness was a kind of warmth that felt cozy. It felt safe. It was a lie. Not just a lie. It was a weapon, used for immense cruelty.
And I won’t lie, it rocked me more than maybe it should. I don’t know Neil Gaiman; despite working in the same industries, we exist in radically different stratospheres. I’m neither a victim or knew any of the victims. And intellectually I know I don’t know the man and never knew the man.
But…
But I think a lot of Gaiman’s success as a creator can be attributed to this kind of parasocial relationship he created, intentionally or not, with the readers of his works. He has such a strong voice, so uniquely and identifiably him, that it’s difficult not to think that you know the man. No matter how much intellectually you know this isn’t so, the emotions are there.
Or least, that’s how it was for me. I wouldn’t even say I was a huge fan, but I’ve read literally all his fiction and I certainly had good feelings for him. So there’s his sense, beyond anything else, of just being wrong. Of judging someone so badly.
Which clearly was the point. I can’t begin to say how much of his public persona and his work was a deliberate manipulation. Even now I think that both his writing and his demeanor at least somewhat reflect aspects of the man, but I also know, because you get lots of bonus thoughts with me, that might just be me trying to feel less fooled.
Regardless, he used both in the pursuit of monstrous things. And I don’t use that lightly. I’m not going to go into what he did, but there’s a pervading and perverse violation of trust, of consent, of social norms. There is cruelty because cruelty was pleasurable. There’s a lack of consideration for not just the victims, but his own child. I say monstrous, and I mean it. He got away with this, in large part, because he’s Neil Gaiman.
Which, obviously, I do believe he did them. The article interviewed eight women for it, telling similar stories without knowing each other. He’s not denied the sexual relationships or even the actions, really, only the context. But there’s no reason for me to not believe all of this and a lot of reasons to do so.
I am also not obligated to do any kind of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ nonsense. I am not the law and I have no moral or ethical imperative to give someone the benefit of the doubt, especially when there’s ample reason not to.
I almost certainly won’t be reading his stuff again. Not, in this case, as some kind of punishment by proxy, although fuck Neil Gaiman, but because the nature of his actions feels entwined with the nature of his work.
I’ve said, elsewhere, that you can’t actually separate the xenophobia and racism from Lovecraft’s actual work. That doesn’t mean Lovecraft influenced works are bad, or that cosmic horror necessarily has that built in, but his own work absolutely does. It exists because Lovecraft had that in him.
And honestly, Gaiman’s work seems much the same, except about sexuality and consent and dominance. Looking back at nearly every story in Sandman, particularly but not limited to things like Calliope, and you can see the threads. And even IF that’s just the taint of knowledge, if it’s just seeing things in clouds, patterns that aren’t actually there, it’s ENOUGH. There are lots of things to read and watch in the world, I don’t have to read or watch his.
I say all that as someone who would, ultimately, consider himself at most a middling fan of the work and admirer of his craft. But I know people, a lot of people, for whom Sandman in particular was such a foundational work for them, that meant so much to them, and that’s been ruined.
It’s all awful, in big and small degrees. And that is, I think, all I have to say or can say.
If you want to read it, and I’m going to warn you it’s probably worse than you think, the paywalled link is here:
https://www.vulture.com/article/neil-gaiman-allegations-controversy-amanda-palmer-sandman-madoc.html
And depending on when you read it, an unpaywalled one might be here: