Neil Gaiman
19 Jul 2024 02:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
firecatNeil Gaiman was recently accused of sexual assault. I’ve been consuming his works and occasionally reading his blogs for 25 years. I’ve gradually lost some of my respect for him as a person but I think The Sandman and American Gods are really great works and he has created some absolutely amazing characters.
Opinions and discussion of sexual assault after the cut. No SA details in the post, there might be details in the comments, if any.
One of the incidents occurred when he was 62 years old. I read his account and her account, and I asked myself, “I’m 62 years old. Would I get into a tub naked with a 20-year-old I had just met, who was my employee (or my spouse’s employee), and trust that neither of us would be harmed?”
(Spoiler: No!) I have enough experience to know there’d be a high risk of harm. I don’t know yet how well they and I will be able to communicate or how much they know about what they want. Combining employment and romance/sex is risky even when the people know they get along as colleagues/pals, never mind before they know each other.
Neil fucking wrote The Sandman and one of the things that makes it a masterpiece is how much insight into human nature it has. So I’m convinced he knew the risk of harm too, or he would have if he’d put one microjoule of thought into it. That strongly suggests he didn’t care whether he harmed her, and/or he sought out the risk.
That’s why I’m sure that regardless of what happened, which I’ll never know, and regardless of the quality of the journalism that unleashed the current shitstorm, the lion’s share of the fault is his.
Opinions and discussion of sexual assault after the cut. No SA details in the post, there might be details in the comments, if any.
One of the incidents occurred when he was 62 years old. I read his account and her account, and I asked myself, “I’m 62 years old. Would I get into a tub naked with a 20-year-old I had just met, who was my employee (or my spouse’s employee), and trust that neither of us would be harmed?”
(Spoiler: No!) I have enough experience to know there’d be a high risk of harm. I don’t know yet how well they and I will be able to communicate or how much they know about what they want. Combining employment and romance/sex is risky even when the people know they get along as colleagues/pals, never mind before they know each other.
Neil fucking wrote The Sandman and one of the things that makes it a masterpiece is how much insight into human nature it has. So I’m convinced he knew the risk of harm too, or he would have if he’d put one microjoule of thought into it. That strongly suggests he didn’t care whether he harmed her, and/or he sought out the risk.
That’s why I’m sure that regardless of what happened, which I’ll never know, and regardless of the quality of the journalism that unleashed the current shitstorm, the lion’s share of the fault is his.