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Notes -
Neil Gaiman having sexual misconduct allegations alleged against him.
https://x.com/bordigay/status/1808522316017815898
Fascinating for the usual 'she was a defenseless underaged 21 year old' tract and 'we had somewhat bad sex at some point' allegations. Reading between the lines it feels clear that Gaiman is a serial polyamorist and atleast a moderate sexpest (by modern standards), but surprising timing to go for him now.
There's been some minor backlash-backlash on grounds of the accusers being TERFs and therefore unworthy of being in the online sphere, and there's nothing explicitly criminal about the accused actions but will be interesting to see how it impacts ongoing projects like Sandman and Good Omens.
Liveblog of the podcast with the details from someone skeptical about the allegations (she's only done the part with the first accuser so far):
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1808514093323587854.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1808604076650660238.html
The highlights would be the Whatsapp messages. Like this one after the day when Neil Gaiman allegedly sexually assaulted her on her first day as a nanny:
And this one a few days later after the weekend when he allegedly "anally penetrates her, she says, without asking and without using a condom and she says he uses butter as a lubricant.":
Or these messages to Neil, also from shortly after the alleged anal rape:
Or these after he messaged her about her supposedly telling people he raped her and she planned to MeToo him:
Or the general description of the year of messages following her meeting Neil, a relationship that supposedly started with him sexually assaulting her on the first day they met and anally raping her the second day:
In summary:
EDIT: Liveblog of episodes 3 and 4:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1808683675984302279.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1808707805915889918.html
The only known case in the universe in which butter was used as an anal lube was in last tango in paris. And him going to the kitchen to take the butter stick out and applying it to one's asshole gives plenty of opportunity to ask "what the fuck are you doing".
Or on your first day in the job at some point you could raise an eyebrow at the invitation to bathe naked with your new boss, as well.
Gotta say, this isn't a good look from him. It sounds like he didn't do anything illegal but he sure did take advantage of a young, inexperienced woman who was both star-struck from meeting a rich celebrity and also working for him. She had very little sexual experience and he was instantly leading her into some sort of intense sub/dom thing.
This is the sort of thing where I think "me too" actually makes sense. He doesn't deserve any legal repurcussions but I'm OK with trashing his public reputation over this. Especially since it apparently wasn't just this one woman but at least 14 according to his wife (herself a famous feminist celebrity).
you know how the internet likes to take old-fashioned words and re-use them? Words like "lewd" and "grinch" and "ruse?" I wish we could do that with "cad." It's the perfect word for the modern age. A guy who didn't actually do anything illegal but still behaved immorally towards women.
I would be more than happy to slot him in with Joss Whedon as examples for the rule: "The more a male celebrity is feted for his feminism, the more likely he is to have done skeevy things with young women."
Indeed. We're at the point where I genuinely assume that any famous male who boldly adopts the 'feminist' mantle is going to be outed as having a sordid sexual history even if none of it is illegal or nasty to the degree that, say Weinstein's was. Its enough of a pattern that I can't help but update priors.
My favorite recent example being Dan Price who gained accolades as that guy who was a 'conscientious' CEO who tried to prove that paying employees more and executives less was a viable business practice and thus most corporations were exploiting their employees.
I do question how much of this is 'intentional' predatory behavior where they disguise their intent in order to lure young women in by appearing 'safe' to be around and able to offer sexual mentorship, vs. just an incidental outcome of modern social mores contradicting more basic instinctual drives.
I don't think most of them wear the feminism as camouflage strictly speaking.
I would guess its mostly because any male that genuinely followed certain feminist tenets such as "enthusiastic consent," letting the woman dictate all the terms, taking 'no' for an answer and refusing to engage with women who appear 'vulnerable' makes you repellent to women's sexual desires. So those few famous men who actually keep those tenets are probably having fewer encounters with women in general which just means they're less likely to catch an accusation.
And these guys are getting access to women by the truckload due to their status, and if they want to get laid they have to act like a masculine 'alphas' in these interactions, which means pushing boundaries and treating women's stated desires as suggestions rather than ironclad edicts so as to actually arouse her interest. The contrast between their publicly stated values and persona and their private conduct is less hypocrisy and more switching 'roles' to what the women are actually looking for once mutual interest is established.
So famous feminist males are getting access to females in either case, but those who seriously adhere to those rules are less likely to get laid (and less likely to get Me-tooed) than those who know (or figure out) they can discard those rules when a woman finds him attractive.
‘Preaches virtue in public but realises they can get away with vice privately’ is pretty much the classic definition of hypocrisy though.
From an external perspective those are pretty much the same thing. I think you’re right in at least some cases, but that sounds awfully like those men are deluding themselves into believing what’s convenient to believe at any given moment.
If they do it once and are horrified that they fell to temptation, okay. But otherwise they implicitly know that what they say about how men and women interact is a lie, and they are choosing not to think about it too hard, all the while coming down heavily on other men.
I think one can end up constructing a mostly cohesive internal narrative where the context of what they're preaching as social norms and the context of what you're doing in individual interaction can be considered different enough that there's no actual contradiction of words and behavior.
For a very rough example, you can imagine someone who is a staunch anti-gambling advocate, campaigns hard to keep gambling and similar vices out of their town and state, to keep kids from engaging in gambling activities, etc. And yet takes their yearly trip to Vegas and goes on a moderate gambling spree while there, and justifies in on the idea that it's fine to do gambling when you go to Las Vegas but you are still against its spread and consider it, overall, a social ill.
Its worth noting that the reason the problem exists is because women often won't be publicly honest about what they actually find attractive and actually want from males when interacting with them.
Its the collision of female-driven social standards with the female-driven desire to get high status males to give them attention. Hard to satisfy both at once, where attractive males give attention to women but only within the (boring) socially permissible ways.
Okay, that's oversimplifying, but if you frame it like that, a famous man who is preaching the female-preferred social standards AND engaging in the female-preferred behaviors when dealing with a romantic partner is still being consistent as to the female perspective.
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I have a different theory for why feminist men often have wild sexual histories.
Feminists by definition progressives. Feminists are generally sex-positive. Feminists, in mainstream feminism, see casual sex as perfectly acceptable and even empowering for women.
This means that, all things considered, if you showed me a variation on that classic question on Linda the bank teller, and asked me whether a specific unknown person who had and approved of casual sex (regardless of gender) was either a feminist or opposed to feminism, I would say they were more likely to be a feminist.
Feminist men, being true believers in feminism, believe the same things about sexuality that feminist women do. They believe casual sex is perfectly acceptable and empowering for women, with there being no reason for anyone to judge a woman for having it or for the woman in question to feel ashamed.
Thus, feminist men believe a lot of things about society, sexuality, and women, that encourage them to engage in casual sex with them. It's not surprising that feminist men are more likely to have casual sex, and therefore more likely to have casual-sex-related scandals!
I don't believe that most male feminists are lying, or using feminism as cover for their misdeeds. I think most are sincere. And their sincerity is actually damaging, because the belief system they're sincere about is false!
I also think this has to do with a lot of male feminists — the ones who are explicitly described that way, not normie dudes who endorse feminism like Chris Evans — being nerds, part of nerd culture.
Nerd culture, if you’re at all familiar with it, is filled with horny sex freaks. It’s also filled with a lot of awkward introverted weirdos who don’t communicate well. And many of these people are the same people. This is a good recipe for misunderstandings and miscommunications around sex. As well as crazy, out of the norm sex choices that people end up regretting.
Edit: It occurs to me that I wasn't clear enough in what I said here. My point is not that we should be conducting shame festivals against promiscuous women or strapping scarlet letters on people, that's not what I'm talking about. My point is that there are real and enduring sex differences in how the sexes experience, desire, and remember casual sexual encounters. I believe casual sex is destructive for men as well as women. But it's clear to me that women desire it much less, enjoy it much less, and often recall it with intense negative emotion, even if they don't believe they were taken advantage of. They don't like it as well as men. They see its destructive power in a way men tend not to. The big lie, the false belief of feminism that I'm criticizing here, is the idea that it's empowering for women and the only reason why people don't think so is patriarchal social customs that can be destroyed through ideology. That's simply not true. This stuff is dug deep down in the sex differences between men and women.
Aye. I think "weird nerds aren't real people" is the most important lesson I picked up from the 2010s.
When you only interact with a group online, you (or I) default to listening to them. All that feminism etc drama gave me enough exposure to notice what kind of people it all was.
Wasted a lot of time trying to make sense of nearly subhuman creeps...
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I can see why you blocked me.
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Male feminist code-switching :skull_emoji:
Yeah, there is some selection bias. We hear less about famous male feminists who privately treat women as equals in agency and accountability getting #MeToo’d, because they get laid less—if at all—in the first place.
In fairness, we do occasionally hear stories about evangelical(I'm using this as a general term for socially conservative American Christians because that's basically what it means in practice) men treating their women well. Some of these are kissy-face stories about a sportsball player's loving marriage and the lengths he goes to to reassure his wife he's not cheating like all his teammates, some of these are about Mike Pence, but it doesn't seem like there's any equivalent among male feminists.
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