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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.
If you put a 60-year-old man in the room with an attractive 20-year-old woman, the one with all the power is the young woman. She possesses a quality that motivates every male mammal, sexual charm. Given her age, she has greater cognitive flexibility, resilience, and mate choice. The old male is motivated by something so deep in his nature that it evolved before humanity even walked the earth. But the young woman is motivated by vanity, greed, fame, and self-image. By any serious consideration, the young woman has power over the old man. And her motivations are less excusable as they are conscious and vain. The male motivation exists outside the plane of morality, which is why history’s moral teachers do not say “don’t seduce” but “stay away from any context in which you could seduce or be seduced”. That’s the lever of moral control here, well before you are lead into temptation. (Islam is right about women?)
No one in history really conceived of a level of self-control that would permit you to be alone with an attractive young woman for an extended period of time. The most well-trained monk was still barred from being alone with a nun. The absurdity today stems from the typical mind fallacy. Unhealthy men whose sexual drives are damaged or reduced imbue their lack of vigor onto vigorous men. Men with vitality are often successful and successful men often have vitality. So the lacking man mistakes his impotency for self-control, when in fact he experiences 10% of the impulse that the healthy man experiences. It’s like a starved man and a hungry man deliberating cannibalism — it’s no virtue to abstain from the flesh when you’re merely hungry. So we aren’t criticizing immorality here, we are criticizing health and nature, and in an especially dumb and gross way.
The best solution to solve the social neuroticism: you can no longer accuse a man of rape if you willingly spend time with him alone. This solves a vast amount of rape and the only drawback is that a woman can no longer pretend to have a platonic friendship with a “guy friend”.
We could achieve much the same effect by simply saying that a man has no legal defense against an allegation of rape if he chose to spend time with the woman alone, but I presume that would not please you in the same way.
The sexual revolution is over, you can’t fuck unlimited numbers of young groupies and not risk getting MeToo’d anymore. Oh well, it’s not an issue that affects 99.9% of not extremely rich or famous men and I don’t consider it a huge tragedy that this deleterious state of affairs is ending.
My rule is preferable because male sexuality is the aggressive risk-taking sexuality. This is evidenced by history and ape studies. Because male sexuality involves more risk-taking, your rule allows women to victimize men by continually inviting men alone who will take the risk. (Men are more likely to meet strange women than vice versa, more likely to swipe on dating apps, etc). My rule makes sense according to human nature: women take less risks and seek for fewer mates and are more cautious, so are less likely to be tricked into being victimized. Your rule gives women even more power, my rule equalizes the power of the genders by requiring the careful gender to expend due care. Ultimately what we want is less total sum victimization and stress. I think every sophisticated civilization from the Middle East to Europe and Asia abided by a rule like this: when determining rape they would consider the conduct of the woman.
Well, inform the millions of years of biological equipment that cause the dominant man to be dominant that it needs to turn off its evolutionary engine. That’s the issue. The sexual instinct is stronger and older than the shame instinct. If you devise an unnatural standard you are going to find a lot of violations to the standard. Yelling and shaming a man for doing what a man is designed to do (procure consent of fertile woman, seduce) is ill-conceived. It just makes everyone more stressed. A simple rule can delete that stress efficiently without burdening the legal system.
Historically seduction of a woman was literally considered a crime, unless she was already the town bicycle. 'She consented' wasn't a defense. Pre-first sexual revolution courting, with the calling cards and chaperones, worked fine before the invention of the telephone.
And today, should "she consented" happens to be an effective defense in a similar case (as pointed out downthread, this is basically the Jian Ghomeshi case all over again), the laws will be changed so that it can't be considered a defense (as they were after his exoneration).
Seems like nothing changed after all.
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