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My memory is that Neil Gaiman's name occasionally pops up around here (edit: here). New York Magazine pulled no punches today. Headline?
The headline is false, though maybe not for the reasons you would immediately guess. As far as I can tell the story itself is not a scoop so much as a rigorous summary of things already known. It's difficult to know where to begin, commentary-wise; probably this belongs in the long tail of 2017's "#metoo" movement? But maybe we should begin with Sandman.
If you don't know who Neil Gaiman is, he's... a writer! A talented writer--not so talented a comic writer as Alan Moore, not so talented a novelist as Neal Stephenson, not so talented a screenwriter as Joss Whedon, but what makes him remarkable is that he is almost as good as every one of those writers within their respective mediums of mastery. He became Alan Moore's protégé; he collaborated with Terry Pratchett (Discworld) on Good Omens (1990). But it was his new take on an old DC character, Sandman, that became his own personal magnum opus. Running from 1989 to 1996, the book briefly outsold even Superman and Batman as DC's top title.
If you read it today, you'll see a lot of English punk, a gothic flair, deep cut literary references, edgy takes on stuff that 21st century Westerners now take culturally for granted... and a whole, whole lot of not-even-repressed sexual deviance, both of varieties that have since become more culturally acceptable, and varieties that have not. Hence my suggestion that the headline is false; as near as I can tell, Neil Gaiman never hid the darkest parts of himself from anyone, ever.
In fact, owing to decades of involvement in fringe geek fandoms, I have had a handful of glancing personal encounters with Neil Gaiman. The first thing to know is that he basically sweats charisma. Where Alan Moore is a spectacle, where Joss Whedon is a douche, Neil Gaiman is patently avuncular. He is warm and articulate, a storyteller every second, and when you meet him you know immediately within you, down to the marrow of your very bones: this man fucks.
And as far as I could tell, he made absolutely no secret of it. By no later than 2010 I had heard multiple totally separate stories from women claiming to have accompanied Gaiman to his home for playtime, hippie-style (or rationalist style, if some of the things I hear about San Francisco group homes are true). It is entirely possible that some or all of them were lying! Certainly they were all boasting. One was very clearly imagining that this would be her big break into the literary world, which seems like a strange hope to express if you are lying about the sex.
This is not the sort of behavior I want to encourage from anyone, for a variety of reasons, but it's probably worth noting, very clearly, that this did not seem at all surprising to me. I remember Bill Clinton, I remember Bill Gates, I know what a groupie is. Famous, powerful, wealthy, men have for all of history been inclined toward promiscuity, and women have been inclined to indulge them that.
The article seems to confirm my own, limited historical experiences:
Inevitably, it seems, in such contexts there is never any shortage of... misunderstanding. The article gets into pretty explicit detail concerning accusations of outright rape--often, however, with women who had been involved with Gaiman for some time, and continued to be involved with him for some time afterward. His second marriage (to a C-list celebrity in her own right) was "open"--
Indeed!
That sort of thing only lasted a few years. Eventually, Palmer was pregnant and decided to try to close the marriage. This seems to have been the beginning of the end of that, and the New York Magazine story could be viewed through the lens of "hit piece intended to influence the drawn-out divorce proceedings." I do not (and cannot) know the truth of these events for myself, but it probably doesn't matter; his career has been drying up for a while now, and once studios milk the requisite profits from their current investments in his IP, those contracts seem likely to be among his last. Well, he's in his 60s and he has plenty of money (even if Palmer absconds with half of it), I don't feel too badly for him.
But the whole charade does remind me once more of the peculiar way in which Western culture has come to insist that there is nothing problematic about sexual promiscuity. Marriage is just one choice among many! Homosexuality, polyamory, open marriages, monogamish couples, as long as it is consensual then it's fine, right? Except that, unlike the terribly old-fashioned practice of "celibacy when single, monogamy when married," the clarity of consent seems to break down in the absence of clearly-delineated relationship boundaries. Gaiman's putative victims do not say that they unequivocally rejected his advances; some, indeed, texted him after the fact with reassurances that their encounters were in fact consensual.
That's the kind of evidence that keeps Gaiman out of jail, regardless of what social media mob justice decides on the matter. Even assuming she was being completely honest when she later said, in effect, "I texted him lies because I was scared," there's no evidence of what she was thinking at the time, except what she actually wrote. A world with clear relationship-grounded boundaries around sexual activity alleviates such ambiguities!
I am sort of peripherally aware of some of the "sex pest" stories that occasionally circulate in rationalist circles, and certainly I am aware of the polyamory (and e.g. Scott's occasional defense of it). Apparently it can work, for some people, at least for a time. But more often it seems to end up like this: if you want an open marriage, probably you don't really want a marriage in any robust sense of the term. And wealthy, powerful men who do not commit themselves to monogamy wholly and from the outset, Pence style, will be promiscuous, and it will eventually create headaches for them, of one kind or another.
Hm. Maybe someone should write a comic book about that.
I'm glad someone did the write up on this so I didn't have to.
I have to update some previous thoughts from six months ago on this matter.
A lot of the described behavior is bad enough to absolutely deserve moral approbation.
I'd still argue that the contributions the man makes to the culture 'outweigh' the harms he's caused, so its simply not economically efficient to lock the man out of writing stories, but maybe do lock the guy in his house and don't let him leave, and any ladies who visit should be fully informed of his proclivities and signing off on a very explicit waiver so they know what they're getting into.
One thing that did jump out though, some of these women attached themselves with clear hopes of career advancement or increased fame thanks to his influence. It seems like none of them got any of that.
So here's an out-there question: Is Neil's conduct arguably worse than Harvey Weinstein's? Weinstein, at least, had the juice to make the women he abused into stars once he was done with them.
Is it worse to NOT actually do a quid pro quo when using your status to get women to sleep with you for favors? Especially with the more painful stuff he inflicted.
Yes, but only in this limited aspect. Weinstein was convicted of other crimes, such as rape. Which is much worse than the non-crime of lying to women to get laid.
For women that leverage sex for career advancement it is definitely worse. For everyone else it's good that the risk of getting scammed exists. Sure, it sucks to get the raw end of an underhanded deal, but that risk is baked into under-the-table dealings. Is a drug dealer that stiffs, then robs, a customer worse than an honest, yet 1000x more vicious, cartel kingpin?
Lying to get laid, while scummy, is common. Women and men lie on first dates. Sometimes they lie in big ways that waste everyone's time. That can be months or years. That doesn't seem any better than a tryst without receiving an expected return.
If a woman wants to curry favor through sex with a powerful -- in this context -- guy that may help her career, then she has to use her judgment of his character and cross her fingers. If she wants to curry favor with a powerful guy that is known to be a womanizer that should enter into her assessment. If she wants a binding agreement, then she should write up a contract.
EDIT: I'm reminded of listening to Dan Savage speak about the Older Gay Guy/Young & Dumb Sexy Twink age gap relationship phenomena a few years ago. He judges a relationship with a significant age gap as ethical if Older Gay Guy leaves the Young Sexy Twink no worse or, ideally, "better off" at the end of the relationship. If you use a younger, inexperienced person for young, sexy sex, then don't leave them homeless, friendless, and drug-addicted at the end of it.
Can't say I fully understand the dynamic above, but if we apply the same framework here, then if all that's lost is some sex without financial benefit, then it's not an exceptional problem. If Gaiman doesn't deliver a book deal and wrecks a marriage -- other than his own -- in the process, then we can call it extra bad and tell the Young Sexy Twinks to avoid such a person.
That's approximately my take on age-gap relationships. But the question of better off can be 'squishy' because its hard to really imagine the counterfactual scenario where they didn't have the relationship.
But it seems that ethically the older person should be actively trying to leave them in a better position, financially, career-wise, or at least creating a more stable life-path for them so that when the older guy exits, the woman's life isn't immediately thrown into chaos.
For heterosexual women, there's the issue of their eventually waning fertility, where a dalliance with an older man that lasts a year or more is inherently decreasing their chances of having kids. Or if they do have kids and the guy leaves, now they're really up a creek, and the kid is probably worse off too in ways that giving them financial support probably won't make up for.
So I think there is an inherent cost to a powerful man using his status to string along young, possibly naive women and making it much harder for said woman to end up in a stable, happy life situation, and those costs often are NOT internalized by that man.
The objection here is that its often hard to know when a guy is a 'known' womanizer and exactly how bad his proclivities are. Sure there's an obvious baseline for most guys, but unless other women are taking down detailed notes of their experience and sharing it with other females (sometimes happens!) there's a clear information asymmetry there, and one that a woman may not even knows exist.
I feel slightly called out. Can't change the past, I guess. At least I never did anything physical and never asked for exclusivity.
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Unless he marries her, that is. One would imagine, all else being equal, older guys to be more marriage minded- and eligible- as a rule.
A good question to examine. The more marriage-minded ones would probably be selected out by getting married early to some large degree.
I can say there's an unfortunately high number I've noticed who are just horndog lotharios who know how to appeal to young women (of a certain type), and are unrepentant about that. And some who get divorced or otherwise find themselves single in middle or late life and decide to go for it.
It is more than fair to say that there's increased competition for the young, marriageable women due to older guys also jumping in the pool.
As to how they treat the women, well, there's nobody actively policing these guys so we can be pretty sure there's some significant amount of destructive behavior occurring.
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