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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.
Stuff like this makes me think that "consent", as a binary yes/no, is not a good model of human relations. Like, we all agree that having sex with who's falling-down drunk is wrong, even if she enthusiastically says yes. And there's no clear line for "how much alcohol is too much." For age, there's a clear legal line, but most people still think it's creepy for a too-old man to have sex with a too-young woman. But everyone has different opinions on how much age gap is too much. A supervisor at work dating their employee is also not inherently illegal, but there's a lot of guidelines about it and situations where it can be considered into sexual harassment.
In this case, there's all sorts of things that create a power imbalance. The guy was rich, famous, and apparently charming. He had legions of fans reading his stuff when they were teenagers, so he was effectively "grooming" them without even having met them. He liked to play dom during sex, and had a lot of experience in it, while he was meeting young women with very little experience. It seems like he met a lot of women who were enthusiastically into it, to the point where he might be genuinely confused that someone wasn't consenting with him.
I wish there was a middle ground. Something in between "he's guilty of rape, send him to prison for 20 years" and "he did nothing wrong, so let him off scott-free." A fine seems meaningless when he's so rich. Maybe a good dose of social shaming is the right punishment. Even rich people still care a lot about their social reputation, and this can be a good lesson to everyone about some of the darker sides of human sexuality. Maybe sex-ed classes could include a lesson on the dangers of falling in love with a celebrity.
If you want to treat women as having agency, you have to assign blame for the consequences of their decisions to them. There was no power imbalance tantamount to force here; Gaiman was rich, famous, and (apparently) charming but he had no authority over them. Writing books read by the public is not "grooming"; calling it such casts doubt on the concept of grooming. A woman's later regret does not make a man's actions any sort of offense against her. If you don't think women have agency, you may as well join the "Fight for 25".
Certainly there are conservative-morality reasons that it's wrong for an old celebrity to have sex with starstruck young women. But either such moral systems treat women as being lacking in agency, or the offenses aren't against the woman (or both).
There are many forms of power besides just physical force, which is the entire reason we have laws against underage sex or sex with drunk people. Please don't tell me you think it's fine and dandy for a boss to tell his female employee that she must have sex with him to get a job because "she has agency and can say no."
Since this is the Motte, assume this is indeed someone's position.
Why is it wrong to ask for quid pro quo? The market will price in the value of it and you'll be able to pay a premium not to have sex with your boss. Nobody is technically forced to do anything here. Sex work is real work. Etc.
To account for these hazards, consent based moral systems have to make up tortuous definitions of power, as you do, that taken to their logical conclusion make any sort of arrangement involving sex (including marriage) into rape. Some feminists see this as a feature. I think this just demonstrates the absurdity of such a lens either way.
This is how we end up with zoomers persecuting 20 year olds for having 18 year old partners, or how having any sort of popularity somehow turns women that court you into children. These are absurd propositions.
I submit to you that the reason you think it is wrong has absolutely nothing to do with any conceit of logic but that you are intuiting, as many do, that sex is sacred and people who trade it it engage in sacrilege.
Well, the short easy answer is that it's clearly illegal, and almost everyone would think that it's morally wrong. So this feels like you're asking a weird academic question like "can you logically justify from first principles why murder is wrong?" I'm not an ethical philosopher, I'm just some guy, going off of what feels right and wrong.
But sure, I'll play along. To start. this:
Absolutely not me lol. I'm a lifelong atheist, and a huge degenerate who has often paid for sex. I also have some friends who were former sex workers.
I think I can confidently speak on this topic because I have so much experience with it. When you're paying for sex, it's not just a simple business transaction. It's still an intimate act that triggers strong emotions. Scientifically, it causes a huge spike of oxytocin, which is a hormone linked to pair-bonding, especially in women. So it's actually really hard to just wham-bam-thank you maam with no emotions. The girls I met who could do that seemed incredibly damaged. Most still liked to talk a little and have some sort of emotional intimicy (and I liked that too).
They also usually have a pimp/manager who can handle the business side of things. Partly that's for pragmatic reason (they can bring in customers and chase down the deadbeats who don't pay up). But I think it's also an emotional need, to separate the business side away from the sexual side. Most working girls have strict rules that they do not have sex with their own manager, and the less-shady managers should also follow that rule. If they do, they usually end up horribly abused. In that sense, even asking for sex is wrong, because it turns what used to be a strictly business relationship into this weird mixed thing, and the woman will have to constantly think about that every time she's with her boss now. Sex work is work, but it's emotional work in a weird way that's very different from normal jobs, and part of that emotional work is just dealing with men constantly propositioning you for weird sex acts.
In my experience there's not much of a "market price," you have to haggle for everything like an old-school bazaar. So that's another area where it gets weird, and the girl can get taken advantage of if she doesn't know how much to ask for. (or the customer can get ripped off also). I guarantee this 20-yr-old Au Pair did not know how much to charge a famous rich guy for kinky BDSM sex.
Also that is totally not my position. I was trying to explain why I think what he did was morally wrong, even though it wasn't rape. There should be a middle ground of scumminess, where there's deception and coersion but not actually rape.
@FiveHourMarathon this is also my answer to you
You contradict yourself. Lest we be under the illusion that only the religious can be sacred.
The vocabulary you're grasping for, the "weirdness" is only here to justify a preexisting irrational bias against turning emotions into a moneyed exchange. It literally is wrong because it feels wrong.
You're operating under the same moral intuition as the religious people. This isn't even to say that's bad. I think it has merit for the same reason I think it has merit that buying an old piece of art to destroy it is evil.
But none of this has anything to do with consent and my objection is indeed that the moral philosophy you're espousing to justify all this is a rotten edifice that is much better served by expliciting this bias instead of trying to hide it behind consent.
Because doing so creates the insane applications that turn normal human behavior into some monstrous exploitation for no reason but the requirement to deny this bias in the name of Reason.
I don't think it's an "irrational bias" to say that hurting someone emotionally is wrong. What about hurting someone physically? Can you logically prove that it's wrong to hurt someone physically, or is that also just an irrational bias?
I think it's fine to turn emotions into a moneyed exchange. Normal people do it all the time with therapists, and maybe with all service jobs like bartenders, salesmen, etc. But those people know what they're getting in for, it doesn't get sprung on them by surprise from someone with power over them. It would also be wrong to trauma dump all of your psychological problems on some poor retail cashier.
Tragically, we can not, which caused the death or around 200 000 000 people in the previous century. Much of what is good and moral cannot be arrived at through reason.
I don't have anything against sentimentalism, or even against irrational biases. I'm only suspicious of people who hide such natural tendencies in the cloak of logic and reason so that they may not be checked by tradition.
It is all well and good that disgusting sexual practices remain obscure and shameful, actually. But any proper application of this principle is completely incompatible with society as it is, and the strategic application of this principle to some has only been a font of power.
The irony of course being that many of the people using this mechanism do so under the auspices of the very philosophers that tried to denounce it.
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