No Substance 197: Neil Gaiman and the Allegations of Sexual Misconduct.
Neil Gaiman was first accused of sexual misconduct on July 3rd. The allegations were made by Tortoise Media, and were followed by another three women over the next two months.
Currently, the five accusations stand as this:
The first is by Scarlettt, who was hired to be a nanny by Gaiman and his then wife Amanda Palmer. Scarlett said that Gaiman climbed into the hot tub with her hours after she arrived at the home and started a relationship with his new employee. She was in her twenties and he in his sixties at this time.
The second is by K, who said she was in a relationship with Gaiman when she was twenty and that he was rough and demeaning towards her. He was in his forties at the time.
The third is by Caroline Wallner, who lived on Gaiman’s property in New York from 2014 till 2021. After her divorce, she was coerced into a sexual relationship with Gaiman so that she could remain on his property. This lasted seven years until Wallner stopped it and Gaiman’s business manager requested that she vacate the property.
The fourth accusation is by Julia Hobsbawm, who accused Gaiman of trying to force himself on her in 1985.
The fifth accusation is by Claire, who accused Gaiman of forcing himself upon her in 2012 and 2013.
You can read about all in more detail here, or listen to the podcast, over here. Obviously Gaiman has declined the claims, or admitted fault as with Hobsbawm. There were reports that he paid for a tumblr ad to protest his innocence, but this appears to be done by a friend. You have to wonder why you’d buy a tumblr ad, but you can’t control people around you, I guess.
Overall, however, the allegations haven’t gotten much mainstream interest. There’s signs that might be changing. A few days ago Disney pulled out of adapting The Graveyard Book and cited the allegations, but we’ll have to wait and see if there’s anything beyond that. Some people have suggested that the lack of traction is because Tortoise Media isn’t well established, and has some dubious ties. Others have suggested that Gaiman is rich enough and powerful enough that he has managed to smother it, along with help from friends in the industry and outside. I don’t know what’s true. Some of it. A mix of it. All of it. None of it. Maybe it’s the Church of Scientology, as I’ve seen some suggest. This seems unlikely to me, but Gaiman does have high ranking family within the church.
Regardless, what is true is that a lot of people are upset about the allegations. That’s fair enough. Some others don’t know what to make of it. Others don’t think it’s true. Others are kind of waiting. A couple of weeks back, I was doing a job at a local high school and one of the teachers there told me he was hoping it wasn’t true. He had a Gaiman inspired tattoo on him, he said. I said they were likely true. I say that now, in fact. I’ve heard stories about Gaiman and his fans for a long time. I live in the middle of nowhere and I figure if I’ve heard them then others have. And it’s not difficult to believe that a powerful man would take advantage of his position. So many do, after all. I can’t say I imagined anything like what Caroline Wallner has said, but if the last decade has shown us anything, it’s that powerful men can and do terrible things, believing they have the right to do that.
I don’t have any real or great insights into the whole thing. I’m just not in a position to provide that (and will never be, frankly). However, I did recently read about people pouring through Gaiman’s work, looking for red flags. I wasn’t surprised, but I did think it missed the point. The reason why Gaiman’s actions are so hurtful to so many people at large is because the work, Gaiman’s work, I mean, speaks against acts like this pretty much constantly. One of the underlying themes in so much of his work is the weight of power, the responsibility of it and the misuse of it. You can dislike his work or find no worth in it, I’m not fussed, that’s up to you, but just technically, that’s what it is about. You can see it in The Sandman and American Gods and in later work such as the second season of Good Omens. It’s so central to the work that I’d argue that you shouldn’t worry about looking for red flags, for the moments where you believe Gaiman showed his ‘true’ self, but look at the main thrust of his work and see how it stands apart, or doesn’t, from him. Has he become, like so many creators do as they age, the villain that would be in their work?
Art is a conversation. Most people will never meet the author of the work that they read, regardless of how they view it. They will not share intimacies with them. They will never be privy to the day to day events or thoughts of their life. They live within the work, within the conversation in the text, a text that exists independently from its creator once it is given to you. This is how I split the author and the work in my mind. For some people, however, I know that the work and the author is interlinked and the conversation is immediate with the individual. For them, the two can’t be split. That’s fine as well. So is the decision not to read the work of authors you don’t personally like. There’s lots of authors out there, after all. I don’t believe you should limit yourself to just nice authors, but you’ve got choices, so you can decide who you want to be conversation with.
The accusations damage both Gaiman and his work. He has branded himself as being progressive and has publicly spoken up and in support of various good causes. The accusations, for the reader (for everyone who is outside the women mentioned before) are a betrayal both of the public individual Gaiman has presented and the ethos of the work. The question that the reader is left with is if that betrayal hollows out the work for you to such a level that it destroys it, or if it can survive the accusations. Because, ultimately, it’s not red flags that matter. It’s the meat and bones of the work.
How you respond to that is entirely up to you. It’s also not that unimportant, I’m afraid. The only people who remain important are the women who are involved in the accusations. What is important is for the words of these women to be seen and heard and for them to have the same weight as Gaiman’s and the same reach. At the moment, that’s what should be the focus of our attentions. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s easy for those words not to be heard.
Ben
(Ben Peek is the author of The Godless, Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth, and Dead Americans and Other Stories, amongst others. His next book will be The Red Labyrinth. His short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Polyphony, and Overland, as well as various Year’s Best Books. He’s the creator of the psychogeography ‘zine The Urban Sprawl Project. He also wrote an autobiographical comic called Nowhere Near Savannah, illustrated by Anna Brown. He lives in Sydney, Australia.)