The idea that we should be able to separate the artist and their art is an idealistic one, but I just read this exposé of Gaiman’s history of sexual abuse, and no, just no. Every gentle, thoughtful, open-minded word he ever wrote was a lie. The image he presented was a facade, while what was lurking behind his illusion of gentility was a rapist, a selfish brute, an ex-scientologist steeped in that privileged nonsense.
He deserves obscurity and contempt. Actually, what he deserves is a felony conviction and jail time. Unfortunately, we live in a time when the deserving don’t get what’s coming to them.
Honestly, I have to wonder if the detail in the article crosses the line from public interest to prurience. But I guess in a world where monsters suffer no consequences, we have to hope that retracing their monstrosities does something.
Yeah, I thought about quoting some of the stories in the article, but they filled me with such visceral disgust that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Gaiman looks worse than Louis CK and Harvey Weinstein.
I go back and forth on this. There seems a correlation between being gifted and talented with also being a complete shit; examples are legion. Einstein was a misogynist who badly treated his wife; do we refuse to benefit from his discoveries in physics? Do we refuse to benefit from DNA because Crick or Watson (I can never remember which one) was a racist? Richard Dawkins has made significant contributions to evolutionary biology; does all that go out the window because of Dear Muslima?
I can separate the artist from the work to the extent that any honors given to the work are for the work and not for the person behind it. If Natanyahu discovered the cure for cancer, I would be fine with both giving him a Nobel Prize and also putting him on trial for war crimes; the two are not in conflict. I think the problem lies with ignoring either the benefit of the work or the shittiness of the person. It’s possible for two things to be true at the same time.
I saw the allegations against him a few months ago and stopped reading any of his stuff. Did new details come out?
Whenever something like this happens I always hear people saying “oh, well, you’re denying yourself the chance to read some really great literature” or the like.
The way I look at it, there’s far too much literature in the world for me to ever finish, so I’m not actually missing something if I choose to boycott authors who’ve done horrible things due to all the remaining non-horrible authors I can still read.
#3: I know the problem, and I’d usually say that we should dissociate art from artist. But now I can’t possibly read Coraline, sweet and harmless as it is, without remembering that story of Gaiman going to the kitchen to get a stick of butter to use as lube when he anally raped a young woman who had repeatedly said no. And afterwards told her to lick his penis clean and call him “Master.” I’m done with him.
Same thing with the films by Polanski, and the films where Kinski played a big role. And films produced by wossname. Louis C K is an asshole but not quite as bad as that british guy who was exposed some years ago.
I am willing to.make an exception for the music by Ten CC. Only one member was a pervo and he only joined late.
Well, fuck… I wasn’t expecting it to be that bad.
Yeah, me too, very much so, but… Fucking hell.
This is going to take some processing. I’ve got a shelf full of his work.
#8: I fully empathize! I was a fan for 30 years since I encountered Sandman while working in a comic shop. I had three full shelves of his work. I did my mourning earlier this summer, then got rid of everything.
Give yourself time to work through it, then do what you need to do.
@freeline #3:
Watson. I was at an event once where Watson was also present (he wasn’t speaking there). I saw him chatting with a couple of people, one of whom I knew. If I’d gone over there I know my colleague would have said, “Hi, Rich. Have you met Jim Watson?” and I would have had to say, “No, and I don’t want to. You know he’s a racist c-nt, don’t you?” On that day at least, it didn’t seem worth the inevitable hassle I’d get so I went and found a seat at the back.
All of this coming out about Gaiman adds a whole new layer to the Loncon 3 controversy with British ‘shock jock’ Jonathon Ross being asked to act as Master of Ceremonies for the 2014 Hugo Awards, since Gaiman was apparently the one who had originally pushed for his invitation. Gaiman also got really passive-aggressive afterwards about how Ross was ‘really a good guy once you got to know him’ when people started complaining about Ross being there due to Ross’ history of rather tasteless jokes at the expense of women.
(That said, Ross had also written comic books and done video game work, and his wife had co-written the screenplay for Stardust, so he wasn’t a priori a bad choice or someone coming in from outside the fandom.)
freeline: those are scientific and technical accomplishments you’re talking about. I really don’t think those are comparable to creative works in the arts or entertainment. The latter are more tied to the mind and character of their creators, and are thus less separable (in their readers’ minds at least) from their creators’ personal actions and character-flaws.
Jeez.
Bastards without shame.
‘Alina Habba Says Man Accused Of Rape And Trafficking Is “Just Like Trump!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=34R0UR4vVoo
Yes, it is Tate she is talking about. And his crimes have been widely publicised. I could dig up more examples of horrible people endorsing even worse people, but this example is my limit.
The late Terry Pratchett has done no evil. If his collaboration with Gaiman predated the rape their novel ‘Good Omens’ is not sullied. After all, Hamsun’s novels predated his time as supporter of Vidkun Quisling and the nazi occupation and they are still to be found in libraries.
What got me was his initial excuse. He described what he said he’d done – which were the actions of a super creepy sex pest AT BEST – and then said “see, no problem”. Yikes.
@12 Raging Bee — Where would a fundie like Kevin Sorbo fall? Unpopular opinion here, I know, but I rather enjoyed his portrayal of Hercules, enough that I bought the HLJ series on DVD (years ago). But in doing so, I was paying for the acting service provided by Sorbo and, more importantly, the rest of the production crew including the writers, of which Sorbo was not part. I mean, the manufacture and maintenance of my car likely involved input from social monsters somewhere along the line, but I still bought it, too. Even a subscription to Netflix continues to fund both Gaiman and Sorbo.
Denns K: generally speaking, both movies and cars are made by organized groups of people, not by lone individual creators. And organizations are generally considered responsible for hiring people who at least aren’t depraved criminals; and for preventing any employee’s evilness or bad character from affecting their products, their clients, or their reputation. So basically you’d have to judge each corporation’s people and products when you decide what to buy from whom. And you probably won’t be able to avoid buying from corporations that employ evil people, as easily as you can avoid buying creative works written by evil authors or artists.
Is there any other source documenting Gaiman’s nasty history? I was unable to access the article linked by PZ.
Story’s behind a paywall, but I can see from the discussion that I don’t want to read it or Gaiman anymore.
I was considering for some time if I should start reading his books because I’ve been told they are good and I was putting off that decision for years now.
That’s that dilemma solved.
Separating art and artist has always been difficult. Whether one can continue to appreciate the artist’s work comes down to individual choice, IMO, provided it doesn’t drift into using an artist’s work to excuse terrible behaviour.
I don’t find this particularly surprising. Somebody pointed out years and years ago — well over a decade — that Gaiman really liked to abuse and kill trans people in his works. (In Sandman, for example, there’s Wanda in “A Game of You”, who is the only human character on the “good” side who dies, pretty much specifically because she is trans, or the serial killer in “Doll’s House” who exclusively kills trans women.) Since having that pointed out, I’ve been a little leery of anything he’s written. It’s true that writing something in fiction doesn’t necessarily reflect a desire to do so in reality, but when there’s a verifiable pattern of fixating on making one particular minority — one the definition of which is inevitably tied to sexuality — and making them suffer and die in fiction, that does suggest something deeper.
For people wanting to read the article, putting
12ft.io/orarchive.ph/in front of the URL often helps.microraptor@5– True. There is far too much good art to experience in a lifetime and we’re constantly adding to it.
The Vicar @22:
You really don’t get irony, do you, you fucking worm.
The most harrowing part of it was the account of the victim, how she was so alone, that she kept turning to her abuser because she had no-one else.
Remember, kids, don’t read. Any book out there, just don’t read it. None of the mouth noises written on scraps of paper either. That way you never have to form opinions about authors with problematic content and/or a problematic life history. You will never have to cancel your bookshelves.
No more
heroesliteracy! If you can read this message, you’re doing it wrong…Generally the biggest problem I see with people looking past the awfulness of living authors is that giving them money enables them to keep doing the awful things they do, so if they’re dead, or if you already have the works in question, or for some other reason it doesn’t contribute to their power to do harm, I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with reading them still. On the other hand, yeah, once you know, it can be really hard not to think about. My only exposure to Gaiman is Good Omens, so I don’t have nostalgia tainted by new knowledge… but I was very into Harry Potter as a kid, and I haven’t dared to even try revisiting it.
That article is hard to read, frankly. What it describes… ugh. Reading through it anyway, I have to say, I don’t just see a self-centered, over-privileged scumbag. To be clear, I do see that, but I also see hints of how a person might be transformed into such a thing. The imperative thing is to break the chain of pain, not to redeem Neil Gaiman, obviously. But… well, it makes a certain amount of sense that someone in his position might have insights on that chain of pain that show through in his work. From the sound of things, he knows it quite intimately, first as victim, then as perpetrator. It sounds like he’s closer to the villains of his work than the heroes… but maybe that still has something valuable to say. Maybe we can stop valuing him as comparable to Terry Pratchett, but continue to value his work the way we do H.P. Lovecraft’s? I don’t know. Probably not while he’s still alive and still trying to defend himself. But… maybe even despite the evil he’s done, we can still find help counteracting it in his own work.
I don’t know. My impulse is always to see the humanity even in monsters, to remember that they could have been otherwise, and to cling to anything that might help us change the world for the better, regardless of the source. The man has done unfathomably evil things, all the same, and I get why others would have a very different impulse. I even understand why some might think a perspective like mine would do more harm than good. It’s all so horrible.
I was already a fan of Gaiman when I read Stardust. While I was unaware of him being a sexual abuser, I found the story a bit cringe-worthy since it seemed to glorify a largely nonconsensual relationship.
#18, #19: Salon has an available synopsis. https://www.salon.com/2025/01/13/ten-grim-revelations-from-the-shocking-neil-gaiman-abuse-allegations-expos/
#19: Also, the Salon piece doesn’t include any of the really stomach-turning details.
Wrote about this just now. https://proxy.freethought.online/impossibleme/2025/01/13/neil-gaiman-and-the-other-lie-of-purity/
Can’t read the article linked here. Subscriber walled. Apparently, tho’ don’t remember I’ve exceeded my quota of free to read Vulture articles already. Maybe next month?
@ The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs) & beholder z: You know what really hurts trans people – and everyone else on this planet? Helping elect Trump. Which we all know you two did.
Also beholder #27, even for you just what the fuck? Talk about some bizarre strawmonster fallacy. No one is even remotely hinting at anything remotely resembling what you are spewing there. Afgain, just WTF?!
Thanks, abbey, I was about to cite your article and found you’d beat me to it. QFT:
Keep being willing to believe the best of others and keep trying to be the best version of you because we didn’t and never will get the best version of them.
We don’t discard knowledge because of the people that discovered it.
We can easilly discard art for that reason though.
That trick with the archive.ph/ ahead of the URL that SQB mentioned in #23 worked for me. Wouldn’t say I’m happy about that, though.
The trick with ‘discarding art’ as DanDare in #36 put it, is the investment. I go through the same thing with musicians and bands I like. It’s no big deal if you were never that into it in the first place. The more people were into Gaiman’s work, the less easy this is. And some will be invested enough to dismiss or deny all of this, of course.
I liked the Sandman stories. Wouldn’t call them formative, but interesting. But the man deserves to be set aside.
@30. schweinhundt : Thanks. Able to read that no probs.
Well, the disturbing content aside. yeah. If that’s the sanitised version, well, yeah.
Oh and thankyou #23. SQB for that as well.
I am, I guess, not exactly shocked about Gaiman. I’ve enjoyed Gaiman’s work over the years – as noted in the article, sexual abuse of women is a theme he returns to a lot. He’s a wealthy, powerful cultural creator with an especial following among damage/vulnerable young people who appreciate his fairy-stories as escapism from their difficult lives. It’s the perfect setting for a predator, really. I own a few of his works, and I’m not going to get rid of them – but I’m certainly not buying more. Fuck that guy.
What I found particularly grating was how Amanda Palmer comes across in the story… I’ve been quite a fan of her work for years, a former partner was a huge fan of hers and I picked her up as well. She has done some amazing music and music videos on themes from mental illness (runs in the family) to abortion (voicemail for jill) to empowerment, etc. I would have expected her to be more protective of the kinds of damaged, vulnerable fans that she attracts. At best here, she sounds like someone who picked up a young fan who was barely two steps away from homelessness, whisked her away with dreams of being a part of a new exiting family/social life, and then used her as an unpaid babysitter and left her alone with her husband whom she knew to be sexually aggressive – even if not predatory. When this fan whom she took into her circle and entrusted with her child confesses what happened, she suggests that the fan gets help and essentially cuts her out of her (Amanda’s) life. At best she sounds selfish and vapid. And that assumes she didn’t know that her husband had basically turned her fan/unpaid servant into a kind of unconsenting sex slave.
Fuck’s sake. I hate to lose two artists I like in one go, but it’s going to be a lot harder to take the message of Voicemail for Jill all that seriously after this…
@#25, Rob Grigjanis
When a thing is used as often as he used “abuse and/or kill trans person”, it really becomes difficult to claim it’s all ironic. You sound like the people who still want to pretend Jowling Kowling Rowling isn’t a TERF.
@#34, StevoR:
Do you have time to waste here? Don’t you have genocidal murderers to fellate, right-wing-but-less-outspoken-than-Trump boots to lick? Hey, it’s getting dark, you can help White House aides pretend Biden isn’t sundowning. If there were literally 10,000 clones of me who all had votes to cast, and we had all voted for the candidate who lost my state, it still would not have changed the Electoral College result here, and Harris would still have lost. Harris (and Biden, whose ghost controlled her every move) lost quite properly, because she chose to embrace Republican policies and chase Republican voters in basically every policy area other than “being rude on Twitter”, and it turns out that when you try to minimize the difference between yourself and your opposition, a lot of people will take you at your word. Harry Truman was saying all the way back in the 1950s that when given a choice between a Republican and a Democrat who acts like a Republican, the public will choose the Republican — if your party is so damned stupid that they still haven’t learned that lesson, then it’s actually better if they’re kept out of power. The only problem is that brain-dead partisans like you keep making sure the only viable alternative is the Republicans themselves; if you’d just let go of the people who hate you and wish you would die if only they didn’t need your vote, we could swap in a third party that actually does something. But no, keep blaming everybody but yourself and your imbecile evil party.
@Vicar, 40
Seriously – what is the point of all of that massive wall of text? Like – what’s your call to action here? Go vote Jill Stein? Help Tulsi Gabbard win her next primary? What’s your ideal vision of the next election look like?
The Vicar @40: You misunderstand. I wasn’t defending Gaiman. The irony is that fuckers like you don’t give a shit about trans people, or anyone else who will suffer under the MAGA regime. So shut the fuck up. Please.
He should get life prison. Or better, ahh he should get the Epstein treatment. I read the beginning and stopped in disgust.
@43 lotharloo
No, he should not. Most murderers don’t get life in prison.
@iasius:
Fine, then the only other option is Epstein treatment.
@iothrioo
I didn’t know he had EBV.