"Call me Master"

The allegations against Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman (Photo: Kendall Morgan)

The Tortoise News podcast has conducted an 8-month investigation into allegations made by two women against the author Neil Gaiman.

You should listen to their meticulous, four-part podcast for the full details of that because the journalists involved have gone to great lengths to describe abuse, its complexities and how a seemingly consensual relationship can be anything but.

I have heard Gaiman discussed in connection with troubling behaviour for some years now. All gossip and speculation and rumour. It’s anecdotal and not proof of wrongdoing. But it filled the air every time his name came up.

He’s another one of the “oh him, I always figured” club as far as some of the people I know are concerned. Again, this isn’t proof of anything other than several people claimed to be unsurprised when the story broke yesterday.

The careful Tortoise investigation details alleged violent conduct during sex with young women the author had relationships with. Always young, always fans, always craning their necks to look up at him. One was asked to sign an NDA, back-dated to the date of Gaiman’s first alleged sexual assault, about three hours after he met her.

The two women give accounts of very similar behaviour but nearly two decades apart. Gaiman, in response, says their accounts are muddled by “regret” and their poor memories of what happened.

But even without the subjective accounts of two women, 20 years apart, the things he does agree actually happened are pretty eye-popping.

What’s your version of flirting? Gaiman’s involves laying eyes on you for the first time, assessing your willingness to be sub to his dom and telling you to get in the bath with him.

Social media had little time to react to the news before election fever took over, but the responses I saw on Twitter/X were from fans saying they “liked” him “past tense” and that they would try to separate the art from the artist from now on. A collective shoulder-drop from people who’d grown up on his writing, escaped into the worlds he created.

The anatomy of these public scandals is largely the same every time a new one breaks. Allegations are made, the man denies it all, says he didn’t break any laws, angrily refutes anything that could specifically land him in jail. The discourse continues for a while, some of us change our opinions of the person being accused and some of us just sort of forget what we’ve been told.

The forgetters interest me. Do they just put that knowledge in a box marked “not useful” in their minds and continue as before? I can’t do that and sometimes I think it would be easier if I could but that it would be like walking with a sharp stone in my shoe.

Is this kink-shaming?

No. Kink, as I understand it, is mutually agreed between two parties and usually involves some kind of pleasure for both people. The power dynamic of sub/dom is performed/played out for the purposes of sexual pleasure. It isn’t just, allegedly, one person causing harm, pain and humiliation to the other while that other suffers in silence. The end. Their reward - ongoing proximity to their abuser (allegedly). The interactions described by Gaiman’s accusers involve pain and humiliation for them and then, nothing. I doubt even the kinkiest of pain-fetishists would enter into that bargain when there’s ultimately no fun for them involved at all.

If his intention is to sexually titillate his partners by playing out the role of a cruel dom who demands to be called “Master”, then fair enough. That’s between him and his very young girlfriends. But when the intentions behind the role play are actually to humiliate and hurt someone to make himself feel good, that’s an entirely different game. What if it’s not just a bit of cheeky fun? What if he gets off on grinding an already vulnerable person’s sense of self into dust so he can take full control of their lives? That’s not so cheeky.

He didn’t break the law

A whole other Substack. Whatever Gaiman did or didn’t do, his certainty that he didn’t break the law doesn’t really matter. Because the kind of behaviour that requires total compliance from another person and total dehumanisation of that person (and scene), doesn’t have to be the legal definition of rape to be cruel, abusive and wrong. The men who say “I didn’t rape anyone” are assuming that anyone would still want to be associated with them when their preferences in the sack extend to physically dominating and harming someone who is smaller, poorer, younger and weaker than them.

He doesn’t have to break the law (which isn’t exactly robust) to be a callous, woman-hating abuser (allegedly).

The women are doing it for attention

The women in these stories, more often than not, now opt for complete anonymity. There is nothing in it for them if fame and recognition is what they truly seek. Nothing at all. A woman who speaks up about a powerful man, accusing him of abuse, gets - at best - a few days or weeks of people speculating about her state of mind, promiscuity, desperation for fame, gold-digging. That’s it. You won’t find them cruising Sunset in a limo, swigging Krug from the bottle with their entourage. It simply doesn’t happen.

Then they’re doing it for the money

As a journalist who has sometimes helped out on these stories, I can tell you that the women do not get paid. They don’t ask for money and journalists (the ones I’ve worked with) don’t offer any. To speak out is an act of bravery. They’re paid in fear, anxiety, constant worry that what they’re doing might be the wrong thing, might ruin their life. A voice telling them it’s better to stay silent than open themselves up to potential discovery and renewed trauma. There is no happy ending where they roll on a bed covered in fifties. At best, they’re paid in closure.

The days of the kiss-and-tell girls who’d pout in the Daily Sport and describe a footballer’s manhood are long gone. These women are reliving serious trauma. No one does that willingly in the hopes it’ll get them a mythical seat at the fame table.

What happens now?

As the details of Gaiman’s alleged behaviour play out, mention is made of a video message he sends to one of the young women, his children’s former nanny in New Zealand. He gets the Irish actor Fiona Shaw to record a video for her, saying that she hopes to meet her one day.

I thought about Shaw as I listened to the Tortoise podcast and how, whatever Gaiman said to convince her to do it, he almost certainly didn’t tell her the truth. Or at least, he’d have held back the bit about the true nature of his relationship with the young fan.

I’d be incandescent now if I were her. All of those famous actors and writers and notables who stand next to Gaiman, making him look respectable and like he’s part of the great celebrity firmament.

Whether he broke the law or not, I wonder how many will want to stand next to him now?