Neil Gaiman: Portrait of the Writer in the New Journalism

The famous fanatsy writer is accused of sexual misbehavior that borders on the criminal. The New Zealand police have not charged him, so the podcast team from the UK’s Tortoise Media have brought the issue to the public. Is this the new methodology of sexual justice?

False Neutrality

I am not a fan of the literary work of British fantasy writer Neil Gaiman.

I am going to analyze the media reports on the sexual controversy that surrounds him these days — the topics are sexual consent within relationships, older men who seduce much younger women, law enforcement inadequacy, life-partners who may act as enablers, and how these are covered by writers —from the stiff righteousness of moralistic bloggers, to the slick polish and heavily-resourced opportunistic podcast machines: Where are the good guys in this story? Or someone with a heathy commitment to neutrality?

There’s no neutrality here, no matter how many times the podcasters from Tortoise Media, who broke the story of Mr. Gaiman’s sexual behavior, tell us there are two sides to every story. There may be, but it doesn’t mean they’re given equal treatment.

American Gods and Emotional Androids

I read Gaiman’s novel American Gods years ago and thought the concept was better than the book, which was filled with overwrought prose and characters used as plot devices, not as individuals with authentic thoughts, behaving in ways consistent with their inner world. Of course, they were gods, and what did I know about the inner worlds of gods?

As a reference point for character authenticity in science fiction, experience Sean Young’s deep, psychologically probing performance in the classic sci-fi film, Blade Runner: she’s an android coming to realize and mourn her non-human existence. Ms. Young endows the character with doubt, pain and existential confusion about her origins and future — infusing the mechanical with the almost-human. No easy task, but what do I know about the inner worlds of androids?

American Gods doesn’t get close to that: lots of imagination, little heart. Not unlike the story that’s about to unfold.

The Story of the Master

I listened to Tortoise Media’s 4-part, 3-hour podcast called Master, and read multiple pieces from writers who specialize in stories about the abuse of power where there is a sexual component.

He’s probably not a monster, one of the writers concludes about Mr. Gaiman, he’s probably just an ordinary predator and abuser.

The articles I examined agreed: the relationships were complicated, and there was text evidence that the two profiled “victims” were willing participants. While the texts have saved Gaiman, for now, from prosecution in New Zealand, where a police report was filed, Gaiman is painted as a middle-aged white man steeped in privilege, glorified as a creative genius who grooms, gaslights, and brands consent to fit his activity. The texts he sent to his 21 year-old sex partners — American “K” (2005, NG was 45) who he met at a Miami literary conference and Kiwi “Scarlett” (2022, NG was 61), who arrived as a nanny for the son Gaiman had with feminist songwriter Amanda Palmer and engaged in a three-week sexual relationship with Gaiman— have the slightly naughty tone of an attentive and adventurous lover; not the messages of a monster.

The entirety of the texting — and it is a massive encyclopedia, exchanges across four continents covering spaces from restaurants to hospitals, from idyllic vacation spots to mental institutions — makes the sexual activity seem overwhelmingly consensual when taken at face value. Master doesn’t think much of face value, and the podcast takes on a disapproving tone. It documents Gaiman’s demands, insensitivity, perverse expectations, and hints at darker sexual undercurrents: the women experience pain, he administers kinky punishments, and insists on being called Master. The women did not know each other until Scarlett sought out Rachel Johnson of Tortoise Media and the research led to the discovery of “K,” a Minnesotan who had been a devoted Gaiman fan from her teenage years.

We are included in the confessional atmosphere of the podcast as if we are all in agreement that the age difference, the power dynamics, and Scarlett’s chaste lesbian backstory negate the voluminous texts that express sexual excitement, bold adventure, emotional connection. The writers commenting later can riff off the podcast and know they have the readership positioned to condemn Neil Gaiman.

‘I did nothing unlawful,’ Mr. Gaiman insists, and the New Zealand police agreed when Scarlett reported the incidents in October 2022. According to one of the independent writers, when Scarlett was unable to get the police to investigate, she turned to the podcast. The Tortoise Media contact, Rachel Johnson, is the sister of former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose short-lived tenure was marked by controversy, some of which involved sexual harassment.

Anticipating the Opposition

One of the writers anticipated and refuted someone like me who is not on board with an immediate condemnation of Neil Gaiman:

I can be the dupe from the “wait and see” crowd, too indecisive to embrace a guilty verdict from a blog or two; or
the “tortured artist” apologist who writes off the cruelty of the aggressor as an artist’s expression of profound pain; or
the amoral minimizer who reads the texts and thinks, it’s a bit sleazy but nobody’s perfect; or
a high-grade drug and alcohol abuser who sees Gaiman in the style of Hunter S. Thompson, whose flaws we tolerate because we wish we could be like him no matter what price is paid in wrecked cars and forfeited bail, and he looks like a fun guy to party with; or
I’m a delusional narcissist, lost in an echo chamber, barely noticing the damage I create because “society” has permitted this my whole life.

With this we have created an umbrella of sin and weakness and abdication of moral duty that is large enough to encompass any kind of wrong-doing, and the entire panorama of human frailty and inadequacy is subject to the judgment of a writer who admits to “being of the mind that the allegations (against a range of celebrity-like people she lists) are all true.” What are we to make of that? This “I believe everything” confession is not refreshing or even honest ……… it’s an embedded bias the writer throws in our face, letting us know that because women have been so badly abused, she has the right to issue a sweeping guilty verdict that covers any suspicion of male sexual misconduct.

This is beyond Neil Gaiman: this is about exposing private moments and the judgments we render. For almost everyone, it will never be OK for a 61-year-old man to seduce a 21-year-old woman; consent across the cavernous abyss of four decades of life experience is not possible. But we didn’t make the age difference illegal in the US or the UK or New Zealand, so it’s a set-up for podcast justice. Keeping with the down-under theme, it’s a kangaroo court that now puts Neil Gaiman on trial.

“K” met the literary icon at age 19, by 21 was having an affair with him; Scarlett at 21 needed employment and was to be a nanny, and during her first night of employment, when there was no child in the home, she and Gaiman were naked in the same bathtub. It escalated from there over the course of three weeks. The sex could be rough; Neil could be distant and controlling. The female blogger on medium.com brought out old laments that reinforced victimization: women who knew their attacker and had previously consented were not taken seriously by police. But Scarlett was able to tell her story in a professional podcast, and if the public commentary is any indication, Scarlett is a landslide winner in this court. Her texts indicating “consent” may damage her ability to have Mr. Gaiman’s freedom taken away, but his life and legacy have been dealt a serious blow. The podcast gives her story visibility and credibility on a global scale.

Is this not enough? Do the writers believe that Neil Gaiman needs to be locked up? Is that the only way for the women to obtain justice and closure?

A two-level system — prosecution for criminal acts, public exposure for the dominating abuse falling short of that — at times seems adequate to achieve sexual justice. It’s clearly not enough for most people, yet contrary concerns surfaced that we have crept into character destruction without standards of proof. The writers all offer sweeping proclamations that come from personal no-tolerance belief systems they espouse openly as legitimate features of a “society” they purportedly represent.

One of the writers offers an expert analysis of the podcast and politicizes the milieu: Gaiman and his partner Amanda Palmer have to answer for progressive politics tarnished by male-dominated sexual abuse; this journalist is horrified by a Rachel Johnson quote expressing empathy for the Jeffrey Epstein enabler/groomer Ghislaine Maxwell, and in her summary asserts that she desperately wished that someone other than Johnson was on the report. A conservative-leaning podcast advertising during a break sets off this journalist. This is her territory and she knows who should be there and who shouldn’t. We get the typical accusations of victim-blaming when Johnson asks Scarlett why she stayed in the bath, or continued in the relationship. Even while decrying the questions, the writer gives us the stock answer: the abused often develop feelings for their abuser. Why bother the subject with questions when the journalist has the answers?

The abused tied emotionally to their abuser completely negates mutuality, consent, and any defense for Neil Gaiman. He can show evidence of their emotional connection; we are told it’s brainwashing. The writer speculates that there must be others who Gaiman abused; she is sure they will come forward soon. She is critical of a tangent involving predatory behavior by Gaiman’s father and Neil’s upbringing in The Church of Scientology because it doesn’t connect to the main story in any meaningful way. The writer doesn’t want to be distracted from crime and punishment.

Smoke and Its Causes

Photo by Thomas Stephan on Unsplash

The writer opens the last section of her piece with: My experience in investigating sexual assault has taught me that where there’s smoke, there’s usually a blazing inferno. In one of my very first medium.com pieces, Clichés That Kill (https://medium.com/%40donnkharris/clich%C3%A9s-that-kill-f824b3b1f86f), {April 2019} I analyze the distorted messages buried in many clichés.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire is one of the worst, and the writer here doubles down and warns of a blazing inferno. It’s a paranoid mantra: a suspicious, unfair assumption. Neil Gaiman may ultimately prove to be everything this writer believes he is, but not because she wills it into existence. The story needs to breathe on its own.

I began my experience with the Neil Gaiman story by reading a piece from a medium.com writer, identified as a “god blogger” with 157,000 followers who seems to publish primarily in the “i blog god” and “sex stories” publications. His story topics are unique, and he attacks with quick, sharp sentences, a craftsman of the modern style — no frills, heavy on the bold section titles rendered in complete sentences. He keeps readers guessing: I was never quite sure what his full position was on Gaiman, Scarlett, or life in general. His default tone is vaguely dismissive and irreverent: he doesn’t seem to believe in the face value of anything.

The opening section poses a question about the character of Gaiman’s fans, who have been reading the barely disguised misogyny in Gaiman’s works and now must face reports of his perverse behavior. Gaiman’s previous, highly-publicized statements about believing the accusations of women who come forward with stories of abuse lead the writer to ask: Is it different when the accusations are against him?

Gaiman gives us a rare face-value approach: accusations of abuse should be taken seriously and investigated. No matter how this is interpreted, or what the writer who is “inclined to believe all accusations” tells us, the accused need to be able to defend themselves. Neil Gaiman is not violating a pillar of human decency or advancing a misogynist worldview by claiming the relationships were consensual. He is in a real bind, and so are we, if any explanation is marked as hypocritical because it contradicts his support for women who come forward. Step by step, we are seeing Neil Gaiman’s options narrowed by fabricated premises: first, emotional connection is reframed as brainwashing, and now, explanation is hypocrisy when it comes from someone who was a supporter of women’s rights.

Gaiman appears to have cooperated with what little the New Zealand authorities had asked of him. There is agreement on the basic facts of the encounters — time, place, sex act. The areas in question that could make the difference between freedom and incarceration are harder to measure: motivation, consent, communication, power, the boundaries in roles like employer/nanny, friend/enabler, lover/master, pain/pleasure, aggression/ seduction, the norms of BDSM sexual activity. The involvement of a group of academics studying sexual assault, engaged in the accusations against Gaiman through a friend of Scarlett’s studying at a university in Auckland, reached a not-unexpected conclusion: Neil Gaiman groomed Scarlett, then he sodomized and abused her. Scarlett now has the podcasters and the researchers advancing the view that she’s a victim of a crime.

Sexual grooming is behavior over time intended to establish emotional connection with the subject, to lower their inhibitions, with the objective of sexual exploitation. It usually involves a trusted mentor violating a relationship that should not include sexual contact, based on differences in age, authority, and perceived power. When the scholars and bloggers allege that Scarlett had been groomed, they had broadened the term’s meaning and added a shock-value element to the narrative that does not accurately portray the reality.

If the sexual contact occurred on the first night of their acquaintance, where does the process of grooming come in? There is no long-range plan to create dependency, to trick the victim into higher and higher degrees of trust and escalating physical contact. The encounter may skirt the boundaries of acceptable sexual aggression/seduction, but grooming is unequivocally the wrong word here. It is an inflammatory term, likely to elicit a strong reaction. Grooming implies a focused, evil intent, the looming presence of a patient and ultimately successful predator, the victim a helpless and unaware child, or a naïve innocent. Grooming is a premeditated act — and can be a factor in which crimes are charged and the severity of the sentence for the guilty. The use of this term could have serious ramifications, for Amanda Palmer as well as Neil Gaiman.

Sodomy, a term as ancient as sexual grooming is modern, is an accurate if archaic term for anal penetration, carrying the aura of a Biblical prohibition that could result in eternal damnation.

The reporter alleges that many more Gaiman victims are likely out there, that Amanda Palmer may have helped “groom” Scarlett for Neil Gaiman, and that “K” came to her senses in 2022 (around the time of Scarlett’s accusations) about “the kind of relationship this was” (after 17 years of ongoing contact) ……… these strike me as unsupported editorializing to reinforce her central point: Scarlett is a crime victim, Neil Gaiman is a predator and an abuser who should be held accountable by authorities, and the system failed Scarlett.

Given only passing mention in the podcast was a third young woman, unnamed, who had an affair with Neil Gaiman and reported that he was a caring man and there were no incidents of forced sexual activity or psychological distress.

The Ripples of Misdiagnosis

However the encounters are defined, we don’t get to overturn centuries of legal evolution that resulted in the concept of innocent until proven guilty. That concept is central to western culture, yet many demand extreme punitive action against the accused before any official proceeding has even been initiated. And they often get it, because of the pressure placed on the institutions with whom the accused is affiliated.

Sexual misconduct seems to have been part of the human experience from the earliest days of recorded history. No corner of the modern world has escaped its damage. In today’s environment, where the public stance emphasizes consent and often penalizes any expression of aggression or misogyny, individuals adopt positions around sexual incidents that are implausible and rarely tied to truth, but which we accept as part of an unspoken social contract we have with public figures. One challenge is that the provisions of this contract are undergoing a rapid transformation. What was common in 1950 could be cause for criminal charges in 2020. Even more puzzling are the acts made public which are never investigated and barely discussed, and those that are briefly investigated and brought to unsatisfactory conclusions, not by virtue of who’s guilty or innocent but by the inability to craft clear, coherent processes and discussions that at least leave us with an understanding of what took place.

In a televised confirmation hearing a few years ago for an American Supreme Court seat, an accuser identified the nominee as the young man who had tried to rape her when they were college-aged. The attorney hired by the nominee’s party and given the aggregate time of the legislators who would have been cross-examining the accuser, was a skilled and focused female, softening the impression of an insider cover-up. Ultimately, the nominee was confirmed. Not wanting to seem callous, or to victim-blame and lose party support among women, one of the lawmakers voting to confirm said, ‘I believe this happened to the woman, the attack is very real,’ — the Neil Gaiman idea of treating allegations as true — ‘but it’s a case of mistaken identity. It wasn’t him. It was someone else.’

We expect a response like this. We know the speaker doesn’t believe that, but he has to justify his party-line vote somehow. No one challenges him on it. If he said, ‘I know the SOB is guilty and so what? He’s our guy and that’s that,’ the lawmaker’s career would be over. The social agreement is to tell the lie; we are all covered by its bland confusion and faulty memory.

Back to the terse, cryptic 4 minutes of the god blogger: he poses questions that attack the Gaiman issue from unexpected angles:

Is Gaiman being accused of “non-progressive” sex and are his left-wing positions a cover for his brutality and misogyny? Is Gaiman’s comic book character Calliope a prototype for how Scarlett was treated?

His closing assertion: that millions have enjoyed Gaiman’s fantasies, but he seems never to have wanted to be real with his readers, and when a few details emerged, he denied them — is a puzzling call for Mr. Gaiman, accused of criminal acts with severe consequences, to offer a public confession in order to maintain openness with his millennial followers. Gaiman didn’t deny the sex, the details, his own actions — he only questioned the interpretation of his partners about consent, and the massive text history supports much of what he asserts. Never to have wanted to be real seems an odd charge for the blogger to levy against Gaiman. Privacy does not indicate he is hiding something, only that it’s not the kind of thing that comes up in general discourse, even with celebrities.

The breakdown in logic, the mindless attribution of off-the-wall motivation to human behavior, the quick assumptions that derail rational dialogue and polarize groups in a flash: these are the dangerous features of social media in 2024. If cases are going to be tried there, the accused will be at a disadvantage, with a libel suit their only recourse — notoriously hard to prove, and so much damage is done just by the accusation, that ruination is just an allegation away in many cases.

In the Gaiman case, I found the podcast to project a surface neutrality, but an undercurrent of disapproval permeated the piece. Scarlett’s Fall 2022 version of events, evidence consisting of texts to friends and other notes that expressed distress over the Gaiman affair is presented as accurate and proof of her claim. But Gaiman never saw these notes or exchanges. What he saw were the texts that communicated enthusiasm, even love. This was a sexual relationship that lasted three weeks; the emergence of the accusations and the involvement of third parties — the police, the academics, many of the reports to friends — took place well after Neil Gaiman was no longer in a physical relationship with Scarlett and was out of the country much of the time. If brainwashing is a subject that has a bearing on this case, Neil Gaiman has good reason to question the role of the researchers in formulating the ideas that Scarlett was to express. They had a case with international interest fall into their laps, and every motivation to steer it in the direction of abuse and criminality. For them, this was both belief system and livelihood.

The Law of the Instrument

Accusations carry tremendous power: they have brought down prominent figures, toppled governments, destroyed careers, halted opportunities worth millions of dollars, long before anything was proven in a court of law or at a formal hearing. Theoretically, if someone were wrongly accused they could fight back, be compensated, return to their previous stature ………. but this is a rare if not non-existent outcome.

Among the more troubling aspects of how and why rumor becomes scandal and goes viral is the role of reporters in sensationalizing stories with a sexual element involving the famous. For an aspiring independent reporter, the odds of career success are low, the competition brutal. But the rewards for those who reach the upper tier are tantalizing, and the salacious material is out there to be mined.

To paraphrase the “The Law of the Instrument,” the brilliant adage about the ‘hammer needing a nail’ from Abraham Maslow:

If your only tool is a shocking exposé of the famous, it’s tempting to treat everything like a scandal, to believe that all you hear is true.

These writers specialize in sex stories. Journalistic doggedness, aggression, the need for the most damning details, the urgency to be first with the story, the pumped-up outrage at pre-set signs of violations of the social order — these often characterize the environment in which the writer-reporter operates, and success requires breathing this poisoned air, acclimating to its unhealthiness. It did not escape me that all the pieces I reviewed made specific mention of the lubricant used for a defined sexual act. The stories that emerge from this world often carry the imprint of toxic process and/or the bias of a specific lens.

The Kitchen Sink

A writer expanded the scope of the Neil Gaiman transgressions with the following:

Check out any relationship advice board or column. You’ll find many, many examples of women asking for advice about how they can do better in their relationship, so that their partner will stop raping, assaulting, controlling, hitting, shouting, stealing, driving too fast with them in the car, threatening, cheating, destroying their things.

I have no idea what prompted this rant, or why these particular actions were chosen. Driving too fast with them in the car? Sounds like a very specific experience. Raping, stealing, cheating? Women want to do better in these relationships? These are not like any relationship advice columns I’ve read lately. We won’t gain much when we are trying to define consent and we throw the kitchen sink at the situation because we are desperate to pile on when one of the bad guys is in the hot seat.

Taking all of this under consideration creates a swirling muddle of ideas, emotions, beliefs and loyalties. Neil Gaiman is already paying a price for his sexual deviancy. For many it’s not enough. I’m worried about who in the end is going to render the judgment. Tortoise Media? The reporter who “tends to believe that all accusations are true?” A New Zealand magistrate in a wig pressured into action by public outrage? Someone with a handgun with an obsession to avenge the fictional Calliope?

We shouldn’t forget that this Fall America may very well elect a leader, for the second time, a man who is now a convicted felon (falsifying business records to hide $130,000 used to silence a woman with whom he had a sexual encounter), faces three other indictments (interfering with an election, mishandling classified documents and fraudulent valuing of property in order to obtain loans) who some years ago proudly gave us his dating philosophy as he waited in a production bus to do a cameo on an afternoon soap opera: ‘When you’re a star, you can do anything, they’ll let you do it. Grab ’em by the pussy.’ Shortly after this clip became public, 63 million people voted for the candidate and they were swept into power. It was widely dismissed as locker room talk, not for public consumption, therfore a non-factor.

An American senator, in roughly the same time frame, was forced out of office for reports of groping and overly familiar physical contact. When he asked the senior senator demanding he resign if he could be afforded due process, meaning an ethics hearing, the senator told him: ‘You could, but if you force that kind of public pain on the party I will have the whole chamber unite to censure you, take away your committee assignments, and you’ll be a pariah as you wait on your hearing.’ The accused understood: the leader was protecting the party during an election period, and nothing was off-limits, not even the Constitution. He offered his resignation within a few days.

So at the highest levels of journalism and government we have made casualties of innocent until proven guilty and due process — two important foundational principles that distinguish enlightened societies from totalitarianism. This is this state of the social media paradigm now, from Auckland to Washington, from Miami to Minneapolis, from London to Mar-a-Lago. It’s bigger than Neil Gaiman, and the price of this zealous over-reach could be more than we have considered. As we teeter on the precipice of unscrupulous leaders seizing unchecked power, let’s be careful not to desensitize ourselves to rumor-mongering and the elimination of unliked players in a haphazard blitz. If it means we delay consequences for accused violators, it’s only a delay, and in the long run we will be what we say we are: advanced societies acting with measured restraint and fairness, not held hostage by pressurized reactions and political expediency.