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Perhaps uniquely in the history of #MeToo, the women now alleging sexual misconduct on the part of the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman would appear to have their alleged perpetrator’s full support. Back when this movement seemed full of potential, in 2018, Gaiman urged the public to believe women like Christine Blasey Ford, whose allegations of sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh were then being trashed.
“On a day like today it’s worth saying,” Gaiman wrote. “I believe survivors. Men must not close our eyes and minds to what happens to women in this world.”
Before very long, it is now alleged, the great feminist would get two women to sign non-disclosure agreements, dating to the start of his sexual contact with them. In the case of a woman sent by his wife to babysit, this allegedly started with coercive sex in a bath.
“We must fight,” Gaiman’s 2018 pro-survivor declaration continued, “alongside them, for them to be believed, at the ballot box & with art & by listening, and change this world for the better.”
As with art, so with a despised celebrity’s tweets: the content is sometimes separable from the man. The languid response to the opening Tortoise Media investigation, Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman, last July, confirms how hard it remains for low-profile, non-glamorous accusers to be believed, regardless of successive, cautionary reports involving, for instance, Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew and Gaiman’s fellow New Statesman guest editor, the disgraced Russell Brand.
The first accusations about Gaiman, detailed by Tortoise, were stolidly, even reluctantly received. Gaiman “strongly denied” allegations by two women of non-consensual sex. Some film adaptations were suspended. A new dramatisation of his children’s book, Coraline, due to open this year, was not. He kept his publishers and five honorary degrees. Even last week, when the US journalist Lila Shapiro detailed a spectrum of alleged behaviour featuring what reads, at best, like BDSM gone hideously wrong, more grimly, like concerning behaviour in the presence of a child, headlines focused repeatedly on Gaiman’s denials. If that sounds like appropriate caution, compare with the old Weinstein reports, or domestically, with the consternation when, for instance, the highly regarded writer Daisy Goodwin alleged that a Tory, Daniel Korski, once touched her breast. After horrified reports focused on her experience, as opposed to Korski’s denial, he withdrew his candidacy for mayor of London.
If, for headline writers, Korski could hardly match Gaiman for ostentatious virtue, well, nor did his claimed offence come close to what is alleged about the writer. From reports in which Gaiman’s denials loom as large as multiple women’s detailed accusations, it’s confirmed that rule number one, for a powerful married man interested in exploitative recreational sex with manipulable young women is: recruit from the isolated and obscure. Snag a babysitter, a fan, someone vulnerable. Learn, from, say, John le Carré, Cormac McCarthy: both appear widely forgiven, even sneakingly admired, for getting away with it. Gaiman’s rebuttal has been respectfully quoted, as if his denial of “non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever”, does not leave much else unaccounted for. While, with BDSM in the picture, there is room for confusion about consent, this leaves open many other allegations, including a child’s possible awareness of aspects of this hobby. A nanny says she was ordered by Gaiman’s son to “call him ‘Master’”.
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For Gaiman’s superfans, unwilling to think badly of a writer they love, over and above his creative talent, for returning their interest, for his care for the marginalised, for being an LGBTQ+ ally, for being progressive on practically everything, difficulty in adjusting to a creepy, cruel-sounding Gaiman is more understandable. For some fans it should not have counted by way of mitigation, but evidently did, that one of the Tortoise journalists is Rachel Johnson, the former prime minister’s sister and his ardent supporter.
Gaiman’s claim to the opposite standing, as a trusted progressive authority, actually does make his alleged misconduct more reprehensible than a standard big shot’s. Harvey Weinstein never posed as a feminist; you didn’t hear Mohamed Al Fayed say things like (Gaiman’s) “why can’t we all be nice to each other”, or not in public. Neil “call me Master” Gaiman is not just any wealthy man who has won extraordinary access to extremely young women; the women were likely to be dazzled precisely because, with his former wife, Amanda Palmer, he represented – as an Observer piece once said – “geek royalty”.
Which less easily explains the pause while Gaiman’s older associates, collaborators and friends silently reconcile the dashing feminist with the disgusting person eight women describe. Two eminent friends are reportedly “processing” the reports. Is it that complicated? As the writer Jeff VanderMeer commented on Bluesky: “‘Neil Gaiman’s my friend. I have to process my feelings.’ Barf.”
Few professionals, these days, are more careful than UK and US publishers not to hurt feelings or to cause offence, even if it leads to accusations of censorship: last week The Bookseller was unable to elicit any response from Gaiman’s. Maybe Bloomsbury will continue to publish his children’s book What You Need to be Warm, written as a goodwill ambassador for the UNHCR: “It is about our right to feel safe, whoever we are and wherever we are from.”
Given the number of people who can tolerate le Carré, McCarthy and Alice Munro (who stayed with a man who sexually abused her daughter), perhaps his publishers are correct to think that, given a few more news cycles and absent any more – non-celebrity – survivors, Gaiman’s strenuous denials will prevail. In McCarthy’s case, after all, a Vanity Fair journalist recently made light of statutory rape. Then again, none of the above was careless enough to pose as a champion of survivors or of children. That may, even in Gaiman’s special case, count for something.
