Reply to Neil Gaiman article in Vulture

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Everyone involved is gross. These women all agreed to consensual sex with this man until at some point it went bad. What the heck did they expect, having sex with a married man while working as his babysitter? I’m not blaming them for instances of sexual assault but let’s not pretend these are upstanding young women. This man is disgusting. If he, as my boss invited me to take a bath in his garden, that would be a hard no. Where is common sense?[/quote]

(I have only read the Variety article and excerpts of the Vulture on Reddit and elsewhere as it's paywalled on my phone)

The power dynamics are really significant here. Most of these women were very young. Several were employees of Gaiman or his wife. One was a neighbor who'd just divorced. Several agreed to NDAs for shockingly low sums, indicating that even when they knew what had happened was wrong, they struggled to really believe it. He clearly preyed on women who were especially vulnerable or compromised. So that's where the "common sense" was. Many of these women were likely abused or neglected as children or in prior relationships. It's very common. And then abusers like Gaiman are good at spotting the qualities of someone with that background -- eager to please, low self esteem but responds very well to attention and flattery, willing to override their internal resistance to things to please him (until, for most of them, there came a line where their internal resistance kicked in and they said no -- I am betting Gaiman got off and trying to find where that line was and then trying to push past it).

Also Gaiman and Amanda Palmer were very vocal advocates of polyamory. I think they used this essentially as cover for Gaiman to be a straight up predator. They could draw people in under the guise of "it's okay, it's an open relationship, we're affectionate people, love is love, the human body is beautiful in all its forms so nudity isn't shameful" and so on -- it normalizes a whole range of behaviors that would not be considered okay in a more traditional community where most people are monogamous and you don't take baths at your boss's house or discuss sex with your employer. They sold this "alternative lifestyle" as better than other kinds of relationships and people really idolized them for having figured out polyamory and viewed them as more evolved or something.

Turns out they are just extremely terrible people and there were a million signs along the way that people ignored because they seemed so "cool." Never been a better example of why "coolness" is absolutely worthless. Cool is deeply deceptive.[/quote]

I’m a Gen X woman who has been really concerned by the normalization of “alternative”  sex and “kink” that seems like just a way to degrade women by any other name.  I’m not saying to prohibit consensual conduct — but acting like BDSM and stuff like c@ming in a woman’s face etc is totally normal healthy sexual behavior is not right. Even on forums like this you see a lot of people acting like you’re a prude if you think this stuff is distasteful.  I think there’s a lot of young women that feel like they don’t want to be labeled a prude so they go along with stuff because it’s cool or supposed to be fun, then realize along the way that it’s not actually fun and just makes them feel crappy.  For instance, the vast majority of women do not really enjoy an&l — that’s not where our best erogenous zones are.  Yet there’s now tremendous pressure on women to include this as a normal part of sex lives.  I think all of this pressure makes it hard for young women to draw appropriate boundaries and realize “oh, wait, a married middle aged guy who wants to dominate me and degrade me is not actually sexy, and I’m not a prude if I think that’s disgusting.”[/quote]

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