Early this week, a summary report of several women’s accusations against the popular fantasy author Neil Gaiman came out. Many readers learned about these accusations earlier, from the UK-produced podcast Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman, that made news last year. To hear them in new detail in the recent New York Magazine exposé, however, drives the point home even more deeply. Nothing has changed, and the #MeToo movement has not failed. The problem remains the same: successful straight men with unlimited funds and power have a tendency to exercise that power over others in predatory ways. We saw it with last year’s accusations around Russell Brand, and we continue to see it.
So why the #MeToo backlash, and why the insistence that queer and trans people are the ultimate threat to society—specifically to children—when the real threat has been in front of us all along?
Related
I mean…technically?
In the most recent piece concerning the Gaiman allegations, a reporter spoke to Scarlett Pavlovich, a young woman who’d run away from home at a young age only to strike up an ill-fated relationship with the musician Amanda Palmer. Pavlovich soon became the babysitter of Palmer and her ex-husband Gaiman’s young son. Pavlovich looked after their son at Gaiman’s property, where much of the alleged abuse occurred, some of it with the child present.
Culture, unfiltered
Our newsletter will bring you the pulse of queer culture, from the tastemakers to the groundbreakers.
“A week or so into Pavlovich’s time with the family,” the New York Magazine exposé states, “[Palmer and Gaiman’s] son began to address her as “slave” and ordered Pavlovich to call him “master.” Gaiman seemed to find it amusing. Sometimes he’d say to his child, in an affable tone, ‘Now, now, Scarlett’s not a slave. No, you mustn’t.'”
The child was picking up on his father’s own language, proving that he was present for at least some of the alleged abuse that occured. In a separate episode, Pavlovich joined Gaiman and his young son on the couch while they watched a TV show. At this point, “Gaiman put his arm around them both,” the article states, “reached into Pavlovich’s shirt, and fondled her breasts. She says he didn’t make any effort to hide what he was doing from the boy. Another time, during the day, he requested oral sex in the middle of the kitchen while the boy was awake and somewhere in the house. “He would never shut a door,” she says.”
Needless to say, rampant abuse of this kind affects everyone, and creates an unsafe environment for kids to grow up in. Alleged predators like Gaiman can hide behind kink all they want, but kink—as people in the queer community know—is about consent. What Gaiman is accused of doing is nonconsensual on many levels. The fact that he allegedly dragged his son into it is just one unspeakable detail out of many.
People don’t want to look at the fact that most predators do not belong to any specific demographic, but tend to emerge from the pool of people with access to exorbitant power and money—the opposite reality of most people under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. We know this. We also know that when it comes to protecting the safety of children, it’s not queer people who are largely to blame. Just look at how Gaiman’s own alleged activity endangered his own child’s safety.
It’s politically convenient to see trans and queer people as predators: as queer people, we still, even at this point in time, exist at the fringes of the public imagination. As we’ve seen time and again, it’s much easier to imagine a vague monster living on the edge of the woods than contend with the reality of the real monster who lives in the home.
Sign up for the INTO newsletter and get your twice-weekly dose of stories that shape the queer experience, culture, and lifestyle.
