The Four Color Media Monitor

There's former fans of the disgraced Gaiman who sure made pretty peculiar moves in their admiration of pop culture, and according to this Rolling Stone article on Yahoo, some are having Buyer's Remorse about getting tattoos inspired by Gaiman's resume:

...for millions of fans, it will be impossible to see Gaiman as they once did, and this is perhaps hardest for the people who expressed their admiration in the indelible form of a tattoo.

As one reader with a tattoo inspired by Gaiman’s dark fantasy novella Coraline put it on X, formerly Twitter: “The continuous neil gaiman news is devastating to me and genuinely makes me want to cut my skin off. i got this tattoo months and months before his allegations and as a lesbian sexual assault victim having something he created on me makes me ill. why are people so evil???” The post includes a photo of the large ink work, which covers their entire forearm. In a 2023 post on the platform, another fan, showing off an arm tat of a character from Gaiman’s comic The Sandman, wrote, “First thing I did when I got it was text my friend ‘Neil Gaiman better not ever turn out to be a creep,’ lol” — as if to predict the very fallout the writer’s most devoted readers are now facing.

A tattoo artist, meanwhile, wrote on X, “I personally never got into Gaiman’s work, but I have tattooed a LOT of things based on it for clients. It feels like a good reminder that ANY fandom tattoo you get runs the risk of being spoiled by the creators doing heinous things, even if you think ‘it could never be them.'” (Indeed, the allegations against Gaiman have been devastating for his community in part because of the perceived feminist themes of his books.)

Well his tribute to Islam in the 50th issue of the Sandman could contradict the whole notion he supported feminism. But you can't expect most leftists to consider the possibilities. This article, however dampens the impact when it brings up J.K. Rowling:

“Tattooing has always kind of had a bit of a fandom element,” says Thomas O’Mahony, the London-based co-host of the podcast Beneath the Skin, which explores history through the art of tattoos, along with Dr. Matt Lodder, a senior lecturer at the University of Essex who specializes in the field. O’Mahony mentions how 17th-century pilgrims would get tattoos of “the Coptic cross in Jerusalem, as a proof of pilgrimage, and what is the biggest fandom if not the fandom of Jesus?” Pop culture has always been well-represented in the tattoo medium. In the 1920s, O’Mahony says, artists were “taking designs from Disney cartoons, stuff like Steamboat Willie, very early cartoons. Tattooing, a lot of it is directed by what consumers want.”

But Gaiman is one of those figures who seems to particularly lend himself to tattoo culture, O’Mahony says. “I think there’s a level of parasociality that has been engendered through his work,” he says. “Like, if you look at traditional authors, no one’s really getting a tattoo of Stephen King. They might be getting a tattoo of the works that he’s created, but there’s a primacy of the author in Gaiman’s works — he’s so present in them.” As a bestselling and highly recognizable author, O’Mahony feels Gaiman might be more comparable to a rock star (and musicians have certainly inspired many regrettable tattoos in their own right). A more literary precedent for the Gaiman situation might be J.K. Rowling, whose ceaseless transphobia in recent years has led countless fans to remove or cover up their once meaningful Harry Potter tattoos.

This is just what the Times of India was talking about. The double-standard on the left when it comes to LGBT ideology. Why does the RS writer think that's so much more important than women's safety? Also note how Rowling's experience with sexual assault is ignored in this piece, and that says quite a bit about how this article flubs. If Gaiman suddenly took up such an identity as transsexuality, chances are quite a few leftists would be voicing less concern over the scandal than they are now, assuming they even covered the case at all.

None of this will stop tattoo enthusiasts from continuing to request designs explicitly tied to fallible artists and celebrities, O’Mahony says. “You look at a lot of public figures that are adored from like the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, a vast majority of them have done objectionable things,” he points out. “People aren’t [necessarily] attached to the person. They’re attached to the idea the person represents.” Perhaps you could say that even while Gaiman is seeing his TV and movie adaptation deals canceled, and bookstores are weighing the idea of pulling his titles off the shelves, the fans most passionate about his fantasy worlds can’t erase him from existence in quite the same way. After all, he changed their lives — and the proof is right there for anyone to see.

Well it wasn't in a good way he did. The darkness he emphasized is all that's wrong with modern storytelling, seeing how it's become such a sad staple in only so many places, along with other forms of wokeness. And he's never shown any remorse for corrupting and sullying the entertainment landscape with his overrated tales. This article does hint one of the most notable audiences Gaiman appealed to was punk subculture, and that's but one of the most annoying things about his resume.

RS isn't the only news source that's taken a double-standard by dragging Rowling into the whole mess. Popverse's Chris Arrant did something similar when he addressed the scandal:

"I never saw that side of Neil."

That's something we can all relate to. While we all have varying degrees of connection to Gaiman, the sexual assault allegations were compounded with the more recent reporting that some of the reported instances was done in the presence of one of his children. That added detail brings a whole other sense of dread and revulsion, especially for those with children - and even for those like me who don't have children, but have just simple empathy.

Neil Gaiman was the second author I ever dealt with professionally as a journalist. I was researching a story regarding a 'rumor' (which turned out to be fan speculation) of a specific new project he was working on with Marvel Comics. Using some sleuthing, I obtained his direct contact info and reached out - and surprisingly, he responded within the same day. A series of emails were exchanged, and I found the answers I needed to form the basis of the story.

That was a formative experience for me after becoming a fan of his work in the '90s, and it and further interactions as a journalist didn't refute that. But, as Tori Amos inferred, I didn't know all of Neil - and I certainly knew much less than Amos did. As a fan of someone I can never begin to truly know all the sides of someone; as a journalist, the same also applies.

In all of this, what it boils down to is a matter of trust: trust given to him by his friends and family, as well as those who work with him, and those who are (or were) fans of his work; even those of us who had professional dealings with Gaiman while also maintaining an appreciation for his work. Even if its a trust Gaiman didn't consciously give to me, it was a trust I bestowed that was later violated. Is the answer to never trust any celebrity again? That may seem drastic, but I'm finding more and more than you can bestow positive feelings on a celebrity figure without trust being among them.

As I've been prone to saying after previous things like this, just because I'm a fan of someone's work doesn't mean I'd trust them taking care of my cats. That's not that trust has been removed and they're no longer trustworthy to me, but in effect, trust is earned.

While it may be possible to separate the art from the artist and retain some modicum of enjoyment for Gaiman's work, I have not been able to do that. Through allegations against Warren Ellis, the facts surrounding J.K. Rowling, the flagrant actions of Mel Gibson, and going further back to the deeds of Woody Allen, I find myself giving less and less fucks. While I can admit that their works of which I was a fan of remain 'good' works in my mind, actions like these rob me of my ability to enjoy them, or even find them palatable at all.

Looks like Mr. Arrant's the 2nd person I know who's dragging an actual victim into the whole mess, along with veteran actor/director Allen, who was, at least for a few years, unfairly accused of sexual assault even though he had originally been cleared of wrongdoing by courts in the 90s, and no other known accusations ever turned up against him to date. Some performers have now expressed regret they tried to blacklist him. If there's no concrete evidence to support accusations against Allen, then to keep up this charade amounts to nothing more than absurd virtue-signaling. Arrant then asks:

What do I do with my Neil Gaiman books, and how do I engage with future works of theirs - or new adaptations of their works? The quick answer is to put it all in the bin and not to think about it. For me, though, I think its important to find a healthy way to engage and continue to write about things - not avoiding the difficult, but find a way to be able to communicate about it and all the facets of it.

Well at least he's not condoning book burnings, because something that nasty doesn't doesn't aid the situation any more than Gaiman's abominations. And amazing Arrant's willing to acknowledge that the whole notion Gaiman would commit his horrific acts while his infant son was present is also sickening. And on the subject of his children, Distractify notes that a daughter of his was named after a drag queen! Truly stupefying.

And I notice NPR's Glen Weldon is commenting on the scandal, about where he'll go from here as a "fan", and not very convincingly:

While we don't know whether these disturbing allegations are true, learning of them naturally leads to a deeply personal, complicated question: How do we deal with allegations about artists whose work we admire — even revere?

I should note: It's a complicated question for most of us. It's not remotely complicated for those who rush to social media to declare that they never truly liked the creator's work in the first place, or that they always suspected them, or that the only possible response for absolutely everyone is to rid themselves of the now-poisoned art that, before learning of the allegations against the creator, they loved so dearly.

Nor is it complicated for those who will insist that a creator's personal life has no bearing on how we choose to respond to their work, and that the history of art is a grim, unremitting litany of monstrous individuals who created works of enduring, inviolate beauty.

From this, it doesn't sound so much like he's willing to reevaluate whether the stories were any good to begin with, so much as whether he should keep it or trash it. What was so "beautiful" about Gaiman's work? The 14th and 17th Sandman issues, in example, were most definitely not, and as I said before, the way they were written was defeatist. There was one part early in the series that showed a character urinating on a wall. How is that "lovely"? Stuff like that is embarrassingly crude. Even his Marvel stories had distasteful elements. By the way, who's "we"? Assuming Weldon's a male feminist himself, doesn't he think we should "believe all women"? Is he questioning how several women who didn't know each other have come forward, and the case has reached critical mass? Tsk tsk. I vaguely remember one of the first issues had the caption, "listen" featured a few times. Tragically, Gaiman failed to do the same for any victim who protested his horrific assaults on them.

Most of us, however, will find ourselves mired in the hand-wringing of the in-between. We'll make individual, case-by-case choices, we'll cherry-pick from the art, we'll envision ourselves, in years ahead, sampling lightly from the salad bar of the artist's collected works, and feeling a little lousy about it.

Closing the door on an artist's future work

Here's my personal approach, whenever allegations come out about an artist whose work is important to me: I see the moment I learned of them as an inflection point. From that very instant, it's on me. The knowledge of the allegations will color their past works, when and if I choose to revisit them in the future. It won't change how those works affected me back then, and there's no point in pretending it will. But my newfound understanding of the claims can and will change how those works affect me today, and tomorrow.

To put that in practical perspective: If I own any physical media of their past work, I feel free to revisit it, while leaving plenty of room for the new allegations to color my impressions. But as for any future work — that's a door I'm only too willing to shut.

Take Gaiman. I have written and podcasted extensively on how Gaiman's The Sandman unlocked something in me — a love of big swing storytelling, of grand mythic themes and characters grounded in the everyday, of locating magic in the mundane. Should I ever go back and pull those graphic novels down from the shelf, I will remember my younger self marveling at how a series that began as a grisly little horror comic – one so indebted to the works of Stephen King that it felt usurious — could transform into an epic tale that used anthropomorphic representations of abstract concepts like Dream, Death and Desire to grapple with all-too human issues of family, alienation, guilt and duty. The act of reading it was like witnessing an artist shaking off his adolescent influences and finding his own, quietly assured voice.

That will never change. But with my understanding of the allegations so far, my giving him or his future work thought and attention — and, crucially, money — will change. It will end. A second season of Netflix's adaptation of The Sandman appears to be on the way, and I loved pretty much everything about the first. But I will be stepping away.

It's an arbitrary distinction, I admit. But choosing the moment I learned of the allegations against Gaiman as the dividing line between engaging with him and not is, importantly, a choice. It feels declarative, in a small way. The very tiniest of flags, firmly planted.

If he's willing to revisit Gaiman's earlier writings, he's not reevaluating. And based on the following, he's merely virtue-signaling:

I did the same thing with J.K. Rowling. Now, I was never as deeply connected to her work as I was with Gaiman's, but once she took to Twitter to launch into her weirdly spirited campaign against the idea that trans women are women, I decided she didn't need my support, going forward. The Hogwarts Legacy game sure looks fun, from the clips I see on TikTok. And I'd idly wondered if a trip to the Harry Potter theme park to score myself a wand might be worthwhile. But engaging with those properties could mean putting even more money into her pocket and represent an explicit affirmation of her rancorous positions. And for me, forgoing a game or a ride or a wand-choosing-the-wizard experience simply doesn't amount to anything like a sacrifice; it's almost literally the least I can do.

This is getting to be like a case of "3 strikes and you're out". Sounds like this leftist disgrace hasn't a care in the world that Rowling was a victim of sexual assault herself, and no respect for science and biology either. He doesn't even clearly explain what was so great about the Sandman series, or any other Gaiman writings, for that matter. I'm not convinced Weldon's saying anything he does altruistically. If he wanted to, I'm sure he could've spotted something wrong a mile away with Gaiman. But he was one of a shipload of real life J. Jonah Jamesons who's devoted much of his career to taking apart cohesion of moral values, and couldn't write his way out of the proverbial wet paper bag. Weldon once again comes off as nothing more than a virtue-signaler who's not willing to ask whether he's doing the right thing, and his attack on Rowling only proves he doesn't have what it takes to defend women's dignity. As far as "guilt" is concerned, he evidences none of that. Or, he shows no signs of Buyer's Remorse when it comes to Gaiman's Sandman series, and I doubt he'll do that in the years to come. "A little lousy"? Sure. Also note how Weldon's willing to make use of a social media site owned by China's commies that may be unavailable for a while now in the USA. Let's also consider that from this point onward, Gaiman's career is pretty much over, and no further books are likely to be published or adapted. So it's pretty laughable for Weldon to say he'll keep the past writings on his shelves while avoiding future ones. Weldon's little more than a cure for insomnia, and he owes Rowling an apology.

Inverse says there's just no good way to adapt Gaiman's writings anymore, but they make the same flub, and at the beginning:

“Works belong to the fans, not the artists” has been the rallying cry when creators get “canceled.” There is an argument for that, as stories can grow and morph through fan works even after a project is released. However, there are exceptions to that rule. For example, even though the Harry Potter fandom has outgrown J.K. Rowling and her transphobic views, HBO is still planning to adapt her books into a series, and in doing so, they put more money into her pocket and indirectly condone her behavior.

Groan. This obsession with dragging Rowling into the mess is getting tiresome already, and again puts the sincerity of the columnists in doubt. Still, what's the following they say later on:

But despite those consequences, Gaiman still has multiple projects in the works. Season 2 of The Sandman is expected to premiere on Netflix sometime this year, and Prime Video is adapting his 2005 novel Anansi Boys into a miniseries. Both of these projects have wrapped filming, but at this point, it may be best to cut the losses — and ties with Gaiman — and shelve the shows entirely.

I don't expect them to receive high ratings after New York Magazine's expose, and for now, the network will probably release them with little fanfare in the end. And for the millionth time, what's so special about dark stories with grisly elements? Nobody's asking what should be a challenging query.

A writer at Vox also commented, and comments on how another male feminist has been unmasked:

The faux-feminist man who is accused of being a secret predator is by now, after the revelations of the Me Too movement, a familiar figure. A few years ago, when Me Too was raging through Hollywood, former liberal darlings Louis C.K. and Joss Whedon saw their whole legacies re-evaluated after being accused of sexual misconduct on C.K.’s part and bullying on Whedon’s. (Whedon has denied all the allegations.) Now, two new famous feminist men have been accused of gendered misconduct — but these revelations come at a moment when our culture appears to be far less interested in performing a reckoning.

The most serious of the new stories are the accusations against Neil Gaiman, a prolific and beloved figure in the fantasy and comic book world. Gaiman built his career on the idea that he was an ally to women, but last year, a podcast from the UK-based Tortoise Media accused him of physical and emotional abuse and sexual assault. Now, those claims have been amplified by a deeply reported and detailed feature in New York magazine alleging that Gaiman abused multiple vulnerable young women over whom he was in a position of power. Gaiman, in a post on his website, maintains that his relationships with these women were consensual.

In other words, Gaiman just followed Whedon's example, albeit much more horrifically, and now stands to lose everything, deservedly.

The accusations against Gaiman are much more serious and violent than the accusations against Baldoni. Yet both men find themselves in the same familiar place we saw with other faux feminists. They built their public images on being “the good ones” in a misogynistic world: men who understood that other men were violent and untrustworthy, who seemed committed to doing the best they could not to fall into the same traps. Now, they stand accused of using those long-crafted images as public shields for their private misbehavior.

This sounds like an attempt to slam men in general, rather than argue whether education is poor for both men and women in terms of how to act civilly. That kind of ambiguous rhetoric is exactly what's wrong with feminism from a leftist viewpoint.

The question that remains is: What will happen to the feminist men who lose their feminist cred in this time of Me Too backlash? What was all that feminist capital worth to begin with?

Was it even altruistic to begin with? That's a query nobody seems interested in figuring out.

In his fiction, Gaiman appeared to be at least trying to walk the walk. He populated his books with powerful women who don’t suffer fools. He tackled subjects like sexual violence at a time when they felt taboo.

Even Gaiman’s fans could acknowledge that for all his effort, he wasn’t always all that good at writing women — he seemed reluctant to center them in most of his stories and was always writing detailed descriptions of their breasts. Still, most readers agreed that he was well-intentioned.

No, on the contrary, he was being soft on crime in his stories, as both the 14th and 17th Sandman issues strongly suggested, but nobody thinks to take a closer look to consider that. Why, if memory serves, when Morpheus prevented the obese rapist/killer from sexually assaulting the girl in the former, Dream said she belongs to no one, "except perhaps to herself." And just what did Gaiman mean by "perhaps"? It's like he couldn't help but slip in a stealth contradiction, implying he didn't really uphold respecting a woman's personal agency. No wonder the story hasn't aged well.

In this version of the story, Gaiman is no longer the male feminist trying his best and now and then falling short of perfection. No longer is he a man “doing what he can, both personally and in society, to improve things.” Instead, he is allegedly implicating his own son in acts of sexual violence. And he is using his male feminist persona not just as a shield but as bait.

This is why he must be kept far away from children in the forseeable future. Even Palmer will have a lot to answer for. What Gaiman did to his son was offensive in the extreme, and a humiliation to parenthood. This scandal must go to court.

Next, here's a writer at the New Statesman, another somebody who'd once been familiar with Gaiman, and is now disturbed by the revelations:

To get this photo, I volunteered to steward the event. My hope was that standing around for hours shepherding the endless line of people who wanted their books signed might grant me a few minutes at the end to tell Gaiman how much his books meant to me, how important they had been to the formation of my adolescent identity, how there were moments as an angsty teenager when I felt his words were all that was holding me together. It did. I got my photo, and my snatched two minutes of tongue-tied conversation. I told him I had no idea what I was doing and sometimes wondered if I’d ever figure things out. In my copy of American Gods, tattered to the point of destruction by dozens of rereadings, he wrote in red ink “Rachel, Believe!”

I don’t know how to reconcile that memory, that photo, with Lila Shapiro’s disturbing piece about Gaiman, published in the latest issue of New York Magazine. Over 10,000 words she alleges that Gaiman abused several women in incidents that span multiple decades, and claims that he used his fame to pressure vulnerable young women into non-consensual and violent sex. Gaiman denies the allegations and insists the incidents described were instances of BDSM sex between consenting adults.

Among other things, the investigation explores how some women may reframe traumatic incidents as consensual as a defence mechanism. It raises the question of how consensual a violent power dynamic can truly be when the dominant partner is a multi-millionaire superstar author in his sixties, and the submissive partner is a broke babysitter in her early twenties. In a lengthy statement posted to his website, Gaiman said that the New York Magazine piece described “moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen. I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.”

The allegations against Gaiman have sent shockwaves through his fanbase – even a sense of betrayal. The sci-fi and fantasy writer is perhaps best known for the comic-book series The Sandman, and his novels Good Omens and American Gods. The Ocean at the End of the Lane won Book of the Year in the 2013 British National Book Awards. In 2015, Gaiman guest-edited an issue of the New Statesman magazine. He championed the rights of refugees, women and LGBTQ+ people on social media. He was celebrated as a feminist hero among many of his readers for his fiction’s depictions of vulnerable women.

But did anybody ever notice the lenient approach he took to the evil figures seen in the 14th and 17th Sandman stories, in example? I just don't comprehend how that never occurred to anybody years before. Speaking of refugees, if he sides with illegal immigration, including Islamofascists infiltrating once safe countries with civilized values, that's disturbing too. In fact, where were pseudo-feminists like Gaiman during the Rotherham scandal? Today, he's disqualified himself from commenting regardless.

And he was married to Amanda Palmer, the punk cabaret musician known for her raw, confessional music and the intimacy she cultivated with her fans. She would talk and sing openly about her own experiences with sexual assault. The online community she built was a safe space for recovering survivors, who found catharsis in her lyrics. One of her better-known songs, “Oasis”, describes a woman getting an abortion after being date-raped at a party. When she married Gaiman in 2011, their fanbases merged and an air of chaotic bohemian romance settled around them. For a decade, the couple had a kind of cult status for angsty nerdy misfit kids – and then angsty nerdy misfit adults – like me. There’s a photo of 22-year-old me with Palmer too: snapped in the aftermath of a gig, when she started playing impromptu ukelele songs on the steps of the theatre, straight after I told her how her music had helped me.

But before I ever heard her music I fell in love with his words. I discovered Gaiman’s books when I was at my most impressionable. I’d traipse across London following the path of Neverwhere; the first sex scenes I ever read were from American Gods. Of course, I was hardly alone in the pedestal I placed him on. Unusually for an author, let alone a sci-fi and fantasy author, Gaiman had rock-star status among readers in the 2000s and 2010s. One woman flew to the Cambridge book-signing from the US. She wasn’t a student, but a fan, desperate to see him in the flesh.

There was no shortage of women who would have volunteered to have consensual BDSM affairs with Neil Gaiman. The allegations in Shapiro’s piece describe something different: deliberate abuse of power, of degradation, where the thrill is not in the depravity of the acts themselves but seemingly in forcing them on someone unwilling but unable to say no, then goading them into retrospectively reframing their reluctance as enjoyment. Anyone in the kink community will tell you that an experience of such a nature is not BDSM, that any pressure or ambiguity over consent automatically turns risqué play into straight-up abuse.

The way Gaiman wrote his characters, you felt sure that he knew the difference between the two. As a teenager who felt damaged and broken and uniquely alone in the darkness (as all teenagers do), I remember how his books felt so safe. Which is odd, because there is nothing safe about them. The books, short stories and Sandman comics are full of disturbing scenes of sexual violence – men who dehumanise and brutalise women, men who fetishise little girls, men whose innermost desires have twisted them up inside and turned them into monsters. Yet it never seemed gratuitous, never seemed akin to the mindless torture porn in the likes of Game of Thrones. “Although his books abounded with stories of men torturing, raping, and murdering women, this was largely perceived as evidence of his empathy,” writes Shapiro. Yes, but it was more than empathy. Somehow it felt like whatever you might have suffered, he was on your side.

Today, it's clear he never was. But the comics he wrote weren't gratuitous? That's disputable, considering there were several very violent moments that were alienating, and gave adult entertainment a bad name. Now, since we're on the subject of Rowling, the Times of India says she's had what to say about Gaiman's non-apology:

JK Rowling took another dig at British author Neil Gaiman on Wednesday after the rape accused released a statement denying the sexual harassment allegations by eight women.

"Grok, show me an example of DARVO," wrote Rowling on X, sharing a screenshot of Gaiman's statement on the rape charges.

What is DARVO?

DARVO, which stands for 'Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender,' is a manipulative tactic that abusers may employ to avoid taking responsibility for their actions and to discredit their victims. This tactic involves denying any wrongdoing, attacking the credibility of the survivor, and reversing the roles of victim and offender.

When using DARVO, the abuser may claim that they have not done anything wrong and instead portray themselves as the victim of abuse. This role reversal can create confusion and make it challenging for others to determine the truth.

By employing this tactic, abusers aim to shift the blame onto the survivor and avoid facing the consequences of their actions. DARVO can be a powerful tool for manipulation, as it can cause survivors to doubt their own experiences and make it more difficult for them to seek support or justice.

The late Canadian author Alice Munro's 2nd husband, Gerald Fremlin, did something like that to her daughter Andrea Robin Skinner, and it's definitely offensive. Shame on Gaiman for pulling that act too.

Now, from Yahoo Life, they've commented on the subject of celebrities betraying the trust of fans, and at the end, there's the query of whether we can separate the art from the artist:

Many fans grapple with the question of whether they can still enjoy the work of their former favourite artist or celebrity without supporting or condoning their behaviour.

Beedon says that the process of separating the art from the artist is "deeply personal", with no right or wrong way of doing so.

"One strategy is to reflect on why the artist’s work resonates with you - is it the themes they touch on, characters they portray, or moral messages they deliver?" she says. "By focusing on these elements, you might find it easier to appreciate the art independently of the person behind it."

But many people feel conflicted about continuing to engage with an artist’s work - particularly if they stand to profit from it. In this case, Beedon advises setting personal boundaries.

"You might choose to enjoy their work without financially contributing to them, or you may decide to step away altogether. Whatever your choice, it should align with your values and comfort level."

She adds: "Ultimately, navigating this situation requires compassion - for yourself, for others grappling with similar feelings, and for the complexity of human imperfection."

A better question can be whether the "art" in focus was any good to begin with. At least a few of the scribes I know of in comicdom who've been accused of sexual misconduct, like Gerard Jones, seemed more interested in pushing leftist agendas along with their disturbing stealth sexual references than in actually turning out something intelligent. Those stories, for the most part, were pretty bankrupt creatively, and Gaiman's are little different. A writer at USA Today raised the issue too, while noting that she'll have a hard time watching Coraline again:

He is far from the first admired celebrity to be accused of sexual abuse, and it can be painful for fans to learn that a notable figure may not be who they thought they were. After taking it all in, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “How can I watch 'Coraline' again?”

The article was meant to be uncomfortable. Why?

Graphic recounts of sexual abuse grab — and hold onto — readers' attention.

Nicole Bedera, author of "On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence," says most readers are responding in a similar way, which is by asking themselves, “Is this bad enough that I have to stop being a fan of this man?”

IMHO, yes, it's that bad, and even before what's known about Gaiman came to light, I don't see what all the fuss was about regarding his comics and books.

“That’s part of why a lot of journalists will write these articles to be so graphic,” she explains. “Because if they’re not graphic, people are pretty quick to separate the art from the artist and try to keep supporting this person.”

On this, the main problem is that, if the offender is being paid residual bonuses for sales of the product, that's why it's a bad idea to continue making purchases that can put money in his pocket.

And Bedera cautions that graphic recounts can sensationalize sexual violence and raise the bar for what people consider to be violent enough to withdraw their support.

In her research on college sexual violence perpetrators, she found that school officials were less likely to intervene on violence that seemed more ordinary. “They would say things like, ‘He’s no Harvey Weinstein,’” she explains.

And, misogynistic fans can create a cult-like following behind celebrities who are accused of shocking violence.

“If you’re responding with disgust, there are misogynistic readers who are responding with awe, and that’s how that new fandom can be created,” Bedera says.

Can you separate art from the artist?

The short and clear answer is no, Bedera says.

Most certainly not when the work was pretentious and gruesome to begin with. As for universities with lenience, good grief, could these be the same ones that allow anti-Israel violence to run rampant? Well, if racism can rule a roost, it only figures misogyny can too, and vice versa.

Bedera recommends people look to other creators the artist has worked with and even their victims, who sometimes are artists themselves. In diverting your attention and financial resources from the person who has been accused of abuse, you can “help keep this person from becoming more powerful and maybe chip away at the power they already have."

For me, my connection to “Coraline” was never about Gaiman himself. When I first watched the film 15 years ago, I’m not sure I even knew it was based on his book.

So it’s unlikely that I’ll burn my copy of “Coraline” or delete the photos posing with my pink and yellow birthday cake — the damage has already been done.

But the next time “Coraline” returns to theaters, as it has the past two summers, I’ll save the $20, and stop convincing all my friends to go with me.

Outlook asked the questions too:

The allegations against the famed fantasy writer raise a fundamental question: What to do when a filmmaker or a theatre personality whose work I am fond of and who has been accused of sexual misconduct by using their positions of power—the fame of an artist—releases a new work, while victims continue to fight for justice? Should I boycott the movie/play then?

Again, this is particularly necessary if we don't want to finance the felon. And if you want a perspective of Coraline itself that's eyebrow raising, try this item at Vigilant Citizen, which points out how it builds on allusions to sadism, and one of the commenters asks: "And what of the white balloons in the garden at the end? Is this a symbol of sexual abuse victims?" And this all first came up 11 years ago! As a result, those who looked into this film stumbled onto something without realizing it, to be sure. That aside, somebody needs to ask the onetime fans of these movies what's so special about darkness in their minds?

However, when Overland addressed the issue, they said at the end:

The horrifying violence and abuse that Scarlett Pavlovich describes is not the result of an individual man’s monstrosity. It isn’t even the result of some innate, absolving, universal “human nature”. Scarlett Pavlovich endured what she endured because capitalism in New Zealand worked hard to make sure that she did. A rich man can rape a poor woman in a bathtub and, in some way, get some twisted satisfaction from doing so. But the rich — all of the rich, every last one — directly financially benefit from having built a world in which poor women have no choice but to submit to being raped. This misogynist violence is the premise of capitalist society, and ending that violence will require us to end capitalism.

Oh, for crying out loud. Scapegoating capitalism will not solve these problems. That's not what led to this terrible case. It's leftism run amok, and this item otherwise ignores that Gaiman's one of the most boilerplate leftists around. To act like socialism's throughly incapable of bad influence doesn't help matters. But, one can only wonder what the writer thinks of say, George Soros, considering how wealthy he is. Ross Douthat at the NY Times makes a somewhat better argument:

No, where the system breaks down, when bad things happen, it’s because of a failure to establish appropriate parameters, or a refusal to abide by the therapeutic rules — even when, as with the allegations against Gaiman, the entire surrounding story underscores just how hard it can be to constrain a predator’s behavior or litigate the murky landscape of power and desire.

I think what's really needed is better education, and to convincingly oppose these religious cults that've only resulted in these atrocious failures of morality.

We Got This Covered says his former fans aren't buying his shoddy defenses:

We should feel very sorry for Neil Gaiman‘s legions of devoted fans. For decades they thought they were championing a kind, supportive, feminist ally who regularly delivered imaginative, impressive gothic fantasies. Everything, from his writing to his online activity to his social circle, painted a picture of a genuinely lovely person.

Except maybe his social media posts, which could be pretty alienating, IMHO. And his fantasy tales were not impressive, because of how vapid they actually were. Yet nobody listened to any of the Cassandras who tried to point this out, until Gaiman was discovered doing something terrible behind the scenes.

Over the last six months that facade has come crashing down. First came a series of podcasts detailing Gaiman’s questionable sexual behavior, but this week’s publication of a lengthy exposé in New York Magazine drawn from the direct testimony of his alleged victims has left jaws on the floor. We won’t go into the precise nature of their stories here, but the general response has been shock, disgust, and outright horror.

Most of Gaiman’s predominantly liberal, feminist fanbase disowned him overnight. Signed books have been tossed in recycling, graphic novels donated to Goodwill, and we only have sympathy for those stuck with tattoos of his characters. [...]

It’s difficult to see a way back from this for Gaiman. The best-case scenario is that somehow his production partners in Netflix and Amazon shrug their shoulders and continue producing The Sandman and various other adaptations of his work. However, given the shocking nature of these women’s stories, we suspect some executives are mulling over writing off what’s already been spent as a tax break.

As for his future literary career? Well, if his fans are actively destroying the Gaiman novels they already own, it seems unlikely they’ll be rushing out to buy new ones. Though many would like to see criminal charges brought against him and compensatory payments to his alleged victims, it would ultimately be best for Gaiman and his work to simply fade away into obscurity. Here’s hoping karma is real.

Well considering the gravity of the accusations, that's why a court case would be recommended. Trouble is, as I realize, these "celebrities" are wealthy enough to hire lawyers who can keep the cases from reaching a hearing for years. The court of public opinion, however, can be a greater form of punishment. And it's to be hoped more people who've taken note of the news will be voting with their wallets and not buying Gaiman's overrated tommyrot anymore.

And Slate's talking about the end of male feminists, if Gaiman's crimes signal it:

And so Gaiman joins an ignominious crew of famous men whose work and statements seemed to align with women against sexist oppression in public, even as they allegedly assaulted, harassed, or otherwise mistreated women in private. This pathway is now so well trodden as to have become a trope: the male feminist who deeply, appallingly wasn’t.

At the height of #MeToo, these guys were everywhere. There was Louis C.K., who made searching, seemingly self-aware work that scrutinized gender relations and male sexual entitlement. And yet, several women have said that he masturbated in front of them without their permission or otherwise sexually harassed them. There was Aziz Ansari, who made sensitive, thoughtful comedy about heterosexual dating—and reportedly tried to pressure a woman into sexual contact with unceasing persistence after she repeatedly resisted. Then there was Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general who sued Harvey Weinstein’s company for creating a “toxic environment.” Months later, four women accused Schneiderman of physical violence, often during sex. (Schneiderman, like Gaiman, said he was practicing consensual BDSM.)

[...] When a man who seems generally enlightened in public is alleged to have mistreated women in private, there is a sense among his fans of having been duped. The reaction to such allegations is often accompanied by a question: Were his feminist bona fides part of the reason his accusers trusted him in the first place? No matter how many men like Gaiman are hit with troubling allegations, it’s still hard for supporters of male “feminist” creators to internalize that speaking out against gender inequities doesn’t preclude a man from being a jerk—or even a serial rapist.

There doesn't seem to be a sense among leftists that liberal ideology may be impeding upon the ability of these male feminists to recognize why abusive behavior is wrong. And, they seem too obsessed with railing against Donald Trump to be seriously concerned about sexism on the left side, as the following hints:

The adulation of male feminists has quieted a bit over the past several years, partly due to the rising intensity of threats to women’s lives in the Trump era. (Hearing a man say that women deserve equal treatment just doesn’t hit like it used to.) The label of feminist itself has also lost some of its currency. For a time, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, there was an fixation on getting celebrities to say whether they were feminists. Their answers could power entire news cycles. That black-and-white framing has, thankfully, mostly evaporated in popular discourse. Trump’s rise showed many progressive white women the error in approaching feminism as a narrow, single-issue movement having to do with gender alone. And the term began losing the thread when right-wing conservatives who oppose abortion access and promote traditional gender roles began calling themselves feminists.

If they think conservatives are far more of a problem than liberal male feminists, it's no wonder the problem of male pseudo-feminists will never be solved.

Per the Milkshake Duck meme and the admonition to “never meet your idols,” there is a broad understanding in adult society that human beings (and ducks) are complicated. They often hurt others—some number of them hurt others in particularly monstrous ways. The male “feminist,” as a figure of wish fulfillment in the search for a better world, has circumvented the natural skepticism people might otherwise have about public figures. Fan culture plays into this too: The world of comic cons and fan sites that Gaiman inhabits encourages obsessive parasocial relationships with media creators. In that milieu, it can be hard to remember that the public image of a celebrity is just a carefully crafted facade designed for maximum monetary gain. No matter what they post or how they write, we don’t really know these people at all.

And by the end of the decade, Gaiman will likely have been reduced to but a tedious footnote.

Labels: golden calf of LGBT, history, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics