He wasn’t going for creepy horror at all. It was written as a lightly amusing fantasy romp for teens/twenties.
If you’ve never read Piers Anthony, especially a lot of Piers Anthony like I and a lot of other teenagers once did, it’s hard to convey just how thoroughly creepy sexual fetishes absolutely permeates everything he wrote. He started out creepy (the short story In the Barn in Again, Dangerous Visions) and he just never slowed down. Anthony’s writing is a lot less nakedly disturbing in a fantastic horror sort of way than it is just…icky.
But let us take the story in that Mary Sue article. So, that article quote another article from The Vulture, where the victim, remembers something from 5 years ago. She meets Gaiman for the first time, and then undresses and takes a bath in a garden, lets him undress and get in with her- and then-disturbing stuff happens. This is told to an author, who of course writes the story so that it is readable and something people want to read. Then she hands it over to an editor , who then edits the piece to fit the Vultures readership. So, we have the victims old memories now third hand. But we think it is the unvarnished truth? Of course something happened- something that disturbed her. Nothing to Gaiman’s credit.
So, now tell me- this was 5 years ago. The victim has come forward and gotten her tale published. Why not bring criminal charges? or a lawsuit? I get why some women dont- they are ashamed and they dont want their story getting out. But the victim did- here- or at least this third hand account of it.
Of course there is. Gaiman is clearly a seducer, a sexual predator. That does not = rapist.
Why do you think I didnt?
We are convicting a man based upon third hand testimony,from a 5 year old memory- a man who hasnt even been arrested or charged. Why havent charges been filed?
I recall one where an early teen boy, upon seeing the cute early teen girl, immediately drops his shorts and starts jerking off in her presence. I couldn’t buy his in-universe rationale (that that is what any male does in his culture when seeing an attractive female), and it was my last novel by him that I purchased.
…in 2007 she alleges he raped her during a trip to the Cornish countryside after she repeatedly told him “no” due to having a bad UTI. Stout filed a police report in October.
…alleging that Gaiman attempted to assault her in his tour bus after she had told him she didn’t want to have sex with him. New York Magazine reports that years later, he gave her $60,000 for therapy to — as he put it in a recorded phone call — “make up for the damage.”
Palmer told her that she’d heard from at least 14 other women who said they’d had similar experiences with Gaiman.
People ask that every single time we hear about rape. Either you have to conclude that rape is actually really rare and a third of the women in the world are all liars, or you have to conclude that, for various reasons, women who are raped often don’t go to the police. Reasons which include the police not believing them either, or blaming them.
I know which I think is more likely.
You said it yourself: We’re not convicting him, because he hasn’t even been arrested or charged. If I, knowing what I know right this moment, were on his jury and had to vote whether to convict, I might conclude that there was a shred of reasonable doubt.
But neither I nor anyone else in this thread is on a jury. We have neither the option of conviction nor the burden of “beyond all reasonable doubt”. We’re allowed to say “it’s really really likely that he’s a rapist”. And of course, if we really were on a jury, we’d probably be presented with even more evidence than what we have right now.
There is a quite a bit more detail in the original Vulture article. Without rehashing and arguing it all, suffice it to say the circumstances of the alleged victim’s life and mental state were extremely complicated at the time, including being destitute and bereft of family support. As described she didn’t feel she was in a position in either situation to do anything to actively defend herself. Even when she did eventually come forward (to the ex, Amanda Palmer) she found herself stuck in a bit of a complicated limbo which she had trouble navigating, including a legal situation where she was told she could not progress further without Palmer’s support which she thought she’d get, but didn’t. It all sounds quite plausible from where I’m sitting.
That’s without getting into all the other stories and there are several. Like I said a LOT of smoke. Gaiman may not think he’s a rapist, but I don’t trust his judgement because he damn well knows he stepped over the line and more than once. He’s paid multiple women off with NDA’s.
One story, okay - could be many possibilities. Many is much more problematic.
I think one of the reasons this happened is because he knew he’d get unquestioned support from his science fiction audience. It’s not exactly known for being friendly to women. You can read it here.
Interesting how back in our day, that sort of thing just kind of passed with little remark, didn’t it?
But more to the point here, yeah, Anthony always affected the weird juvenile perv (aging eventually into weird dirty old perv) thing in his writing BUT AFAIK up to this time of this day, that is all he has. Which at this point considering all else a bunch of other people have been revealed or denounced to be up to actually doing, I say knock yourself out, Piers.
As noted earlier in this thread his audience is fantasy, not sf and has/had a very substantial female fan base. I’d be inclined to speculate that there are probably aren’t many male fantasy authors who were more popular with women than Gaiman was.
Pause. As I said upthread we aren’t *convicting" him of a crime. That’s, as you just said, if charges are filed, or he is arrested. What we are doing is evaluating what information we do have, the seriousness of it, and the quantity of such and deciding (overall) not to support Gaiman with our time or money. Which is always our right as a consumer. Sure, some of us are going further in terms of unpleasant names, but using your own words:
Most of us don’t exactly see a great deal of daylight between sexual predator and rapist. These are emphatically NOT good things. So, to put it another way, would you be happy if everyone in this thread just continuously insulted or referred to Gaiman as a “sexual predator”? Is it the word rapist that’s bothering you? Because that’s like the narrow and pedantic argument about Trump’s Carroll case - sexual abuse was ruled to have occurred but not “rape” by the very limited definition of NY law.
Which may well answer your second question. If the parties (as reported in some of the articles) were coerced into signing an NDA, or earlier gave consent which they (as was their right) withdrew, they may have felt they had no legal recourse to bring charges, or that by doing so, they would be subject to penalties based on breaking the NDA which they could not afford.
Yes, and generally because the woman didnt want to come forward- for very good reasons. But that’s not the case here.
Sure- and the stories all come from the media- and the media here wants you to think that. And you know Gaiman may well be guilty.
Some have come out and called him a rapist.
That needs a emoticon- many people here dont know that MZB’s case is worse. Her dec’d husband was a convicted serial child molester, and either MZB assisted him, or at the very least knew what he was doing and said/did nothing. You can believe either way, but neither way does she come out good.
Look at the Rust/Alec Baldwin case- it went on here for pages- with most posters saying Baldwin was guilty. I there, as here- suggested we dont rush to judgement- and 'wait and see". It turns out that Baldwin was acquitted. The media was wrong, and so were many SDMB posters.
That is all I am saying here- let us not rush to judgement based upon what the media wants to tell us. Maybe Gaiman is guilty- or maybe not. I know how the media works.
I know- this isn’t a popular opinion. “Of course he is guilty, look at all those reports, look at all that smoke- he is a rapist!”. And maybe you are right.
I think your arguments are verging on the unrealistic and pedantically legalistic. For example, in the Rust shooting, pretty much everyone agreed that it was an accident (IE Baldwin didn’t set out to shoot two people) but that he was dangerously negligent.
Which was largely admitted by all, though some placed more blame on him than others. He was found not guilty with prejudice because of of the prosecution’s misconduct, not due to a dispute of events happened (responsibility for the events, sure, but not the events).
To put it another way again in YOUR version of things, if someone commits murder, and the evidence supports that accusation, but the case is thrown out because of a technicality, is the accused “innocent” of murder? If if he later admits to the crime?
I mean, they’re not liable under the law, but that’s distinctly different from being morally and factually a murder, a rapist, or what have you.
Again, if we JUST called Gaiman a sexual predator every single day, you’re totally okay with that, just not the word rapist?
There are plenty of cases where someone who likely did horrible things can be defended on some grounds. But it’s good to ask yourself, is it important to defend this person now? Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
If at some point in the future it turns out all these women are lying, then sure, raise the defense. But right now, think of the impact on all the women who have been assaulted and weren’t believed, and give some thought to the damage of another man saying “let’s not be hasty, maybe she’s just confused.”