A New York Times article about Neil Gaiman’s first public response to his accusers draws some much-needed attention to the non-response from his various publishers:
HarperCollins, which has published many of his most notable works, and Marvel, the comic book publisher, have no new books forthcoming with Gaiman, according to representatives from the companies.
His literary agent at Writers House, which represents blockbuster authors like Dav Pilkey, Nora Roberts and Ally Condie, did not respond to requests for comment about whether the agency would continue to represent him. Norton, which published an illustrated edition of Gaiman’s “Norse Mythology” last November, did not respond when asked whether the company would publish Gaiman’s works in the future. DC Comics, which published his blockbuster comic book “The Sandman,” along with other works, declined to comment when asked whether DC would continue to publish him.
For some of the women who have accused Gaiman of misconduct, the muted responses from his publishers and collaborators are a bitter disappointment…
In an interview with The Times, Kendall described the “culture of secrecy” around Gaiman. “Neil’s works were his bait, and promotional events were his hunting ground,” she said. “As long as his publishers and professional collaborators remain silent, Neil will continue to have unrestricted access to vulnerable women.”
“The silence of the community around him — his fandom, his publishers — is loud and disturbing,” Stout said in an interview with The Times. “I’ve heard that it was an open secret that he was a predator, but that whisper network did not reach me.”
I think it is unfair, unreasonable, and wrong for anyone to fault the bookshops for ordering books that their customers come in and request. The books are published, they are in the system, and the whole purpose of the bookstore is to satisfy their customer’s preferences. And as one executive at a very large book distributor once told an SJW employee who was complaining that they were distributing Milo Yiannopoulos’s books: “seeing how we carry 50 different editions of Mein Kampf, where do you propose we draw the line? We’re a distributor, we’re not the Book Police.”
However, it is absolutely fair, reasonable, and correct for people to be holding the book publishers accountable. The publishers make it very clear that they stand for certain principles and oppose other principles; unlike Castalia, most of them even have mission statements that they claim defines their very purpose. And precisely none of those statements are in line with publishing an author who is quite credibly accused of having committed a series of rapes and sexual assaults over a period of more than 25 years.
When publishers are deplatforming and refusing to publish authors whose politics they don’t like, they really have absolutely no room for continuing to publish serial sexual assailants and sexual harassers simply because they approve of their politics. This isn’t something that is simply going to blow over and go away because the alleged crimes are too serious and the hypocrisy is too blatant.
We’ll be holding an early Arkhaven Nights tonight to discuss both the latest developments in #GaimanGate and the bankruptcy of Diamond, the comics distributor.
The man accused of sexually assaulting and/or raping 8 women and counting finally breaks cover to issue a denial that directly contradicts his previous dictate to believe all women. Fandom Pulse provides the text and the context:
Over the past many months, I have watched the stories circulating the internet about me with horror and dismay. I’ve stayed quiet until now, both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation. I’ve always tried to be a private person, and felt increasingly that social media was the wrong place to talk about important personal matters. I’ve now reached the point where I feel that I should say something.
As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are 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.
I went back to read the messages I exchanged with the women around and following the occasions that have subsequently been reported as being abusive. These messages read now as they did when I received them – of two people enjoying entirely consensual sexual relationships and wanting to see one another again. At the time I was in those relationships, they seemed positive and happy on both sides.
And I also realise, looking through them, years later, that I could have and should have done so much better. I was emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been. I was obviously careless with people’s hearts and feelings, and that’s something that I really, deeply regret. It was selfish of me. I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people’s.
I’ve spent some months now taking a long, hard look at who I have been and how I have made people feel.
Like most of us, I’m learning, and I’m trying to do the work needed, and I know that that’s not an overnight process. I hope that with the help of good people, I’ll continue to grow. I understand that not everyone will believe me or even care what I say but I’ll be doing the work anyway, for myself, my family and the people I love. I will be doing my very best to deserve their trust, as well as the trust of my readers.
At the same time, as I reflect on my past – and as I re-review everything that actually happened as opposed to what is being alleged – I don’t accept there was any abuse. To repeat, I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone.
Some of the horrible stories now being told simply never happened, while others have been so distorted from what actually took place that they bear no relationship to reality. I am prepared to take responsibility for any missteps I made. I’m not willing to turn my back on the truth, and I can’t accept being described as someone I am not, and cannot and will not admit to doing things I didn’t do.
And once more, we see conclusive evidence that Neil Gaiman is a mediocre writer of fiction. I very much hope that some of his accusers will take him to court for defamation, because his absurd statement literally stinks of evasiveness, Machiavellianism, spin, ex post facto revisionism, and lies.
Perhaps the most amusing claim is that the objectively biggest fame-whore in BOTH comics and science fiction over the last four decades has “always tried to be a private person”. Think about the massive scope and scale of that obvious and so easily disproven lie, think about the chutzpah required to conclude that your naked assertion will outweigh the literally tens of thousands of items of evidence to the contrary, and then consider the probability that he is telling the truth about anything else.
I think Reddit might actually melt down in response to this. I cannot believe either his legal team or his PR team thought this was a good idea, no matter how completely the news of his alleged crimes has broken contain.
UPDATE: Even his biggest fans from the subreddit devoted to him aren’t buying this. They’re not buying ANY of it at all.
Neil Gaiman had an extraordinary career. And I mean that literally. It was Extra Ordinary.
Writers who’ve hit it big all have the same complaint. Some rando will come up to them and make the following offer; “I’ve got this absolutely amazing idea for a story. Here’s the deal, I’ll tell you about the idea, then you write the book and then we split the money.” Gaiman’s biggest successes were in getting people to actually do that for him. Anyone who’s read Terry Pratchett knows damn good and well who did all of the heavy lifting in Good Omens. Even Gaiman admitted it. As for Sandman, the most amazing comic book of all time, how much of that comic’s success was due to the artwork? Without Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Jill Thompson, Shawn McManus, Marc Hempel, Bryan Talbot, and Michael Zulli, would anyone have the vivid impressions of that title that they do? They were the real storytellers, Gaiman just had the ‘amazing idea.’ Which half the time were retreads of somebody else’s work.
As for the King of Dreams, let’s be honest here, Morpheus was nothing more than a Mary Sue and a pretty obvious one at that. And one that no one can look at now without seeing the true horror it was masking. Sandman is about to be swept under the rug alongside his “creator.”
It is over. It is ended.
But Larry Correia most definitely won the best quote competition:
Years ago John Scalzi declared me teaching armed self-defense classes to women was “victim blaming”. Turns out Scalzi just didn’t want his friend Neil Gaiman to get shot.
And speaking of John Scalzi, he managed to both a) avoid condemning Gaiman and b) make the entire scandal about himself and his feelings. Again. The man really chose the wrong career, as instead of a mediocre pop SF writer, he could have been the greatest White House press officer the world has ever seen.
I hate every single possible thing about this, and I’m heartbroken about all of it.
I’ve admired Neil’s work immensely, but my connection is, we’re friends and have been for some time. All this has been a set of punches to the gut. I’ve been (reasonably) criticized about not being louder sooner, but processing bad news about friends is a thing, and it hurts.
This is at odds with my public persona of “moderately famous nerd has opinions online,” plus there are folks who believe that the SF/F field has been unusually silent on Neil and find that troubling. So, some backlash for me on it. Fair enough. There’s no response that’ll make everyone happy. If I don’t comment there will be “his silence is telling,” and if I do respond there will be “way to make it about you,” and if I acknowledge any grief, I’ll get knocked for my “processing,” etc. I accept a ration of crap is mine no matter what.
And finally, two women on Reddit reveal that women on the science fiction tour circuit have known about Gaiman for 25 years, but it’s been swept under the table and kept quiet by a conspiracy of bookstore owners and people working in the publishing industry.
I was warned to stay away from Neil Gaiman when I was in college. So approximately 25 years ago. Despite never having been at an event he was present at. Women in the science fiction and con communities have been trying to keep each other safe from him for a long time. When the public allegations came out, the reaction I heard from a lot of women was “good, we’re allowed to talk about this now”.
I had the same experience in the early aughts. I was a pratchett fan, found good omens through that route, and was talking to an older woman in the sci fi community about the book. She warned me to stay away from Neil Gaiman and said he liked to take advantage of young fans. Now that all this news is coming out I’m so, so grateful to her but horrified that nothings come to light sooner.
And to absolutely no one’s surprise, the meme masters at Neil Gaiman Memes do not disappoint.
L’il Benny has come a long way from his days as the openly imperialist Littlest Chickenhawk, and as the Hollywood Reporter – which is famous for its panegyrics to conservatives and Republicans – breathlessly reports, his massive success is totally real, totally organic, and not at all fake and manufactured:
Shapiro admits that, yes, he was once a Never Trumper. “In 2016, I didn’t vote for either candidate because I didn’t know if President Trump was going to be conservative,” he says in a bit of self-serving revisionism. Like many other right wing media figures at the time, he eloquently spoke about Trump’s many moral failures and called him a joke — but eventually caved. He maintains, however, that his take on Trump as a person is basically the same. As he puts it to me on the plane, “My opinion of Trump characterologically has not changed.”
But once Trump was in office, “right away he nominated Justice [Neil] Gorsuch, and I put on a MAGA hat,” says Shapiro. “In 2020, obviously, I backed him. And in 2024, I gave money to his campaign, I fundraised for him. I campaigned in six states. If we back him and if he does the right things, which I think he will, then America will be great.”
It’s mildly amusing that even a puff-piece article about Ben Shapiro can’t help but show what a complete fraud he is. The thing is, I knew Ben Shapiro back when he had a conscience. He made a conscious, informed decision to sell his soul and his mind for fame and money. And I can assure you, he knows better than anyone else what an intellectual imposter he is.
As for the so-called “fastest-growing conservative empire”, the Daily Wire, well, conservative Boomers have always been suckers for those who despise them pretending to be one of them. But the Daily Wire has never been able to conserve its professed positions and principles any more than conservatives managed to conserve marriage or the Ladies Room.
Universal Press Syndicate signed my WND column because they thought I was the intellectual heir to William F. Buckley. As it turns out, it’s Ben Shapiro who was his true heir. In more ways than one..
New York Magazine publishes a cover article going into copious detail on Neil Gaiman’s alleged sex crimes. There is only one new accuser, and the article abruptly shies away from the obvious question about his current relationship to Scientology and how that has benefited his career, but the details of the existing accusations are worse than even those of us with longtime suspicious about the man had imagined. Note that the quoted section below is about as innocuous as it gets, be warned that Gaiman’s described behavior isn’t merely immoral, illegal, and offensive, but very literally disgusting.
Around four in the afternoon on February 4, Pavlovich took the ferry from Auckland to Waiheke, then sat on a bus and walked through the woods until she arrived at Gaiman’s house, an asymmetrical A-frame of dark burnished wood with picture windows overlooking the sea. Palmer had arranged a playdate for the child, so not long after Pavlovich arrived, she found herself alone in the house with the author. For a little while, Gaiman worked in his office while she read on the couch. Then he emerged and offered her a tour of the grounds. A striking figure at 61, his wild black curls threaded with strands of silver, the author picked a fig — her favorite fruit — and handed it to her. Around 8 p.m., they sat down for pizza. Gaiman poured Pavlovich a glass of rosé and then another. He drank only water. They made awkward conversation about New Zealand, about COVID. Pavlovich had never read any of his work, but she was anxious to make a good impression. After she’d cleaned up their plates, Gaiman noted that there was still time before they would have to pick up his son from the playdate. “‘I’ve had a thought,’” she recalls him saying. “‘Why don’t you have a bath in the beautiful claw bathtub in the garden? It’s absolutely enchanting.’” Pavlovich told Gaiman that she was fine as she was but ultimately agreed. He needed to make a work call, he said, and didn’t want Pavlovich to be bored.
Gaiman led Pavlovich down a stone path into the garden to an old-fashioned tub with a roll top and walked away. She got undressed and sank into the bath, looking up at the furry magenta blossoms of the pohutukawa tree overhead. A few minutes later, she was surprised to hear Gaiman’s footsteps on the stones in the dark. She tried to cover her breasts with her arms. When he arrived at the bath, she saw that he was naked. Gaiman put out a couple of citronella candles, lit them, and got into the bath. He stretched out, facing her, and, for a few minutes, made small talk. He bitched about Palmer’s schedule. He talked about his kid’s school. Then he told her to stretch her legs out and “get comfortable.”
“I said ‘no.’ I said, ‘I’m not confident with my body,’” Pavlovich recalls. “He said, ‘It’s okay — it’s only me. Just relax. Just have a chat.’” She didn’t move. He looked at her again and said, “Don’t ruin the moment.” She did as instructed, and he began to stroke her feet. At that point, she recalls, she felt “a subtle terror.”
Now that a mainstream magazine is willing to directly address the issue, and now that it’s apparent from the details provided that this guy is not merely bumping up against the borders of consent, but is a full-fledged predator and rapist, it’s going to be a lot harder for publishers like Harper Collins, Folio Society, Easton Press, and Penguin Random House to blithely continue publishing his work while simultaneously asserting their dedication to social justice.
In fact, I was reliably informed that the Folio Society didn’t want to have anything to do with me because their executives believe I am a Very Bad Man, and yet they continue to market and sell Neil Gaiman’s books despite the fact that they know perfectly well multiple women have been publicly accusing Gaiman of raping them for more than six months.
I suggest that Folio Society executives like Lauren Juster and Joanna Reynolds take the time to read today’s New York Magazine article which details, at great length, their publishing partner’s crimes against women. And there is absolutely no way that there isn’t more, and quite possibly worse, forthcoming.
That picture is both apt and hysterical, especially after decades of media images seeking to present him as some sort of dweeby neo-rock star. How the foul are fallen! But the physiognomy was warning us all along. And even though there isn’t much in the way of new accusations, the sheer volume of detail is apparently proving enough to convince some of Gaiman’s most stubborn defenders, such as this disappointed fan.
Neil Gaiman has been one of my favorite creators since I first picked up The Sandman with issue #7. His work has been a constant in my life since, and I treasured everything the man has written. He seemed like a truly decent human being. I even got to interact with him once on Tumblr, that felt like a really great moment in my life. Since the allegations of SA surfaced last year, I have been quietly hoping against hope, that my impression of his decency would survive. Now that I’ve taken the plunge, reading this article, and diving into this rabbit hole with other sources, I have to admit to myself that Gaiman is likely guilty of what he’s accused of. And while it’s disappointing to learn the awful truth about an artist you respected (adored), my deeper sorrow lies with these women he most likely assaulted and abused. And I feel more than a touch of shame for burying my head in the sand because I didn’t want to be dissapointed in yet another person.
It’s also remarkable to see the pictures of his accusers and observe how all the women upon whom he allegedly preyed look so much alike. If you were a Gaiman fan who was young, plain, insecure, brown-haired, and weren’t overweight, you were in trouble.
UPDATE: /pol/ has taken notice. If the weaponized autists get rolling on the subject, a lot of things will be learned that the investigative journalists haven’t uncovered yet.
UPDATE: Fandom Pulse is on it as well. Please note that they were a little less delicate with regards to the quotes from the article regarding Gaiman’s alleged violent perversions.
UPDATE: JK Rowling calls out the SJWs who are normally so quick to denounce people, but have been uncharacteristically reticent to call for Gaiman’s cancellation and deplatforming.
The literary crowd that had a hell of a lot to say about Harvey Weinstein before he was convicted has been strangely muted in its responses to multiple accusations against Neil Gaiman from young women who’d never met, yet – as with Weinstein – tell remarkably similar stories.
It appears the next chapter in the ongoing Neil Gaiman sexual assault scandal is about to begin. From r/NeilGaimanUncovered:
This is a heads-up as promised (and the last update) before the long-awaited article. We are only a few days away from publication. The article will be posted in this sub as soon as it’s out and we’ll include trigger warnings so vulnerable members can engage with highly disturbing content on their terms.
Rest assured, the memewarriors at Neil Gaiman Memes are ready and will be memeing up a storm on the basis of the new information once it is revealed. And as can be seen in the meme below, it’s not exactly a mystery as to why Gaiman did what he is accused of doing, why his purported “success” was manufactured for him, or why he has seemingly been protected for so long. As with the British politician mentioned in the prior post, he makes it very clear who and what he serves.
One Gaiman fan on Reddit was skeptical that anyone could possibly have had any idea about Gaiman prior to the allegations going public last year:
Can anyone point me to some threads or posts where people shared their feelings of ick about Gaiman from before the allegations went public? So many people here were feeling the same thing, surely there are documented cases of people speaking out.
Here are three from this blog alone. The posts from 2017 and 2018 are mine, the one from 2013 is from a reviewer I was quoting. But my disdain for Gaiman as a writer and novelist is well-documented, and while I didn’t read enough of his work to be certain that he was a bad person prior to the 2024 allegations of sexual assault, much less the manufactured creature he now appears to be, he was most definitely in the “yeah, this guy is probably off” category after reading American Gods and a few issues of Sandman, after which I stopped reading him. Although, to be fair, it was the mediocrity that was the reason, not the probability that he was what he turned out to be.
2018: If you think Neil Gaiman is a great novelist, or even a great SF/F novelist, you are simply wrong. He is a successful, talented and much-loved SF/F author, and understandably so, but he is also little more than a very successful stunt writer with two or three tricks in his bag. There is a reason that all of his notable books involve mythology of one sort or another; his true gift is translating ancient myth into a form that pleases postmodern palates.
2017: It is right and proper to judge the artist on the basis of the art. More often than not, the art created by the artist provides relevant insight into his psyche; it is very difficult to write the opposite sex well and it is also very difficult for a man to write characters who are different than his own socio-sexual rank. Read Louis L’Amour and Robert Ludlum. Then read John Scalzi and Neil Gaiman. The difference is readily observable. Then read Piers Anthony and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Notice the creep factor? Exactly. This is one area where you can reliably trust your feelings.
2013:Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods and Anansi Boys are written by the exact same man. It’s that Mr. Stock Type shows up for all four, each iteration as dull and insufferable as the last, distinguishable only faintly by his name. Leaving American Gods and Stardust alone for now, this isn’t so much a matter of “oh you could do this to any fantasy book,” itself an asinine proposition, because not all fantasy books feature a timid Londoner devoid of ambition who has relationship troubles with a demanding sweetheart/fiancee. The sweethearts in question(respectively Rosie Noah, Jessica, and Victoria Forrester) are likewise identical: thinly written, demanding, henpecking, and not the brightest. Really Gaiman kind of sucks at writing women, and apart from this one incredibly tertiary character in American Gods I don’t think he’s particularly comfortable with gay men–certainly not enough to write them as protagonists. Similarly, the catalyst to “finding the secret magic world” is always more or less the same: through colliding with one of said secret world’s inhabitants.
And by worse, I mean a LOT worse for Neil Gaiman fans, as in the aftermath of multiple sexual assault accusations being made, non-fans are going back, reading Gaiman’s work, and observing what was always – and I do mean always – obvious in his work:
Many years ago I bought a huge anthology of Gaiman’s stories. I wasn’t familiar with his work and wanted to give this man a chance. The book collected dust for ages until this week. I had no idea about the allegations when I started reading, but the stories disturbed me enough that I got curious about him and googled. Based on the stories I’m reading so far, I can’t say I’m surprised. I know y’all are huge fans over here, but….has no one noticed how strange his approach to writing women and children is????
I just finished Snow Glass Apples, about a 13 year old girl prostitute vampire that get’s happily r***d by a necrophiliac… He’s very clearly a master storyteller, he didn’t have to go there. He could have easily disturbed us without having to resort to the pedo overtones. But he made the choice to go there. He wanted to. He likes the story better this way.
There are traces of this kind of thing in the stories I’ve read so far – the way the troll in Troll Bridge sniffs at the 15 year old girl’s breasts and crotch. Again, the story was good on it’s own. These details add nothing to the story except to be edgy by sexualizing a very young girl.
It’s not simply about what you write, it’s the way you write about it. There are no shortage of people who were severely put off by my approach to the multicultural interactions portrayed in the prologue to A SEAS OF SKULLS. And due to the way I wrote about it, no one is going to conclude that I am pro-beheading, pro-rape, or pro-crucifixion, although they might correctly conclude that I am not enthusiastic about mass migration.
When, like Neil Gaiman, you’re writing about underage teenage girls and putting them in overtly sexual situations on a regular basis, then drawing a bath for your wife’s young nanny and exposing yourself to her, there is an awful lot of very foul-smelling smoke that lends itself to the conclusion there is a extremely nasty fire burning somewhere in the dark.
Tanith Lee wrote a fair amount of dark sexual material. She also wrote about children from time to time. But what she did not do was combine the two. While what one writes tells the reader a lot about the writer, how one writes tells the reader even more and may even provide some hints as to why.
There are rumors that a big story about Gaiman will be published in mid-January. We’ll see, and we probably shouldn’t be surprised by anything that might be alleged. After all, he managed to convince a surprising number of people that he was “a master storyteller” when he has always been more akin to a deejay doing remixes than an original musician.
“The United Kingdom indefinitely banned puberty blockers for children after warnings about an “unacceptable safety risk” on Wednesday. Wes Streeting, the U.K.’s secretary of state for Health and Social Care, announced the ban would affect everyone younger than 18.“We need to act with caution and care when it comes to this vulnerable group of young people, and follow the expert advice,” Streeting said.
The declaration from the British government comes after the Commission on Human Medicines found there is “an unacceptable safety risk in the continued prescription of puberty blockers to children.”
With the commission’s report revealing that puberty blockers were prescribed to minors who filled out only one online questionnaire and completed a single Zoom call, Streeting said Wednesday that there was “particular concern” about whether the “children and their families were provided with enough time and information to give their full and informed consent.”
Now the prosecutions of the doctors who prescribed these puberty blockers to children should begin. This was only and ever child abuse, and it is about time that this practice was banned.
I remember when I was a kid you would hear teachers at school often talk about how evil China was for allowing the practice of foot binding. This was the practice of binding little girls’ feet to stop them fully growing. I remember thinking how cruel and evil it was. I am not sure what sort of support this practice has in modern China, but blocking the natural development of children through puberty is just as, if not more, cruel than binding little girls feet.
The comparison to historical Chinese foot binding is both apt and illustrative. There can be absolutely no doubt that the historians of the future will look back at this time as a period of insanity. As awful as foot-binding is, it’s nowhere nearly as cruel and evil as blocking a child’s natural development under the guise of “changing” their sex.
There will be more than one “Mysterious Big Thing” but only one of them is due in December and when it’s time you’ll know. Trust me. ❤️ NG’s troubles aren’t going away any time soon.
Neil Gaiman fans are bracing for the next round of disclosures concerning the Sandman author’s alleged shenanigans. In the meantime, the woman to whom the Gamma male glommed onto in a failed attempt to parley his moderate success and celebrity into a romantic relationship has finally spoken out and begun to publicly distance herself from him, although her actions fell well short of the complete condemnation and disavowal for which her fans, and Gaiman’s disaffected former fans, were hoping.
Tori Amos breaks silence on allegations against longtime friend Neil Gaiman
In July, writer Neil Gaiman found himself at the center of a legacy-tarnishing scandal when five women stepped forward to share their stories of alleged sexual abuse at the hand of “The Sandman” author.
In a recent interview with The Guardian, musician Tori Amos made a rare statement on the accusations against her longtime friend and collaborator, calling them “shocking,” and expressing a willingness to walk away from the friend she thought she knew if everything that’s being said about him by his alleged victims is true…
“And if the allegations are true, that’s not the Neil that I knew, that’s not the friend that I knew, nor a friend that I ever want to know. So in some ways it’s a heartbreaking grief. I never saw that side of Neil. Neither did my crew. And my crew has seen a lot. I haven’t publicly said anything because: what do I say? I didn’t hire the nannies. I wasn’t there. I’ve never met these people. And I’ve never received a letter – of the thousands of letters I’ve gotten in 33 years – I’ve never received anything that was about Neil, except praise for his work and how much his work meant to people. That’s all I ever knew.”
It’s not surprising that even such an outspoken advocate for rape victims would be hesitant to publicly condemn a longtime friend and benefactor. I understand the outrage of the few who genuinely expected better from her, but people are always people. Even those who feel most betrayed by Neil Gaiman will never give Jon Del Arroz and I any credit whatsoever for our early, public, and forthright condemnation of Neil Gaiman, nor will most of them criticize Tori Amos for taking four months to even address the panoply of very creditable allegations of rape and sexual assault.
The labels of people who are considered “good” and those who are considered “bad” will always dictate how people perceive their actions. From the perspective of the average Neil Gaiman fan, JDA and I are very bad indeed, and therefore our condemnations of an accused serial rapist and sexual assaulter are intrinsically suspect, and since Tori Amos is very good in their eyes, her reticence to do so is, for the most part, considered understandable, and perhaps even laudable.
But for those who are not emotionally invested, the facts are what they are. My opinion is perfectly clear. On the basis of the currently available evidence, Neil Gaiman is a mediocre literary talent who appears to have been systematically elevated due to his various connections, whose success appears to have been mostly manufactured, and, given the multiple accusations that have already been made public, appears to have abused his social position to take advantage of gullible and vulnerable women of various ages to assuage his own psychosexual desires.
And I simply don’t care what anyone happens to think about me or my motivations. That’s my opinion, and I fully expect events to eventually confirm it in due course.
The Boise State women’s volleyball team are demonstrating courage that very few other female athletes have been willing to show by refusing to play against men pretending to be women.
In a stunning turn of events, the Boise State Broncos women’s volleyball team announced that it will forfeit its semifinal match in the Mountain West Tournament against San Jose State. Although the team did not specify the reason for the forfeit, that’s obvious: SJSU has a trans-identifying biological male player, Blaire Fleming, on its team. The Broncos forfeited twice against SJSU during the regular season, but the prevailing thought was that the team wouldn’t forfeit during the conference tournament and end its hopes of reaching the NCAA Tournament. However, that’s exactly what the women decided to do.
Equality does not exist. Women cannot compete with men in the vast majority of sports, nor should they. The point of sports is competition, not winning, and there is no competition when men and women compete on physically unequal grounds; this is why there are weight limits in sports like boxing and weightlifting.
Since the politicians, the courts, the conferences, and the schools won’t do the right thing, it therefore falls to the athletes to shut down the whole charade. Let the deranged baphomites collect as many fake “tropies” and “championships” as they like; so long as women refuse to compete with them, they will win nothing.
