On 28th September 2018, the fantasy author Niel Gaiman tweeted,
“On a day like today it’s worth saying, I believe survivors. Men must not close our eyes and minds to what happens to women in this world. We must fight, alongside them, for them to believed at the ballot box & with art & by listening, and change this world for the better.”
I presume the “day like today” referred to the fact that the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh as a U.S. Supreme Court judge had been forwarded to the Senate that day. The previous day, 27th September 2018, Kavanaugh himself and Dr Christine Blasey Ford had both testified to the Judiciary Committee. In her testimony Dr Ford said that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her approximately thirty six years earlier at a party when both were teenagers. I say “approximately” because although Dr Ford said that the assault was “seared into her memory”, she could not say in which year it happened, nor in whose house the party took place.
*
There are times when the message “You’ve reached your monthly article limit” is very welcome. I got it from New York magazine’s Vulture blog. That means I cannot re-read Lila Shapiro’s exposé of Gaiman’s sexual behaviour. Good, I’d rather not read that again. It is clear that he used his fame and status to sexually exploit young women who came into his orbit as fans or employees in a manner that is no less disgusting for being a tale as old as time. Some of his deeds may have reached the level of crimes.
Many now say, “Who cares about the “may”? Let Gaiman be hoist on his own petard! Let those making accusations of sexual assault against him be believed automatically, as he wanted to happen to Kavanaugh.”
I do not say this. The presumption of innocence is a universal principle. That means it applies to everyone, including those who would deny it to others. I used to think it was a settled principle; that anyone in the political mainstream understood its importance. That particular delusion died for me as I watched Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination hearings and read hundreds of tweets and opinion articles like Gaiman’s that said that Ford should be believed because she is female, and Kavanaugh disbelieved because he is male.
The #MeToo movement had ceased to be concerned with justice.
I want the presumption of innocence to be re-established as a universal principle of justice. Justice demands that both sides be heard and that potentially exculpatory evidence be seen. And there are some things in the Vulture exposé to which Gaiman could point in his defence if this comes to a trial. I have talked a great deal about the evils of automatically believing women (or whites or blacks or rich people or poor people or any other category considered as a lump of virtue or vice). But there is an equal and opposite evil, that of assuming that adult women cannot be believed when they say “I consent”.
I had been groping towards a way to express this when Sarah Hoyt of Instapundit pointed me to a writer who had already expressed it better than I could. The piece in question is by Kat Rosenfield and is called “On what women want”. Rosenfield writes,
By this point in the article we’ve been instructed, explicitly and repeatedly, that you can’t assume a relationship was consensual just because all parties involved gave consent. “Sexual abuse is one of the most confusing forms of violence that a person can experience. The majority of people who have endured it do not immediately recognize it as such; some never do,” Shapiro writes in one section. In another, she explains that it doesn’t matter if the women played along with Gaiman when he asked them to call him “master” or eat their own feces because “BDSM is a culture with a set of long-standing norms” to which Gaiman didn’t strictly adhere (as the meme goes, it’s only BDSM if it comes from the BDSM region of France, otherwise it’s just sparkling feces-eating sadomasochism.)
Shapiro spends a lot of time thumbing the scale like this, and for good reason: without the repeated reminders that sexual abuse is so confusing and hard to recognize, to the point where some victims go their whole lives mistaking a violent act for a consensual one, most readers would look at Pavlovich’s behavior (including the “it was wonderful” text message as well as her repeated and often aggressive sexual overtures toward Gaiman) and conclude that however she felt about the relationship later, her desire for him was genuine at the time — or at least, that Gaiman could be forgiven for thinking it was. To make Pavlovich a more sympathetic protagonist (and Gaiman a more persuasive villain), the article has to assert that her seemingly self-contradictory behavior is not just understandable but reasonable. Normal. Typical. If Pavlovich lied and said a violent act was consensual (and wonderful), that’s just because women do be like that sometimes.
Obviously, this paradigm imposes a very weird, circular trap on men (#BelieveWomen, except the ones who say they want to sleep with you, in which case you should commence a Poirot-style interrogation until she breaks down and confesses that she actually finds you repulsive.) But I’m more interested in what happens to women when they’re cast in this role of society’s unreliable narrators: so vulnerable to coercion, and so socialized to please, that even the slightest hint of pressure causes the instantaneous and irretrievable loss of their agency.
The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they’ll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it’s not just sex they can’t reasonably consent to. It’s medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Our entire social contract operates on the premise that adults are strong enough to choose their choices, no matter the ambient pressure from horny men or sleazy used car salesmen or power-hungry ayatollahs. If half the world’s adult population are actually just smol beans — hapless, helpless, fickle, fragile, and much too tender to perform even the most basic self-advocacy — everything starts to fall apart, including the entire feminist project. You can’t have genuine equality for women while also letting them duck through the trap door of but I didn’t mean it, like children, when their choices have unhappy outcomes.
Related posts:
“A point that has to be made again and again about high profile sexual abuse cases”
“No evidence will ever be enough for those determined not to believe”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14298661/pennsylvania-woman-falsely-accusing-kidnap-rape-anjela-borisova-urumova.html
Believe all women.
llater,
llamas
A great pity as Gaiman has written some memorable children’s books some of which have made a highly successful transition to film.
I am slightly acquainted with the facts of this case which are repellent to me, but then again so are those practices frequently engaged in by many other groups of consenting adults.
To each their own then within the law as long as you leave the kids out of it – which is clearly not the case in the infinitely more vile widespread abuse still somehow being tiptoed around by our betters. I’d like those wringing their hands about Gaiman’s victims to show the same level of empathy for thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of white working class English girls.
None of the above invalidates the fact the he is a 24-carat hypocrite whose reputation as a man, if not an author, is irreparably damaged. No actresses will be clapping their nasty little hands at the mention of his name Polanski or pre-me-too Weinstein style.
This is a war, perhaps only a ‘culture’ war, but a war, none the less. The other side does not acknowledge nor abide by generally accepted conventions of only thirty years ago. That is how successful ‘they’ have been.
Turns out there is a high chance Gaiman was a talent-less plagiarist, apart from his predilection to abusive exploitative relationships. All in all, a pretty disgusting individual.
“Believe all women – even if the evidence says they are lying”.
Unless, of course, the women are Jews – in which case Progressives will not believe them, regardless of how much evidence the women present of Islamic rape and other abuse.
Although, in Britain, non Jewish women and girls are often also not believed – and people who do believe them are punished for Islamophobia.
Quite right Paul, no Jewish woman is capable of lying, much less a public ‘false flag‘ operation.
Given the advancements in A.I. and in video manipulation, you cannot even Believe All Cameras.
I defended enough people accused of some form of unwanted sexual conduct to have formulated my own hard-and-fast rule about the accusations:
Believe all women, unless the woman is mad at the guy, or she seeks pity or assistance, or she’s mad at the world, or she regrets boinking someone, or she’s having mental illness issues, or she just plain resents males, or because the guy showed her insufficient attention or respect, or because she got so drunk she can’t remember what happened, or . . .
It bothers me that our response to the difficulty of proving rape in some circumstances would cause us to relax the standard of convictions. A guy sent up for six years on a he-said-she-said basis is more screwed than anyone else. If you require no evidence, there’s no evidence that can be refuted.
APL, WTF? Neither Paul Marks nor anyone else has said that “no Jewish woman is capable of lying”.
Glad we agree on that Natalie
Okay, I’m confused.
Are you saying that the allegations of mass rape during the Hamas attack were false? I ask because the point that Mr. Marks was making was that they seemed to be well-supported with evidence, and yet the pro-Hamas left has gone all-in on denying their truth – abandoning their otherwise-general belief that all women must be believed. Which makes his “unless they’re Jewish” remark into ironic sarcasm.
Glad we agree on that Natalie
You say something which is obviously meant sarcastically, and then, when called out on it, hide behind the literal meaning. Can you possibly be under the impression that this style of argument is persuasive? This is your last chance to say what point you thought you were making with your comment of 4.44pm.
bobby b,
You may be correct but the impression I have had over the last year+ is that the pro-Hamasites just don’t care. They believe that the Israelis (and others) raped, tortured and murdered (not necessarily in that exact order) on October 7th, 2023 deserved it. Or that those crimes, whilst regretable, were subservient to the BIG CAUSE*. There is a very large chunk of The Left that values ideology way above humanity.
Or… that the rage of Hamas was justified either as an inevitability of the “Palestinian Plight” leading to violence (caged animals) or just because Israel is so utterly evil that doing anything, no matter how horrific**, is OK.
Or… The Western supporters of Hamas are just mentalists. How else do you explain “Queers for Palestine”?
None of theses explanations are mutually exclusive.
*Many on the Left have taken much the same view of Stalin. Shame… but…
**I don’t shock easily but when I heard that the Hamasites had stolen the mobile phones of their victims so they could film them being raped and tortured and easily send the video to their victim’s social media accounts so their friends and family could watch in real time I was shocked.
NickM writes, “I don’t shock easily but when I heard that the Hamasites had stolen the mobile phones of their victims so they could film them being raped and tortured and easily send the video to their victim’s social media accounts so their friends and family could watch in real time I was shocked.”
Yes, a further example of the way that no evidence will ever enough for those determined not to believe is that, as well as proudly filming their atrocities on GoPro cameras, Hamas frequently used their victims’ own phones to torment the victims’ families. And still there are vast numbers of people who say, “Got a non-Israeli source for that?”
One example:
The Daily Mail account gives the name of the granddaughter, Mor Bayder, but not the murdered grandmother’s name. However this story from the Times of Israel dated 8 October 2023 describes the same atrocity:
I’ve added a link to the “No evidence will ever be enough for those determined not to believe” post as a second “Related post” to this one.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3437198/Prosecutors-slowed-CCTV-footage-commuter-accused-bizarre-sex-assault-actress-make-look-guilty.html
This attempted travesty of justice, largely driven by some allegedly duplicitous behaviour and unquestionably poor judgement by the CPS (albeit well after TTK), took place in 2016. In other words a year before the Weinstein inspired me too believe all women movement took off.
P.s. on as learned a site as this it is disappointing that anyone could use the isolated case of this vile woman fecking around* and finding out (by being rightly punished) to make snidey remarks open to interpretation as justification for those questioning the October 7 mass rape torture and murder of defenceless women.
For shame (as Homer Simpson would say).
* speaking as a Jew and not having previously read the story this particular woman’s behaviour was so utterly reprehensible and in such stunning bad taste as to beggar belief. Unlike so many today we still take that whole “Nazi thing” very seriously, not just a convenient label for anyone who has the temerity to question us. But, like all groups, we have our bad apples.
Bobby b: ’Given the advancements in A.I. and in video manipulation, you cannot even Believe All Cameras.’
Indeed! There’s a story in the ‘Mail’ this morning g about a deepfake video targeting a Labour canvasser that’s utterly shocking.
For me this is the key part of the quoted article:
The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they’ll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it’s not just sex they can’t reasonably consent to. It’s medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Our entire social contract operates on the premise that adults are strong enough to choose their choices, no matter the ambient pressure from horny men or sleazy used car salesmen or power-hungry ayatollahs. If half the world’s adult population are actually just smol beans — hapless, helpless, fickle, fragile, and much too tender to perform even the most basic self-advocacy — everything starts to fall apart, including the entire feminist project. You can’t have genuine equality for women while also letting them duck through the trap door of but I didn’t mean it, like children, when their choices have unhappy outcomes.
For over a century feminists have been arguing that men and women are the same from the neck up, now it varies depending on the situation and what will get them the desired result.
Maybe giving the women the vote was a bad idea after all?
Natalie says, ‘And still there are vast numbers of people who say, “Got a non-Israeli source for that?”‘
Has any MSM organ even questioned the casualty figures from The Hamas controlled Gazan Health Ministry?
People believe not just what they want to believe but who they want to believe. Even if it means redefining legal terms like “genocide”.
Analysis of some of the footage gleefully circulated by MSM shows several easily identified individuals rising from the dead more times than Beric Dondarrion.
Julia M, I just saw that story you mentioned (about the Labour canvasser whose life was turned upside down when someone faked up a video of her apparently uttering a stream of racist invective) on the “ukpolitics” sub-Reddit. I’ll post about it shortly.
Is there, inside every Lefty, just waiting to burst out, a little Lavrentiy P. Beria?
Natalie is correct – each case must be decided on its merits.
To punish a leftist for being a leftist is just as bad as punishing a conservative for being a conservative.
If Mr Gaiman is innocent of sexual attack then he should not be punished – regardless of the unjust punishments he has demanded for innocent conservatives.
But he should also reflect on his demands for punishment for innocent people – hopefully such reflection will help him make the free choice to become a better person, to stop demanding injustice for his political opponents.
After all we have Free Will, moral agency, we can choose to do other than we do – this is the basis of the Criminal Law, and of morality, ethics. Without this there is no law, no justice, no morality, no ethics – for there are no persons.