NEIL GAIMAN IS INNOCENT!

Have we learned nothing from the #MeToo era?

Dear Nevermorons,

Well, folks, it looks like I spoke too soon when I declared that The #MeToo Era is Officially Over.

Superstar author Neil Gaiman is having his career systematically destroyed for the crime of having consensual sex with a 22-year-old woman.

Until 2024, the sci-fi writer had a squeaky-clean reputation. Then Tortoise Media released an extremely defamatory podcast series called Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman.

Next thing you know, he’s been dropped by several of his publishers, including Dark Horse Comics and HarperCollins. Furthermore, an incredibly long list of planned adaptations of his works have been cancelled.

Oh yeah, and they put him on the cover of New York magazine. Looks like they’ve made him the poster boy for #MeToo Part Two.

All this has occurred without a single criminal charge being laid.

Furthermore, Gaiman and his wife Amanda Palmer have been hit with 3 separate lawsuits in three different U.S. states (Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and New York) that accuse them of human trafficking.

According to an article in The Globe and Mail:

Palmer knew of Gaiman’s sexual desires and presented Pavlovich to him knowing he would assault her, according the lawsuits. Pavlovich alleges Gaiman and Palmer violated federal human trafficking prohibitions and seeks at least $7 million in damages."

WHAT DOES “HUMAN TRAFFICKING” EVEN MEAN ANYMORE?

This raises the question: What the hell does “human trafficking” even mean anymore? Did Gaiman and Palmer ever forcibly confine Pavlovich? Did they sell her to anyone? Did they pimp her out? Did they move her across a border and force her to work under exploitative conditions? Did they ever even move her from one location to another without her consent?

As far as I can tell, the answer to all of these questions is no. The term “human trafficking” has apparently become an all-encompassing blanket term covering a vast array of unspecified spookiness.

Celebrity gossip isn’t really my thing, but I gotta admit - I really fell down the rabbit hole on this one.

I’m not even a fan of Neil Gaiman - sci-fi’s not really my thing - but I feel called to stand up for him on this one. The poor guy is being mercilessly persecuted for something that he isn’t guilty of.

To be honest, Gaiman seems like quite a gentleman to me. A womanizer, sure, but definitely not a rapist.

I find it extremely unlikely that he will ever be charged with any sexual crime, let alone be convicted of one. And given the flimsiness of the case against him, he will probably prevail in court when it comes to the lawsuits as well.

For fuck’s sake, he’s being sued in the U.S. for crimes that supposed took place in New Zealand. How the fuck does that work?

Whatever the outcome of the lawsuits, however, the damage has already been done.

This story is strikingly reminiscent of the Jian Ghomeshi case which set off #MeToo back in 2014.

Those of you who aren’t Canadian probably won’t recognize that name, but Ghomeshi was a popular CBC radio host who was accused of sexual assault. This was a key moment in Canada’s Cultural Revolution.

Like Gaiman, Ghomeshi was apparently into BDSM and rough sex. Both celebrities used their fame to sleep with female fans, and both claim that all of their relationships were completely consensual.

All the charges against Ghomeshi were eventually laughed out of court, but that’s not the part of the story that people remember.

Now, I will get into some of the details of the allegations against Gaiman, but I’ll preface this with a disclaimer - this article is not meant to be comprehensive.

If you’re interested in getting the whole story, you can check out Tortoise Media’s extremely defamatory and insane podcast series Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman.

That said, I will do my best to show how ridiculous the accusations against Gaiman are.

Basically, the author had a short-lived sexual relationship with a woman named Scarlett Pavlovich, who was introduced to him by his wife Amanda Palmer. This occurred in New Zealand, where the couple lived at the time.

Apparently, Palmer and Gaiman were in an open marriage, so it kind of seems like Palmer was doing her husband a favour by introducing him to her friend. But this part of the story is unclear. Ostensibly, Pavlovich was hired to babysit the pair’s son.

According to many media reports, Pavlovich was homeless at the time, but this is not true. For example, the aforementioned Globe and Mail article states:

Pavlovich alleges in the lawsuits that she was homeless and living on a beach when she met Palmer in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2020. Pavlovich was 22 years old at the time.

According to the lawsuits, Palmer invited Pavlovich to the couple’s home on Waiheke Island. Pavlovich began running errands for the couple, babysitting their son and helping with chores, eventually becoming the couple’s nanny.

Gaiman first sexually assaulted her the night they met in February 2022, according to the lawsuits. The assaults continued but she kept working for the couple because she was broke and homeless and Gaiman had told her he would help her writing career, according to the lawsuits.

Let’s take a second to think about this - What kind of millionaires would hire a homeless person to babysit their kid?

The truth is that Pavlovich was a friend of Amanda Palmer’s. The wild inaccuracy of media reports shows that a lot of reports are just copying and pasting. If they would have listened to the podcast series that broke the story, they would know that Pavlovich was not homeless when she met Gaiman.

Gaiman then initiated a sexual relationship with the 22-year-old woman. They then had a three-week sexual relationship which involved some rough sex and BDSM.

Gaiman then left New Zealand. At this point, text messages show that Scarlett is smitten with the famous author, and clearly wants to continue a sexual relationship.

Things appear to take a turn for the worse when Scarlett tells her friends Misma and Chris about her relationship with Gaiman.

It just so happened that Chris wrote his PhD under a “world renowned scholar of coercion, consent, and sexual assault” and now lectures about those issues at the University of Auckland.

Chris and Misma then persuaded Scarlett to go and see a friend of theirs called Paulette Benton-Greig, a “critical feminist scholar” and lawyer who specializes in sexual assault cases.

How could you not trust a face like that?

When asked about her initial assessment of the relationship between Scarlett and Neil Gaiman, Benton-Greig said:

I do remember very clearly forming the view that he had groomed her for sexual compliance. The stories she told me about how it was over the time she was living in his house as a nanny—just classic grooming, in my view.

WHAT DOES “GROOMING” MEAN ANYMORE?

Um… so… excuse me… but what the fuck does this woman think grooming is?

Apparently “grooming” can now refer to a sexual relationship between two adults which began within hours of them meeting each other. Let’s call it “Greased Lightning Grooming”.

If the term “grooming” now refers to relationships between adults, this begs an important question - what is the difference between courtship and grooming? If a man showers the object of affection with attention, compliments, and gifts, is that “grooming”? Is seduction being redefined as an inherently sleazy act?

The irony here is that Scarlett, who seems very suggestible, appears to have been manipulated by her woke friends into believing that she had been manipulated by Gaiman.

Now, I could go on and on about how ridiculously flimsy the case against Gaiman is, but I’ll try to keep to brass tacks. Suffice it to say that there is abundant evidence that Pavlovich regarded her relationship with Gaiman as consensual.

Here’s an excerpt from the Master podcast series which comes from time-stamped WhatsApp messages which have been reviewed by multiple reporters.

Scarlett: I just wanted to check in and hear about how you are.

[…]

Neil: Honestly, Amanda told me that you're telling people I raped you. […] I wanted to kill myself. I'm getting through it a day at a time, and it's been two weeks now. I'm still here—fragile.

Scarlett responds with shock:

Scarlett: Oh my God, Neil. I never said that. I have been deeply upset about it all because it has triggered things from my past. For many reasons, I feel whiplash, but I am horrified by your message. ‘MeToo? Rape?’ This is the first I've heard of this. Wow. I need a moment to digest your message.

At 11:28, Scarlett messages again:

Scarlett: Okay, this has been blown way out of proportion, it seems. My heart is pounding. I'm so sorry you have been so not okay—I had no idea. I have never used the word ‘rape.’ I am just so shocked. I honestly don't know what to say.

A few minutes later, Neil sends another message:

Neil: It was very destabilizing. I spent a week actively not killing myself, if you see what I mean.

At 11:30, Scarlett replies:

Scarlett: The more I hear, the more I am dying inside. I can't believe this has been told to you—it's absolutely not true. I feel sick to my stomach.

Neil responds:

Neil: Heart pounding.

At 11:39, still in the same conversation, Scarlet writes:

Scarlett: I feel like bawling my eyes out. I would never ‘MeToo’ you—I don’t know where that came from. I have told Amanda that even though it began questionably, eventually it was undoubtedly consensual, and I enjoyed it. My heart is pounding too. Neil, I am so deeply sorry to hear how terrifying this has been for you. I feel like I am being head-fucked. I am so, so shocked.

Some time later, Amanda Palmer receives a threatening message from Scarlett’s friend Misma, who basically declares her intention to #MeToo Gaiman.

On March 25th… Neil Gaiman learns from Amanda Palmer that the detail of what Scarlett is alleging comes from the WhatsApp message from Misma.

The next day, Neil Gaiman messages Scarlett.

Neil: Misma’s message to Amanda is kind of awful. I’m a monster in it. Knowing that you would be willing to say “It’s not true, it was consensual, he’s not a monster” makes me feel a lot more grounded.

Scarlett: It was consensual. How many times do I have to tell everyone?

There you have it, folks. What more could you possibly want? Neil Gaiman is innocent.

If you ask me, it seems like Scarlett Pavlovich was being manipulated by her friends. Honestly, she seems like an impressionable, immature, and not particularly bright person. She had complicated feelings after a brief but intense relationship which ended suddenly. That’s all.

Gaiman then attempts to smooth things over with Scarlett by offering to pay six months of her rent. She accepts, but then reports him to police in January 2023.

New Zealand police then review her messages and interview her over the course of three days, eventually concluding that they do not have grounds to lay criminal charges. Pretty tough to convince a jury that a sexual relationship wasn’t consensual when you put the words “it was consensual” down in writing.

According to Tortoise Media, police may have been restricted by “the limitations of the law”. In other words, he didn’t commit a sexual assault. But the podcasters they clearly don’t feel that he should be left off the hook just because he didn’t break any laws. Rather, the lack of a criminal charge is taken as proof that the justice system is sexist and exists to protect men.

Haven’t we been through this already? Haven’t we learned by now the disastrous consequences of automatically presuming that men accused of sexual misconduct are all guilty?

Throughout Master, the podcasters assume that Scarlett’s intentions are as pure as freshly fallen snow. Never for a minute is it considered that she might be motivated by a desire for financial gain, or for revenge, or for attention, or that she was being manipulated by a lawyer.

The podcasters then launch into a multi-month search for other “victims” of Gaiman’s. In the end they find four, none of whom have remotely plausible evidence that Gaiman sexually assaulted them.

• “K”, a Florida woman, dated Gaiman for two years when she was in her early 20s. He flew her to Scotland and they had a romantic vacation together. She claims, without proof, that he sexually abused her. She claims that sex with him was painful, apparently due to his prodigious anatomy. So, basically, she’s complaining that her world-famous boyfriend’s dick was too big.

• Julia Hobsbawm, a writer who claims that Gaiman pushed her onto a sofa and forcibly kissed her in 1986.

• Caroline Wallner: A former tenant of Gaiman's who lived on his property rent-free for six years. After her marriage ended, she had a sexual relationship with Gaiman for several years, and later extorted him for $275,000. She was in her early 50s when their relationship began.

• “Claire”, a 22-year-old fan who had a relationship with Gaiman over the course of many months. After meeting in person, they kissed and fooled around. Gaiman apparently really liked her, and they kept in touch. They exchanged many flirty messages, had phone sex, and seemed to be developing a romantic relationship. Then, during a July 2013 book tour in the United States, Gaiman invited her to travel to meet up with him. At some point, he invited into a private room on his tour bus, where he kissed and groped her. She wasn’t into it, so he suggested he leave. Years later, she got in touch with him and successfully extorted him for $60,000.

Really, if you want to know how insanely ridiculous this all is, you’ve got to get into the details. Neil Gaiman sounds like a kind, generous, romantic man who had a penchant for getting involved with emotionally unstable women. If anything, it seems like he was too kind for his own good.

It’s also evident that he was absolutely terrified of being #MeToo’d. Clearly, it was his worst nightmare. Ferchrissake, he paid $60,000 to a woman he never even had sex with.

And look where it got him. He allowed himself to be extorted, and now the fact that he made payments to three women is taken as proof of his guilt.

It’s worth noting that Scarlett, Caroline, and “Claire” all signed Non-Disclosure Agreements in which they swore up and down to keep hush-hush in exchange for cash. They each broke their side of the deal, but apparently that doesn’t affect their credibility in the eyes of the media.

This is how tilted the scales are. Even after ten years of #MeToo, people still can’t wrap their minds around the simple fact that women are just as capable of malicious and deceptive acts as men are.

Okay, so I think that’s enough of the back story. There are more details, of course, but the long and short of it is that there is hard proof that the relationship between Gaiman and Pavlovich was consensual. In the case of the other women, there is no real evidence that Gaiman sexually abused them. For fuck’s sake, one of the cases is literally him trying to kiss a woman in 1986.

NINETEEN-EIGHTY-FUCKING-SIX!

The fact that this cancellation campaign seems to be successfully destroying Neil Gaiman’s career goes to show that people seem to have learned nothing from the #MeToo era. The line seems to still be “Believe Survivors, even if they’re liars.”

Apparently, many people still seem to believe that a woman can retrospectively withdraw consent for sexual acts that she (and her partner) previously believed to be consensual. Let’s think about what this means.

According to this belief, a woman can believe that she can consented to a sexual relationship at the time it was occurring, only to later discover that her apparent consent was an illusion.

From a man’s perspective, this basically means “no one is safe”.

Even if a woman verbally consents prior to sex, this doesn’t necessarily mean that that she actually consented to sex. After all, she could have been lying when she said yes because she didn’t know how to say no. Worse, she could have been lying to herself, mistakenly believing that she consented, only to later realize that she didn’t actually consent.

Think about how insane that is. It means that any one of us could be guilty of rape without even knowing it.

This infantilizes women, as Kat Rosenfield has pointed out.

On what women want

In her words:

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.

Okay, so there you have it, folks. I just spent all day writing about the details of a celebrity womanizer’s sex life.

Now I want to pose a question: What exactly did Neil Gaiman do to earn himself the wrath of the mass media?

When I started writing this piece, I thought I had the answer:

But it turns out that this was just an AI hallucination. I found that open letter, and Gaiman’s name is not among the signatories.

In reality, it seems that Gaiman has refrained by making controversial remarks throughout his entire career. When he has commented on political matters, he has stayed well within the sanctioned bounds of acceptable discourse.

So, I’m just going to pose the question: Why is Neil Gaiman being cancelled? Does anyone have any clues?

After all, Neil Gaiman is a massively successful author. There have been tons of movies and Netflix series based on his books. Tons of companies stood to profit from future film adaptations. A ton of people will lose out financially because of his cancellation.

I don’t really have a good theory, but it seems to me that the Powers That Shouldn’t Be may be sending a message to other artists - “If we can cancel an A-list superstar like Neil Gaiman, we can cancel you. So you’d better stay in line if you know what’s good for you.”

THE TWISTED LINGUISTICS OF SEX CRIMES

This case also gives us cause to reflect upon the meaning of words. The words “grooming” and “human trafficking” seem to have become worbs.

If you don’t know what a worb is, I remember checking out this brilliant video, in which renowned super-genius Dr. Scrotes explains the term, which he invented.

Basically, a worb is a word that everyone uses but that no one really knows the exact meaning of.

You know - democracy, socialism, capitalism, equality, and so on.

When it comes to terms like rape, assault, and human trafficking, it’s pretty important to have a definition that one can refer to. Otherwise, it’s impossible for anyone to prove themselves innocent.

For instance, is it “human trafficking” if I take my wife across town on my motorcycle? Both humans and traffic are involved in that scenario, aren’t they?

What about if I transport an unconscious person to the hospital? Is that human trafficking? After all, an unconscious person isn’t capable of giving consent.

What if a woman is black-out drunk and I take her home for her own good? Is that “human trafficking”?

As for grooming, I think that things have gotten ridiculous if we’re using that term to refer to adults. If women want equal rights, they need to take equal responsibility for their actions.

Pretty much every heterosexual man in the world ever has lavished a woman with attention in the hopes that she will sleep with him. If that counts as grooming now, we’re all sexual predators.

WHY THIS MATTERS

If you haven’t gotten the memo, a third of men under 30 are involuntarily celibate. Now, there are surely many reasons for why this is the case, but I firmly believe that one of them is that young men are terrified of women.

Why, you ask? Isn’t it obvious? A spiteful woman has the power to ruin your life. Pursuing a sexual relationship with a real-live woman is too risky these days. It’s safer to get your rocks off with some stranger on OnlyFans.

Sad, but clearly true.

WEAPONIZED RAPE ACCUSATIONS ARE A THING

Furthermore, we should all know that weaponized rape accusations are a thing by now. One need look no further than the smear campaigns targeting Julian Assange, Russell Brand, and Rod Coronado.

And if they can’t get you on some trumped-up sexual assault allegations, they’ll get you on something else. Prominent dissidents who have been cancelled for lesser crimes include Buffy Sainte-Marie, Ward Churchill, Andrea Smith, David Rovics, and the list goes on and on.

As I previously stated, I’m not even a fan of Neil Gaiman. It shouldn’t be my job to stick up for him. But it’s possible that the smear campaign against Neil Gaiman is a sign of things to come.

If this is (God forbid) #MeToo 2.0, we need to be prepared. We need to learn the lessons from last time around.

The main takeaway from #MeToo is that people need to stick up for their friends. If you see someone being wrongfully accused, it is your moral duty to stand up for them. And if they’re your friend, it’s your duty to offer them moral support.

A secondary takeaway is that trying to be the most reasonable person in the room doesn’t work when you’re dealing with malicious gossip.

Neil Gaiman clearly believed that the truth was on his side, and attempted to set the record straight about his relationships in a mature and mild-mannered way. Look where it got him.

It turns out that when you respond meekly to accusations, people assume you’re guilty. Go figure.

If you’re accused of something that you didn’t do, it may actually be better the flip the script on your accusers.

If that seems shocking to anyone, it’s probably because you’ve bought in, on some level, to the idea that men are always perpetrators and women are always victims. But that doesn’t give women enough credit.

In the case of Neil Gaiman, it is clearly a man who is the victim of malicious women. Some of them are clearly pursuing a financial agenda. Some of them may also be motivated by woke ideology which considers vengeance against men an inherently virtuous act.

In other words, it is mistake to assume that people making accusations are interested in justice or the truth. It is equally likely that they are motivated by greed, spite, or a desire for attention.

Lastly, if this is the beginning of another #MeToo moment, we may just have to get used to the idea that we’re not living in the 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s. It may be that a man in this day and age can no longer get away with sleeping with a bunch of women just because a bunch of women want to sleep with him.

Personally, I’ve made the choice to be monogamous, and I think that’s probably the smartest move for someone like me. After all, there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll be targeted by another smear campaign at some point in my writing career.

If you’re a political dissident, and you take your work seriously, you might have to get used to the idea that it’s probably best not to bang the nanny.

Conservatively Yours,

crow qu’appelle