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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7844 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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What about the part where he was having sex while in the same room as his young kid? That's pretty messed up. Guy really went down the deviancy rabbit hole.

On February 19, 2022, Gaiman and his son spent the night at a hotel in Auckland, which they sometimes did for fun. Gaiman asked Pavlovich if she could come by and watch the child for an hour so he could get a massage. It was a small room — one double bed, a television, and a bathroom. When he returned, Gaiman and the boy ate dinner, takeout from a nearby delicatessen. Afterward, Gaiman wanted to watch a movie, but the child wanted to play with the iPad. The boy sat against the wall by the picture window overlooking the city, facing the bed. Pavlovich perched on the edge of the mattress; Gaiman got onto the bed and pulled her so she was on her back. He lifted the covers up over them. She tried to signal to him with her eyes that he should stop. She mouthed, “What the fuck are you doing?” She didn’t want the child to overhear what she was saying. Gaiman ignored her. He rolled her onto her side, took off his pants, pulled off her skirt, and began to have sex with her from behind while continuing to speak with his son. “‘You should really get off the iPad,’” she recalls him saying. Pavlovich, in a state of shock, buried her head in the pillow. After about five minutes, Gaiman got up and walked to the bathroom, half-naked. He urinated on his hand and then returned to Pavlovich, frozen on the bed, and told her to “lick it off.” He went back to the bathroom, naked from the waist down. “Before you leave,” he told Pavlovich, “you have to finish your job.” She went to the bathroom, and he pushed her to her knees. The door was open. (Gaiman’s representatives say these allegations are “false, not to mention, deplorable.”)

There's plenty of other bizarre accusations that paint him as more than just a regular sex pest.

One evening, Palmer dropped Pavlovich and the child off with Gaiman and retreated back to her own place. Pavlovich was in the kitchen, tidying up, when he approached her from behind and pulled her to the sofa. “It all happened again so quickly,” Pavlovich says. Gaiman pushed down her pants and began to beat her with his belt. He then attempted to initiate anal sex without lubrication. “I screamed ‘no,’” Pavlovich says. Had Gaiman and Pavlovich been engaging in BDSM, this could conceivably have been part of a rape scene, a scenario sometimes described as consensual nonconsent. But that would have required careful negotiation in advance, which she says they had not done. After she said “no,” Gaiman backed off briefly and went into the kitchen. When he returned, he brought butter to use as lubricant. She continued to scream until Gaiman was finished. When it was over, he called her “slave” and ordered her to “clean him up.” She protested that it wasn’t hygienic. “He said, ‘Are you defying your master?’” she recalls. “I had to lick my own shit.”

Eh. Back when everyone lived in one-room hovels, parents always had sex in the same room as their kids.

And at that time, by the time the kids were capable of a reaction other than "eww, gross", they had already moved out.

What baffles me is that she is all hating that, and the article all points out the defiant disapproval of our heroine, and then Gaimann just has to snap his fingers and she is on her knees again.

The only explanation given is that sex is confusing “for the brain”. And that she hated herself, so the degradation made him her soulmate?

I am not sure it is possible to condemn him for “rape”, that is sort of difficult if he gets enthusiastic consent love messages per text, but I condemn him morally for abusing a sort of mentally ill woman. Like, you wouldn’t think someone with Down syndrome being able to give consent, because they don’t understand things and make good decisions and a predator is running intellectually circles around them, and this is true for her too.

true for her too

It's true for many women.

Guy really went down the deviancy rabbit hole.

Yes! But I feel like, having read American Gods and Sandman, this is totally unsurprising.

American Gods

Have I just blocked out or forgotten the deviancy? Yeah, Laura's death seems like a cosmic punishment for infidelity, and the ancient god in Wisconsin (?) is disturbed but I don't remember it being a sexual thing. Might have to just pick it up for a reread.

Have I just blocked out or forgotten the deviancy?

Bilquis?

Oof, yeah, totally forgot about that one.

Salim and the Jinn came to mind after more thought, though I'm sure most people now complaining about Gaiman still wouldn't take kindly to calling that one deviant.

I just reread the entire Sandman like a month ago and didn't remember that there was that much rape. I mean, of course I remember the most famous rapes (Calliope, Fun Land attempts to rape Rose, the diner scene etc.) but even beyond those there's quite a lot of it.

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