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Forgive my naivete here, but I'm not really sure what the story here is, beyond "Neil Gaiman is a creepy sexpest."
Well, yes, and I will happily join in with condemning his sordid exploits. Promiscuity is bad and this seems quite a straightforward example. I'm just wondering what particular light is shed by this specific case?
I feel like the real story is that this isn't just one guy. It's part of an ongoing pattern where a lot of men turn into creepy sexpests when they're given fame and power. And this guy was able to cover it up for decades, so it makes you wonder if basically every celebrity is secretly like this and they're just hiding it. And to some extent it makes me wonder- are these celebrities uniquely terrible, or is every man a creepy sexpest at heart, and we just restrain ourselves because we don't have the power to get what we want?
Person + power = sexcapades is pretty universal, women love to do that shit too
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On the internet we get to chose our own celebrities
Littlewood and Hardy instead of Laurel and Hardy
Paul J. Cohen instead of Leonard Cohen
Frank Ramsey instead of Gordon Ramsey
David Moon of X3J13 instead of Keith Moon of the Who
Which raises a different question. Rather than ask whether "every celebrity is like this", we might ask "Why are we choosing these guys as our celebrities?". Or we might ponder who is choosing our celebrities? Us? Really?
Are there hidden influencers choosing our celebrities from behind a curtain, much like I'm trying to force you to celebrate Paul J. Cohen? Harvey Weinstein is a partial example; not entirely hidden, not able to make just any-one a star, but still wielding substantial covert power over which attractive young actress becomes a minor celebrity for a while.
My impression is that the pathologies of locally high-status men engaging in dubious pussy-chasing are basically the same in other contexts and this isn't specific to conventional celebrities. Gamergate happened because Zoe Quinn looked like she was cheating on her boyfriend with someone locally high-status in the indie game community, and the community seemed to think there was nothing odd about this. This kind of thing is absolutely rife in academia - probably more so than it is in Hollywood, although the press doesn't cover it as much.
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If you're asking me, my guess is that:
From here on I'm going to get more religious, so you may wish to disregard the following if you have a more secular mindset:
The conclusion I draw from these observations, personally, is to be very aware of the depth and temptation of human sin, to show mercy even to those who seem like great sinners to me, and to be aware of and do my best to fight against my own inclination to sin. I very much hope that I'm not as bad as some of those public figures I'm aware of, but it would be foolish of me to be confident in that, so this is another reminder for me to repent and seek a conversion of the heart.
As mentioned, I think disordered sexual behaviour is a more common manifestation of the inner sinful nature among men. I don't think it's entirely absent among women, but I think it's probably more common for women to engage in different types of sin. Both sexes, however, stand very much condemned by their own inward natures and desires. So I don't see any final moral advantage, as it were, for women over men, nor for men over women.
Good answer! Thanks. I'm not religious, but I do think in a similar way- we're all vulnerable to temptation, and we have to constantly use willpower to guard against it. Different people respond to different types of temptation, so I think women more often go down the path of emotional manipulation and narcissm rather than physical sexual debauchery.
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I don’t think it’s quite either. After watching vast numbers of successful and apparently sensible men ruin themselves for affairs with not very pretty girls, I’ve honestly started to believe that there is a built-in switch in the male brain that looks around and says, ‘Hmm, we appear to be the alpha around these parts, time to spread the genesSEXSEXSEXSEXSEX!’. Any sufficiently powerful man either has to commit to a rigorous system like Pence or have his brain melted.
I don’t present this as an excuse, quite the opposite. Just an observation.
Women spend their entire lives being hit on by men constantly, they then have to decide who and when to reject vs. accept and have significant training in establishing their boundaries for these things.
Many men spend their entire lives without being hit on without them initiating to the point that they will continue to flirt when it isn't acceptable to do so (because they are in a relationship, old, power dynamics and so on) because they don't expect it go anywhere.
If it does get reciprocated or it comes out of nowhere ....they don't know what to do and have little familiarity with saying no.
This is the flip side of the power dynamic - men may use power and prestige when they shouldn't to get laid, but women can also take advantage of men's weakness and this is seldom acknowledge or commented on.
I don't really recommend it but it's an interesting experience, just like everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth every guy with a reason not to feels like they can reject a pretty woman coming onto them...but many fail in that moment.
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I mean, maybe Gaiman is a creepy sexpest, assuming the truth of the allegations. Certainly the evidence seems to be that he is quite promiscuous, like so many other men of similar repute.
Will he be cancelled entirely? Is this evidence against the plausibility of "open marriage?" Should we accept the article's allegations at face value, or question the veracity of the claims, victim-blaming style? What is "consent," really?
There seemed to me to be a plethora of culture war angles--that's all.
Ah, to be clear, I'm using 'sexpest' mainly just to mean 'aggressively promiscuous person'. It doesn't imply non-consent for me. I like it as a gender-neutral alternative to 'slut', I suppose? It also implies actively seeking out or badgering others for sex, and that also sounds like Gaiman. This is enough for me to morally condemn Gaiman.
But this was known already, and I'm not sure what Gaiman's case specifically, or the vagaries of whether he gets cancelled or not, tells us about either the broad issue of sexual ethics, or even that much about the moment. Gaiman is an ageing white man who's also, at best, what we used to call a dirty old man. He seems potentially vulnerable to cancellation, but then, cancellation has never had a 100% hit rate, so it could go either way.
So I think I'm with 4bpp in terms of what we can draw from Gaiman's case, even if I suspect we differ on overall sexual ethics. There's just a limit to how much can be inferred from any one case.
I think it implies male as much as 'slut' implies female. You can have a woman who's a sex pest just like you can have a man who's a slut.
I think the distinction that comes most naturally to mind for me is that a sexpest is someone who aggressively pesters others for sex, and a slut is a person who rapidly or unhesitatingly gives in to such pestering. They're complementary, I suppose?
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And, as far as throwing fuel on the fire, JK Rowling has weighed in:
My understanding is that the venn diagram of "people who hate Rowling for her trans views" and "Neil Gaiman superfans" is very close to a circle, so I'm expecting there to be either a lot of cognitive dissonance, deliberate head-in-the-sand, or crazy explainers as to why they're on the same side.
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