Master of myths and manipulation

Sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman underline deep trouble with consent

KARACHI:

Before Richard Siken and his puzzling yet seemingly boundless availability to answer fans' most banal queries on X, there was Neil Gaiman on Twitter. Goodreads. Tumblr. Reddit - though one only hoped so.

He engaged with the digital world like a man who had discovered an entirely new stage for his performance. He would speak of writing, of the sanctity of story, of the necessity of creativity, and always, with the ease of someone practised in the art of affirming others, he would assure you that your dreams were, indeed, valid.

Gaiman was not alone in offering this new kind of digital intimacy, of course, but he was certainly one of its most charming practitioners. Or at least, he was until New York Magazine published a damning exposé on Gaiman on January 13. For this cover story, journalist Lila Shapiro interviewed eight women, gathering testimonies from six who accuse Gaiman of rape, coercion, and degradation. Four of these women previously went public with their allegations in a podcast series by Tortoise Media last July.

Shortly after, the writer posted a statement on his website emphatically denying all accusations. He insists, with quiet confidence, that what transpired was not non-consensual, but rather an exploration of BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism), a negotiation of boundaries within a world of desire and dominance. In his retelling, he is the subject of misunderstanding, his actions framed as the fault of misinterpretation rather than intention.

This is, of course, the work of a man who has built a career out of recuperating myths.

In Norse Mythology, Gaiman introduces us to Yggdrasil, the sacred ash tree, and the mead of poetry, a magical concoction of blood, spit, and honey. In The Sandman, he reimagines Milton's Lucifer as a fallen angel turned extravagant philanderer.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a myth is both "an ancient story" and "a widely believed but false idea." These definitions reflect the evolution of myth—an attempt to bridge the gap between what we see and what we understand. When the myth exceeds its reality, it becomes a false idea.

Neil, a lifelong believer in the power of myth, has resuscitated many. The myth he retells now is the myth of consent.

Yes means what

The news about Gaiman does not come as a surprise to me, nor, I suspect, to many others who have watched him - much like any well-constructed narrative - spend decades weaving his own mythology. Gaiman's self-positioning as the mythic storyteller, with a public persona both enigmatic and playful, has long invited the question of his moral accountability. But it is not the what of the allegations that troubles me so much as it is the how - a larger, more unsettling question that has haunted our cultural conversations for years. That question is not "Was there consent?" but "What does consent mean when power is so pervasive, so insidious, so hard to pin down?"

Post-#MeToo, there is greater awareness around violations of consent: we know minors cannot consent, and intoxication can invalidate a "yes." But things get murkier when a woman like Scarlett Pavlovich, a young lesbian from an abusive childhood, at the brink of homelessness, meets Gaiman through his ex-wife Amanda Palmer to babysit their child. Pavlovich alleges she repeatedly said no to Gaiman's sexual advances, but he pressured her into sex. She recalls his words just before he assaulted her: "Don't ruin the moment."

This is not mere coercion with the threat of violence, but a demand that she enjoy it, or at least not protest in a way that could ruin his high. Soon after, Palmer asked if Pavlovich would move in to care for their child. Pavlovich didn't just say yes.

"I am consumed by thoughts of you, the things you will do to me. I'm so hungry. What a terrible creature you've turned me into," she texted Gaiman. In his statement, the writer talks of revisiting old messages that "read now as they did when I received them - of two people enjoying entirely consensual sexual relationships."

Between feelings and words

What happens if we understand consent as a myth? A compromise between what we think we see and what we understand? When the very idea of agency - the ability to give a clean, unequivocal 'yes' or 'no' - is more a rhetorical flourish than a lived experience? As Brenda (a pseudonym), one of Gaiman's accusers, puts it: "It was like he'd gone into this ritual that had nothing to do with me."

Brenda, a young fan, is caught in a world where the boundary between fantasy and reality is porous. Even if it were consensual, the power dynamics - age, gender, fan status - make any encounter with a public figure a murky thing. Here is a discomfort that far exceeds the safeguards of verbal agreement. Even the vaguely defined enthusiastic consent may not be enough to salvage a situation where your apparent lack of pleasure can turn the situation more risky. Here, the very act of consent is subsumed by a script, a performance, a role one plays in order to fit into someone else's narrative. And someone like Pavlovich may have to sound and act happy and play along and it is this distorted proof of pleasure Gaiman can sleep assured with.

At best, consent is a privilege. At worst, it is a myth invoked to counter uncomfortable realities. Does it not assume a subject with a reservoir of agency that remains impossibly intact? At the same time, this agency is circumstantial. Depending on whom you ask, sex workers, women who wear hijab, and those married to powerful men can be powerless victims or empowered and strategic. There are those who mind both provocations and modesty, who will read Karl Marx or Andrea Dworkin and forget that their access to these politics is shaped by privilege as much as it is by choice.

The ick

Then there are women like those dating Leonardo DiCaprio, seemingly okay with being disposed of when they turn 25. Leo's defenders will say those are two consensual beings knowing they are getting what they signed up for, but his critics will get the "ick".

It is this ick we must hold onto. In the incredibly polarising grid of social media, where consent appears like a shield between safety and threat, where sexual harassment is a shorthand for a wide spectrum of harm and injury, this ick begrudgingly reminds us that violence can unfold in the realm of feeling without slipping into language.

The ick that we feel upon seeing a once-fourteen-year-old who found her husband when he was twenty-one, now in a happy marriage of six years troubles this fine line between a yes and no, a line we have constructed, carefully delineated, like a border on a map, pretending it marks a place where all is clear, where violence stops and freedom begins.

Almost as if what consent entails is as much a matter of its interpretation as it is of its utterance. As of now, nine women have called out Gaiman, half of his fans, others in positions of financial precarity. Reading their testimonies will disturb you. But if there is a takeaway, let it be that shorthands and myths will only disguise how much the system is not in your favour.