Neil Gaiman the Master Predator
Neil Gaiman, the best-selling British author, was accused of being a sexual predator in a lawsuit this week by his former nanny. Seven more women (and counting) have come forward.
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Neil Gaiman, the beloved fantasy author (Coraline, Good Omens, Sandman) is not a good man.
Despite his winsome curls, plummy narrator voice and purported feminism, he enjoys un-lubricated, nonconsensual, anal rape, if we are to believe his much younger, economically disadvantaged victims.
Really Tracy, did you have to go there? Before breakfast? Anal rape is your nut graph?
Oh, and he insists that they call him “Master.”
Bondage with my cornflakes. Great. This column isn’t going to get better, is it?
No. Neil Gaiman as sex predator is quite the fucktangle. Buckle in.
First, I need a moment to scream into the void.
ARE ALL MEN MISOGYNISTIC MONSTERS?
No, of course not. Not every man has a secret sexual basement. Some have crawl spaces or mad women trapped in their attics.
Good men exist. I sincerely doubt Jimmy Carter ever raped a nanny. Which is what a new lawsuit alleges about Neil Gaiman.
A New Zealand woman filed a lawsuit on Monday against Neil Gaiman, the best-selling British author, and Amanda Palmer, his estranged wife, accusing Mr. Gaiman of repeated sexual abuse and Ms. Palmer of “procuring and presenting” the victim and intending to leave her “trapped, vulnerable and penniless.”
Scarlett Pavlovich, who is from New Zealand but now lives in Scotland, claims in the suit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, New York and Wisconsin, that Mr. Gaiman raped and assaulted her repeatedly while she was working as a nanny and babysitting the couple’s son.
As a result, Ms. Pavlovich “suffered severe emotional distress, physical injuries and economic losses,” the lawsuit said. She also claimed she was not paid adequately for her work for the couple.
The story originally broke last July with the Tortoise media podcast “Master” and New York Magazine’s Lila Shapiro wrote a long feature this month: There Is No Safe Word: How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades.
I listened to the podcast series Master months ago, as this was on my radar to write about. They interview Pavlovich and four other women who had encounters with Gaiman. What struck me wasn’t the violent sex, so much as the next-level mindfuckery. There are voicemails. Gaiman is a masterclass in sad sausage. After every transgression, he fails to understand how this hurt her. Oh, he didn’t see it that way. It pains him that she sees it that way. More really.
Neil Gaiman isn’t your typical misogynistic thug. He’s Alan Alda-esque. Intellectual. Curious about you (until he isn’t). He cares.
He also grew up in a prominent Scientology family and was an auditor by his teens. Mindfuckery was the family business. You could say he is a Master.
Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman and the open marriage
Before we get to the unpleasant legal proceedings — the as-yet unfinished divorce between Palmer and Gaiman and the sexual assault charges — there is the Bohemian love story.
In 2008, Gaiman divorced his first wife and mother of his three children, Mary McGrath and started a relationship with artist/musician Amanda Palmer, who is 16 years younger.
Their meet cute: Palmer asks Gaiman to write stories for her book, “Who Killed Amanda Palmer,” in which she poses as a murder victim in various grisly scenarios.
Is this some kind of fucked-up pick me dance? Does she sense his hatred of women? Oh hey, here’s a project you would enjoy! Me as a dead woman!
That’s skein untangling. But for a long time these two were the poster children for sexy cool kids open marriage.
This Sunday Times story from 2019 where Amanda Palmer celebrates her open marriage with Neil Gaiman hasn’t aged well.
There are lots of varieties of open relationships, from don’t ask/don’t tell, to very compassionate and considered, transparent communication. I’m a fan of the latter. We’re not interested in having big, multiple relationships; we’re just slutty, but compassionately so. Of course, we’ve both shattered one another’s hearts occasionally through bad choices, but our relationship stands it. We remain one another’s emotional priority. It’s a shame that society is so closed-minded in this respect — there are a lot of unhappy marriages out there.
Says the woman who is now in a three-year long protracted custody battle with Gaiman.
In the Times interview she goes on to say, that when they had their son, Ash, she asked that they close the marriage. Which clearly he respected as evidenced by his former fuckbuddies coalescing around a lawsuit.
Forgive my open marriage skepticism
It’s interesting to see how the sex-positive, don’t kink shame, ethical non-monogamy narrative breaks down with gruesome sexual abuse charges. Ethical non-monogamy only works with people who have ethics. I’m doubtful that people who are attracted to a lack of relationship boundaries, will agree to keep things within bounds. Palmer says she told Gaiman not to sleep with the nanny, Pavlovich. Gaiman is accused of having sex with his small child in the room, and even in the bed.
Despite Gaiman and Palmer self-identifying as feminist and progressive, they seem to be attracted to power imbalances. The sex partner/victims are younger, fans, economically vulnerable, employed by them, and in Pavlovich’s case, homeless.
Predators seek vulnerability.
Neil on Amanda in that 2019 Times story.
There were no sparks at all. I wasn’t attracted to Amanda, and she certainly wasn’t attracted to me.
But then, a few months later, I met her in London at a friend’s house. A car had run over her foot a couple of days before — she had been American, looking the wrong way before crossing the road — and she was on crutches. I watched her struggling up the stairs, and it was as if somebody had hit me with a love-shaped brick. I was just like, “Oh!”
So now that’s she’s literally wounded, she’s attractive. I wonder at what point she got the “write captions for my imaginary death” idea.
The New York Magazine story describes Gaiman’s prefered hunting grounds.
People who flock to fantasy conventions and signings make up an “inherently vulnerable community,” one of Gaiman’s former friends, a fantasy writer, tells me. They “wrap themselves around a beloved text so it becomes their self-identity,” she says. They want to share their souls with the creators of these works. “And if you have morality around it, you say ‘no.’” It was an open secret in the late ’90s and early aughts among conventiongoers that Gaiman cheated on his first wife, Mary McGrath, a private midwestern Scientologist he’d married in his early 20s. But in my conversations with Gaiman’s old friends, collaborators, and peers, nearly all of them told me that they never imagined that Gaiman’s affairs could have been anything but enthusiastically consensual. As one prominent editor in the field puts it, “The one thing I hear again and again, largely from women, is ‘He was always nice to me. He was always a gentleman.’”
Always a gentleman.
Let’s cut to this part.
Gaiman didn’t believe in foreplay or lubrication, Stout tells me, which could make sex particularly painful. When she said it hurt too much, he’d tell her the problem was she wasn’t submissive enough. “He talked at length about the dominant and submissive relationship he wanted out of me,” she tells me. Stout had no prior interest in BDSM. She says Gaiman never asked what she liked in bed, and there was no discussion of “safe words” or “aftercare” or “limits.” He’d ask her to call him “master” and beat her with his belt. “These were not sexy little taps,” she says. When she told him she didn’t like it, she says he replied, “It’s the only way I can get off.”
Who cares what you like, Orifice #452? Neil needs to get off. #perfectgentleman
The impression management is on point.
During the early years of their marriage, they lived apart for months at a time and encouraged each other to have affairs. According to conversations with five of Palmer’s closest friends, the most important rule governing their open relationship was honesty. They found that sharing the details of their extramarital dalliances — and sometimes sharing the same partners — brought them closer together.
Later that year, Palmer got pregnant. She and Gaiman were spending more time at home together and talked about slowing down and devoting their attention to their marriage. She wanted to close the relationship, and he agreed. But when she was eight months pregnant, Gaiman came to her with a problem: He had slept with a fan in her early 20s, taking her virginity. Now, Gaiman told her, the girl was “going crazy.” He promised to change, and they met with a couples counselor. Gaiman was prone to panic attacks and had never been in treatment. “Amanda was shocked at how traumatized Neil was, given his public persona and the guy she thought she’d married,” a person close to them says.
Honesty or total abuser profile? He cheats on her when she’s pregnant and vulnerable. Yes, cheats. Like he did on his first wife. This was never a monogamy problem, Neil Gaiman has a character problem. He unilaterally changes the terms of mutual agreements to his own benefit and then has the unmitigated chutzpah to feel “traumatized” by his own wandering dick.
Who is Amanda Palmer?
Is she Gaiman’s accomplice or his victim? Is she some Ghislaine Maxwell procuring fresh meat?
Palmer was famous for speaking out about sexual abuse and encouraging others to do the same. In songs and essays, she had written of having been sexually assaulted and raped on multiple occasions as a teenager and young woman. Pavlovich didn’t think someone like that could be married to someone who would assault women.
Pavlovich, the nanny, didn’t think a feminist would be married to a monster. And Palmer probably thought Gaiman would never betray her because she was such a cool wife with her non-monogamy and asked so little of him.
By the time she asked Pavlovich to babysit, Palmer was fed up with Gaiman’s behavior, but “she still had some faith in his decency,” a friend says. Still, she knew enough to warn Gaiman to stay away from their new babysitter. “I remember specifically her saying, ‘You could really hurt this person and break her; keep your hands off of her,’” the friend says. And Palmer still hoped, according to those close to her, that she and Gaiman would be able to negotiate a peaceful co-parenting arrangement. She found a school for their child and the two houses on Waiheke. “She was going to do her best to keep Neil as a presence for her son,” one friend says.
Stop drinking the peaceful co-parenting Koolaid!
Why would you want this FW as a presence for your son? How did you think this was going to go down? Neil Gaiman has demonstrated time and again that he doesn’t give a shit about anyone’s boundaries. Do you really think he’s going to find it in his imaginary decency to care about his son? If a gazillion stories on this blog are anything to go by, he’ll probably look for a bigger transgressive high.
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.
I’m leaving off the degrading act that follows this.
‘She didn’t consider leaving’
She had a migraine, and her whole body ached. But she didn’t consider leaving. She’d hated herself her whole life, she tells me, “and when someone comes along and hates you as much as yourself, it is kind of a relief, without it always being consent.”
Pavlovich didn’t file rape charges until two older women friends, who worked in advocacy, convinced her what she experienced was abuse.
And Neil Gaiman wants you to know that none of this is true.
I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.
But he concedes he wasn’t his best self. He’s going to do the work to restore your faith. Trust him.
🤮 It turned him on to rape women in front of his son. There is no co-parenting with that. He should never get to have contact with that child again. The boy could potentially grow up to be a serial killer because of what this monster did. That’s exactly what happened to serial killer Paul Bernardo- his father raped women in front of him.
I do believe men like this want to train their sons to be just like them.
I listened to the podcast and have been following this, including on reddit because I know people in the community of fantasy writers. He’s a monster. The Amanda part is tricky. She writes too about how she wasn’t attractive to him until blabla..and he is a master emotional manipulator. But victims can turn into co-predators. I believe in Stockholm Syndrome, but she is also at this point accountable too. She drank the kool aid, he is a kool aid dispenser, but then she also groomed and served up vulnerable women to be abused – “your’s the 14th (or 12th something insane) one” she says, after a woman complains to her of abuse by Neil. This is said over and over again about intimate violence but it’s TRUE that the horrific mind fuckery is what makes any recovery so hard. How to trust yourself ever again? I am in the camp of not trusting anyone still. Will I ever change? Not sure. I’m just so happy to be free of my abuser.. The problem as my therapist said is, “it’s difficult to legally punish bad behavior (meaning “words”) ” so you need those moments of violence to litigate. But it’s their self worth/reality destruction that kills them/us/me the most.
What you say reminds me of an interesting article about different types of “murderers’ accomplices.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/shadow-boxing/202206/rethinking-the-murderers-accomplice
The article doesn’t get that deeply into backgrounds of these proxy abusers but I really don’t believe “just anyone” will play the Ghislaine Maxwell co-abuser role the same as not just anyone can get drawn into wittingly playing a side piece and participating in the deception and betrayal of an unwitting third party. They’d have to be pretty much fucked up to begin with, especially when it comes to participating in the abuse of child victims or extremely economically or socially vulnerable victims.
I agree with a quote that’s been attributed to Martin Neimoller that goes something like, “When they come for the innocent and do not have to walk across your corpse, curses be on your life and your religion.” But short of someone being subjected to extreme violence probably coupled with TBI, forced drugging and catastrophic sleep deprivation (the formula used to inculcate boy soldiers for warlords and criminal gangs), I don’t think facilitating or pimping for an abuser is in the capacity of any adult who was formerly normal or healthy. I’m not even sure Hedda Nussbaum should have evaded criminal consequences after Joel Steinberg infamously beat their adopted daughter to death.
I do believe that people who facilitate the abuse of others are typically former childhood victims of traumatic abuse but not all victims survive in an emotional sense. I suspect it’s the half dead trauma zombies who end up acting as “accomplices.”
Since this is a post about writers : Simone de Beauvoir did this for Jean-Paul Sartre, procured young women and brought them to his bedside, since he was decrepit and no longer mobile. She and Alice Munro, who betrayed her own daughter, both were lionized in their own right and were considered feminist voices, yet were Ghislaine Maxwells in their private lives.
de Bouvoir was also vicious in mocking some of these victims in letters to Sartre or friends. They all sounded like the nastiest bunch of social climbing cannibals.
A friend and I were talking about our experiences being repeatedly harassed and having to dodge worse in our respective narc-filled industries and she said something interesting– that, after all these years, the thing that’s starting to enrage her the most is remembering how many women in her profession facilitated these pervs, pimped for them and procured victims.
I’d experienced it myself and I relate to having an almost deeper sense of disappointment or betrayal over the complicit behavior of women. But then it makes sense since most countries reserve greater punishments for traitors than they do even enemy combatants.
Oh, HOAC, of course!! *That* is the problem, the complicit women. This would all topple in a day if it wasn’t for them. Look at all the Trump supporters on this very site calling women “whores” and “skanks”. They see their value and financial and social security springs from their sexual attractiveness to men and their ability to procreate, and — accurate!! So it’s a zero-sum, existential game of pick-me to them. By and large, that is the case! It’s internalized misogyny. The women who agree to prioritize their husbands’ needs over their children’s, and men’s priorities generally over the well-being of children.
The book Demonic Males: Apes and the Evolution of Human Violence has some very interesting insights on the social dynamics that either promote or discourage “coalition-building” among women. Apparently the closer any organization or society gets to gender equality, the more women will cooperate with each other. Furthermore, the types of people of both genders who rise to prominence in systems that have more gender parity tend to be more cooperative and socially responsible and less aggressively self-serving. The narcs might still exist but they just don’t do that well in a fair system.
Meanwhile if any woman manages to gain power within a heavily male dominated system, it’s typically going to be a patriarchy-coddling Margaret Thatcher type who’s no friend to other women and who will also typically double down on the most aggressive and destructive patriarchal values (war mongering, social repression, pushing retrograde social policies, etc.). There’s a precise parallel for this behavior in chimpanzee social structure– the “token female” who, in exchange for engaging in Clockwork Orange aggression in service of violent alphas, might get an extra hunk of banana or a bit of temporary amnesty from the brutality that females are typically subjected to.
That’s generally why I pull short of framing women as women’s own worst enemies even if the betrayal somehow feels uglier. The problem is really systemic and most humans simply don’t see the bigger sociopolitical picture or really understand what they’re participating in. As long as women are still trapped in the same old feudal ape protection racket, many are going to act just like our ape ancestors and closest ape cousins and grovel for a few perks. And as long as men fear other men within the same zero sum game and unegalitarian system, they’re mostly also going to play along for perks. Yes their perks tend to be better but it hardly seems worth it since men actually face an eight fold higher risk of being murdered by other men than even women face.
Everyone would benefit from equality. The author of Demonic Males even makes a great case that war would be reduced. I don’t assume that this is because all women are naturally more “moral” but because any form of inequality tends to optimize the worst human traits and equality does the reverse.
I too am a bit conflicted re AP and also hoping she is accountable too and recognizes her part in this fuckery. I also relate to not trusting anyone… 3 years out and I believe I won’t ever trust anyone again beyond my two kids. Also sounds like you have a great therapist.. sending gentle hugs to you and great appreciation for your words when words failed me.
I’m happy that you’re writing about this.
The virgin thing reminds me of the cheating (and sexual harassment and many other lies) scandal that ended the career of another author, Sherman Alexie. I find that particularly despicable (that and the homeless predator and raping in presence of his son thing).
I had not known about Alexie. I just did some reading and am so sad another author whose work I’d admired turns out to be just another sexual predator. Sigh.
Another author I loved (another author, i mean, but I never liked Gaiman, and Coraline is creepy!) who turned out to be a predator was Oscar Hijuelos.
Oh yes and I loved Garcia Marquez my entire life then I reread “Love in the Time of Cholera” in 2021 and the ending… made me sick!
And the worship of Nabokov … my daughters college class read Lolita and frankly it’s pervy and upsetting, and it’s weird to force kids to believe it’s somehow sophisticated to make an exception of Lolita.
And one of my other favorite writers, Paul Theroux, abandoned his first wife… so did my beloved Martin Amis… And also my beloved Dickens…!!
Tracy I have been waiting for your take on this!!!! I knew you’d give us a platform to discuss this topic.
When the big story broke last week, I too took a deep dive and it took several days to get through it all bc I was so triggered. NG’s behavior is absolutely henious and I don’t have a lot of positive feelings about AP altho she may get a small sliver of patience to see how this plays out. I can see how a woman gets trapped in this mindfuck .. I did when I was younger and since I’ve escaped my last fw… while I don’t want to kink shame.. I also think one has to be brutally honest with themselves about why this scene attracts them and to be perfectly aware it can.. not always.. but it can attract real predators
What was the worst for me in wading through this was realizing all the times I got trapped in the same bullshit. Realizing this is exactly how the last fw trapped me for 13 years and how I was half dead by the time I got out.
These asshats prey on broken women.. they appear to validate and support our journey to healing all the while subtley breaking us down further. The pattern of behavior of NG exactly duplicated the ex fw’s behavior. To the point when I moved to this area.. both his brother and mother of his children didn’t want me staying at his house while I was homeless.. it was a big house.. I had the upstairs… I had known the family for 45 years and thought.. nah.. he’s the quiet harmless one.. wouldn’t hurt a fly.. its well known the ex was the crazy one…
Oh.
My.
God…..
I was just as crazy as ex #1 AND #2 by the time I got out. I also clocked that he used to welcome homeless young women ALL the time into his home… via his wife/s or children. One of them we would run into in the grocery store all the time and I long suspected they had had a sexual relationship based on how they would exclude me from the convo and how she would find ways to touch him.. she was a teenager when she stayed with them. Many more weird stories but stopping there.
And yes… a relationship can start consenual and still have acts of unconsenual sex.. this ex fw raped me and would brag about how he *knew* his last kid was his bc he forced himself on his ex-wife #1.. that should have been a clear warning sound but I was so broken by then and convinced it was on her .. not the rape but his concern for not knowing who fathered his other two kids.. good reason to suspect someone and we all know who it is.. until I learned it wasn’t.. she was lost in the abuse cycle by then.
Anyhoo… NG’s behavior pattern is something I think a lot of us can recognize and were also caught up in in our own situations.. I know I can say that today with honesty and without judging myself too harshly… it’s still hard some days but I’m a work in progress.
And as the whole Blake Lively/Justion thing is breaking wide open too.. I can’t help but wonder what are WE doing supporting these people??? There are many calls online to separate the art from the artist. I no longer can. I will no longer support these people with my precious dollars. fuck ’em cuz I’m mad as hell.
I don’t believe it’s possible to separate the artist from the art. The recent New Yorker article on Alice Munro does an excellent job of showing how over and over her short stories revealed her preoccupation with women who protected monsters (for those who don’t know, Munro’s second husband sexually abused her youngest daughter as well as other young girls, and Munro chose to look the other way and stay married to him). It seems clear to me that a similar article could be written about Neil Gaiman, with a similar examination of the themes and details of his work.
Many, many years ago, when I was writing a thesis on Tennyson for one of my MA degrees in literature (I have two, one earned and one picked up on the way to my PhD), I discovered Tennyson used to go on walks with young women around his estate on the Isle of Wight, and at some point in the walk, he would stop, point down at his boot, and tell the young woman “My bootlace is loose,” so that she would kneel at his feet to tie his bootlace. As a young woman the same age as those Tennyson wanted to kneel at his feet, and who was trying to make my own way in academia at a time when male condescension of womens’ intellects and ambitions was the norm, I was outraged, and told my advisor I would not write on him.
My advisor at the time, James R. Kincaid, a professor I admired, supported me when I opted for the “more courses” option instead of writing a thesis. More than a decade later, when I was a young professor, Kincaid himself became a figure of controversy, for his literary critical study “Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting.” His detractors said that even if he wasn’t outright excusing pedophilia, he did minimize its prevalence and its harms. I’ve always wondered what motivated him to write that book.
Um he wrote it because he was a pedophile.
There’s no actual proof of that. But I have wondered.
Agree Adelante. Ugh. Tennyson though! Love your stance.
You can’t separate the artist from the art. To do so is just cherry picking because as an “art consumer” you can’t bear to lose your own memories which featured said artist or art work or your own enjoyment or entertainment or pleasure.
I will not listen to Michael Jackson. I will not read David Brooks or Esther Perel and certainly never Neil Gaiman. I am disturbed that I read Hemingway watched Woody Allen and numerous others of their ilk before I knew what was what. I will not download Jay-Z or Diddy. Nor will I ever consume porn of any description. Also, due to many things (not the least of which is the way Bianca Censori is being plainly exploited) it is a hard pass on Yeezy anything for me. And I won’t watch Blake Lively OR Justin Baldoni because that / those piece of art(s) is or are forever tainted when people have allegedly been abused and / or actually suffered for its production. And if I *personally* cannot prove someone suffered but my best educated guess is that for sure *someone* did suffer or was taken advantage of or exploited in some way, then equally I won’t hedge my bets and buy / consume etc (eg porn / sex trafficking / consent).
I give my consent when I buy that art.
Purchasing is political.
Every dollar or any moment spent in supporting anything is also political.
I choose to support those who are genuinely supporting others and who really are trying to make the world better and not just line their own pockets.
My own baseline now is if I find out they are not who they claim to be, I am done. I withdraw my support for them in perpetuity. That is my small power and I unreservedly retain it.
“while I don’t want to kink shame.. I also think one has to be brutally honest with themselves about why this scene attracts them and to be perfectly aware it can.. not always.. but it can attract real predators”
Actually, these days I do kinkshame! And no, I definitely did not start out that way. I realized how naive it was to not expect who it would attract. It would be like saying “no, of course men who like power and guns will not be attracted to police and army” – it would be, I was, naive/brainwashed.
I certainly do kink shame about any kink that is abusive.
And even if it isn’t abusive, it doesn’t belong in public.
I 1,000% kink shame. If your kink is disgusting or harmful, you should be shamed. Plus, if I know about someone’s disgusting or harmful kink, they already involved me without my consent so they’re a piece of shit for that.
Because my #2x had a hidden basement of activity, and noting how I forgave the tip of the iceberg, and then 1/3 of the iceberg. And because
He was coercive and clandestine…I know these men and I can’t even read the story of how they stealth. It hits too close to home. Massage therapist,
young teens, tippie toeing to see what you can do… It is with years of forgiveness and getting away with it that they are emboldened. There is no cure for this man or anyone like him. And no therapist trained enough. They need to be locked away like man eating Tigers. Period.
Forgiveness and apologies are worth nothing without behavior changes and most won’t go through the hard work to examine themselves critically and make intentional changes. The high’s from “getting away with something” are too addictive.
It’s not their fault…as Tracy says there is NOTHING TO WORK WITH.
Right!! That’s it!
I used to feel in therapy like I was watching a dog get hit with a newspaper. But really, dogs are much nicer.
Blue Wolf wrote: There are many calls online to separate the art from the artist. I no longer can. I will no longer support these people with my precious dollars.
Per multiple news stories yesterday, the upcoming reboot of Buffy The Vampire Slayer will NOT include involvement by Buffy’s creator, writer and producer Joss Whedon because of the allegations of abuse and misconduct against him several years ago. While his fall from grace and popularity was primarily because of the stories about how he mistreated his cast, word had previously come out about his infidelity. Tracy’s August 22, 2017 column was about Whedon’s cheating, and she wrote about him again on Jan. 19, 2022. Whedon was another self-proclaimed feminist and good guy.
Wearing the feminist flag is the go-to move of the covert narc sociopath. Dangerous.
I agree, but he wasn’t even covert: the irony is that in his case, it was much more akin to Michael Jackson… hiding in plain sight. His books referred a huge shit ton of rapes. Feminists projected on that, that he understood how common rapes and violence against women are… sure, he did, but because in reality because he was one of them. Not because he was a feminist!
Well, sure… still hidden I guess to the average tv viewer or music fan though but you make a good point.
In hindsight these types are so obvious. But then isn’t that part of the duper’s delight? That the narcopath can brazenly do this stuff while maintaining their cover of plausible deniability (feminism, being kind to children *insert virtue signal here ) which under the white hot illumination of evidence is exactly the opposite is true and the nightmare we fear is real?
Of the many new terms on Chump Lady that have helped me understand and heal, “Dupers Delight” is the most important concept, I have come to believe. Thank you, once again, Chump Lady, for identifying that phenomenon and naming it.
Actually the term “duper’s delight” was coined by forensic osychologist Paul Ekman, an expert in facial expressions and emotions. It is widely used in discussions around psychopathy / dark triad and narcissism so that is why it is used here on CL. Just fyi!
There’s a lot of debate in literary and classical music circles whether the autobiography of dissident Soviet-era composer Dmitri Shostakovich was real or fake and ghost-written (you’d know his work from almost every modern film set in Russia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfsbCBTAnAg). But I hardly care anymore because Shostakovich’s autobiography, Testimony, makes a very brilliant point that sadists can’t be real artists. I’ve observed the same thing so I kind of lean to the side of the autobiography being genuine.
One chapter begins with the wonderful line “I hate Toscanini.” Apparently the famous 20th century orchestra conductor Toscanini used to pride himself on driving members of his orchestra into heart attacks through his abusive behavior. Shostakovich wrote that Toscanini was actually a shitty conductor and, when Toscanini “gifted” Shostakovich with recordings of his work, Shostakovich said he was glad to be able to regift the crap recordings to people he hated as a prank.
I recommend Testimony because, regardless of whoever wrote it, they were spot on about the the correlation between cruelty and real creative genius being bullshit. I even think one of the reasons that Picasso suffered from intermittent violent depressions is that he knew he was flying at half speed. He might have been born with more talent than most people can hope for but on some level he knew he was kind of a lazy plagiarist and cheat who wasn’t living up to his own capacity. And I think his treatment of women is what partly blunted his ability.
Scumbag.
“Mindfuckery was the family business” explains it all to me.
When I read he came from a Scientology family I pretty much knew where this was going. “Family business” is a apt description.
Yep.
Having once been somewhat close to this particular circus, I am not at all surprised by the ooze that is now gushing out. Specifically, I was around Palmer years ago. I thought then that she was one of the most textbook manipulative narcissist I’d ever known. Not to say that people like that can’t be undone by more ‘master’ manipulators. But character-wise it seems like ugly and uglier.
!!
Yes, sharks can be outdone by bigger sharks. most creeps tend to gravitate to their own level, their careers of abusing others are often interspersed with being victimized by worse abusers. I even suspect that their rates of victimization might be far higher than average people who sort of accidentally fall for frauds but wouldn’t be knowingly attracted to bad people.
Every sadist I’ve ever encountered is also a masochist on the flipside.
Actually, this IS the typical misogynistic thug. This is what MOST of them act like now. The soft spoken, bumbling, lovable, “Oh I’m so harmless I could never hut anybody and I’m a feminist too!” It’s like the guys who pretend to be gay to get access to women. Oh don’t worry, Joey’s gay, he’s safe. Until you pass out on a couch and he rapes you because it was all an act to get you to let your guard down. Rapists are evil but not stupid. They know appearing harmless will get them access to victims. Just like so many pedos act like the greatest people and are so wonderful with children. Yeah, that’s how they get victims.
I’ve seen pictures of the monsters my ex associated with. Not a single one looked dangerous. They look soft, nerdy, harmless, normal. That is what the typical sex offender looks like today. They post about women’s rights on their social media and wear shirts that say “This is what a feminist looks like!” and are outraged at anyone who harms women or children. That is what they act like. Unless he’s an absolute moron, he’s going to hide what he is. They know to hide it.
My ex seems like the nicest guy. Most of you would like him upon meeting him. Most people do. He says the “right things”, he acts the “right way”, he doesn’t look threatening. People who are literal psychiatrists and people who have worked with battered women and abused children did not pick up on him even in the slightest. A survivor of child sexual abuse who met him got a little bit of an off feeling and later told me, “I just thought maybe he was actually gay, I never suspected he would do anything to a kid.”
I just hope this makes people realize, the way they look means NOTHING. The things they say mean NOTHING. Nice charity things they do mean NOTHING. Works they create mean NOTHING. None of that has anything to do with choosing to be a predator. It is a choice any human being can make. It can be anybody, which I know is terrifying, but it’s reality. When there is proof, it needs to be looked at. Nobody can say “No, I know that guy and he would NEVER!” They hide. If people realized that, maybe I wouldn’t have lost damn near everybody in my life because they wouldn’t even consider the possibility.
“Promising Young Woman” is a really good movie that shows this.
Nice catch Chumpty. Also in her next film Emerald Fenell absolutely showcases the psychopath-sociopath in sheep’s clothing too. She knows what is up. Saltburn is the progression of Promising Young Woman…
The protagonist in Saltburn is what my ex was like. It was deeply thrilling to me to see that kind of person depicted in a movie. And kind of educational.
Omg. You have my shared horror.
I still have mixed feelings about Saltburn. Maybe I am just scarred from it 😂😆
I know what you mean about mixed feelings for Saltburn, me too.
THIS. I move in bookish and artsy circles and <.1% of the men look like they could physically restrain you, or would ever try. They know the language of inclusivity and feminism. But every single one of the men who assaulted me also came from these environments and were almost always the type who had a little bit of professional sparkle, and used it to invite the young, brave woman (who writes about her own history of abuse) out for drinks to give her the “safe male attention” she desperately wants to believe in.
Yes, it’s about 9 to 1 fake v. real deals out there. I have met ride or die male “allies” and have been alive long enough to see them stand the test of time. But most? Sheep/wolves’ clothing and protection racket stuff.
You just described my ex perfectly. No one believed he was capable of the horrible things he did. “He’s so nice!” “He’s even a bit boring”. This super nice guy in a super nice guy job was hiding a secret life of stalking and harassing women along with cheating in a myriad of ways. For decades.
Men who proclaim to be feminist can use that as a disguise to access areas in which they can do even more harm to vulnerable people.
It feels off to me when men carry on about being feminist and aren’t respectful of the boundaries- they are not women or have the lived experience of women but still insist on pushing to the front for acclamation for being ‘feminist’.
The sad thing is that, when the worst human beings chose some fake “guise” or mask to wear to distract people from their real characters, they’re usually not going to simply choose some bland, mediocre disguise but will probably try to mimic something fabulous and wonderful, heroic, kind and humanist, etc.
The point I’m trying to make is that the “real deal” models that fakers are pretending to be actually exist. This may be relatively rare and not always easy to find. But it would be very tragic to give into the imitation game that abusers play and resign to the idea that decent people don’t actually exist anywhere. They honestly do. So please don’t let abusers take control of your world view and make you totally lose faith.
Thank you- I just can’t even with men at the moment and I know that’s unfair and I’m projecting my own trauma.
I know my Dad, my boys and others I know haven’t and would never do such things .
Apologies to all you good guys out there.
I also had some good models around me but holy fuck the fakers are good at playing the imitation game. They even fool FBI profilers. They’re like viruses that mutate to bypass human immunity.
“Not all men have a secret sexual basement” but most do. I downloaded Minwalla’s article and discussed it with my partner, last year, the partner who assured me that “he wasn’t anything like my ex”. The one who said “I’m not that kind of guy, I don’t do those things, I would never do that to you”. The one who expressed horror when I told him about my ex’s mindfu*kery, my dad’s history of cheating the entire time my parents were married, and my brother’s similar pattern of cheating”, the one I felt “safe” with. Yeah, he’s the one who had side chicks that he was “deeply in love with, who “got him on a level no one else did” that he fu*cked every time he had an overnight trip the next state down, wrote long love letters to that expressed emotions he never expressed to me. No, you are EXACTLY like my ex, my dad, and my brother. The hypocrisy of men is EPIC. NG didn’t have a basement, he had an entire apartment complex of secrets. I hope he gets what is coming to him.
Oh no!
It’s the worst when you invest so much trust in someone and confide in them about things they use to hurt us in the end.
It gives them a roadmap to our vulnerabilities and they exploit them for all they’re worth.
Three things come to mind: 1) and please don’t be mad at me- whether you have fully reset what you are attracted to/if you see the signs. All of what he said were just words – anyone with cognitive empathy can do that (and narcs have better cognitive empathy than sane men). 2) I think porn/increasing societal sexualization etc. makes this view much more common. 3) I just read a book chapter on differences in men’s and women’s cheating. It argued that opportunity for many men is key – and that even the type of women who would cheat often especially when the kids are younger have much less opportunity and that conversely for men having a job that takes them away provides a good cover to get additional sex partners. While there is no part of me that thinks that all men cheat, men on average do want more sex partners than women do.
I’m sorry they did that to you! I’m so sorry that you’ve been betrayed and victimized several times now.
I think many abusers would like everyone to think that most people are like them. That what they do is the norm. That they’re in the majority and anyone who resists is outnumbered. So there’s no point in resisting or leaving them to escape the horror. So you might as well stay put and keep eating sand and shit sandwiches. Because there’s no hope of ever finding better company or support in this evil, meaningless world.
That level of nihilism is what makes people evil to begin with. Don’t buy it.
Pavlovich’s narrative makes me want to cry in rage. Taking advantage of a traumatized, disadvantaged and brutalized person like that is like going into a slave labor camp and offering a hungry child ten bucks to suck your dick– like those UN workers exposed for raping desperate and starving women and children in war zones. The “lack of confidence/self esteem” of the victim doesn’t provide an excuse for the perpetrator.
Absolutely. And I’m so angry at Palmer not paying her for her nannying to begin with… and then refusing to give a statement to police in Pavlovich’s defense!
YES! I have read a bit about this and I assume it’s because the rest of her abuse is so egregious that the lack of pay is not focused on. But these two rich celebs have a nanny that they aren’t paying? That stood out to me too.
Copy / Pasted from Vulture itself commenting on the Pavlovich story posted on the Vulture site:
“FYI, from the DHS website (before Gaetz asks Musk to take it down):
Human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion in exchange for labor, services, or a commercial sex act.
Causing someone under the age of 18 to engage in a commercial sex act, regardless of using force, fraud, or coercion is human traffick-
ing under U.S. law. Human traffickers use various forms of force, fraud, and coercion to control and exploit victims. These forms include
imposing of debt, fraudulent employment opportunities, false promises of love or a better life, psychological coercion, and violence or
threats of violence.
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/ht_101_one-pager_.pdf
”
Just fyi
“It’s a shame that society is so closed-minded in this respect — there are a lot of unhappy marriages out there.”
I am so sick of this narrative. if both parties consent, have at it. But don’t act like it makes them so much more enlightened than the restof us.
To imply that the answer to unhappy marriages is open marriage? It’s more just putting a band aid on a severed limb and pretending the problem is solved. My FW would have loved a one-sided open marriage where he could go around picking up a variety of new women while I stayed home doing the launbdr in the house that we would not have to sell, takingcare of the kids that we would not have to split custody with and he would not have to pay child support for. He did not want a divorce because he didn’t want to be that guy that left is familyfor a younger model, nor did he want the financial consequenxes. He didn’t want to lose me as an appliance. So sure, HE would have been happy with a one-sided open marriage, but would that have changed the fact that he didn’t want to be in this marriage? No. So when someone says that open marroages are the anwer to unhappy marriages, they aren’t. They justa way to avoid the messiness of a divorce. They are a way tostay in the BAD marriage.
I used to be an admirer of Gaiman–I liked his work and admired his public persona. But after hearing about his treatment of women, especially after reading that long New York magazine article, I feel nauseated whenever I see a photo of him or hear more detail about his despicable behavior. I didn’t know much about Amanda Palmer, but she sounds despicable, too. A pox on their houses!