I like your nuanced take in this and I also enjoyed your book.
I’ve followed this story closely. If the allegations are true, then a few things come up for me about Scarlett.
Although not homeless at the time of taking the babysitting job, around a year before (I think), she had been homeless for two weeks, had slept on the beach and found it traumatic. She couldn’t bear the thought of returning to that, as it would also have put her at risk of sexual assault.
Additionally, she grew up in a highly abusive home and was estranged from her parents. This gave her no safe place to land in life. Perhaps more importantly, it did not create the psychological foundations for her to make healthy emotional decisions or correctly interpret boundary violations. Instead, “the world is unsafe” is probably a feeling that had been normalised for her.
While she was indeed 22 and not a teen, due to her trauma background (she also endured sexual abuse as a teenager), there may have been some arrested emotional development, alongside a sense that Gaiman’s coercive behaviour was somehow “normal”. It can take people decades to come out of the fog of a childhood of abuse. I believe her confused and confusing behaviour was an expression of that “foggy-ness”.
Also, if Gaiman is indeed a predator, her vulnerability made her exactly the kind of victim he would pick out.
Lastly, I can understand why she didn’t come out of the bath and run away. I think the Freeze and Fawn response were both at play. She was also naked and in a remote house with a bigger, stronger man - and at nighttime too. It really is a terrifying scenario.
As someone who has repeatedly experienced economic precariousness, I can understand Scarlett’s “I’ve nowhere else to go” mentality. I’ve been stuck in very difficult living situations (nothing nearly as extreme as her story, thankfully) for those reasons. It’s hard to convey the fear and disorientation that those situations create. It’s hard to also convey the shame and secrecy - sure, you could call a friend for help, but that’s much, much harder than it sounds.
Her other options - well, coach surfing brings its own risks. At the end of the day, you’re cohabiting with stranger after stranger. It’s also not clear that she owned a car she could sleep in - I got the impression that she didn’t.
I think, when entering Gaiman’s house, she found herself in the fog of abuse again, without having yet developed the emotional skills needed to navigate this.
I hope you don’t mind my two cents! Like I said, I’m a fan of your writing and perspectives. I also think you bring up some extremely valid points in this article.
I'm not unsympathetic to the conditions that made it difficult for her to initially escape, which is why I want society to stop perpetuating them. But I find the fact that she went back after day one (and kept sending sexual texts) much harder to explain with trauma. Women can have screwed up priorities, too.
Or we could spare the circle-squaring and admit the obvious: Scarlett lied about rape for clout, just like Amber Heard.
Do you really think Neil Gaiman anally raping and ejaculating over a 22-year-old lesbian virgin friend of his estranged wife—all in an antique single-person bathtub within 45 minutes of meeting, and thinking it was totes cool—is more likely than her making it up?
I mean, everybody's talking about her victimhood and what an asshole he is.
Nearly no one is talking about why a virgin lesbian fed her own shit and puke off Neil’s dick would write breathless confessions of the HUNGER he kindled in her.
It's such a painful story to read, especially as someone who liked some of NG's works. I'm struggling, as a fan of Amanda Palmer, to figure out what she knew and when.
I saw her really, really struggling early in her New Zealand stay, when it turned out Neil had broken quarantine and flown to the isle of Skye (a place he loved and she hated) but the events with Scarlet were after that, when they had decided to try to be near each other for the sake of their son. Some things she said to her Patrons in 2022 make a lot more sense now, but it's still disorienting and confusing.
Likewise, I’m finding it hard to make sense of her role in this. Was she duped and gaslighted by him? Or an enabler? Or something more complex and in-between? Unfortunately she can’t tell her side of the story due to divorce proceedings and a custody battle for their son.
I don't like legislation based on "consent". It seems to strengthen a male-biased, contractual, pornified conception of "sex". Acts of sexual violence and extreme degradation should be criminalised regardless of "consent". (The police don't have to prioritise raiding BDSM dungeons but at least "tops" should be aware they can be reported.)
I think this is a good idea. Healthy partners doing safe things wouldn't be stopped, but people pushing the limits with people they don't know well would have to take extreme caution.
I don’t have a dog in this particular fight — I don’t want to eat shit or vomit, and the idea of making a woman do that is about as far from being arousing as anything I could imagine. But you do know that if we say certain BDSM activities cannot be consented to, that will hit the gay male community particularly hard? I mean, in addition to wearing women’s clothes, one Biden official was a public spokesperson for “puppy play.”
If the state can say that certain sex acts are degrading to the extent that they can be banned, there is no principled reason the state can’t ban sodomy.
That's a slippery slope argument that could as well be applied to the fine line between theft, fraud and gifts. All I'm asking is that acts of violent assault and coercive control etc are still criminalized even in a "sexual" and "consensual" context. As it is, it's often easier to get away with murder/manslaughter when calling it sex gone wrong. It should be possible to legally distinguish between sexual acts that can give both parties physical pleasure (and which can and should also be illegal if non-consensual, involving minors, etc) and non-sexual acts of violence, domination and humiliation that happen to be some people's sexual kink (and which are probably better left as fantasies and not acted out even if one can find a "willing" partner).
And yes, all or most legislation against crime would hit men harder as the male "community" tend to commit more crime. 🙂
"We raise boys to get a skill, and women to marry." For the greater part of human history, we raised boys to provide resources and gather social capital preparatory to marriage. Societies which bottleneck this process for young males tend to dissolve in civil strife (see Syria). Western societies "freed" the male from obligation to provide resources, or accrue social capital, in order to have sex. Sex is now an independent contractual arrangement between two or more parties. Everyone is litigating sex now instead of having it. Sadists like Gaiman will always set the rules of their own sexual satisfaction -- closing the contract with the other party is intrinsic to the eros of the sadist. The extent of their success is a function of their social capital. Gaiman apparently spent decades accruing social and real capital, including his wife, before he unleashed his inner sadist on other women.
It's a valid point. I've considered intergenerational transfer of capital along female lines of inheritance as a science fiction premise. The story is still cooking.
Pavlovich was 22 when she met Palmer in 2020, which makes her 24 when she met Gaiman. I think New York were a bit deceptive with this and wanted to report the youngest age possible that would be relevant to the story.
I like your nuanced take in this and I also enjoyed your book.
I’ve followed this story closely. If the allegations are true, then a few things come up for me about Scarlett.
Although not homeless at the time of taking the babysitting job, around a year before (I think), she had been homeless for two weeks, had slept on the beach and found it traumatic. She couldn’t bear the thought of returning to that, as it would also have put her at risk of sexual assault.
Additionally, she grew up in a highly abusive home and was estranged from her parents. This gave her no safe place to land in life. Perhaps more importantly, it did not create the psychological foundations for her to make healthy emotional decisions or correctly interpret boundary violations. Instead, “the world is unsafe” is probably a feeling that had been normalised for her.
While she was indeed 22 and not a teen, due to her trauma background (she also endured sexual abuse as a teenager), there may have been some arrested emotional development, alongside a sense that Gaiman’s coercive behaviour was somehow “normal”. It can take people decades to come out of the fog of a childhood of abuse. I believe her confused and confusing behaviour was an expression of that “foggy-ness”.
Also, if Gaiman is indeed a predator, her vulnerability made her exactly the kind of victim he would pick out.
Lastly, I can understand why she didn’t come out of the bath and run away. I think the Freeze and Fawn response were both at play. She was also naked and in a remote house with a bigger, stronger man - and at nighttime too. It really is a terrifying scenario.
As someone who has repeatedly experienced economic precariousness, I can understand Scarlett’s “I’ve nowhere else to go” mentality. I’ve been stuck in very difficult living situations (nothing nearly as extreme as her story, thankfully) for those reasons. It’s hard to convey the fear and disorientation that those situations create. It’s hard to also convey the shame and secrecy - sure, you could call a friend for help, but that’s much, much harder than it sounds.
Her other options - well, coach surfing brings its own risks. At the end of the day, you’re cohabiting with stranger after stranger. It’s also not clear that she owned a car she could sleep in - I got the impression that she didn’t.
I think, when entering Gaiman’s house, she found herself in the fog of abuse again, without having yet developed the emotional skills needed to navigate this.
I hope you don’t mind my two cents! Like I said, I’m a fan of your writing and perspectives. I also think you bring up some extremely valid points in this article.
I'm not unsympathetic to the conditions that made it difficult for her to initially escape, which is why I want society to stop perpetuating them. But I find the fact that she went back after day one (and kept sending sexual texts) much harder to explain with trauma. Women can have screwed up priorities, too.
Fair points.
Or we could spare the circle-squaring and admit the obvious: Scarlett lied about rape for clout, just like Amber Heard.
Do you really think Neil Gaiman anally raping and ejaculating over a 22-year-old lesbian virgin friend of his estranged wife—all in an antique single-person bathtub within 45 minutes of meeting, and thinking it was totes cool—is more likely than her making it up?
Nothing gets you those adoring fans like admitting to eating vomit.
I mean, everybody's talking about her victimhood and what an asshole he is.
Nearly no one is talking about why a virgin lesbian fed her own shit and puke off Neil’s dick would write breathless confessions of the HUNGER he kindled in her.
It's such a painful story to read, especially as someone who liked some of NG's works. I'm struggling, as a fan of Amanda Palmer, to figure out what she knew and when.
I saw her really, really struggling early in her New Zealand stay, when it turned out Neil had broken quarantine and flown to the isle of Skye (a place he loved and she hated) but the events with Scarlet were after that, when they had decided to try to be near each other for the sake of their son. Some things she said to her Patrons in 2022 make a lot more sense now, but it's still disorienting and confusing.
According to the podcast, when Scarlett told her, she said Scarlet was the 14th woman to come to her with such a story.
Gotta wonder how many were Scarlett’s alts...
Likewise, I’m finding it hard to make sense of her role in this. Was she duped and gaslighted by him? Or an enabler? Or something more complex and in-between? Unfortunately she can’t tell her side of the story due to divorce proceedings and a custody battle for their son.
I don't like legislation based on "consent". It seems to strengthen a male-biased, contractual, pornified conception of "sex". Acts of sexual violence and extreme degradation should be criminalised regardless of "consent". (The police don't have to prioritise raiding BDSM dungeons but at least "tops" should be aware they can be reported.)
I think this is a good idea. Healthy partners doing safe things wouldn't be stopped, but people pushing the limits with people they don't know well would have to take extreme caution.
I don’t have a dog in this particular fight — I don’t want to eat shit or vomit, and the idea of making a woman do that is about as far from being arousing as anything I could imagine. But you do know that if we say certain BDSM activities cannot be consented to, that will hit the gay male community particularly hard? I mean, in addition to wearing women’s clothes, one Biden official was a public spokesperson for “puppy play.”
If the state can say that certain sex acts are degrading to the extent that they can be banned, there is no principled reason the state can’t ban sodomy.
People of all stripes are welcome to not report each other to the authorities if they believe the sex is going well.
That's a slippery slope argument that could as well be applied to the fine line between theft, fraud and gifts. All I'm asking is that acts of violent assault and coercive control etc are still criminalized even in a "sexual" and "consensual" context. As it is, it's often easier to get away with murder/manslaughter when calling it sex gone wrong. It should be possible to legally distinguish between sexual acts that can give both parties physical pleasure (and which can and should also be illegal if non-consensual, involving minors, etc) and non-sexual acts of violence, domination and humiliation that happen to be some people's sexual kink (and which are probably better left as fantasies and not acted out even if one can find a "willing" partner).
And yes, all or most legislation against crime would hit men harder as the male "community" tend to commit more crime. 🙂
We normalize Sadism for every other man (and boy and teen). Why not Neil Gaiman? All hail the pornification of society
You got the button-eyed Neil Gaiman!
I hacked it with a prompt that didn't mention Gaiman, then buttoned his eyes myself.
"We raise boys to get a skill, and women to marry." For the greater part of human history, we raised boys to provide resources and gather social capital preparatory to marriage. Societies which bottleneck this process for young males tend to dissolve in civil strife (see Syria). Western societies "freed" the male from obligation to provide resources, or accrue social capital, in order to have sex. Sex is now an independent contractual arrangement between two or more parties. Everyone is litigating sex now instead of having it. Sadists like Gaiman will always set the rules of their own sexual satisfaction -- closing the contract with the other party is intrinsic to the eros of the sadist. The extent of their success is a function of their social capital. Gaiman apparently spent decades accruing social and real capital, including his wife, before he unleashed his inner sadist on other women.
I don't mean to imply that men shouldnt acquire capital. Only that women should acquire it, too.
It's a valid point. I've considered intergenerational transfer of capital along female lines of inheritance as a science fiction premise. The story is still cooking.
Pavlovich was 22 when she met Palmer in 2020, which makes her 24 when she met Gaiman. I think New York were a bit deceptive with this and wanted to report the youngest age possible that would be relevant to the story.
Yeah, I have since noticed inconsistent reporting on that. Thanks.