What Neil Gaiman Has In Common With E.L. James
The two authors reportedly share a strange and harmful idea about what "Domination and submission" means.
In 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James, Christian Grey grooms virgin college student Anastasia Steele into his world of his version of BDSM. Ana has precious little knowledge about sex--let alone about BDSM--and, for most of the book, seemingly no interest in being dominated in a BDSM context. Mostly she just likes/worships Christian, feels pity for him, and is easily manipulated due to her naivete.
According to an article published in New York magazine’s Vulture, Neil Gaiman is a violent sadist (in terms of the negative meaning of the word) who groomed a woman four decades younger than him and abused her. I was not a witness to any of the alleged acts, so I, like most people discussing the story, can only base my viewpoints on the claims made by the various parties. Gaiman denied that he raped or sexually assaulted anyone, but he didn’t exactly deny that he groomed the 22-year-old whom he hired to be his babysitter/nanny, Scarlett Pavlovich.
Some people are tying this story into conversations about BDSM. Some are using it to question whether women and men can even consent to certain BDSM acts if they go beyond the pale in the views of the person judging. But, according to Pavlovich’s account in the article, she did not even consent to much of what Gaiman allegedly did to her.
Other articles I read while preparing this essay
Neil Gaiman and the perils of BDSM. Is it possible to consent to sexual torture? by Kathleen Stock
"Mastergate" and navigating unfiltered BDSM dynamics by
Consent Isn't Enough: Neil Gaiman, BDSM, and the Dance with Darkness by
Like in 50 Shades of Grey, Pavlovich was not a masochist and not a submissive woman in BDSM terms, and she did not go seeking out that kind of an affair.
To be a masochist--as I am--is to derive sexual pleasure from suffering pain and/or humiliation at the hands of another you chose to submit to. If there is no sexual pleasure being derived and no submission by choice, then there is no “s” (of the “D/s” variety) and no “M,” and there is no “BDSM.” It’s just a violent man beating someone against their will.
Look at the first instance of alleged sexual acts that Gaiman allegedly did to his babysitter. Gaiman fed her wine while he remained sober, told her to take a bath outside, then approached her naked and allegedly penetrated her with his fingers against her will.
“I said ‘no.’ I said, ‘I’m not confident with my body,’” Pavlovich recalls. “He said, ‘It’s okay — it’s only me. Just relax. Just have a chat.’” She didn’t move. He looked at her again and said, “Don’t ruin the moment.” She did as instructed, and he began to stroke her feet. At that point, she recalls, she felt “a subtle terror.”
Gaiman asked her to sit on his lap. Pavlovich stammered out a few sentences: She was gay, she’d never had sex, she had been sexually abused by a 45-year-old man when she was 15. Gaiman continued to press. “The next part is really amorphous,” Pavlovich tells me. “But I can tell you that he put his fingers straight into my ass and tried to put his penis in my ass. And I said, ‘No, no.’ Then he tried to rub his penis between my breasts, and I said ‘no’ as well. Then he asked if he could come on my face, and I said ‘no’ but he did anyway. He said, ‘Call me ‘master,’ and I’ll come.’ He said, ‘Be a good girl. You’re a good little girl.’”
This is not some case where the alleged victim felt scared and did not say anything. Or where she engaged with her eyes and body in a way that a man could have misinterpreted. In the situation that is described in the article, she explicitly said no multiple times.
Look how the aggressor in this example is said to have responded: “[He] continued to press. ... He said, ‘Be a good girl.’”
It follows a pattern common to many vanilla and male-dom-ish romance stories where the man treats the woman as a default submissive. In this version of “BDSM,” any woman must be forced to be a submissive “good little girl.” Anastasia isn’t a submissive at heart, but she must act the part because that’s how Christian wants it.
It’s the same with the acts of Gaiman that are alleged in the article.
This part deals with allegations made by a fan, Kendra Stout, who met him in 2003.
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.”
There are women who actually do like to get beat with a belt--when they are in the mood and when they are with the person they give permission to. It gets one’s adrenaline going to be beat or whipped hard. I know. I have experienced being whipped to the point of having my skin cut by women I trust and consent to such acts with.
If I can find women willing to whip me, it shouldn’t be hard for Gaiman, an author with a much larger following, wealth, and one who could be choosing from a larger base of women with such proclivities, to find a submissive woman who likes to be whipped. But maybe some men don’t care about whether their partner feels satisfaction?
Even if a dominant man meets a woman who is new to BDSM or who wants to try it out to please him, he ought to begin from step one and only raise the stakes when she develops an understanding of her desires and limits.
There is another account of Gaiman allegedly beating Pavlovich with a belt out of nowhere and then raped her.
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. ... 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.”
That’s where the magazine also includes a questionable description of BDSM dynamics--or one that doesn’t fully explain how BDSM works.
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.
That could only have been part of a role play scene if the two of them were playing roles. That could only have been a part of consensual nonconsent if Gaiman had the consent of his partner. It does not say that Gaiman asked Pavlovich likes to be whipped by him in general, nor in that particular moment, nor whether she wanted to be his “slave”--he just kind of acts like any “good girl” should be his slave. In this hypothetical scenario, Gaiman would have defined the roles unilaterally without any buy-in or agreement.
Yet the magazine also states that “all of the women, at some point, played along, calling him their master, texting him afterward that they needed him, even writing that they loved and missed him,” a claim that some of Gaiman’s defenders are taking to mean they consented.
An after-the-fact text by someone feeling love or torment that she missed him does not negate the fact that, at the time it happened, she did not consent. Citing the ex post facto texts would be a bit like claiming that Korea agreed to be annexed by Japan in 1910 because Japan forced Korean leaders to sign a treaty.
In the version of events shared in Vulture, Scarlett Pavlovich did not give consent, and Neil Gaiman did not practice BDSM. To frame it as BDSM is to deny that sexual pleasure is a part of BDSM, and it is to deny the agency of the submissive (especially submissive women) in a true BDSM relationship.
Gross stuff, isn't it? I think there's just one hardwired domination/submission system in our brains.
However, just as neither physical arousal nor orgasm are consent, nor is going into compliant mode