Recently, I have been paying more attention to the news surrounding author Neil Gaiman. It is possible, if you have been reading my writing on this blog, you have seen my previous work where I directly addressed Louis CK and Aziz Ansari when they responded to allegations of sexual misconduct and assault. When Gaiman posted a blog post on 1/19/25 called "Breaking the Silence", I felt compelled to respond as I have in the past by considering the work with intimate partner violence offenders and ways in which I (and others) have worked toward educating on respectful and healthy relationships, and how to make repairs to harms that may have been caused, whether intentional or not.
One of the outcomes of completing my doctoral work is that I conducted qualitative research to construct a definition of privilege to be used to guide a more concrete approach to interrogating and understanding that concept more clearly (I am currently working to extract portions of my dissertation to publish an article on this). An element of this definition is that privilege allows an individual to be unaware of the experiences and perspectives of those who lack the advantages they possess.
Sadly, Mr. Gaiman seems to be hiding within his privilege and avoiding the possibility that others might have perspectives that vary from his own.
This is not uncommon for individuals who have caused harm to others. In fact, it is an incredibly simple and mindless response for most people who hold onto the privilege they may have through their backgrounds (which they have no control over, like the color of their skin), and for many who have gained privilege through position or gathering of resources (for which they have lost connection with times before they had such advantages). Examining his letter through the lens of how such a response would be reviewed in an intimate partner violence intervention group offers some utility, both for understanding Mr. Gaiman's response and for understanding work with IPV perpetrators.
At the start of his letter, he claims that he wanted to be respectful toward those who were, "sharing their stories" yet followed immediately with completely dismissing their stories as misinformation. I find it important to work towards operational definitions of larger concepts like "respect", and when I have done direct service work facilitating intimate partner violence intervention groups, a common operational definition I have used for "respect" is that "respect is the ability and willingness to care about other's thoughts, opinions, and emotions," and in this example, Mr. Gaiman is simply not evidencing care for his accuser's thoughts, opinions, emotions, or perspectives.
It would be one thing to care about his accuser's perspectives by admitting that each of them may have interpreted their sexual encounters differently than he did, and that in doing so it may have been possible that he caused them harms he did not recognize. In such a situation, when an individual realizes someone experienced harm by their behavior yet does not have the same perspective of the contexts behind those encounters, to work toward repairs requires careful reflection of the possible ways others may have interpreted situations both including the incident, but also any behavior that may have led up to that incident itself.
Privilege, as a concept, has attachments to the ability to make decisions for oneself and others, and there is typically a historical connection to how and in what ways those decisions have been made by specific groups and individuals. Neil Gaiman is undeniably rich and has a great deal of power and influence as a result of his accumulation of creative control, connections with other powerful and rich individuals, and access to largely influential platforms to discuss his ideas and perspectives. The women who have told stories of how they have been harmed by Mr. Gaiman, clearly have had much less power and privilege than Mr. Gaiman - and as such, he would have had to intentionally pay attention to their perspectives and cared about them in the moments, otherwise it would have been incredibly easy for him to push against and violate boundaries they may have had that he would not have cared about or had much reason to notice.
How would Mr. Gaiman have known these women were uncomfortable with his sexual advances? Would there have been a way for him to notice when he violated sexual boundaries? Does missing cues and failing to listen to these women excuse him from causing sexual harm? Does it excuse him and make him not responsible for sexual assault?
This is a common thread of thinking and thrust of innocence for intimate partner violence offenders. She didn't say anything, so she obviously wanted it. We had text messages later that clearly were sexual in nature and she could have responded to me then, so why didn't she? I can't be a mind reader!
Mr. Gaiman does make one small offering in his letter. He discusses that he was "emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been. I was obviously careless with people's hearts and feelings" yet in saying these things, he offers them not as much as a careful analysis of the way he harmed others, but rather as a way to discuss that he plans on working on himself and learn how to grow from this "experience" of what he completely portrays as being wrongfully accused. In other words, an apology with no apology in it whatsoever.
I personally mourn that he has ended up being someone different than what he appeared. I have very much enjoyed his work, and have been careful to keep the complexities of these allegations as things that need to be explored in more depth. Unfortunately, his letter today simply fits into the patterns I have heard and observed over more than 25 years of my work with privileged, abusive, violent, controlling, and hurtful people.
His letter does nothing to "break the silence" but rather only contributes to the noise that often misses the deeper points of how privileged ignorance is no excuse for causing harm and pain in others.
