Lila Shapiro on the Allegations Against Neil Gaiman

A weekly behind-the-scenes dive into everything interesting, dynamic, strange, and wonderful happening in literary culture—featuring Lit Hub staff, columnists, and special guests! Hosted by Drew Broussard.

On January 13, New York published a story by Lila Shapiro detailing allegations of sexual assault against fantasy author Neil Gaiman. (TW: the piece is at times graphic and should be approached with care.) Gaiman has denied the allegations and claimed that the encounters were consensual.

It’s an upsetting story for so many reasons, and an important one. So, in a special episode of the show, Drew sat down with Lila Shapiro to talk about writing these kinds of stories, what they mean to communities across the world, and how to address the power imbalance between fans and their idols.

* “There is No Safe Word” by Lila Shapiro for New York Magazine

* Neil Gaiman’s response

* Below the break, a transcript of Drew’s closing remarks.

A transcript of the podcast can be found here.

From the episode:

Drew Broussard:  I don’t think that this story is over either. Certainly it is not over for the women who were contacted in this piece, for the women who have leveled these allegations, and I know I speak for the entire Lit Hub staff, when I say that our thoughts are with these women who’ve spoken up at frankly, considerable danger to themselves. It is not an easy thing to publicly confront someone, particularly an an alleged predator. Our thoughts are also with every reader out there who feels hurt, sad, betrayed, angry—if it wasn’t already clear. I count myself among those readers.

And it is important to note that you will see people taking this opportunity to score a cheap point by saying things like, “oh, well I never liked his work anyway,” “Oh, I have always thought he was a bad writer.”

If that’s your response in a moment like this, with all due respect, keep it to yourself.

It is an incredible thing in this world to respond to a piece of art. And it is truly painful to realize that anyone in your life, be it somebody who you knew super duper well, somebody who you knew just a little bit, somebody who you only knew through social media or through their works to discover that that person is not the person who you thought that they were. Allegedly.

That’s a painful thing and no matter how you are affected by this, if you are affected by this, that’s valid, and it’s okay to feel that way. I needed to hear that over the course of the last two weeks, multiple times, and just in case you needed to hear it too, I wanted to say it.

I have also been thinking in the days since recording this conversation a lot about something that Lila said towards the end there, about this ccosystem that we have in place that raises up gods and allows this sort of worship to happen. I have participated in it in my life and over I would say probably the last decade or so, I have been trying to divest from that system to remember that these are all just people, too.

And don’t get me wrong, it is important, even crucial, to go and tell the writers, the creators, the people whose work that you love, that you love it, that you are thankful for it. It is always a good idea to do that. It is always a good idea if you feel so moved to send a little note to somebody’s contact form on their website or tag somebody on Blue Sky or whatever social media platform you’re on and just be like, “Hey, I really loved this thing. It meant a lot to me. Thank you for it.”

This ecosystem, for lack of a better word, is not the fault of anyone who loved a piece of work, who loved it so much that they got tattoos or commissioned art that they wrote fan fiction, did cosplay. It is the fault of those who would (allegedly) take advantage of those interactions, who take advantage of people who thought that they would be safe. And I think it is worth reexamining the structures that the literary world—the genre and speculative fiction and fandom worlds inside of that, certainly—but the literary world in general has put these structures into place, and I am not necessarily saying that we need to change them all to tear them all down and build something new, we could certainly, and maybe we will. But at the very least, we need to start reexamining these structures as individuals and as a collective, as a community.

There’s a lot of shit going on in the world right now, to put it mildly. And the last thing any of us needed was another thing to think about, another thing to worry about. Another aspect of community that we need to repair and shore up and take care of. But here it is.

There is no room in this community, or at least there shouldn’t be any room, there is no room in this community for sexual predators, for those who would abuse the power, the gift, frankly, that they have of our attention.

And so yes, there are other writers out there and. I am overjoyed to see so many people discovering so many of them right now.

It’s okay to be excited about what’s coming, what you’re discovering, and it is okay to be sad about what has happened, what maybe you are leaving behind.

You will find that you are not the only one experiencing whatever, sadness, anger, any feeling that you might be feeling. You’re not the only one experiencing it. We are all, I’ll say it again, in it together.

The Lit Hub Podcast is a production of Lit Hub Radio and is available wherever you get your podcasts; music by Dani Lencioni of Evelyn; Engineering and production by Stardust House