Interesting Links for 05-07-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Neil Gaiman has been accused of sexual assault

(tags:neilgaiman assault )

2. Aaand here's a song that Amanda Palmer wrote which might hint at a bit of a pattern with Neil Gaiman

(tags:neilgaiman AmandaPalmer relationships lyrics )

3. How 14 years of Tory government has affected LGBT rights

(tags:lgbt Conservatives )

4. Humans are part of the ecosystem (or: The way to save the lemurs was by vaccinating the chickens)

(tags:Humans nature Madagascar chicken vaccination )

Comments

[gingicat]

One thing I've realized over the years is that it's easy to think something is consensual at the time and then look back and go "actually, that was really fucked up." So I believe women in those situations.

Unfortunately those terrible experiences made it hard to trust certain good-faith requests which turned out to be pretty good experiences.

[andrewducker]

Yeah. I'm not convinced that Neil is actually evil here.

But I do think he's being careless and damaging.

[ninetydegrees]

One of the women said she said no and he still went with it anyway. That's more than being "careless" and "damaging". That's either not understanding what consent means, which I find hard to believe, or not really caring about your partner's consent. Let's not find him excuses, please. He's already doing it on his own according to what the article reported.

[andrewducker]

You're right. I somehow blanked on "In one incident, she claims that Gaiman penetrated her despite her asking him not to, as she was suffering from a painful infection at the time." Which is definitively wrong.

[gingicat]

Exactly. A good apology is never a bad idea.

[bens_dad]

1. He had digital penetration with the Nanny.
I need to know more about the state of his relationship with the child(ren)'s mother at the time, but that is cause for concern.

[andrewducker]

He had an open relationship with Amanda Palmer.

[adrian_turtle]

The nanny was his employee. She was 20, and he was about 60. That means their relationship was covered with red flags from the beginning, just because there was so much risk of abuse and exploitation. If it was a furtive relationship, that would have made it even higher risk, but even if the whole thing was open and his partner was ok with it, it would still have been well into the Bad Idea Zone. But the relationship might have been a bad idea, yet not criminal.

The specific action appears to have been criminal. If she refused to have sex on one occasion and he forced her, it doesn't matter how many other times she might have had consensual sex with him. (Come to think of it, I don't know how NZ law regards this. I know almost nothing about NZ law.) I'll just say it would have been criminal if he'd done it here.

[gingicat]

Agreed.

[bens_dad]

4. Tumblr wont let me in*.
Is this about Newcastle disease ?

* OK, I wont create an ID, so it is my choice ...

[andrewducker]

When I was in vet school I went to this one lecture that I will never forget. Various clubs would have different guest lecturers come in to talk about relevant topics and since I was in the Wildlife Disease Association club I naturally attended all the wildlife and conservation discussions. Well on this particular occasion, the speakers started off telling us they had been working on a project involving the conservation of lemurs in Madagascar. Lemurs exist only in Madagascar, and they are in real trouble; they’re considered the most endangered group of mammals on Earth. This team of veterinarians was initially assembled to address threats to lemur health and work on conservation solutions to try and save as many lemur species from extinction as possible. As they explored the most present dangers to lemurs they found that although habitat loss was the primary problem for these vulnerable animals, predation by humans was a significant cause of losses as well. The vets realized it was crucial for the hunting of lemurs by native people to stop, but of course this is not so simple a problem.

The local Malagasy people are dealing with extreme poverty and food insecurity, with nearly half of children under five years old suffering from chronic malnutrition. The local people have always subsisted on hunting wildlife for food, and as Madagascar’s wildlife population declines, the people who rely on so-called bushmeat to survive are struggling more and more. People are literally starving.

Our conservation team thought about this a lot. They had initially intended to focus efforts on education but came to understand that this is not an issue arising from a lack of knowledge. For these people it is a question of survival. It doesn’t matter how many times a foreigner tells you not to eat an animal you’ve hunted your entire life, if your child is starving you are going to do everything in your power to keep your family alive.

So the vets changed course. Rather than focus efforts on simply teaching people about lemurs, they decided to try and use veterinary medicine to reduce the underlying issue of food insecurity. They supposed that if a reliable protein source could be introduced for the people who needed it, the dependence on meat from wildlife would greatly decrease. So they got to work establishing new flocks of chickens in the most at-risk communities, and also initiated an aggressive vaccination program for Newcastle disease (an infectious illness of poultry that is of particular concern in this area). They worked with over 600 households to ensure appropriate husbandry and vaccination for every flock, and soon found these communities were being transformed by the introduction of a steady protein source. Families with a healthy flock of chickens were far less likely to hunt wild animals like lemurs, and fewer kids went hungry. Thats what we call a win-win situation.

This chicken vaccine program became just one small part of an amazing conservation outreach initiative in Madagascar that puts local people at the center of everything they do. Helping these vulnerable communities of people helps similarly vulnerable wildlife, always. If we go into a country guns-blazing with that fire for conservation in our hearts and a plan to save native animals, we simply cannot ignore the humans who live around them. Doing so is counterintuitive to creating an effective plan because whether we recognize it or not, humans and animals are inextricably linked in many ways. A true conservation success story is one that doesn’t leave needy humans in its wake, and that is why I think this particular story has stuck with me for so long.

[bens_dad]

Thanks.

I wonder how much of the current poverty in Madagascar comes from "silly" things like that.

(There is of course the potential risk of chicken farming becoming so big that it causes significant habitat loss. I am sort of surprised that the poor *have* land to rear chickens; I'd assumed that most of the problem was that the people had been moved off of the land.)

[andrewducker]

It looks like their poverty is both intense and multidimensional. Not least because until 20 years ago there was no decent schooling. I can't see clearly where most of them live, but there's still a huge amount of agriculture going on.

[calimac]

This reminds me of how the recent US court decision allowing the criminalization of homelessness is not going to solve homelessness, and various people pleading for an attack on the root causes of homelessness (mostly brutal economics) instead.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely.

"If we make homelessness illegal then they'll have to stop being homeless!" is the kind of solution that seems so obviously ridiculous to me.

[magedragonfire]

It is ridiculous, but the people making these laws aren't even thinking of that. They're just imagining the big ol' kickbacks they're going to get from the USian for-profit prison industry - because, of course, slavery there is legal if it's felons who're enslaved.

[calimac]

Yep. It's actually engrossed in the Constitution, 13th Amendment:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States ..."

[wenchpixie]

I came to comment on the Gaiman thing, and had the tab open for a couple of days because I don't know what I think quite yet, so I'll hang fire on saying anything, but it means I got to read this, and it's brilliant. Solving the problem that's actually there, not just the assumed problem.

[andrewducker]

I'm glad you left the tab open :-)

I too am waiting. I do not think the silence can last forever.

[vivdunstan]

Re 1 I haven't mentioned it elsewhere myself. But as expected as a long term Gaiman fan I have very complicated views on this. And yup, I'm basically extremely disappointed. I also wonder what its implications - still to see how things fall out - will be for the TV series of Sandman and especially Good Omens 3. The latter would seem to be to be in particular peril.

[calimac]

That last point makes me wonder: What would Pratchett say about all this?

[andrewducker]

I can't imagine he'd be anything other than aghast.

Edit: but I don't know what *he* was really like. So maybe I'm idealising there too!

[vivdunstan]

Absolutely.

[greenwoodside]

1 & 2. Oh dear. I've enjoyed some of Gaiman's work (The Graveyard Book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane), never managed to get into Sandman, and am very fond of Good Omens (book and TV) though I think particularly because in those works he's paired with a writer with a strong comic sensibility.

He has been setting off my 'too good to be true' instincts, largely given his cult on Tumblr.

At the same time, this makes me think back to the Chris Avellone accusations in 2020. In that case, I did believe it; I didn't want to because I've liked his writing for ages and he's been involved in games that are important to me, but I also knew that his profile was a near perfect match for someone who might get stuck on their own ego and hurt someone while drunk. (He was a big name games writer, had fallen out with colleagues and went on record saying some very unprofessional stuff about them, and very much seemed to enjoy his reputation and the attention that went with it.)

And actually I was wrong. The accusations were completely retracted. I assume not because they weren't provable, but because they weren't true. I admit I don't know enough about Californian libel law to be sure.

In Gaiman's case...I guess we'll never know exactly what happened. The circumstances are deeply skeevy though not in themselves criminal. Du lieber Gott, Neil, your child's 20-year old nanny? Seriously?

[greenwoodside]

The above sounds a bit mean-spirited now I think about it in relation to his work. His Doctor Who scripts in the Moffat era were great, and American Gods had a lot of style. I also love his writing about the late Diana Wynne Jones -- it's always touched me to see a male writer discussing the work of a woman, especially a woman in working in a low-brow/unchic genre, with admiration and understanding.

[greenwoodside]

Re: "I guess we'll never know..."

Though the text messages sound as if they could be indicative.