Seeing talk again about Neil Gaiman as more people become aware of his abuses, and reminded of something I wrote earlier that absolutely relates.
The short of it is, as always, we want to simply repaint people as inhuman monsters the moment we find out behaviors like this. We want them to be "them" not "us", because if they're regular people who do awful things then all of "us" can be awful and I can't conveniently ignore the awful things people do around me.
Likewise, in the case of artists, there's a tendency to immediately see all of their art as complete trash. Not just tainted, but as being poor quality to begin with. Sometimes there's validity when it was rose-colored glasses before (ie. JKR's blatant bigotry throughout her writing that we glossed over mostly because we were kids and not paying attention), but often it's not based in the actual quality and experience of the work itself... just the tainted associations around it.
I'm not suggesting you should ignore the artist and just "get over yourself" or anything like that. I'm saying it's important to not automatically associate good artist with good person.
Because it's such a clear and easy example I love to point out Joss Whedon with this. His good stuff doesn't stop being good, it just becomes unenjoyable because you see him reflected in it. And what I think happens in both Joss Whedon's case and Neil Gaiman's is that their awfulness contributed to the quality, it didn't just fly under the radar.
In the case of Whedon, it's because his fetish was "breaking strong women", to fulfill that fetish in his writing that meant he had to write strong women. Because he so often wrote series, it mean he also had to write stories of them recovering their strength after being broken (so he could ultimately break them again). We connected with the strength of these women, that's what often made his stories so good and he hid behind that.
Dismissing all of that because it's come out that he's awful means we're not paying attention to how other artists show themselves, or how seemingly positive people might just be awful people with the mirror opposite abuses to the positives being celebrated.
foggyminds.com/display/c6ef095…
Why You Must Keep The Monsters Human
*(Reposting because my node crashed and lost all my posts and I want to keep this one pinned)*I've been mulling over making this post for a little bit, but I think it's really **really** important.
It's critically important that you remember and acknowledge the humanity of monsters. Not for their benefit, but for *everyone else's* benefit.
When someone commits a monstrous act or shares a monstrous belief, we want to think of them as an inherently vile and non-human thing.
But doing so shields and protects other monsters.
When you make a Nazi, or any kind of abuser, into a one-dimensional monster. When you make their whole existence *center* on this monstrous act or belief... you make it hard to see their humanity. And that's the point, you don't *want* to see their humanity.
*** You Don't Want To Believe That Someone You Know And Trust (Maybe Even Love) Is Capable Of Such Atrocity. ***
And that's the problem. Because when you reject their humanity, that humanity becomes their shield. Your friend Bob can't possibly be a Nazi or a child-abuser, he's such a loving father and he helped you move!
Because you see their humanity, you can't possibly imagine them as monsters because the monsters have no humanity in your eyes.
There's a reason that when serial killers get caught their neighbors say they couldn't imagine them doing such things.
So don't ignore their humanity, keep it in your mind... so the next one can't use it as a shield.
