Power on the Scales

I want to expand a bit on a topic I broached yesterday, that of how the term "power imbalance" tends to be used in modern discourse. Yesterday, I was talking about a potential romantic relationship between a man in his 60s and a woman in her 20s. I guess I had the recent sexual assault/abuse allegations against Neil Gaiman in mind. One comment on the articles about Gaiman I read in various forms was something like, "There's no reason a girl in her twenties would have sex with a man in his 60s unless it's an abuse of power." Power in this case meaning economic and/or celebrity.

Yeah, it's real. Such power does exist and it's fundamental to how the world functions. Celebrities and the economically well off do bear a responsibility--"With great power comes great responsibility" is certainly true. I remember in the late '90s when I was on BowieNet, David Bowie used to participate on the message boards. Once there was this asshole who went on a rant about how David Bowie was making himself irrelevant by working on a collaboration with Pete Townsend because Townsend was an old man with little cultural cache. Bowie, who was always very sensitive to ageism, replied very angrily, even insulting the original poster. And as much as I thought that guy was an asshole, I felt kind of bad for him. Because it's not some random person on the internet who rebuked him, it was David Bowie. One word from Bowie that would be a tap from anyone else would be like rocket grenade. I think Bowie realised this (or someone like Cherry Vanilla, in case Bowie was having a ghostwriter participating on message boards, which I actually doubt for various reasons) because he posted an apology a few days later.

Here in Japan, the age of consent is 13 years old and while local laws and taboos supposedly make relationships between old men and young girls rare, I have reason to believe many girls go right from junior high school to marriage with certain rich old men. I suppose I don't know enough about these relationships to truly criticise them, but I know a lot of families are poor and anxious about what kind of a future their children will have. Guaranteed financial security for life may make it seem like not such a bad deal, particularly in a country where marriage often seems to be primarily a financial relationship. All the same, knowing from experience working with them how truly 15 year old girls are still children, it makes me sad.

But there are two sides to the "power imbalance" concept. There's the power someone has, and there's the power he's perceived as having. How much responsibility does he have for how he's perceived? You have to remember that powerful people are also just people who have needs and imperfections. Should Tom Cruise only date women of his age and celebrity stature? How many options could he truly have then?

It's a little different now that celebrities have so much constant exposure on the internet but there's still a lingering culture of the "Celebrity God". I know people have vague but fervent ideas of how contact with a celebrity will result somehow in a level of financial security and validation.

And then I think that can turn sour. When meeting a celebrity, and even being in that celebrity's life so far as to actually become intimate with him doesn't bring those hazy rewards one expects, it can be a little depressing. In my first casual encounters with celebrities, I always found it a little depressing. Here's this great person who means so much to me and then this moment of actually meeting them is so fleeting and insubstantial. I had to think about it and go through the logical steps of realising these are people. After that, I could have reasonable conversations with them, even rewarding conversations.

I think people underestimate how much the shitty economy has to do with some of these accusations of sexual assault that come years after they allegedly took place. There are a lot of people who are rapidly descending economic strata and they're panicking. Then, a little careful incubation from some slightly unscrupulous media people and a golden goose is born, if a sad and sickly one.

The coverage of Gaiman's allegations seem particularly suspect. Many of the media outlets who report on Gaiman and on abuse allegations have been silent. The "talk" page on Gaiman's Wikipedia entry is fascinating. It has a long, ongoing debate on whether or not to include mention of the allegations at all. The people who advocated including it seem to have finally won now that there are four women from two different podcasts. But the reluctance for many people to report on it is striking, I suspect both for Gaiman's good reputation going decades back specifically as an advocate for victims of abuse as well as the clearly biased tone of the publications covering the allegations.

It looks like the original exclusive source, Tortoise Media, got statements from Gaiman by misleading him, too. I think he gave statements to someone he thought he could trust. This paragraph is particularly interesting:

Tortoise understands that he [Gaiman] believes K’s allegations are motivated by her regret over their relationship and that Scarlett was suffering from a condition associated with false memories at the time of her relationship with him, a claim which is not supported by her medical records and medical history.

Notice how carefully Tortoise avoids directly quoting Gaiman. I find it striking that Tortoise assumes a medical condition is necessary for the creation of false memories. Psychological research from the time of Sigmund Freud has long established the phenomenon of false memories of even important events as a part of the normal human cognitive experience, long before Kurosawa made Rashomon.

Seeing how biased coverage continues to be is kind of sickening, particularly as I think Gaiman is a guy who's always valued his privacy. It's unfortunate that I can't say for sure he's innocent. Even if he is, this is something that'll change the course of his career and a whole lot of people connected to him. And that, I suspect, was the idea.