35 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: On what women want
I think what this article is ignoring is that Pavlovich was a vulnerable person: abuse survivor, homeless, essentially no social network.
In my view, the author of the exposé doesn't suggest that Pavlovich's "consent" wasn't really consent because she was a woman; rather that Pavlovich was a vulnerable person taken advantage of by a powerful person and as such it was impossible for her to freely consent. I read the texts from her to Gaiman and see someone who has learned that survival means saying and doing whatever keeps your abuser happy.
The article conveniently leaves out these paragraphs from the exposé:
“I said ‘no.’ I said, ‘I’m not confident with my body,’” Pavlovich recalls. “He said, ‘It’s okay — it’s only me. Just relax. Just have a chat.’” She didn’t move. He looked at her again and said, “Don’t ruin the moment.” She did as instructed, and he began to stroke her feet. At that point, she recalls, she felt “a subtle terror.”
Gaiman asked her to sit on his lap. Pavlovich stammered out a few sentences: She was gay, she’d never had sex, she had been sexually abused by a 45-year-old man when she was 15. Gaiman continued to press. “The next part is really amorphous,” Pavlovich tells me. “But I can tell you that he put his fingers straight into my ass and tried to put his penis in my ass. And I said, ‘No, no.’ Then he tried to rub his penis between my breasts, and I said ‘no’ as well. Then he asked if he could come on my face, and I said ‘no’ but he did anyway. He said, ‘Call me ‘master,’ and I’ll come.’ He said, ‘Be a good girl. You’re a good little girl.’”
I'm not sure how this event in particular could be construed as anything other than rape. She said no multiple times. He continued regardless. This isn't a "terrible-but-consensual sexual experience" that Pavlovich tried to redefine "as actually rape" - it *is* actually rape.
Comment by freakwent at 20/01/2025 at 08:58 UTC
9 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Not to take sides, but he does dispute that description of events, and so we are back with the old situation we see so often.
So we fall back to #believeallwomen and hope none of them are ever wrong or lying, because it's the most sensible simple option. I don't really understand why we have abandoned the concept of a court as the appropriate venue for this sort of thing.