From the Quarantine Archives:
Castlevania Season 4 dropped this weekend. I thought about starting it last night, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. During promo season for the show, I hopped onto a comment thread and saw that Warren Ellis had been called out for disrespectful and predatory sexual behavior with coworkers and fans.
And when I did a google on the allegations, all the headlines looked like this…
I mean, it doesn’t come as a surprise right? Not with that hat, not with that fucking beard. Like, I guess we all should have known… But I had hoped that he wasn’t one of the bad ones…
Ever since #MeToo took off, I’ve been looking around at the men I find inspiring, and just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it fucking sucks. It hurts every time I hear about the harm they caused other people, other women. I believe survivors, and I don’t like to split hairs about how “bad” the behavior was. Violence against women is all part of the same machine of patriarchy and oppression.
When the man responsible is a writer, director, person who has inspired and shaped my creativity, there’s an added layer of losing something that was dear to me. The stories and ideas that shaped my daydreams and writing now feel tainted.
I’ve had conversations with girlfriends of mine about how to process allegations about men we admired, and I’d like to talk about how it’s going. *obvious trigger warning* I’m going to be really salty in this piece. Also, men are not the sole perpetrators of sexual violence, but I am only going to be focusing on men in the entertainment/creative industries with allegations.
The first one for me was Louis C.K. I was going through some serious depression as I finished college, and Louis’ comedy was one of the few things that felt comforting during that time. He made jokes about the kind of depression I was experiencing- the super unglamorous sitting on the couch, eating unhealthy food in sweatpants kind of depression (or just another normal day in the pandemic). I had never seen someone describe that openly. And it made me feel less alone.
When the allegations against Louis came out, I talked with a girlfriend about how much his stand up had meant to me. She had a similar experience. His comedy had been a life raft in a time when we were at our lowest.
But fuck him. I’m not interested in giving him a second chance or letting him have a comeback. I can’t listen to his comedy anymore knowing that he thought it was okay to just take his dick out whenever he wanted.
And Warren Ellis had the exact same response that Louis did to the women calling out their behavior. They both had a weak, ‘I didn’t know it wasn’t okay.’
That’s where the systemic part is important. In the bluntest terms, women are understood to be sexual objects. Because women are raised with the spectre of rape and violence hanging over their heads, it doesn’t always feel safe to say no, or object strongly.
Men will come back and say ‘Well, I didn’t physically hurt anyone. I didn’t attack anyone.’ (Wow, the bar is set low, isn’t it?) They clearly don’t know how it feels to be backed into a corner. Assault is when you don’t have a choice, or that choice is taken from you.
People spoke up about Aziz Ansari’s allegations ‘not being that bad.’ But we have to acknowledge how normal it is for women to be in situations that make us uncomfortable. Women can go along with what a guy is wanting to do, because it feels safer than objecting. Culturally, we are not willing to accept how common this is.
So I applaud the work of the people behind So Many of Us, for compiling this behavior. What Warren Ellis did is emblematic of what so many women experience- the gaslighting, manipulation, and general entitled male skulduggery.
In his non-apology, Warren went on to say that he had no idea there was a power imbalance in the interactions with female fans and creators- another echo of Louis C.K. Maybe he’s thinking, ‘Well, I’m not Harvey Weinstein. I’m not Andrew Cuomo/Brett Kavanaugh/Matt Gaetz-etc.’ Men by default hold power, which means even your most average scumbag: the Pizza Hut manager, the popular Twitch streamer or Youtuber, can have a significant amount of power over the women they coerce.
I didn’t write this to ruin Castlevania for anyone that just wanted to binge some Netflix this weekend. (Interesting enough, the women and non-binary folks behind So Many of Us aren’t asking for Warren to be canceled.) I just can’t go back to reading and enjoying his work without thinking of how he treated the people in his community.
Some of my friends can separate the artist from their work, but I just can’t. I find myself imagining how their victims felt, what they lost. I’ve found myself looking around at these men like ‘What have you done that we don’t know about?’
I’m tired of it, and I don’t think there’s a nice and clean way to respond. I’m glad Netflix removed Kevin Spacey from House of Cards, but that decision affected the rest of the actors and staff on the show. I’ve been really happy with how the team of You has responded to Chris D’elia, but there’s that added suspicion of what is just a publicity move, are they just ticking boxes, or are they really taking action to protect their team?
The most important thing is that we don’t let this fade away. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s potentially retraumatizing for a lot of people. So for the ones who have the bandwidth, we need to keep this conversation going. I don’t think we need to come up with one holy grail solution, or one final answer to this problem. We just need to keep working.
Frankly, just believing survivors and taking their experiences seriously goes a long way. Perpetrators thrive because society silences and shames their victims. When men know that people aren’t going to let them get away with manipulation and coercion, it makes it harder for them to act. When we finally start seeing sexual violence as a community issue, not a women’s issue, we’ll be in a much better place.
For further reading and context, check out this personal essay from Paging Dr. Nerdlove: On Finding Out Your Heroes Are Monsters