Power, Sex, and the Language of Accountability
This is not an attempt to lay down truths, only to trace the contours of a change — to think aloud about what happens when the rules of intimacy and power are rewritten faster than people can catch up.
When I read the allegations about Neil Gaiman, what struck me most wasn’t just what was being said, but how differently we understand such stories now.
Only a couple of decades ago, his alleged behaviour might have been dismissed as eccentricity, the messy private life of a brilliant man. Today we talk about power imbalance, coercion, and consent. Terminology that didn’t even exist when I (as well as Neil Gaiman and many of the men recently involved in scandals and cancellations) grew up. The vocabulary has changed, and with it, the moral landscape.
Men of Gaiman’s generation, those now in their fifties and sixties, are being measured against rules that didn’t exist when they came of age. They grew up in a world where relationships between powerful men and younger women were not seen as exploitative but romantic. The doctor and the nurse. The professor and the student. The rock star and the fan. These were glamorous clichés, not warning signs.
It’s easy to forget how recently we began to name the imbalance for what it is. And with the new terminology came new expectations – backdated even decades into the past, as if people should have known the rules before even the words existed to prescribe them.
We forget how explicit the hierarchy once was. The “casting couch” wasn’t whispered about; it was practically a trope. As a teenager, when I said I wanted to be an actress, my parents warned me about it. Everyone knew what it meant. That the path to success could depend on what a girl was willing to tolerate, what price she was willing to pay.
The same was true in pop culture. I was an avid Beatles fan and already knew about the girls who had followed bands from city to city. The word groupie didn’t just mean fan. It meant devotion with a price. Even as a child, I understood that these men had access to women’s bodies as part of the reward for being adored. That was the air we all breathed.
The Jimmy Savile story, retold in The Reckoning, exposed the darker end of that same spectrum. Young girls went to his dressing rooms or hotel suites because they were excited, flattered, never questioning the assumption that they would be safe with a celebrity. Then they realised too late how wrong they had been. It’s devastating precisely because it shows how power and fame could turn admiration into paralysis, while the world looked away. Everyone knew, and yet somehow no one knew.
Indeed, the term “victim blaming” would have literally made no sense to anyone. The general understanding was: “Just what the hell did you think being invited into a hotel room meant?!”
Even now, people who grew up in the 1980s and 90s struggle to draw these lines. Teachers still confuse horseplay with bullying, especially when boys tease girls. Many of today’s teachers grew up when “Boys will be boys” was practically school policy.
It normalised behaviour that today we would recognise as harassment. The message was clear: boys’ impulses were natural; girls’ discomfort was their burden to manage. Those messages don’t vanish when the children grow up. They become part of how adults understand (or fail to understand) what power looks like.
And what we didn’t realise back then, but know now, is how men simply by being men have that power. Or do we? I’m not sure men still really realise this.
What fascinates me is how many of these men are, at least outwardly, progressive — even feminist. Gaiman himself has written beautifully about women, compassion, and equality. He has claimed to be a feminist, and I believe he meant it! I don’t mind if you think this laughable, but just hear me out. You might label this simple double standards, but I have a more complex take on it.
Believing in equality isn’t the same as living it. It’s hard to see the distinction between defending abusive instincts and a genuine struggle to reconcile what you grew up in with what you learned only in your 50s and 60s. I don’t know Neil Gaiman. But I know people who believe they are completely egalitarian towards women, but they aren’t and don’t see it. These people might not be actually abusive but unfairness presents itself in many much more subtle ways.
Especially people used to power can sincerely support women’s rights and still act out the old scripts that place them in charge. The scripts that weave throughout and permeate society in countless ways.
Have you ever tried to remove ivy? Underground the roots grow into a living net. You tear some of it out, but much of the structure remains, still linked, still alive. Along walls, they cling so hard, it’s tough work to scrub off.
Another male celebrity who has called himself a feminist is Piers Morgan (with caveats, of course). To my knowledge, he has never been accused of assault, but of something more insidious: dominating space. Watching him talk over women on air, dismissing them mid-sentence, is like watching patriarchy in real time. It’s not even malice; it’s habit. Men have been trained to fill silence with their voices and to equate confidence with competence. Women, meanwhile, have been trained to soften, apologise, and make room.
This imbalance runs through every part of life: work, relationships, even sex. The inner calculation women make. Do I speak up? Will I be heard, or punished? A legacy of centuries of being the smaller, quieter presence in the room. It’s not only emotional; it’s physical. Men are often literally louder, taller, more imposing, even without trying or meaning to be. That shapes power too.
And sex is where these old scripts become especially slippery. Desire is full of contradiction — it’s where fantasy, conditioning, and vulnerability meet. The same culture that taught men to lead also taught women to please. Nowhere more so than between a man of power and fame and a woman who’s impressed by him. It’s not surprising that dynamics of dominance and submission find their way into the bedroom. Sexual fantasy runs deep, deeper perhaps than most other instincts. Kink is not known for compliance to social norms. A man turned on most if called Master in bed might sound laughable to some, but I reckon it’s probably one of the least offensive kinks that ever existed.
And then there’s the debate about whether men always know that they are causing pain and whether they even take it seriously. I’m not here to defend hurt and abuse. I do realise that they often do. And I have no idea in this particular case how things happened, the reality is that none of us can. I sometimes despair over how messy sex and desire can get. I’m one of those people who would rather it didn’t. If I do have any hidden kinks, I have yet to discover them. I am aware that some people are turned on by causing or even being on the receiving end of pain. There are a lot of details here, being alleged, that sound so weird in so many different ways that I don’t even want to go there because there’s no way to prove either way.
When the Huw Edwards case first broke, no one named him. The silence said everything: whoever it was, he was someone untouchable, someone “respectable.” The story became less about legality and more about how prestige and hierarchy protect men from scrutiny — until they no longer can.
My point is this: When we tell men in middle age to suddenly override everything they’ve been taught, to rewire how they interpret control, pleasure, or initiation, are we asking too much, too quickly? Maybe. But that doesn’t make the harm any less real. It only shows how much work there still is to do, on both sides.
What we’re witnessing now is the growing pains of a moral evolution. Men are being asked not only to change their behaviour but to understand what women have lived through, to see the invisible calculus of fear, doubt, and self-containment that shapes so much of female life. And they’re being asked to do this almost overnight.
Some have made the effort. Many are confused. Others simply can’t (or won’t) keep up.
But the truth is, this shift won’t be complete for another generation yet. (If ever it will be. I’m not going to go into how porn might just be making it more complicated for the newer generations to learn anything about what women want.)
You can’t re-programme in a decade instincts and entitlement that have been rewarded for millennia. Real change comes when children grow up watching women who no longer defer, and men who no longer mistake dominance for strength.
It’s hard, being a woman in the meantime — navigating conversations where the loudest voice still wins, deciding whether to explain again why something hurts or to stay silent and save your energy. But something has shifted for good.
We have words for it now. We’ve stopped (or at least in the process) pretending not to notice.
And that, perhaps, is the real revolution.