At the same time, any good they do does not erase or counterbalance the harm. Jimmy Savile, the UK’s worst celebrity paedophile who abused hundreds of children, conspicuously did a lot for charities throughout his career. He said that he knew God would look at all the good he had done and it would make up for the bad things. There was a calculus in which he only had to do more good each time he did bad, and it would cancel it out. It’s a twisted view. Harm is harm and is not changed by any independent “good” act a person does. But apparent goodness can change its significance in the light of the harm that accompanies it.

Savile’s apparent selfless good acts were actually a calculated attempt to win license to do harm, and a psychological coping mechanism to allow him to believe in his own basic goodness before God. Plus the reputation for selfless goodness served as a smokescreen to prevent people seeing clearly what was really going on, and to win the support and protection of powerful people. Seen this way, while the charitable works may have had some helpful effects, these were not genuinely good actions but in large part self-serving and an integral part of the dynamics of this man’s abuse.

I think the same applies to men like Cosby and Gaiman: the overt charity or the overt feminism changes its meaning when you see how it serves them psychologically and reputationally, amd how it may be a functional part of the whole abusive operation.

Matt Bernstein in a recent video (it’s long) discusses men who act as outspoken self-avowed feminists but then abuse their power to treat women terribly. The feminism may be genuine, but it may also be their smokescreen, or a mix of each, and when a man is very loud about being a feminist you have to look carefully to see which is the case. Some are genuine, but you have to ask. Maybe Gaiman was doing the feminist smokescreen, or maybe he’s just so messed up that these two sides of his life - the feminism and the abuse - just didn’t really encounter each other.