The faux-feminist man who is accused of being a secret predator is by now, after the revelations of the Me Too movement, a familiar figure. A few years ago, when Me Too was raging through Hollywood, former liberal darlings Louis C.K. and Joss Whedon saw their whole legacies re-evaluated after being accused of sexual misconduct on C.K.’s part and bullying on Whedon’s. (Whedon has denied all the allegations.) Now, two new famous feminist men have been accused of gendered misconduct — but these revelations come at a moment when our culture appears to be far less interested in performing a reckoning.

The most serious of the new stories are the accusations against Neil Gaiman, a prolific and beloved figure in the fantasy and comic book world. Gaiman built his career on the idea that he was an ally to women, but last year, a podcast from the UK-based Tortoise Media accused him of physical and emotional abuse and sexual assault. Now, those claims have been amplified by a deeply reported and detailed feature in New York magazine alleging that Gaiman abused multiple vulnerable young women over whom he was in a position of power. Gaiman, in a post on his website, maintains that his relationships with these women were consensual.

Meanwhile, actor, director, and professional male feminist Justin Baldoni has been accused by actress Blake Lively of sexually harassing her on set — walking into her trailer while she was naked, improvising kissing scenes, and discussing his history of porn addiction. According to a lawsuit from Lively and an accompanying story in the New York Times, Baldoni feared that Lively would go public with her complaints, so he hired a PR firm that buried Lively under a wave of sexist criticism. Baldoni has said through a lawyer that Lively’s allegations are “categorically false” and disputed her characterization as “self-serving.” He is suing the New York Times over its reporting, as well as Lively and her publicist, alleging that it was Lively who mistreated him.

The accusations against Gaiman are much more serious and violent than the accusations against Baldoni. Yet both men find themselves in the same familiar place we saw with other faux feminists. They built their public images on being “the good ones” in a misogynistic world: men who understood that other men were violent and untrustworthy, who seemed committed to doing the best they could not to fall into the same traps. Now, they stand accused of using those long-crafted images as public shields for their private misbehavior.

The question that remains is: What will happen to the feminist men who lose their feminist cred in this time of Me Too backlash? What was all that feminist capital worth to begin with?

How Neil Gaiman and Justin Baldoni built their images as male feminists

The reputations Gaiman and Baldoni built as feminists go back years. Both of them were careful to be nuanced about their status as male feminists, to appear to make room for their own errors, and to commit to being better than their fellow men.

“As far as I can see, being in society on this planet at this time makes you part of the patriarchy because that’s the world we’re in,” wrote Gaiman on his popular Tumblr in 2021. “You don’t get to leave it or not be part of it by........

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