Dear “cancel culture”, please don’t. Silencing people doesn’t make the problem go away!
Don’t get me wrong, there are a list of people I’d like to “Get In The Sea” and rapists, and sexual aggressors, are up there on that list. I have criticised people, such as Ched Evans (remember him?) and Dapper Laughs, for the horribly misogynistic culture they permeated. And if you don’t remember Ched Evans, then maybe you should, because he was the footballer who went crying to the press because “feminists” came after him with pitchforks, after he was charged with rape. He was, very famously, re-tried and found “not guilty” of rape, after the court allowed counter evidence about the (female) victim’s sex life. I think I speak for everyone when I say, we’re still angry about it (it should not have been allowed) and when I stand outside my house with my own feminist pitchfork, I quite often think of Ched Evans and where I’d like to stick said pitchfork. A feminist never forgets. That being said… even I think “cancel culture” has gone too far.
I’m going to criticise the “left” today, which is something I rarely ever do. I have seen a lot of instances recently where people on the left (probably because we’re all so emotionally exhausted by this bullshit – it’s 2020 and the shit just keeps rollin’) are “cancelling” everyone, who doesn’t agree with them. JK Rowling got “cancelled” (I promise I”m going to tackle her on another blog that I haven’t yet published because that whole subject is incredibly problematic). Lana Del Rey got “cancelled” for a perceived racist tweet. Left-wing journalist, Owen Jones from the Guardian, seems to get “cancelled”, every other week. Basically, everyone is getting “cancelled” because what better time to ask everyone to shut up, than during a pandemic, when we’re all sitting around just consuming awful news story, after news story, trying to tell ourselves that we’re not all about a die from a deadly virus, rocking back and forth, hiding in blankets and hoping one day, in the future, even when the virus has long gone, it will be safe for women to leave the house again, without fear of sexual predators around every corner.
The latest awful news stories is about a series of pop punk bands (and I’m not going to name names here), whose members have been accused of sexual misconduct. People on both the left and the right are “cancelling” these bands on the premise that they are all sexual aggressors – and we don’t want to be associated with that. I’m going to say first of all: no, of course, we don’t want to be associated with that! But this is a much deeper problem than one bad egg in one band. There will be more exposed. More victims will come forward. The unpopular news is that the pop-punk scene between 2000-2010 was very misogynistic and many men, in those bands, were known to hold problematic views about women. I’m going to argue in this blog, that instead of “cancelling” these bands, we should hold them to account. As empowered women, we need to completely rethink the behaviour that we are willing to allow. We need to act together to make gigs safe for women, generally; where the behaviour of abusive men is called out and those men take the appropriate steps to put things right – like going to therapy and taking actionable steps to manage their own behaviour.
I’m going to very quickly touch on something that is related to this. And this is about abusive behaviour in response to abusive behaviour. I don’t think it is okay to respond to abusive behaviour with yet more abusive behaviour, even if “triggered” by the original behaviour. I am specifically talking about online bullying. It’s okay to hold views about people and to express those views – but it’s not okay to directly target those individuals with abusive messages. Those people may have underlying mental health conditions, related to managing their own shame and trauma to which “responsive” bullying behaviour, won’t have a positive outcome. In the UK, we were very affected by the online bullying of a beautiful, well-liked, TV presenter, who took her own life, after she was hounded online with abuse. She had been accused of domestic abuse (she apparently hit her boyfriend over the head with a lamp). She was subjected to bullying and abusive behaviour both online (from ordinary people) and from the press. She eventually took her own life. I don’t think anyone wants to see a repeat of that and the intense self-hatred that this sort of bullying ensues that mean people feel they have no other option than to end their own lives. You may think someone is a piece of shit for subjecting a woman to sexual abuse. I know I do! But I’m not going to send that person abusive tweets on the internet (although in the Ched Evans case – it is tempting!) and you shouldn’t either. if we hold people to higher standards, we should hold ourselves to those standards too.
Abusive behaviour from guys in bands IS NOT okay; it’s not right. “Cancelling” the bands doesn’t solve the problem – sure, it shuts them up and stops them from being able to earn money and abuse women at shows. But what if a large majority of these bands (at the time) held really misogynistic views about women? Do we cancel all of the bands? Do we cancel all of the shows, so we can be safe? Because I hate to tell you this, but we’re left with a small number of bands and lots of female musicians! Because, news flash, it’s worse than just a few bad eggs. It’s quite a lot of bad eggs. It’s an entire culture that allows this behaviour – the entire reason that historical abuse cases are coming to light now, is that our culture is changing to empower women – much more – and we are now standing up against this and saying, “This isn’t okay. We don’t want to support these people.” How do we know, if they are still abusive? How do we know, if they are still problematic? How do we know anything, really, about bands’ lives outside of the public domain? Their lives often are completely different to the ones they portray in public.
To contextualise my views on this: between 2004-2009, I was involved in the music scene, as a music journalist, a promoter and I also did some PR. I interviewed many bands in the UK music scene during this period. Some of these bands were American. I was exposed to the sorts of people my mother would prefer I never met. I was exposed to people that sweet, little, innocent Luisa was not ready to meet. Unfortunately, back then, the music industry hid predators inside it – an invisible problem; wolves in skinny jeans. The music industry acts as though “toxic masculinity” isn’t its biggest problem but I’d argue that it is.
Young women (some even teenagers) have been abused by men in bands for years. We only to have to go back a few years to see a proliferation of historical legal cases (from the 70s) against musicians, who pursued underage women and abused them. There were still “wrong-uns” in the music industry, when I was interviewing bands. Some PRs would take women journalists to the side and warn us about certain band members. Sometimes they’d brief us beforehand, if someone was difficult, or “handsy”. Sometimes they’d make sure we were escorted out the building safely, with no one trailing behind. I wasn’t unattractive back then. I was slim and I had big boobs and I got a lot of male attention. I wasn’t in the “trophy” troupe (that these men target) because I don’t have blonde hair, I’m short, I’m sarcastic, I make jokes and I shut people down pretty quickly, who say misogynistic shit to me. I am not (generally) the demographic that these men target (for those reasons) but I witnessed it. I saw it with my own big blue eyes how they preyed on other women. Women who weren’t as vocal as me. Women who were already infatuated with these men, because they were fans.
If you are a woman, working in the music industry, you are exposed to all sorts of nefarious creatures. I cannot count the times that I was accosted by some jerk in a band and asked to go back on the tour bus with him. I was the recipient of a full blown hissy fit from a famous lead singer, who screamed in my face, at a festival, because I refused to go to bed with him. He was such a narcissist that he could not comprehend why some woman would not be interested in that – in him! I laughed about it, with my friends afterwards, but I was terrified of him at the time! I really didn’t know what to do. I’d only met the guy thirty minutes before! (Don’t worry, I had an awesome circle of male friends around me, who acted like a protective shield. One of which, was actually in the same band and later became a friend of mine. There are good guys!)
I have witnessed other instances of toxicity from men in bands: there was the man, who I was interviewing, who casually asked my friend for a blow job. There was the time a lead singer in a band asked me to get my boobs out at gig. There was the time, I got groped at a show. I’ve seen men take women on their tour bus and discard them, when they’re finished, (disrespectfully) as though they are taking out the trash. I’ve seen (married) men select their sexual partner for the night, from a menu of screaming females – that they’ve already set the foundations with online. I’ve seen some stuff I really wish I hadn’t, because I think I’d have a much better view of men!
There were also many other occasions, where I had a lovely time with men in bands who are my good friends: men who took care of me when I had a bad day; men who gave me hugs when I “fan-girled” over their bands; the (good) guys in bands whose parents I hung out with at shows; the guys (and gals) who took me out for dinner; guys who gave me free t-shirts and advance copies of their albums; guys who were kind and thoughtful; guys who walked me to my car to make sure I got home safe. Not all men in bands are complete assholes. Some men in bands are wonderful human beings, who are respectful and kind and create safe spaces for women to work in. This rest of this blog post, unfortunately, is not centred on these wonderful humans. So sorry about that! But I just wanted to say there are good guys! (Though just because you had a good experience with those guys – doesn’t make them immune from treating someone else terribly just fyi, before you “cancel” victim’s testimonies!)
There is a toxic culture in music that is created by small communities of men, who operate (largely) without coming into contact with many women on a day-to-day basis. It is the culture of the “tour bus”. Men whose only company is other men and who sit around and watch porn, drink beers and go out looking for female prey. These men do not only exist in bands, but some of them happen to be in bands. They do not understand “mixed” spaces, or have ever been conditioned to operate safely and respectfully to women. It has, historically, been an environment for them, where they are able to do whatever the hell they want, without any consequences. These people exist in their “tour bus” microcosms, without the usual standards of behaviour policed by society. Think of how “lads” used to behave on holiday in Ibiza because it isn’t that different! My experience, at the time, was mostly that the badly behaved “boys” were in American bands and they had the “holiday” mindset that they weren’t in their native lands, so there were no consequences! When you mix this with drugs, alcohol and women (narcissistically) dying to shag someone in a band, you have a toxic cocktail. These men operate like animals – and they find women willing (at least at first) to be their prey. And as long as they get their fix for the night – everyone win’s right?! (That’s a joke; I’m not actually excusing that.)
The recent allegations have surfaced have been around certain band members coercing women, known to them, into degrading situations without any regard for their safety and well-being. People are screaming for these bands to be “cancelled”. But I’m going to tell you that this issue is not just one or two people in the music scene. It’s a toxic masculine “culture”, where these men believe (narcissistically and naively) that masculinity is about being a “player”, about using people and about being a terrible human, who doesn’t treat other people with due care. I can almost assure you that anyone who has ever woken up next to someone they don’t really know has used a person before. But coercing and abusing a person is not the same as a one night stand. Coercion and abuse cause trauma! There is a thin line here, though, and I think it’s worth calling out because this is why the culture needs to change. Young men need to be taught boundaries. They need to be told this isn’t acceptable. The culture is what needed to change. (I haven’t been a music journalist for ten years, so maybe it has?)
There are a lot of really trashy people in bands who operate as sexual predators, looking to score with a chick and these people pull out all the stops – I’ve heard stories from women who were flown all over the world – for sex. I’m pretty judgemental, so I do judge people who sleep with a different person every night of the week, especially if they’re “supposed” to be in a committed relationship (and their wife thinks they are). I’ve heard from women who were coerced into sex acts with men in bands – and yes, some of those women were coerced into having sex with multiple members of the bands, not always expressly with consent. It has happened. (And society calls them “groupies”, even if they are women who think they are in love with someone in a band, who are coerced into becoming “community property”.) And closing your eyes to this doesn’t make it go away. I wish we’d acknowledged this toxicity sooner – and said, “This isn’t right”. But I honestly think young women, in my generation, were just so used to males’ shitty behaviour. It was just so commonplace! Fame gives toxic people a shelter to hide their toxicity. It is not in the music labels’ best interests for this information to get into the public domain, because it won’t sell records. There are predators who have operated under the radar, for a long time, because it was simply not in anyone’s financial interests to expose them. (And to be brutally honest, most of the music industry is ran by men, who are mainly interested in money.)
I feel for the women who have reported these abusers, but I am not surprised. Gigs should be a safe space for women. A female journalist or a female press office, or a female fan, should be able to exist in these male-dominated spaces, safely. I reiterate, again, that almost all of the musicians, I came into contact with, were very respectful towards me.
In my experience, the worst things to happen, occurred long after this little lady had gone home to (her own) bed. But women, I implore you: if you don’t feel safe, don’t go on the tour buses. Don’t get into their cars. Don’t go home with them. Behave, as you would, if they were an ordinary person – hold them to the same standards and go home with your friends! If they stalk you online, set boundaries. Tell them what is and what isn’t acceptable. I think we have to force these changes in behaviour, ourselves. And it shouldn’t be our jobs to do this. It shouldn’t be for victims of sexual abuse to have to defend themselves as to why it is abuse. Because “abuse” just is. To the victims, I believe you. And I hope, we all believe all the victims who come forth. But if we want this change to be permanent, cancelling bands won’t cause that outcome. It’ll push the behaviour back into the shadows. It will still occur under the radar. And not cancelling them and not saying anything, is “enabling” it. They’ll continue to operate in the same way because that behaviour is just “accepted”, as apparently, it was back then, because we had no power to change anything! We need to reeducate people on what is acceptable behaviour. (Even if they should already know how to treat people with basic human decency!)
I hope all the men that are involved in these incidents, or in related bands, take a really hard look at the choices they have made in their lives, which has enabled the bad behaviour of their bandmates, or behaviour they are guilty of themselves. And make the appropriate apologies to the people they have hurt (directly, ffs, Ryan Adams!). They should also take the steps to put it right! This behaviour is not okay. It is toxic and damaging to women. We need to create a better culture! We need to educate men on “toxic masculinity” and try to stop it at the root cause. Or we’ll be stuck with it, and our children, and our children’s children, will have to deal with it too.
I think a lot has changed in the years, since I was a music journalist. We’ve had #metoo movements, as well as just a generally more equalitarian outlook for women, especially in the UK. We have jobs; we have legislation that (supposedly) gives us equal pay; we have all of the rights. But we still don’t make it easy for women to report sexual crimes, without recrimination; too often the victim (like in the case of Ched Evans back up there are the top) is subject to more scrutiny than the rapist. There is no benefit to women coming forward with these allegations, without anonymity. These men need to take responsibility for their actions, not just in words but in deeds. Let’s start acting human to one another. Let’s make a positive change in the world, by making our culture better, safer and more inclusive. Cancelling people doesn’t do that – it stops the conversation. Men, we want you to all do better! I’m not going to cancel you, but I do expect you to be accountable and to take the necessary steps to put it right. And in these instances, to put your money where your mouth is and provide the appropriate trauma-support for the victims! If you’re in a position to help, maybe you should? We all have a human responsibility to take care of our each other. While we have the opportunity to make this a better society, why don’t we all be the change we want to see in the world?
we dance to all the wrong songs 