I was going to turn down this piece. When the #MeToo campaign first began on social media last year, my first instinct was to distance myself from sexual harrassment and assault. The idea of opening up about these things tapped into my greatest fear (after flip-flops), which is to appear vulnerable.
It is interesting that we associate strength with silence. We call it dignified, like putting a brave face on something traumatic. I first encountered my own brave face in my teens, and for want of a better phrase, refer to it now as robot mode.
In the latter part of last year, as #MeToo developed and the women in my life relived their most painful memories, I fell into a dark cycle of anger and recall. There was the music executive who cupped my breasts after a night out, and another who called me a slag and asked relentless questions about my love life. There was the collaborator who was "handsy", and his male friends who told me not to rock the boat and complain.
When I look through my correspondences with these people, all I see is robot mode – forced friendliness on my side, signing off emails with an x. I imagine some of these men would be surprised, if not upset, to know that during our interactions, I was disassociating, building up an internal pool of frustration that would one day spill out along with that of millions of women and victims of sexual abuse.
The culture of the music industry allowed for questions that still haunt me now. I think the powerful industry veteran who kissed me goodbye on the lips instead of the cheek did so by mistake, and had no bad intentions. But should I consider that we regularly discussed my campaigns at weird hours in his home, where he had installed a bespoke stripper pole, and kept a collection of hardcore porn?
Likewise, I think one of these executives did not mean me harm. But why did I feel that the occasionally sexual undertones of our interactions was the price I paid for his help? And, since I was in my twenties, and these men in their fifties, why did I so often wear the grimace of the responsible adult?
Throughout my career, I have constantly batted off exhausting banter from professional contacts that remind me of one thing: I am a body, a body, a body. Yet I often thought of myself as a machine during these moments, daydreaming of how, through sheer resilience, I would one day gather enough power to remove myself from their company. I would be interested to know how many male artists have had to think of that.
I want to refer to myself as lucky to have had relatively innocuous experiences, but that would do a disservice to those who have been through similar. As I write, I waver between two thoughts – the first that my story is insignificant and I shouldn’t make a fuss, and the second that I am terrified for my parents to read it, in case they think I’ve screwed up my life. These two positions cannot both be true. I will say that this is the first time that I’ve written an article while shaking. That’s why these stories need to continue being told.
However, there are far worse stories than mine. The broadcaster Victoria Derbyshire recently interviewed women in UK music who have been subject to serious abuse, all of whom tell stories that begin with offers of help, leading to psychologically twisted campaigns to make them believe that their abuser was the only gatekeeper to a future in music.
Rebecca Taylor of the bands Slow Club and Self Esteem told me one of her own experiences of a label boss "grabbing my vagina and asking if he was going to have a good time in London".
She adds, "I was a huge fan of the label and scared I messed up my chance to work with them by swiftly going home after that. I told my band mate and management but as we were all so hopeful they would sign us it ended up being ignored."
The artist manager Yasmin Lajoie, who has been collecting testimonials within the UK music industry, has gathered stories of rape, forced oral sex, and other forms of serious assault. Lajoie, who has written about her own experience of assault is the co-founder of a campaign called Stop2018, along with the artist Chlöe Howl and music supervisor Michelle de Vries.
These violent crimes begin in everyday attitudes that allow women’s voices to be discounted. When I sent out a group email to research this piece, the replies were filled with accounts of being mistaken for the girlfriend of the band, rather than the band, or having achievements attributed to the male member of the group. A friend recently graduated with a music degree told me that, during her time at university, her female tutor told her that to make it in the music industry, you need to be "a bitch or a whore".
The music industry is geared towards young arrivals – two of Derbyshire’s interviewees were in their teens when they were first approached by older men, an age when they might be most conducive to damaging attitudes. I was in my twenties when the executive who groped me told me that, to get me a record deal, he just had to send out my photo, planting a belief in my head that my music was not worth listening to. When another artist on his roster broke free of his control, he told me she was in "angry lesbian mode" and that she needed him in order to succeed (spoiler: she’s very successful).
These attitudes send women messages telling them to submit to the will of controlling men. They make us feel worthless and so we sit still and smile when the boundaries of our professional agreements are crossed. They brand women "difficult" for falling out of line. They lull us into a mass hypnosis, so that we don’t act when we see problems in front of us.
After taking part in #MeToo last year, I felt miserable and exposed, bereft at the loss of my brave face, unsure of how to live in a world where so many women, men and non-binary people, many of whom I knew and admired, had secretly been victims. I was angry at myself for what I deemed my compliance. Where was my self-respect, my internal alarm system?
But gradually I began to associate robot mode with the moments of existential panic that I am prone to, in which I fear I’m not a person. I contacted a therapist and began talking through some of my experiences, in the music industry and beyond. That existential panic, which has been with me throughout my adult life, lost its grip.
I am someone who hates to be angry. I am a dreamer who would like to live in a world where my only fear is objectionable footwear, where the only obstacle to my happiness is a bare foot in a thonged sandal. However, the period of history that began last October with the Harvey Weinstein scandal, with its resulting whirlwind of real-life rage and emotion, has had a remarkable effect on my experience. Like a fever, flaws in our culture are burning to the surface. For the first time, I sense that equality is not something we just talk about, but something we could achieve, and as I feel a balancing of power between myself and male counterparts, that pool of frustration appears as though it may eventually drain, leading to better, more open working relationships.
In the UK music industry, it’ll take more conversations like this, and continuing efforts by powerful bodies such as AIM and PRS Foundation. It will also take people at the very top listening to women’s experiences and understanding that they are real, then taking action. As well as a no-tolerance policy to abuse and harrassment, we should seek gender parity on label rosters, festival bills, playlists and in the music industry workforce. Using the momentum of #MeToo and this extraordinary cultural shift, we could build a welcoming and safe music industry for all those daughters of the fathers who have made a statement about having daughters.
In a strange twist of fate, I recently found myself in the same room with Asia Argento, one of the first women to tell her stories about Harvey Weinstein, and was introduced to her briefly by a friend. It was only then that I understood that at the centre of this storm were individuals, whose lives had been disrupted for the benefit of others. It was a new type of brave face, one not won from silence.
I told her about the freedom she had given me, and people I knew. I told her she woke me up from robot mode forever, realising for the first time how true this was.
In spite of my desire to ignore it, and my own experiences, completely, #MeToo changed my life. That’s the reason I wrote this after all. I hope it lets someone out there know that they are not alone.
The death of the male-only club
I'd sense a date felt we "owed" each other a one-night-stand
