Ok, so here goes….I got myself involved in a case of mistaken identity this week…
Recently a post went out about sexual harassment within the folk scene. “Sexual harassment” seems the best term but it is a very nuanced thing – manipulation, coercion, abuse of power.
My friend Lizzy showed it to me Tuesday evening, I read it and took it in. I dug out the original post and sent a message to the author on the Instagram account that linked the post. I noted, however that it was an Instagram account recently set up and it was anonymous. The thought crossed my mind of who it might be, was it someone close to me who needed more support? But I understood fully why the writer would want anonymity.
I wondered what would happen, if it would blow up or not and start a lot of conversation, what I could do to be part of the positive change?
On Wednesday morning I woke up to two Facebook messages of people reaching out to me as they thought I had made the post!?!?!
(it would seem, something which I hadn’t noticed, that although the post was anonymous it had been initialled and they also happened to be my initials and these two men had made the assumption it was me)
I felt quite conflicted about these messages.
Firstly, it was NOT me. It wasn’t my experience and it wasn’t my post. The post, if you read it properly, has a lot of things in it which makes it obvious it wasn’t me, and so it frustrated me these men would reach out based on initials, and seemingly not have really read the original post in much detail? Or not have known me well enough to have seen it wasn’t me but still to have reached out about something so personal when the hope was for it to be anonymous!? What were they thinking?
It was weird to think that two people had thought it was my voice – would there/could there be more? “Oh gosh” went my brain “Is this about to blow up with my name on it” – A selfish reaction, considering the real concern should be around the actual woman who wrote the original blog, but that was my reaction at the time.
I then felt angered to see that both of the men who had contacted me, thinking it was my post, had not shared the post or said anything publicly – they’d sent me unsolicited messages even though the post was anonymous but they hadn’t actually supported the issues openly. Why not?
At first, I thought it was nice to offer support as (if it was my post) I would have been having a difficult time and people reaching out might have been welcome, but as they haven’t posted or supported publicly it is really meaningless, isn’t it?
And wasn’t it also just highlighting that my anonymity hadn’t worked?
To contact a woman and basically let her know that not only do you not have her back publicly but two of you have figured out who she is and she has no anonymity; Christ! If it HAD been my blog post, I would have been absolutely wracked with anxiety.
I then realised that overnight the author of the post had “outed” herself; for want of a better word. And it’s terrible but I felt some relief at this that nobody else could just see the initials and jump to the same conclusion these two men had– that’s how tricky it is to come out with these stories – I didn’t even want to be accidentally mistaken as having written it. That’s how hard it can be, and this woman has done that.
I told both the men who had actually written the blog and said that she’d likely appreciate their messages being sent her way but that actually doing something publicly was better and if they felt they could, that as men ( and one was a man who I feel a lot of us respect and look up to in the scene) that would really help.
This was Wednesday morning. Neither of them has done it. It is now Thursday night. They’ve both posted other non-related/unimportant things on their social media accounts.
I can’t know what the author of the original post had hoped for but I feel we let her down by not starting a proper conversation around all of this – or maybe we have and I have missed it somehow?
I posted a link to the original blog on twitter. Some folk musicians liked it. They did not post themselves or share or comment. One is an artist who has herself done many a public call to arms for support with people abusing positions of power – perhaps she is exhausted with it, it isn’t my place to judge her and it shouldn’t really be the place of other women to have to constantly fight these things, but their silence was disappointing. I considered cancelling a patreon with one of them because I just felt so angry about it – but that is really misplaced. The anger needs to be on the individuals/System we have that firstly allows these things, but secondly seems to make it so impossible for people to talk about. A community which is usually vocal about injustice seems to have gone very quiet now it is a little closer to home.
I am so incredibly disappointed in the two men who contacted me (You know who you are, please do better. Why would you send a message to me when you thought it was my post but not support by having conversations, sharing publicly and being part of the solution?!) I now see all they would have done is shown there was no anonymity and no support but they masked it as concern.
Why is the folk community being so quiet?
Have I missed something here?
I am always here if anybody needs to talk through anything they are facing. Perhaps this too is extremely difficult for the perpetrators who have been operating within a world which has made it so that they really did not see the harm in their actions, that’s OK, we all mess up (granted this is pretty big) but if we want change we need to have supportive, safe conversations for everybody effected by this and people need to take accountability and make change where appropriate.
I have no idea if this blog post is part of the solution or just adds to the problem but I didn’t want to remain silent.
Minnie x
The original blog post can be found here
minniebirch 