Why I am royally pissed with Amanda Palmer

[kaberett]

If you are reading this at the time I post it, hi, and I would apologise for putting together an edited highlights list and taking up space on your reading page, but actually I'm not terribly sorry.

If you are reading this FROM THE FUTURE, then it is because I like and respect you and I am sick beyond the telling of it of having my major, legitimate concerns about Amanda Palmer dismissed as sour grapes sparked by that thing she did where she got people to play in her band for free, because guess what, that is so not on the list of things I am angry with her for that it's not even on the same landmass as the aforementioned list.

I further want to clarify that I get liking problematic media. I am okay with liking problematic media (I do it!). What I absolutely cannot handle is being told that I only care about the issues below because she let people play on stage with her. (There are so many bands I would be delighted to play with, I cannot even tell you. That? Really, REALLY not the issue.) No - what I actually care about is the stuff below the cut.

Content notes: rape, racism, ableism, sizeism.
In roughly chronological order:

1. Shit she has actually, genuinely written:

   FOOD IN EUROPE
   
   as for food, yes….we’re still hungry.
   imagine that. you guys fed us brilliantly the last time around, and now i can’t even imagine not doing this.
   we love you and will trade you love and tickets for food. and you can hang out backstage and drink our beer and wine.
   
   if you can bring food to ANY of the shows, please e-mail food (at) amandapalmer (dot) net and we’ll give you instructions.
   dessert foods kill us, so please don’t bring us cakes and cookies and evil foods.
   last time around in europe, everyone brought cake and chocolate and we got fat.
   loving the belly is one thing, but for christs sake, keep us healthy.

   
   
2. She thinks that donating money to the KKK is brilliant irony, if it's proceeds from product placement in a music video.
   
3. She went on Australian TV to laugh about getting "crucified" by "a website of disabled feminists". (Yes, this is about Evelyn Evelyn - and incidentally, Jason Webley recognised that EE was problematic and apologised. Amanda Palmer? Not so much.)
   
4. She simulated raping a Katy Perry look-alike on stage. If you don't want to watch the video, have an open letter.

ETA oh wow, there is more. I'd been blissfully oblivious to the biological essentialism and cissexism, and also to the bit where she appropriated a protest song about police brutality and racism to mark getting out of a record contract. Also, [content notes: addiction, suicide, abuse],

... when her partner, who was a recovering drug addict had a relapse, she faked a suicide attempt to let him know how he made her feel.

A few years later he committed suicide.

She recorded his reaction when he found her, pretending to be dead, and years later she used it on an album.

Comments

[jjhunter]

I have no good words at the moment, so must fall back on 'here and listening', as well as 'alas, that hoydenabouttown link has an extra " at the end which is not doing it any favors'.

For you, always, <3.

[kaberett]

fix'd, thank you.

[automaticdoor]

I will never EVER EVER EVER be over Evelyn Evelyn and the SHIT that Annaham &c. went through over that. EVER. That is reason enough for me.

[milkymoon]

These are my problems with Amanda Palmer too; she's held up as a feminist icon, and then proceeds to cause a ridiculous amount of offence through her publicity stunts. I don't think this is sour grapes; the things she's done are really awful and shouldn't be dismissed as 'sour grapes' or 'just having a but of fun' or anything else.

[onyxlynx]

I believe that every time I have seen Amanda Palmer's name in print, it might as well have been followed by "said/did something stupid."

She's not a feminist icon to me.

[pipisafoat]

woooooooooooow

actually to add: I watched [part of] the video, and this is when I got so disgusted I closed the entire computer instead of just clicking the back button: when there is a person in nonconsensual bondage as part of a pro-queer-rights thing. Like we don't get enough shit about being rapists and child molesters and "freaks" and all-around shitty people. And you know that I am all for consensual bondage! Even on stage, whatever! Or, when done appropriately, fake-noncon-bondage on stage. this is so far from appropriate. this is actively damaging to a group she's "supporting" and "helping" with this video. EXCUSE ME NO.

[shehasathree]

wow. Thanks for collating these. I only knew about the EE/fwd thing, and that was enough for me!

[ofearthandstars]

THANK YOU. It drives me crazy how Amanda Palmer is revered.

[birke]

I missed the whole Amanda Palmer phenomenon (as in I'm vaguely aware there's an artist named AFP and that's it). Without any background on her motivations, I nonetheless feel free to judge everything you've listed as really effing offensive.

[vass]

What is wrong with her? I've been asking this question for years now, and I still haven't worked it out.

[deathbyshinies]

Apologies for totally derailing everything for a moment, but... eee, vass and kaberett know each other on the internets! This fills me with all kinds of international lefty-feminist-queerdo joy.

[vass]

They were on #dreamwidth-dev and I followed them back here, and it turned out they're in Lashings. And also write good poetry and are on the spectrum. What else could I do? :D

[deathbyshinies]

:) :) Oh, one day when the teleporter is finally perfected I would love to have a tea party with the two of you. Oh, the vegan cookies and flapjack that would be baked.

[deathbyshinies]

There is no room in my revolution for people who unrepentantly shove their comrades under the bus in exchange for a nice comfy seat of their own. I have very little time for fellow people on the left who wilfully refuse to grasp this concept just because they find AP attractive or loved her music at one stage of their lives.

I think the clip of AP on Good News Week appals me in particular because it reminds me very much of how 17-or-18-year-old me might have acted. "Look, look at me, boys! I'm cool and funny, not like all those other silly girls! Disabled feminists, LOLOLOL, now pay attention to me and let me in your clubhouse pleeeeeease?". It's pathetic and embarrassing enough behaviour in an insecure teenager: when the person doing it actually has some social and financial clout behind them (and moreover, has made a significant amount of their money from selling music to feminists and disabled people), well, it needs to be called out loudly and often.

[Edited 16/10/13 13.47 because I just reread the post and realised I used language that erased non-binary people: I apologise for my fail!]

[damerell]

All else aside, I really can see no evidence than the KKK thing is anything but the common rhetorical technique of saying something so outrageous that one is obviously not serious. When I first read your post I half-inferred she'd actually done it.

[deathbyshinies]

But as the saying goes, if someone vomits on my coffee table ironically (or hyperbolically, rhetorically, etc), I still have vomit on my coffee table, no?

[damerell]

Yes. If the KKK actually got any money that would clearly not be OK. But they haven't, have they?

[deathbyshinies]

For me, the coffee-table-vomit in this analogy is the hurt and anger that people who have historically been victimised by the KKK felt when AP basically stated (ironically and for LOLs, it's true) that funding that hateful organisation was on the same moral level as putting product placement in a music video. It's not a tangible harm, and it's certainly not on the same level as *actually* giving money to the KKK, but it still had a negative impact on people who were previously fans of her work (as demonstrated by lots of first-hand testimonies in the link that kaberett provides above).

[damerell]

But that statement is not one that a rational person should take at face value. If in a discussion of UKIP I throw up my hands and say "Hell, why not elect the BNP?", that is not an endorsement of the BNP and it's not sensible to treat it as such.

[deathbyshinies]

I'm not sure your equivalence works there: AP wasn't 'throwing up her hands' in frustration as part of a relevant discussion, but using the comparison to criticise another artist's unrelated behaviour.

I think a better analogy would be something like Person A saying 'Leaving the milk out of the fridge is as bad as voting for the BNP'. And frankly, if a hypothetical Person A did say something like that around me, even as a joke, I would be annoyed and pissed off with them* and would probably tell them to go and jump in something cold and sticky.

* I'm a Tier 2 visa-holder for whom election-driven changes to immigration legislation are an ongoing concern. Randomly reminding me that the BNP exists, hates me and wants me gone causes me no small amount of stress and anxiety, and certainly doesn't incline me towards buying your records -- even if you're just using it as a rhetorical device. See how that works?

Shorter version: Even if one doesn't take it at face value, equating 'product placement' with 'funding the KKK' demeans and trivialises the experiences of people for whom racist hate organisations are a serious concern. And it's part of an ongoing pattern of Amanda Palmer not appearing to give the tiniest of tosses about the experiences, thoughts or feelings of anyone who doesn't happen to be Amanda Palmer.

I'm not going to engage with this sub-thread any further, but anyone else is welcome to jump in if they'd like to.

[edited slightly for grammar and to clarify a point, 16/01/13 16.20pm]

[naath]

I think there's a problem when a person rhetorically compares X-Bad-Thing to Y-Bad-Thing; always some people say "but Y is really horrific, you can't compare it to X which is only a little bit bad", whilst other people say "yes, Y is really horrific; but X is also really horrific", and still other people will say "yes, but it's OK to compare the mildly bad to the horrificly awful to make a rhetorical point" (and probably someone will say "but Y isn't that bad"; but they would be Incorrect).

I think the third position is in on very shaky ground; and the bigger the gap the shakier.

If AFP intended the second position then I think she ought to have provided further justification as to the horrificness of product placement. (did she? I didn't follow it).

[tim]

I encourage you to consider what it is that you feel gives you the authority to decide which people are "rational".

[silverhare]

Wow. I knew some of the things, but not the - the- why would you ever, as a human being, fake a suicide attempt in a deliberate attempt to distress your partner, and then record it. And- I-

NO. WORDS.

[worlds_of_smoke]

I honestly think that AP fails at being a decent human being. She's no feminist icon and anyone who defends her actions immediate gets the side-eye from me. Yeah, you can like problematic things and people but, at a certain point, you have to say enough. I honestly don't trust anyone hasn't gotten to that point with AP.

[vass]

Huh, that blogger interpreted 'Sex Changes' totally differently to how I did.

"So I guess it's about a girl whose boyfriend--or, possibly, girlfriend--is getting bottom surgery. And she [the narrator] seems to think that the surgery is both addictive and unnecessary (she references a charade.) Of course, it could also be about someone who's getting an abortion. It's ambiguous."

I read that song as an emphatic NEITHER OF THE ABOVE. I read it as using gender affirmation surgery as an (admittedly both appropriative and clumsy) metaphor for adolescence and losing one's virginity and other milestones and changing and becoming different people. And it's from the point of view of the person undergoing the change. I mean, she says 'you', but she does that in other songs where she's addressing herself, not another person.

"But I think the whole charade is ending
It seems to me to be the only way to keep from getting
Caught up in a long life of regretting"

They're reading those lines as implying that being trans* is a charade, I read them as implying that not transitioning would be a charade - a charade that this character is ending.

[tim]

I think that when it comes to a cis woman -- a woman who benefits from the oppression of trans women -- appropriating trans experience to turn into art that will gain her popularity (while, at the same time, the voices of actual trans women don't get heard), one has to tread carefully. In her position, Palmer could have chosen to amplify trans women's voices. Instead, she chose to talk over them and write a song that plays into all the standard tropes about trans women; that may not have been what she *intended*, but it's the audience who determines meaning, not the artist. She made that choice very deliberately and I think it's a fine thing to hold her accountable for it.

[vass]

You're right, she definitely should be held accountable for appropriation and for how her songs affect trans people when her voice is privileged over theirs.

I don't know what her intent was, and like you said, it doesn't matter; I was just thinking about what interpretation I heard vs what that blogger heard. Which, on reflection, is a derail and I shouldn't have posted that here.

[kaberett]

FWIW, I value learning about other interpretations & I value the conversation that followed, so -- thanks.

[shinyshoes]

I used to be a huge fan of AP. Over time, my opinion has been sliding. The major thing that pissed me off most recently is how her Kickstarter project lost money (oh noes, boo-hoo, you're the one who decided exactly how to spend that money, and what the hell were you expecting when you offered more than that money could pay for? A profit?).

Of course, she's constantly begging her fans for donations and freebies. Not cool, when she's not some unheard-of up-and-coming artist who literally cannot afford food and hotels and so on.

And now if you go to her website, the main page is now her shop. Which you have to click through to get to her blog. And when you click through, there is a tiny segment of a one blog entry, surrounded by more stuff she wants people to buy and how much it costs. And then if you click through again to read the blog entry, there's a plea for donations at the end of every entry. That's why I don't read her blog anymore.

And yes, all the things you said. And pissing off the Australians and Tasmanians by globally reducing Tasmania to a joke about pubic hair. And her jumping on the "Let's bully Sinead O'Connor for having a strong opinion, even though Sinead gets bullied just for breathing" bandwagon. And a bunch of stuff I forgot.

And everything you said. Enough is enough, really.

[askygoneonfire]

I have been gazing with bafflement as people I otherwise share opinions with revere Amanda Palmer as some sort of God. I'm glad I am not alone here, staring on in puzzlement.

[kaberett]

I genuinely don't understand. (And then I don't talk about it much because surely they know and have decided to like her anyway and I don't want to squee-harsh and liking problematic media is a thing, and then every now and again I find out that either they didn't know or THEY THOUGHT THAT SHIT WAS NOT JUST FORGIVEABLE BUT OKAY.)