What bolder attack could there be on women’s freedom, reproductive or otherwise, than telling a woman that she may not work — that she is not entitled to economic independence — unless she continues to do so with the man she alleges sexually and psychologically abused her for more than a decade?
This is what a judge told US singer Kesha last week: that her own insistence of abuse was not enough. That her words and thoughts and own understanding of truth on her terms were not enough. That surely her judgment could not be as sound as that of her employer, Sony, and what they insist is best for her economic and emotional well-being. Really, it is not any different than the anti-choice legislators who tell women that the state is better inclined to make decisions regarding a woman’s healthcare access and choices.
The ruling landed like a gut-punch to so many women who had been told by various people and institutions that their word was not enough, and that, in turn, their worth was meaningless without a man or a corporation to reify it. It also topped off a month in which a personhood bill that would give a fertilized egg priority over an adult woman was proposed in Missouri and a bill introduced in Oklahoma proposed teaching public-school students about “the humanity of the unborn child.”
So women spoke, taking to social media with the hashtag #FreeKesha to stand in solidarity with the pop star, to drive home that unless a woman is fully empowered — and legally entitled — to make her own decisions, especially about her livelihood, she is not truly free.
#FreeKesha is a lovely and earnest expression of empathy; it is also heartbreaking that the most women can do — even powerful women in the music industry — is tweet. That is, seemingly, the extent of their agency in a system that does not just fail to trust women, but also fails to see them as equal, whole beings whose words have enough merit to even be evaluated for the ascription of trust.
Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Demi Lovato and Lorde were just some of the bold-faced names to use the hashtag to try and confront, with their own voices, a ruling to silence a fellow woman artist. On Monday Taylor Swift, perhaps the biggest voice (and bank account) in pop music, announced that she has gifted Kesha US$250,000 to use however she needs.
Swift’s donation is a sum that could surely help with Kesha’s legal fees or even with cost of living as she reckons with how to work in her profession when her options are: not work, or work with a man she claims abused her for more than a decade.
However, the funds fails to induce any long-term repercussions on the industry itself. While money helps in this particular instance — and that is no small thing — it still would not reform a system and a world that refuses to grant women agency over their own wellbeing.
Want to free Kesha? Do not listen to Sony artists on the radio or on streaming services or buy tickets to their concerts. Do not see movies put out by their film studio. Do not buy a TV bearing their logo.
Talk through your dollars. Talk through your votes. Talk over boozy brunches and in the halls of state houses. Talk every day about the ways in which women are not free. Do not let silence be interpreted as consent. Talk until you cannot talk that women’s bodies and truths are their own.
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