“I have your address and I will come round to your house and give u anal and you will love it you twat lol”, That’s one of the comments Chvrches Lauren Mayberry has received on the bands Facebook wall. One of 500,000. Rape threats are de rigeur for the innocuous lead singer of the Glasgow synth band.
Lauren took to English newspaper the Guardian to response to the torrent of hate hurled at her, Lauren calls it misogyny and it sure is. Lauren responded, “Maybe the men – and I’m sorry, but they are all men – sending the notifications of impending unsolicited “anal” bothering don’t realise it will actually be me who reads the emails – or maybe they don’t care either way. But in order to get to the messages from people who genuinely wish to share something with the band, I must filter through every condescending and offensive message we receive.”
First the band, Chvrches are an OK indie synth band with one killer track “The Mother We Share” but, certainly, not a provocative band though even if they were, Lauren would have every reason to expect that men would not bombard her with repulsive sexual demands to a woman that has shown zero inclination.
However, and unfortunately, Mayberry is asking for one thing and that is more of the same. I can’t think of anything that will appeal wo the masturbatory fantasies of stunted sexual wimps than knowing the object of their desire is reading them and the next result is self-evident and has apparently happened to Lauren, a misconception as to what her fan base are actually saying. The vast majority of the people who listen to Chvrches are not responding to her at all but every male sexual pervert is.
Look at it this way, though it isn’t a great analogy, if you joined a club for pedophiles, would your conjecture be that every man wants to molest little children? I am not claiming that Lauren believes every man in the audience wants to hurt her but still pain comes with the territory. Lester Bangs once, famously, noted that if the average Debbie Harry fan could get her alone they wouldn’t want to to have sex with her, they’d want to beat her up. And therein lies the problem.
It might be baffling to you and I, and I really can’t see the sexual kick of harassing Lauren, but there is an inadequate male out there for whom this is a sex life and Mayberry is taking the brunt of it.
The answer is simple, don’t read it. Chrvches record for Virgin and Virgin was sold to EMI which is currently owned by Universal. They’ve broken pop in the UK and will probably follow suit in the States. Why not have Universals PR Department vet your email.
Try this: President Obama gets thousands upon thousands of hate mail, nasty, racist stuff, do you think he wastes his time reading it? Why bother?
Is it wrong, is there no excuse for the wholesale harassment of Lauren? Yes, its wrong, no there is no excuse, and there is no excuse for children starving to death in Africa. Life is unfair, next. I really do feel bad for Lauren but it is crazy to read it, I get terrible hate mail and death threats from time to time, and I am nearly entirely unknown. Maybe it isn’t misogyny, maybeit is misanthropy and the web.
Lauren, and this has a speck of misandry in it, notes that all the people leaving disgusting comments are men. Well, Hugh Jackman has people throw their pubes in his face and they are all women. The real question is, did Clare Grogan go through the same thing in the 1980s (she’s around, ask her). I would sure guess that the anonymity and ease of the internet has added a great deal of hatred, but still, it hasn’t changed that much.
And I would also guess that if Chrvches gets much bigger, Lauren will not have the time to sift through her messages at which point the problem will disappear. For her at least.