War Between Babes in Toyland
Babes in Toyland
Maureen Herman is known for being Babes in Toyland bass player and last August, after the group reformed at the beginning of 2015, she quit the band… or did she? According to City Pages, Maureen posted a note on her Facebook page on December 21st, that may reveal a bit more about the story:
‘My very brave new friend and fellow bass player, Jackie Fox of The Runaways, wrote a piece about life after her Huffington Post rape disclosure. I’m honored beyond words that she mentioned me and my article in Boing Boing as being a support to her. It was her bravery in coming forward that forever changed my perspective of my own sexual assaults.
Despite the severe fallout from my own bandmates about writing the article, and it being the catalyst for me getting kicked out of my band, I regret nothing. I will never be silenced, by ANYONE.
I’m so glad that Steve Silver shared his story about witnessing Jackie’s rapist act the same way years later, and that it made a difference for her. Speaking up heals, silence hurts. Thank you, Steve, and thank you, Jackie.
(here’s a link to the article I wrote in the days after Jackie’s disclosure last summer: http://boingboing.net/2015/07/13/the-jackie-fox-rape-disclosure.html)’
Maureen is basically accusing her bandmates to have thrown her out of the band because of her support for Jackie Fox, The Runaways girl who revealed a few months ago that she was rapped by Kim Fowley, while many people, her bandmates included, were watching…
Citipages contacted drummer Lori Barbero, who dismissed Herman’s claims as it was expected:
‘She’s so toxic,’ she said I’ could give a fuck what she says, to be quite honest. It just pushes my buttons, I guess. Over all these years I’ve realized the only thing I can do when anything is negative and toxic, you have to let it go. And that’s the reason we have to have a new bass player. It has nothing to do with rape. The relationship didn’t work out and we moved on, and that’s really the bottom line.’
It is the usual battle between bandmates when bands break up but you will understand Barbero’s reaction better, when you will know that she produces Fea, a band on Joan Jett’s label.
‘It’s just really fucked up,’ continued Barbero, ‘Kat [Bjelland] and I have not said a bad word about her, and we wish her the best. It just makes me really sad, because we have so much history together. It’s honestly not what we wanted to happen. Do you think we wanted to fire our bass player? It’s not a fun thing to do. Two months before we let her go, Kat and I were so upset we couldn’t eat, we couldn’t sleep – we really didn’t want to do it, but we didn’t have any other choice. There are many, many, many reasons, but of course she’s making it so it’s our deal, like she did nothing wrong at all. Time heals all, but I don’t think there’s enough time for this one.’
But Herman stands behind what she said, as she told City Pages by phone that they gave her a ‘ridiculous’ list of things explaining why she should be kicked out of the band: ‘The catalyst, Kat told me, was writing the article about Jackie Fox, because [Lori] felt that me being critical of Joan Jett threatened Lori’s business relationship, which I had no idea even existed.’
Herman doesn’t want to apologize for the article she has written and firmly believe this was why she got fired….
It is a sad situation when women don’t support each other when terrible things happen, because if there’s one thing that should never divide women, it is rape.
