Rape Industry
Pop-star Kesha filed a law suit against her music producer, Dr. Luke, and it has opened the eyes of many to the reality of the music business. Kesha signed with Dr. Luke at the tender age of 18, which she has stated was when the sexual abuse began.
She states her producer has gone as far as forcing her to use drugs and consume alcohol in order to “remove her defenses”.
“Ms. Sebert took the pills and woke up the following afternoon, naked in Dr. Luke’s bed, sore and sick, with no memory of how she got there. Ms. Sebert immediately called her mother and made a ‘fresh complaint,’ telling her that she was naked in Dr. Luke’s hotel room, she did not know where the clothes were, that Dr. Luke had raped her, and that she needed to go to the emergency room.”
Kesha has made accusations of abuse that go beyond just sexual, but for the purpose of this article I would like to focus on the sexual accusations. The court ruling was not in Kesha’s favor, leaving the artist unable to release any music outside of her agreement with Dr. Luke which prompted twitter to buzz with the hashtag #freekesha. Kesha is just one of the many females that suffer through the rapist and sexist environment that is the music industry.
Lady Gaga came forward to Howard stern about her own sexual assault, in December of 2014, alluding that her attacker was 20 years her senior and had some sort of power over her career. Her recent song “Til It Happens To You”, which was released this year for a campus-rape documentary, is in the perspective of a sexual assault victim and talks about what it feels like to be a victim. Lady Gaga spoke about it briefly and stated she “didn’t want to be defined by it.”
The music industry is just a branch of our rape culture society. We live in a society that teaches people how to not get raped rather than teaching people not to rape in the first place. This seemingly simple aspect of our culture is what has deemed this deplorable behavior as acceptable. Not only do these music producers and managers take in vulnerable women with big dreams and exploit them, they get away with it.
Kesha and Gaga are definitely not the only victims of this sexist abuse. Rape victims in general are tough to measure since many victims never tell anyone. For a celebrity it must be a lot more difficult since they are in the public eye. However we can assume there are an abundance of young naïve girls who just want to make it as an artist and are being taken advantage of. Our society functions through contracts, and as you can see from the court ruling the one who writes the contract can get away with as much abuse of power as they want; all they have to do is convince an inexperienced, wide-eyed girl to sign.
These are not exceptions, nor are they singular instances. Sexual abuse in the music industry isn’t happening to a woman it is happening to women. If you are a woman this is happening to you. We have to stop viewing women as commodities. We are not a raw material that can be bought and sold.
When looking at all the careers involved in making music women make a very small percentage of it. Though we have many female successful artists we really have to think about who is behind it. Who is buying and who is selling? Men make up most of the producing, managing, and directing. What we wear, the size of our bodies, and even what we sing has to be approved by “the man”. Men write the contracts. Men decide how much we cost. It’s no wonder why sex sells in our society when men are the ones selling to each other. We females have become docile bodies to be sold for cheap.
Our society cannot continue to teach girls to give and boys to take.
In the coming months I hope to hear of a new court ruling where Dr. Luke is brought to justice and / or, at the very least, Kesha is given her freedom. More of us need to come out and bring light to the abuse we are suffering. We need to respond to “the man” in the same manner he treats us. We can’t ask for equality anymore. We have to demand it.
