Issue 83 / November 2017

EDITORIAL
Over the past couple of years, a carousel of men in
high-powered positions have careered in and out
of the news in conveyor-belt fashion on account of
allegations of rape, sexual assault, harassment and
misconduct. The multiple accounts of film producer Harvey
Weinstein’s abysmal and horrifying behaviour have been the
most high-profile – arguably even more so than the women who
came forward accusing Trump of sexual misconduct before his
election as US President.
The more recent accusations of sexual misconduct by
former Real Estate guitarist, Matt Mondanile, however, have hit
much closer to home. A couple of weeks before the American
music magazine Spin published an article detailing Mondanile’s
serial instances of sexual harassment and assault, he played
the September Bido Lito! Social, the monthly gig we host. We
followed the news closely as it was being reported by Spin,
who drip-fed the story before revealing their full research into
the multiple accusations made against Mondanile. He has since
admitted to the accusations and expressed that he is “Endlessly
sorry for [his] inappropriate behaviour.” Reading the accounts
of the allegations made against him in the office, I couldn’t even
make it to the end of the exposé.
Over the past couple of years, our publication has made a
conscious effort to address the gender imbalance in our coverage
of artists and within our pool of contributors, with a hope that this
has a positive impact, however small, in the world of niche music
and culture journalism we occupy. We’ve written about misogyny
and harassment in the music industry, hosted an event about the
representation of women in music media and the wider industry,
have actively reached out to and worked with more women
writers, have launched an internship scheme that is geared
towards including the voices of more women, LGBTQ+, nonbinary
people and people of colour, and have tried to champion
and platform the work of women and trans artists and creatives.
None of this is intended in a tokenistic way. There is an
abundance of brilliant artists working on Merseyside and we
want to give due credit to them all. We also believe firmly that
including the work of people with a wide range of different
experiences strengthens our collective voice and makes that voice
more relevant to more people. It means the world to us that one
of our interns who identifies as a trans woman has just started
an MA in Journalism after working with us over the summer. And
it means a lot to me personally that one of our current interns
first got in touch about writing for us when she read a piece
of work I’d written last year about how music journalism being
dominated by male voices lends itself to reinforcing the male gaze,
“Women’s voices
are shouting
louder than ever
before but their
autonomy is still
being eroded”
impacting how we consume music and how we perceive women
artists.
As you can imagine, the thought of our publication
unknowingly platforming and promoting a serial sexual harasser
– bringing him to this city to play a show – puts a knot in my
stomach that sits there heavy as lead and uneasy whenever I
think about it. Which over the past week between the allegations
coming out and our magazine going to print has been often.
Partly, because it’s prompted me to think about my own
experiences, and the experiences of women around the world.
In a nutshell: I have been followed, flashed at, groped,
touched inappropriately, leered at, shouted at in the street
countless times. Sometimes the shouts are accompanied by a
racial slur. I have omitted from this list what I consider the more
‘serious’ instances. For some people reading this, this will come
as no surprise because they’ll understand the pandemic scope
of the problem. Others might be shocked at how routinely these
things happen. One of Mondanile’s accusers asked to remain
anonymous because she didn’t want her name to be connected
to that instance in her life – to always be thought of in relation
to her perpetrator, in relation to her sexual assault. The things
that have happened to me are not defining aspects of who I am.
The reason I’m sharing them is because I feel they have been an
inevitable and depressing part of my everyday life navigating
the world as a girl and woman, and I think that some of our
readership will be unaware of how entirely normalised these
instances are.
There are freedoms that come with voicing your experience
– for some, it is cathartic, offering a sense of relief; for others,
there is a strange comfort in knowing you’re not alone, coupled
with a sense of outrage that it happens to so many. It reinforces a
sense of solidarity, a sense that something can be changed, and
it educates those who haven’t experienced sexual assault – or
what it’s like to feel constantly threatened by sexual violence –
themselves. It’s equally important to acknowledge that victims of
sexual offences don’t owe anyone their story.
Personally, I feel tired that we’re still having these
conversations. We can shout loud and keep shouting, but,
ultimately, it’s not the job of survivors to educate people, and
only a very small proportion of people affected by sexual assault
have a place to talk about their experiences or will have their
voices heard at all. I absolutely commend the women who have
come forward – Rose McGowan’s refusal to be silenced, Ambra
Battilana Gutierrez’s decision to put herself in danger in order to
expose Weinstein, and Cameron Russell’s commitment to using
her own social media accounts to share similar experiences of
abuse and harassment within the fashion industry, to name but a
few. They are stupendously brave and selfless, and their stories
are vital, but I can’t help but feel that the revelations against
Weinstein – and those concurrent ones in the fashion and music
industry – represent the wealthy and primarily white tip of the
iceberg. Support networks and infrastructure aren’t afforded to
the people who occupy the lower parts of society’s echelons all
around the world; primarily the poor, but also members of the
LGBTQ+ community, women of colour and the undocumented.
Wherever there is a position of power, there is a potential
for abuse. This means two things: changing the landscape of
power so that women and oppressed groups are afforded the
same opportunities in employment, and the same respect in
public and private life as men. And changing the attitudes and
culture of entitlement, of toxic masculinity, that leads some men
to assume they are more powerful anyway, and, more crucially, to
convert that assumed power into actual power by exerting it over
others. It’s a monumental task. It calls for an upheaval of values
and gender roles that have been stewing for hundreds of years,
and that are pretty much the pinnacle of modern-day capitalism.
It has everything to do with class and race. It’s only going to
change through seismic shifts in attitudes and culture, through
education, through protest, through politics, through art, through
music, through film, through schools.
Women’s voices are shouting louder than ever before but
their autonomy is still being eroded. Worldwide, culture has to
change and, depressingly, it’s not going to happen overnight. !
Bethany Garrett / @_bfgarrett
Assistant Editor
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