Alt-pop singer Ethel Cain, real name Hayden Anhedönia, released a more than 2,000-word response to various controversies of various importance that have surfaced recently. On July 9, via a Google doc link in her Instagram Stories, Cain apologized directly for her newly publicized racist posts on the social-media platform Curious Cat, which she made when she was 19. “At the end of the day I am white, so while I can take accountability for my actions, there’s no way for me to fully understand the way it feels to be on the receiving end of them,” she wrote. “All I can say is that I am truly sorry from the bottom of my heart, to anyone who read it then and to anyone reading it now. Any way you feel about me moving forward is valid.” The lengthy statement was released ahead of Cain’s third album, Willoughby Tucker, I Will Always Love You, out on August 8.
In the resurfaced posts, which are currently popular discussion points on Reddit, she admits to saying the N-word and “build the wall!” “I spent my later high-school years being extremely progressive and ‘SJW’ as they called it at the time, as a way to reject the indoctrination of my environment and rebel against the prejudice, hatred, and ignorance of the culture I grew up in,” she wrote to explain the posts, having grown up Southern Baptist in Perry, Florida. “After moving out of my parents’ house, I fell into a subculture online that prioritized garnering attention at all costs. I flip-flopped again, rejecting all notions of my former ‘cringe SJW’ behavior and intended to be as inflammatory and controversial as possible. I would have said (and usually did say) anything, about anyone, to gain attention and ultimately just make my friends laugh.”
She responded to discussion of her handmade Sharpie “legalize incest” shirt and the accusation that she, by wearing the shirt and portraying incestuous abuse in her Southern Gothic music, was fetishizing incest. “I apologize deeply if my actions have caused you any further grief and if I have let you down,” she wrote. “I do want to be clear, however, that I have never fetishized it. Rather, as a lonely and confused child I had my own complicated personal struggles with the concept during puberty (in a hypothetical manner, not involving anyone in my actual family).”
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Cain didn’t apologize for everything. She addressed claims that she drew child pornography by pointing out that the “characters” she drew were over 18. “At the time of that drawing, I had just been raped by a man twice my age,” she wrote, saying she “became fixated on the event and thought that somehow sexualizing it in a way I could control or desire would make it more bearable.” She also did not apologize for “sexual abuse towards animals,” which was based on a photo of her topless with a dog, or for “fetishization of the female experience,” saying, “Cis women are not the only people capable of being victims of sexual assault.”
Cain additionally acknowledged the fact that she modeled her own “missing” poster, which she sold as merch, on a real missing poster of the 9-year-old girl Amber Hagerman — though she did not use Hagerman’s photo or name. “I made that poster at 3 a.m. in a rush and was googling ‘1990s missing poster,’” she wrote, saying that, though she wouldn’t do it again, “the accusations of me fetishizing the kidnapping and murder of a child are beyond egregious.”
She ended by addressing the overwhelming amount of online discourse surrounding her. “There is so much ridiculous material being used to slander me right now, I don’t even know if this addresses every ‘controversy,’” she wrote. “To try and sum everything up, no I am not a violent misogynist fetishizing the ‘female experience.’ No I am not the creator of child pornography, nor am I a pedophile, a zoophile, or a porn-addicted incest fetishist. I urge you to recognize the patterns of a transphobic/otherwise targeted smear campaign, especially in this political day and age.”
