Man, NPR just said nice things about her too

[benndragon]

Via bikergeek, Amanda Palmer (as in Dresden Dolls and Neil Gaiman's fiancee) has jumped the hipster shark (warning: photos of graphic real-life violence). (For those who are unfamiliar with the phenomenon being enacted here, see hipster racism)

Not convinced this isn't simply a Twit moment[1]? See an explanation of her response to people being distressed

Comments

[tober]

Yeah, so cthulhia linked to this as well... and I'm both disgusted and confused. Unlike some other people around here, I don't actually know Amanda Palmer. I've heard some of her music and mostly I don't like it that much... but a lot of it seems to suggest that Ms. Palmer is pretty damn sensitive when it comes to "women's issues" (I put that phrase in quotes because I don't really like it but I'm not sure what else to use that's succinct)... which is fine... but I point it out because... one would think that she would also be sensitive enough to realize that there are a few things (e.g.- the klan, Hitler, various other acts of genocide) that one really cannot use in "irony" and retain one's sensitivity cred. Or maybe she doesn't care about that cred. One or the other. So either she's not so smart or she's not so sensitive. Or Lady Gaga threw her into such a blind rage that all that stuff went out the window? That would be a lot of rage over Lady Gaga - someone who seems to me, at the very very worst, mostly harmless. Well, that's about all I got.

[siderea]

but a lot of it seems to suggest that Ms. Palmer is pretty damn sensitive when it comes to "women's issues" (I put that phrase in quotes because I don't really like it but I'm not sure what else to use that's succinct)... which is fine... but I point it out because... one would think that she would also be sensitive enough to realize

Erm, I don't know how to put this without spreading nigh-baseless rumor... Ms. Palmer often sings, powerfully and articulately, about feelings and experiences shared by females sexually traumatized as girls and young women. I don't know if she has identified herself as a sexual assault victim; she sings in the first person about things which are characteristic of being one. Certainly many sexual assault victims resonate powerfully to her work and find it validating.

In particular, she sings about the very socially unacceptable feelings sexual assault victims often feel, that make them feel freakish and damaged, such as finding solace in self-harm (cutting).

She has made a career of doing through art something that... Hrm. There is this behavior some badly sexually traumatized girls grown to women sometimes engage in, of throwing their damage in others faces. A kind of manic "LOOK AT MY WOUNDS, LOOK AT MY WOUNDS" behavior. Some of Ms. Palmer's work -- especially that which my child rape victim adult patients bring me :/ -- strikes me just like that.

Ms. Palmer's gift with "women's" issues doesn't seem to me an intellectually held philosophical position that can be generalized from, but the cri du coeur of a very intelligent, very artistically talented, and very traumatized person, working her issues out on a world stage. One who in her hurting wants others to share her misery, and therefore is undismayed by what she is doing to others when she says or does racist, ablist, *-ist things.