Man, NPR just said nice things about her too

Mar 26, 2010 19:59

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 ( Read more... )

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siderea March 27 2010, 17:04:11 UTC
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.

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