Send me an IM, I’ll be your friend: How Kimya Dawson let me down as an abuse victim.
It’s hard to find the words to explain how disgusted and belittled I feel when talking about the musician and “activist” Kimya Dawson. The main center of her music that I always loved and appreciated was her lyrical play. Through her exploration of dark subjects, simple folk melodies, and twisting dark lyrics, I thought I found a kindred spirit. Turns out she is a hypocrite.
I enthusiastically was buzzing with energy when I was an intern at K records in Olympia, WA. Although Kimya had left K records, her legacy lived on and had made an impact on the record label and the staff. I was surprised when I started to realize that no one at K Records even liked Kimya Dawson. They all said she was horrible to work with. She had sent an email to Calvin Johnson out of courtesy asking the K Records staff if they wanted to be extras in her music video shoot for a song, “Solid and Strong”, off her upcoming album Thunder Thighs. Much to my surprise, no one at K Records wanted to go. I did though! I asked Calvin for the address and shooting info. The video shoot was at an indoor pool. It is cold in the PNW and I had just moved to Olympia about a month prior so I didn’t have a bathing suit. I remember buying one so I could be in her music video.
At the video shoot Kimya was super nice to everyone. It only made me more of a fan having real life interactions with her. On top of being in her music video, I eventually saw her perform multiple times around Olympia, including really intimate performances at the Washington State Capitol.
All of that (my interactions with Kimya) was before I joined Foxygen and was abused by the singer. I had 10k damage done to my teeth over the site of a prior injury and then the indignity of DARVO being done to me to frame me into silence. Any of this could be fought with solidarity and more financial resources I simply do not have (though I have never asked any women in music for money). As I write this, there is a fake website up with me full of legal falsehoods and straight up slander.
After I was abused I found solace in Kimya’s music. I had always been a fan but her music spoke to me more after that.
I genuinely thought, that based off her lyrics (which invited fans to write her as a safe space and understood complex emotions), that she would emphasize with what happened to me.
For years I attempted to send my abuse story to her with no reply.
Crickets. Crickets. Crickets.
The thing is, she knew who I was and just decided to ignore my abuse story. That’s the worst part; knowing that I was supporting a woman who literally did not give a shit about me and was basically using me to make money.
She had no shame telling a stalker of mine that “she doesn’’t care if she seems anti woman by not responding to me”. But she says she cares about ‘gatekeeping’? Sure.
She said to my STALKER that I was uncomfortably “persuasive” (basically slut shaming me for being a femme in indie who she doesn’t know enough about) yet I have no money, my story has barely been heard, and she kicked me to the curb.
Never in my wildest dreams did I expect Kimya Dawson, the “folk singer that cares about mental health and reforming the system”, to talk shit about me in private DMS to a deranged stalker of mine. I only SAW these DMs because they were then weaponized against me as a “haha” trolling response with screenshots by my stalker who sent them to me with malicious glee to hurt me emotionally once she read Kimya’s responses to her. My stalker got what she wanted.
My stalker was/is a woman I have never met, who was in love with my abuser and acted like she wanted to be his mommy. She had a troll Twitter account mocking my musical project, Globelamp. The whole purpose of this twitter account was to spread constant false information about me, muddy the water, harass me and my followers. I tried blocking her, but she kept finding ways back into my inner sphere by harassing other people close to me. This cyber harassment got so bad that I found this woman’s mother on Facebook to tell her that her daughter was harassing me. Her mother was appalled because I found out that my stalker has kids, one with special needs. Instead of taking care of her kids, this woman I have never met was spending hours harassing me, a small DIY artist with documented PTSD. She has also has had her kids taken from her before by Child Protective Services for being a negligent parent. THIS is the woman that Kimya Dawson felt comfortable dismissing me to without doing any vetting of. My stalker’s social media pages were full of tons of red flags -including slut shaming, sexism, racism and a pathetic and pedestrian brand of satanism- that anyone would have been alarmed by.
Maybe Kimya didn’t mean to, but by interacting with my stalker and blocking me when I complained about it, she helped gaslight and gate keep. What I am wondering is, did she think it didn’t matter how she treated me?
After I got into the online fight with Kimya, she edited me out of the video! Talk about professional! Foxygen didn’t even do that for the music video i’m in, “San Francisco”
Why am I bringing this up now? A while ago I saw on multiple blogs that Kimya Dawson accused Aesop Rock of mental abuse and read her statements. I must admit that after the way she treated me, reading these statements by her made me want to throw up. Especially since she was confident about talking shit about me to a woman who mentally abused me for years. Then tone policed me for being angry about it after HER actions. Wow, so sorry YOU treated ME like shit! I feel terrible about calling you a hypocrite and a bitch, lmao.
Kimya wants to dismantle the abuse at Rhymesayers but mine at Jagjaguwar and Secretly Group doesn’t count? Got it.
What I have noticed is that people who are famous or rich think that only their stories matter. How could Kimya feel so confident talking about gate keeping when she literally helped silence the momentum of solidarity I sought? Whether she thinks she did or not, she did. She slammed a door on a female abuse victim who has way less resources than her. She helped the sexist narrative that I’m just “too hard to deal with” and a “difficult woman”. Like other white feminists, such as Sky Ferreira, Rose McGowan, Weyes Blood, Cherry Glazerr, Phoebe Bridgers, etc, they all cave when it comes to real activist work. The moment anyone is messy and expresses their emotions or trauma without sounding like they are in Jane Austin novel these people stick their nose up at you and scoff. They have the gall to act like they are feminists yet they care more about your attitude than your rights. As long as you are kissing the asses of moderate liberal feminists, you might be heard. Many of these self called “feminists” in music have even signed to my abusers label conglomerate Secretly Group (who still protect and insulate him) or outright befriended him, even knowing the violence, slander and legal abuse that happened to me. These women I thought would be allies are now swallowed up by the machinery I wanted to dismantle which bought their silence. Now they can sell feminism and block the real feminists who challenge their moderate, comfortable corporate compromised bullshit.
