Cancel Culture - Ethel Cain

Ethel Cain is the stage name of singer/songwriter Hayden Anhedonia. She is a trans woman and has recently been victim to cancel culture due to things she had said in the past years. This post is mainly going to talk about the morality of cancel culture and human forgiveness.

There's a lot to this.

Hayden is 27 years old now, and the scandal that appeared has come from when she was 19 years old. She had made comments online using racist words and allusions about the immigration policy during the previous Trump administration. There were screenshots released that showed her admitting to saying these things. She had grown up in a small, predominantly white, town in Florida, and actively tried to fight against the thinking that was instilled in her due to the circumstances. She talks about this in a statement she released. I'm not going to go into details or defend her, but that statement has a lot of information regarding Hayden and her past, but she has expressed shame and regret for the things she said and did.

This is already bad, but this was when a group of people that had been following her online presence and waited for something like this to happen decided to jump on this train. In her statement, she said that this group did extensive work in order to procure these screenshots for the sole purpose to hurt her. These same people have hacked her personal accounts, doxxed her family and a lot of very terrible things just to hurt her. The screenshots had Hayden, at 19, on an online subculture that was very degenerate and harmful to really anyone who was not part of that subculture. If you go looking for the screenshots, be warned of themes of racism, incest, among other things. Other people have also jumped on this train simply to be transphobic, and attack Hayden for simply existing as a transgender woman.

So, this begs the question of what about her response? She apologized and has pledged to be better moving forward and to use her platform for good. She's expressed shame and regret for the things she said and has shown growth through her actions from then.

People don't have to forgive, and they don't have to forget either. This also brings up the problem with human forgiveness, and the ability to move on. You don't have to forgive Hayden for the things she did, but I wonder if you'd be able to move on from it.

Can people truly grow from their mistakes online? Should be the allowed to? This is what is so interesting about cancel culture to me. So many people with massive followings have been canceled for so many things similar and different from what Hayden did, but continue to come back from the allegations and still have success.

Think about James Charles, a make-up artist who had scandals come out about flirting with minors, which severely hurt his career, but he is still a successful make-up artist and influencer. Jeffree Star, another make-up artist who has had a plethora of a racism scandals and is just generally seen as a bad person, can still be relevant on social media today.

Does cancel culture truly exist if the person who is being 'canceled' just doesn't accept it and continues to post? All of these people have issues apologies and there has been a firm belief from so many people that they will never truly change, and that their apologies are just a farce, and that they will continue to do what they want behind closed doors, just taking extra precaution to not get caught.

Does morality exist online? Can people spew hate on whatever platform they want, then simply apologize when it looks bad for them and go back to the way they were loved before, but with slightly less followers? How can us as consumers of their content completely forgive the person for something they did and move on as if they had never said it?

I think it's important to acknowledge what Hayden did. I'm a huge fan of her music, and the way she carries herself online, so when all of this came out about her, it did not feel good. I took in the information presented from both the people who were genuinely hurt by her actions with racism, and the group who brought up her subculture days, where she talked about incest and other not great things. I waited for her response, and when she released her statement I read it, I understood what she said, and I waited to see what the general response was to it. I saw a lot of mixed reactions, most of them valid, some of them just blatantly transphobic and just looking for a reason to hate on her.

The people who can't look at her the same for the racist comments she made are valid. The people who can't forgive her for the incest comments she made are valid. Not everybody can forgive her, but those who don't forgive should not attack everybody who still listens to her music. As a cis white male, I don't feel comfortable expressing forgiveness on what she said about race. The incest comments definitely disturbed me, but her statement had decent points that I almost related to. Being young and craving attention in a time where the internet had everything was bad, as well as being queer at the same time, you could fall into some very bad places out of sheer desperation.

Do I forgive Hayden? I don't know. It's not my place to grant her full forgiveness. Do I think she's capable of moving forward from those things and growing as a person? Yes. I think everybody can grow and move away from something if they truly regret doing it. She's shown constant growth throughout her rise to fame with her music, and I think it's clear that she does genuinely regret the things she did.