Not for nothing, but Lita wasn’t even there when the rape happened. What a world we live in. She lets them off the hook. It was released on June 1, 1976, by Mercury Records. Your Amazon Music account is currently associated with a different marketplace. Cheri’s older age has nothing to do with how trauma is processed. Lita called the bass players “toilet rolls”. To which I can only say that I hope you never have to walk in their shoes. It was corroborated by other witnesses. Everyone processes trauma differently. Maybe she didn’t. Let's have a personal and meaningful conversation and thanks for stopping by! Another excellent, thorough piece on an important issue. From the Album Live in Cleveland (Live) 11 Nov 2019 Listen Now Buy song £0.99. Why for example, would Cherie ever include a her version of this incident in her book? That “but they were kids and also victims” doesn’t fly as an excuse for Cherie’s CURRENT adult behavior regarding this matter. I honestly think Joan and Cherie had a conference call with Kenny and synced their story. I think you’ve hit the nail perfectly on the head there, and that’s why it hurts so much. Or the other people that witnessed it. Dead End Justice The Runaways. And they were girls. I tell you what. Wow…. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Rape is normalized. When Medina mentioned her own experience with rape many years later she did not take the time to ever apologize to her make up artist or show any self criticism. As she explained to the Montreal Mirror in 2006, “To me, the Runaways is my baby, so you have to understand my perspective… I’m not gonna participate in a Jerry Springer fest, bottom line. excuse the typo — I meant “the public IS left” in the last paragraph. Jackie understands the trauma they must have experienced as bystanders in that moment. But maybe for her to acknowledge that on some level she did know what was going on but did nothing about it would require her to hate herself, and maybe she can’t psychologically handle that. Her eyes darken as she tells Vicki, “I don’t know what the difference was between… Like, he didn’t do that to me, Lita and Joan. So after she was being so cool about it, for Cherie to come out swinging was a bit fucked up. No matter who tells the story, there’s not a single version of it where Kim Fowley is not 36 and the band’s manager, and Jackie Fox is not 16 and intoxicated. It only makes sense to me if I remember that both Joan and Cherie were victims too. They went through this whole fucked up thing together. With any band, you’re gonna have interpersonal conflicts, but if that’s what they thought the Runaways were about—about breaking a bass or putting on make-up—well, it’s very disappointing. i see what you’re saying and don’t disagree at all, but i wrote this to… sort of deal with how disappointed i am with joan’s response. The defenders of Kim Fowley in these comments are the names of people I recognize from Cherie’s facebook. Lita would just abuse him back, so he really just left her alone… He would set us off against each other so we could never gang up, figure out what he was doing and replace him.”, On screen, drummer Sandy West acknowledges a great deal of verbal and emotional abuse, although she specifies that she, Joan and Lita were often spared the brunt of Kim’s insults. Fox is extremely generous in her bystander effect interpretation. Face it: they hated this girl. Author Unregistered. She was simply telling her story. She didn’t wanna wear flat shoes. I can see how she might deal with the trauma she witnessed other girls experiencing by framing the victims as weak and therefore deserving of it, unlike her. I can’t blame them for failing to step it up when they were 16, probably fucked up themselves, with such an unbalanced power dynamic and any number of other circumstances we as the public are not privy to. I think they are real humans who are reacting in a real way. Or I didn’t understand what was happening at the time because I was a kid. You're momma says you go straight to hell. Team Blackheart expects it will blow over, because Jackie does not matter. After stumbling across “Edgeplay” on Showtime back in the mid-2000’s, I became briefly obsessed with the Runaways…their music not so much, but rather their story. The band was my baby, that’s all that matters to me. By all accounts, Kim Fowley was a terrible person who had no business being left alone with teenage girls. As someone who grew up around music industry and was a young child in the 1970s I’m concerned about a few things that may been overlooked. I mean WTF? Jackie is an incredibly strong person. This was the big one for me too. But I think the things that Cherie, especially, is posting and alleging are really deeply harmful. jett) I'm a blond bombshell and I wear it well You're momma says you go straight to hell I'm sweet sixteen and a … A year later she was not only brutally raped and tortured but almost murdered? Laughing at Jackie while she’s being raped is like a self-made mantle of safety called “at least it’s not us.”. 6 Easy Steps for Fucking Your Friends Without Fucking Up the Friendship, Anonymous Sex Toy Review: Fun Factory’s Magnum Dildo, Also.Also.Also: Derek Chauvin Found Guilty of Murdering George Floyd, Our Work Is Still Not Done, Pop Culture Fix: Tig Notaro Is Baffled You Think She’s “Sexy AF” But Her Wife Is Super Into It, Dating Download: Three Lesbians Try Dating App Struck and Leave It to the Stars. Kenny will never allow that. And we have to talk about it or it just sits there, unaddressed. 9,162 views, added to favorites 55 times. The power dynamic between the band and their manager was a dangerous one, and the girls were absolutely too young and inexperienced to realize that it wasn’t something they needed to put up with. I don’t think it’s fair of reporters, deprived of a Kim Fowley to expose, to turn to Jett and Currie and paint them as sinister villains OR to insinuate that Jett/Currie’s potential situation is understandable only if they were also “victimized”, a term that carries a lot of weight. Follow her on twitter and/or instagram. The world is not divided into Rapists and Victims. that said, i think jackie has been incredibly brave and very gracious about the treatment she’s received from her former bandmates. Joan Jett’s been a personal hero of mine for my entire life, and no matter what she was or wasn’t aware of at the time, I can’t believe she couldn’t step it up for her former bandmate. Example: Everyone else remembers her showing up 2 hours late for the infamous photo shoot that led to her quitting the band; in her mind she was an hour early. In her book Cherie depicted Jackie as an entertained observer at her own rape who wanted another hamburger. I don’t know that we know enough about how teen girls react to gang rape to even say that there was a bystander effect. "http":"https";t.getElementById(r)||(n=t.createElement(e),n.id=r,n.src=i+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js",s.parentNode.insertBefore(n,s))}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Loading... Close. 304 likes. Peace and healing? She also had AMPLE opportunity to reveal the truth around the time of Edgeplay. These women are currently in their mid-50s, not high school. If you read the book, then you’ll know that my twin sister’s boyfriend had raped me and took my virginity. He also offered her $1,000 for her life story for the movie. You were NOT the bad-asses even you wish you had been. Yes, it sucks that they reacted that way and their responses could have been so much better, but focusing more on your disappointment with them than with the rapist and abuser seems counter-productive to me. Super disappointing and tragic…, The idea that this man could still have so much control over women now that they’re adults and he is dead is so terrifying, especially if they aren’t recognizing his abuse as one of the reasons they were so willing to turn their backs on each other and are still willing to turn their backs on Jackie, Right, because if they’re making fun of Jackie, then what’s happening to Jackie is’t happening to them. In the HuffPo piece, Jackie fully forgives them and talks about bystander effect and why that could explain their actions. About our drug taking. Jackie has been nothing but empathetic in her writings. It’s been pointed out elsewhere that the writer perhaps fostered feelings of negativity in readers toward Joan Jett and Cherie Currie in particular, as well as Lita in his interview with Pitchfork. The criminal here is the rapist. Her little story just gets in the way of their rock star fantasies and future earnings. I’m glad she came forward, but the fact that Currie and Jett deny/minimize the event, and others even try to defend and re-characterize Fowler, all bespeak how really risky it is to come forward. This type of victim-blaming makes me sick. Both women need to be believed. 44 talking about this. Runaways songwriter Kari Krome corroborates Fox’s story and shares her own horrifying experiences with Fowley; he repeatedly forced himself upon her when she was just 14 years old. However, it is brief, and focuses more on absolving her own involvement than on discussing Jackie’s experience. There’s no doubt she made you feel at home.”. Now a lawyer, Jackie was the only member of the band who declined to sign away her life rights for the 2010 movie based on the band’s rise to fame. Michael Steele has all but vanished off the face of the earth, and has been virtually MIA for the past 11 years. (s. anderson/c. There would have been lawsuits and a trial. Pathetic. Last Friday, the Huffington Post published The Lost Girls, a heart-wrenching piece by Jason Cherkis about Jackie Fuchs‘ traumatic experiences as the first bass player in the legendary all-girl rock ‘n’ roll band the Runaways. Now Cherie is a totally different story. The excuses for her leaving the band (in Edgeplay) looked like petty nonsense. One of the risks of coming forward is that you can lose public control of the narrative of your own victimization. Even if she believed it was consensual at the time, she had to understand that it was not by the time she published her revised book in 2011. If what except the so many male groups made great music together in the past, while barely speaking to each other in the future without bringing shit from there past with unresolvable question what-happened-to who-first, why should we assume female bands are going to be such better “role models”? Nobody brought it up again. Thanks for this an excellent analysis of much of what went wrong regrading Jackie Fuch’s bravery who’s words a fully believe. Even in interviews several decades after the band’s demise, the two continue to give wildly different accounts of their time together, each blaming the other for various issues within the group. You are disregarding history of Patriarchy if you think anyone would’ve listen to Jackie, or Cheri or prosecuted their rapists to any real degree or that Jackie’s brutal rape by Kim Fowley would’ve thwarted The Runaways. Especially coming from someone who claims to be a rape-survivor herself. The issue here is not whether or not Jackie Fox was raped by Kim Fowley. The attempt to give it an intellectual gloss with some reference to “bystander effect” is exasperating. That she wanted to be a model for survival and expressed anger about Kelly McGillis (sorry if I spelled her name wrong) saying in an interview she could never get beyond her rape. “Absurdist and too fucking real” is a great descriptor. I just don’t understand why there was so much disregard for Jackie. There is a really good chance we would not even know about Joan, Lita or the Runaways. It seems like their parents failed them- bad. Cherie posted a very long description of some maudlin tear-filled, tear-jerking, hours and hours long conversation she had with Fowley a few years back on her Facebook page dated yesterday. Only murdered a few women. Edgeplay certainly makes no effort to hide how manipulative and nasty Kim Fowley was to his young charges. The Runaways were teenage girls, in way over their heads with an abusive, predatory manager; one could hardly fault them for not knowing how to react. My demand for season 2 is more Bangles!!! As a person, I think she has her own faults like everyone else; as a Role Model (TM), I can see how those who look up to her may be disappointed in a lack of a speech. The public I left to parse out female participation because we also need to ask ourselves whether and how often and when we are complicit in rape culture. If she wants to be mad at somebody about this she can be mad at the person who wrote the HuffPo article, not Jackie who doesn’t even blame any of the members for what happened to her. I’m sorry but she is a 55 year old woman. The pinnacle of this Fowley remembrance piece (allegedly in honor of his birthday – barf) is where he sobs, humbles himself and asks for her forgiveness for the trauma he caused her. Jackie just didn’t want to have short fingernails anymore… and the guitar cord kept wrapping around her heels; she didn’t like that. Dead End Justice The Runaways Letra. Did you and other band members joke about this incident repeatedly after she was out of the band? Yes, they were under that pig’s spell, but that doesn’t absolve them of abject mean-girl cruelty. But talking about this as a girl-fight and focusing on the bandmates’ roles in the incident in my opinion does a disservice to Jackie. I can only imagine how Jackie feels, having all of this dredged up and publicly argued about all these years later. How did she manage to make this painful story all about her, Cherie, and how she was now being made to stand trial for crimes against humanity. It is not any of those girls’ faults that Jackie was abused. This is what they thought was normal. When I read the full article, I felt like the other bandmates were going through a combination of bystander effect and Stockholm Syndrome, mixed with memory impairment from drugs/alcohol. Cherie is not at fault for speaking up in her own defense, and she’s been a great “advocate” for rape victims for many years. Their dismissals, attacks and victim blaming sound a lot to me like people who were so fucked up by their experience that they can’t muster compassion for Jackie without acknowledging and processing their own guilt and pain. Rather than empathize with the obvious trauma Jackie Fox dealt with for the past four decades, Cherie is outraged by being accused of a “foul act.”. Whoa. In their mind she never did. Fowley of course, denied it, comparing it to John Lydon hitting on Audrey Hepburn. About our drinking. The more we can stay focused on the two of them, the less we will be derailed by the smokescreen of infighting the rapist encouraged in these women forty years ago. I wish I had/could have responded better at the time and I support her fully now.” That would have been the appropriate response vs. Joan dismissing her or Cherie, most outrageously, falling into a hate-spiral of victim-blaming. But also, Cherie Currie is 55 freakin years old. I know. English is not my firts language, I hope this is readable. The article is probably among the sanest I have read among the pompous “statements” on the latest bout of Runaways insanity and bad karma. Yes to both of you! I’m also really perplexed by what crime she thinks that she’s been accused of. And I so appreciate both Stef’s and KaeLyn’s contributions to it. When I used to work in rape crisis services, there was definitely a thing where a survivor would sometimes take on the attitude of “I made it out OK, so you should, too,” especially when they felt their sexual assault was “more serious” or harder to recover from. I’d defend Joan Jett and Cherie Currie more, but it should suffice to say that they never should have been put in the position of defending themselves because of Jackie Fuch’s account. It’s so hard to see such icons reacting this way… especially in reaction to how gracious and forgiving Jackie’s continued to be throughout the release and reactions to the HuffPo piece. But whether or not, Currie and Jett could at least apologize for having participated in the cruelty and shunning of Fox that happened after. Cherie is really pissing me off. But also…she’s all grown up now and she could at least show some compassion. I’ve learned a lot watching this play out. Even the discourse in the comments continued to be mindful, which is needed in reaction to situations like this. So I didn’t think Joan’s released statement was all that bad. I was actually surprised that people were so upset by what she said, but maybe my expectations were just so low that anything would have sounded decent to me. We still have so far to go but it’s literally like another universe compared to the era I grew up in. Discover more music, concerts, videos, and pictures with the largest catalogue online at Last.fm. No. Even if Cherie’s lashing out — man, I’d be completely incoherent if I found myself dragged into that position. Either that or they are terrible humans. Copyright 2009 - 2021 The Excitant Group, LLC. Who knows? I had some minor abuse when I was younger but I don’t remember it with any clarity. Jukeboxes had been a quarter for years, and “put another dime in the jukebox baby” gave me the impresssion that they were older. Thank you for the thoughtful article and thanks to all the thoughtful straddlers who have left thoughtful and compassionate comments that engage the conversation in meaningful ways. The Runaways Lyrics. So take opportunity as a teaching moment. i’m not sure how to live in a world where she doesn’t handle everything gracefully and perfectly. Her voice wasn’t great by any means, but it was unique, and she knew how to sing rock and roll. Joan’s movie about the Runaways is fun, but it seems a fantasy compared to what really happened. Sure it one can’t say it gets better they may be better off saying nothing, but does ever star really need to monitor every though they have about their personal life before it get out to public. About being raped a second time shortly after leaving The Runaways and to appear at her attacks trial. Respectability politics loom over who gets to claim the title of victim or survivor. The other girls seemed relieved. My favorite song by my favorite band. The press just loves to women fight amount themselves pit famous-working women against each other, but music fans what to respect artist for what do together or alone they have to realize their still human and not going to live their lives according to some broader feminist ideal. There shouldn’ be one right model for healing that everyone has to live up to. I think it is ok to say, “Hey. Currie/K. I honestly thought that by the next day the articles would be more positive, I never would have expected Joan and Cherie to deny it this way. It wouldn’t surprise me. Cherie’s got a fairly new album out that nobody’s buying, she never liked Jackie anyway, so why not just milk it for all it’s worth by starting a media feud? I appreciate this compilation/commentary of the information. I’m disappointed in her response but I also know that trauma distorts things and shame and denial are powerful and unpredictable forces. It’s totally unrealistic to expect every band of girl musicians to be model for sisterhood and always like or stand by one another, just because they are fewer such people for girls to look up to. I just…they were 16 only sixteen and I can only imagine what was going on in their heads during that time, dealing with a man that had so much influence over them. I really, really despise the way KF is escaping all the discussion just because he’s dead and how different reporters are portraying this as yet another “girl fight” in the Runaways saga. I’d love to see her weigh in with some observations about all this stuff. One thing that is clear is that they were not friends. Still, it’s worlds ahead of Cherie Currie, who posted the following: The statement has been edited; an earlier version contained an indignant Currie announcing that she’d probably have to start a GoFundMe to pay for the aforementioned polygraph. I always admired Cherie as someone with a great, natural instinct for performance. Disappointing and tragic, no matter how you look at it. I don’t disagree with your statement. https://www.facebook.com/Kimfowleyisnotguilty, 5595 likes on Jackie Fox’s FB: Not trying excuse some the ridiculous shit Cherie Currie is spouting right now off tho. For fans, the issue is whether or not Cherie Currie and Joan Jett stood idly by and laughed, whether the incident had become a recurring joke between the two. I never used to understand how helpful and necessary tws are, but they really do help those who may be triggered. ”No matter who tells the story, there’s not a single version of it where Kim Fowley is not 36 and the band’s manager, and Jackie Fox is not 16 and intoxicated.”. That's fantastic. I think that worked well for Joan, but it left Cherie looking like a crazy fool for all the stuff she has written about it. Her reaction is at least partially because of her way to go but it is exactly what rape culture willing. That trauma distorts things and shame and denial that they believe Jackie about what happened here everything she to! Forty years later did Jackie ( the straight arrow ) have frequent sex / drug?... Believe that at worst, they didn ’ t say this to condone or defend what Currie has said ’! Mid 20s after being handed over to a new level of “ advocate ” accuses a victim of in. Hollywood actor ( Vic Morrow and other band members joke about this incident doesn ’ t na! 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