I regret that people treated me like shit. And I regret that I was so wounded already that that really really killed me and hurt me. You know. They all thought that I should be made a mockery of for throwing my career down the drain. I never set out to be a pop star, it didn’t suit me being a pop star. So I didn’t throw away any fucking career that I wanted. It didn’t change my attitude. I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t regret it. It was the proudest thing I’ve ever done as an artist. They broke my heart and they killed me, but I didn’t die.
They tried to bury me, they didn’t realize I was a seed.
~Shuhada’ Sadaqat (Sinéad O’Connor), in Nothing Compares (2022)
A lot of people have been writing about Sinéad/Shuhada’ in the last week—many of whom have no business even speaking her name due to their lack of courage to support her in life and some of whom are just now realizing her importance, recognizing her impact, and addressing the brilliant fire barely contained in her mortal flesh. Others may have loved her music but they didn’t want the noise of her principles, the discomfort of her anger, or the contagion of what they saw as her downfall. It’s both validating and frustrating to see the recognition and appreciation that should have been freely given in her life.
Lauren Hough very pointedly and astutely explains what’s at play in a recent essay “Burn it Down”:
For the past couple days, I’ve watched people eulogize a woman who stood up and paid the price. I’ve watched them condemn those who distanced themselves from her, who mocked her. “It’s such a shame,” they say. “Why didn’t someone say something,” they want to know.
The why is easy. The answer’s always the same. When you value power and access to power and money above all else, you’ll side with those who have it. Every time. Standing up for Sinead meant your CDs and books might be tossed under the literal fucking steamroller with hers. It meant being called crazy. It meant losing money and power and access to power. So, with few exceptions, people with money and power and access to power stayed silent, or jumped on the steamroller. But you already know that. It’s why you’re still on twitter.
It’s a tale as old as time. Women who speak the truth pay the price. Kathy Griffin was torn down and abandoned (fuck that feckless sweater-gay Anderson Cooper). The Chicks. Anita Hill. Amber Heard. Lauryn Hill, who at one point had to directly ask society: “What I said was the truth. Is telling the truth bad manners?” Sinéad lived the answer, as have and will countless others. Women who hold a mirror up to our society’s ugly realities are punished for making us face what we wish we could ignore.
If that weren’t bad enough, often there’s a whiplash in sentiment once these are women gone. From persecution to pity. Fariha Róisín wrote in her recent essay “On Protecting Women”: “We don’t protect women until they die, but even then, do they rarely get justice. We don’t care about women until they die, and by then it’s too late.” We would add that the lack of care and justice is even more severe for “difficult” women, which Sinéad was certainly considered. What is that, to suddenly appreciate after a woman’s death what we couldn’t laud in their life? What would it take to stop and question when a woman is described as difficult? As Natalie Portman said “If a man says to you that a woman is crazy or difficult, ask him, ‘What bad thing did you do to her?’ … That’s a code word. He’s trying to discredit her reputation.” But women do it to each other, too. What would it take to not only question when a woman is being labeled as difficult, but also change how society perceives and hears women in the first place?
On that note, we want to recommend supporting the work of Fariha Róisín, be it her last book Who Is Wellness For? or her forthcoming book Survival Takes a Wild Imagination (available for preorder) or her substack, where she writes about how she is perceived (she recently described how “intense” is often lobbed at her) and relates to the world:
Madonna: The First Album / Like a Virgin Documentary on the Bitch She’s Madonna! YT channel, which houses a fan documentary series covering Madonna’s career. Madonna has always been unapologetically ambitious, defiantly unapologetic, and infectiously confident. And she has been equally adored and hated for it. This docu deep-dive, the first in the series, showing Madonna’s rise to stardom delves into the archives to piece together interviews and archival footage to show how she made her career happen. And it’s crystal clear: no man made Madonna—and Madonna doesn’t need or bow to men, marking her “Difficult” with a scarlet ‘D’. Madonna’s recent health scare pulled into focus the need to appreciate her and her work while she’s still here doing her thing—we really hope she pulls through to complete her career-spanning concert tour.
Roxane Gay wrote stories about women we might recognize with Difficult Women, which she talks about in New York with Saeed Jones in 2017, among other smart and funny things. Roxane, a self-declared ‘Bad Feminist,’ is also clearly delightfully difficult, whether it’s not being ruled by deadlines, admitting that she can do what she does because she does not have children, or talking shit about men who make 4-hour movies with crawling and grunting. Ultimately, maybe Roxane is most difficult for remaining romantic and hopeful in this brutal and uncertain world. Or maybe we’ll learn she’s difficult for all her opinions, which we’ll get more of in her just-announced forthcoming book Opinions.
Tove Jansson. We were in Finland in 2014 and came across a Tove Jansson life retrospective at the Ateneum art museum. The people of Helsinki (and beyond) were evidently excited to see and learn more about the most widely read Finnish author because there was a long queue to see the exhibit. We didn’t set out to see a special exhibit, but just to scope out the art museum, so we knew it would be good and worth the wait when there was a long line of locals. We entered not knowing much about Tove, other than being familiar with her whimsical creatures, the Moomins, but we exited the museum as ardent admirers of Tove, a multidimensional artist who became our latest queer icon and elder. Tove was a painter, writer, illustrator, political caricaturist, and the creator of the Moomins, creatures who form chosen family and live in a valley while getting into all sorts of joyous shenanigans. If you don’t know the Moomins, you should—start here with the first book or here with the first comic.
Tove was clearly something of a “difficult” woman, refusing to adhere to her father’s or grant board’s ideas of “worthy art” and daring to live contrary to cishet norms. We recently watched and enjoyed Tove (2020) directed by Zaida Bergroth, a film that focuses on Tove’s early adulthood while she grapples with making the art she wants and experiences her queer awakening. The film ends with Tove meeting the graphic artist Tuulikki “Tooti” Pietilä who was the inspiration for the Moomin character Too-Ticky and who would become her life partner for nearly 50 years. In being with Tuulikki, Tove said she had “gone over to the ghost side,” as being a “ghost” was what her circle of friends called being a “lesbian.”
Boo!