Prompted by Donald Trump’s vulgar sexual assault scandal, The Voice season 8 runner-up, Meghan Linsey shared her experience in a private Facebook page with sexism in the music industry.
After winning the CMT competitive reality show, Can You Duet in 2009 as part of the country duo, Steel Magnolia, the singer came face to face with a powerful figure who sexually assaulted and threatened her. People around her, including her manager and the head of the label that signed her coughScottBorchettacoughcoughBigMachineRecords told her to keep quiet or risk being blackballed from the industry.
Yahoo Music Reality Rocks reprinted the Facebook post with Meghan’s permission:
“This is lengthy. And as much as I have tried to not talk about the election the last few days, I feel like this is important enough to share. To my friends defending Donald Trump’s disgusting comments about women,” Linsey writes. “When I was touring with Steel Magnolia in 2010, a very powerful man in the music business grabbed up my skirt. He was groping me and proceeded to try to pick me up by my ass on a bus in front of a lot of important people.
“I was mortified and told him not to touch me and to put me down. It caused quite a scene and I could tell that he was embarrassed and angry. The next night he came up behind me and whispered in my ear, he said, ‘I have boats bigger than you could ever imagine, and I could put you in the middle of the ocean where no one would ever hear from you again. Just remember that.’ He laughed and walked away.
Lindsey explains that what Donald Trump said in 2005 on that Access Hollywood bus about his celebrity entitling him to do whatever he wanted with any woman he wanted was so much more than locker room talk.
“THIS is why Donald Trump’s comments are so upsetting. This is why it’s not just ‘locker room talk.’ Because at the end of the day, it’s NOT just talk. This is rape culture, where powerful men sexually assault women and get away with it because of ‘who they are.’ Donald Trump is one of those men. At first I wasn’t voting for him because I love my African American friends, my LGBT friends, my Muslim friends, my Hispanic friends… But hearing his comments in that tape started to make it even more personal for me. It made me feel like I wanted to vomit, because it reminded me of the many times I’ve been compromised as a woman.”
Linsey concludes by saying “rape culture has to stop… If you are calling it ‘locker room talk’ or ‘just what men do’ or saying ‘it was 11 years ago’ or ‘he was just trying to sound cool while talking to a young reporter,’ then YOU are a HUGE part of the problem.
Amen, sister.
