Sex/uality Artifacts

Hello! My name is Sami Parave and my first artifact was about two news articles that pertained to the assignments we had to read in class about the rape and consent and boundaries articles. The news articles I found were about known singer, Kesha, and a recent rape case that she has been involved in. She claims that her music producer had been “abusing her sexually, physically, verbally and emotionally shortly after she signed a contract with him when she was 18” (Buckland, Mirror Magazine). Her music producer, known as Dr. Luke, denies that this was the case, but more investigation is still occurring.

In reference to the article “I Wasn’t Raped, but…” by Nicola Gavey, there are some direct correlations with Kesha’s situation with some of the points made throughout the article. In the article, it discusses the fact that some women feel more worried about the dangers of sexual assault and violence because of stories they hear about in the media. In the article it states, “these gendered ways of being may be further enhanced by the exacerbation of women’s fears about rape through the media reportage and through warnings about violent sexual attacks that emphasize women’s vulnerability to rape” (Gavey 585). This can be seen in many ways such as reports of other women being in the situations and the constant warnings that are given to women about sexual assault. One way that Kesha contradicts this idea is when she was able to give a jaw-dropping performance after the case had been brought to the surface of the media. She showed her strength as a women and her strength as a survivor of sexual abuse. As “I Wasn’t Raped, but…” states, women should taught to be strong after these events, not that they should hide and be in the background for forever because of what happened.

In the other article in class titled “Consent and Boundaries,” the aspect of unwanted sex and sexual abuse are both discussed because they both involve the idea of not giving consent to the actions that are happening. What was different about Kesha’s case was that she also felt obligated to keep allowing these abusive acts to keep happening because Dr. Luke was her music producer and she wasn’t sure if she would be able to keep singing and performing if she didn’t allow him to keep going. Now, she has realized that she is stronger than this and she doesn’t have to keep it a secret, which meant that she finally stood up for herself and told someone what was happening so that she could move past this unfortunate situation. Which brings us to how she is moving forward now with performing better than ever and continuing to fight for her right and trying to get justice for what Dr. Luke has been doing to her.

Here are the links to the articles on Kesha’s case:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/kesha-rape-lawsuit-against-ex-5916602

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/kesha-alleged-rape-dr-luke-place-virgin-source-article-1.1976933