Lauren Mayberry is continuing her crusade against online misogynists after a horrific 4chan thread was revealed in response to CHVRCHES’ new music video for their track, Leave A Trace. The thread openly objectifies Lauren, calling her a ‘slut’ and a ‘whore’, merely for wearing a dress, and sporting wet hair – clearly ample ammunition for 4chan users to deride her.
For those not in the know, 4chan is among the most toxic of the social media sites, with lengthy threads ranging from harmless memes to sexist threads such as these to child pornography in the extreme cases – leading to the arrest of some members from the site.
The site was at its worst when discussing Mayberry, with some posts including “I thought Lauren was pure, why did she agree to dress like a slut?” and “time to whip out the Vaseline”. While some on the thread defended Mayberry, most proceeded to critique her body, sex life, boyfriend and whether she just “secretly loves the attention”.
It brings the downside of anonymous online posting firmly into view, no more obvious than with this disgusting comment from an unknown 4chan user: “I like that I can say the most depraved stuff about Lauren without her knowing who I am. She might despise the comments I make here, but we could be friends in real life … I could be someone she knows personally. Or a celebrity. Or both. She will never be the wiser.”
It is likely the thread was inspired by Lauren’s brave attack on misogyny back in 2013, and ever since after she did an opinion piece in The Guardian where she slammed sexist online commentators. It appears little has changed – in fact it appears it is worse than ever.
Lauren was “invited” to this thread, and quickly responded on Twitter:
Dear anyone who thinks misogyny isn’t real. It is and this is what it looks like. http://t.co/cLC97T8MxU pic.twitter.com/2bBZtw4yoL
— Lauren Mayberry (@laurenevemay) August 17, 2015
PSA: apparently wet hair makes you a “slut”. Nice work, 4chan / humanity. https://t.co/66cch5WWeW — CHVRCHΞS (@CHVRCHES) August 17, 2015
Signing off the internet for the day for some 🍷+📺 To the haters, have a bit of what she said: http://t.co/JzW9ejYRfc. Everyone else: ❤️💪🏻❤️
— Lauren Mayberry (@laurenevemay) August 17, 2015
We’ve spoken at length before about the issue of misogyny in the industry and comments other musicians have made on the issue – however, Lauren remains one of the strongest voices yet. In her Guardian articles she spoke about not just accepting and taking it:
“Is the casual objectification of women so commonplace that we should all just suck it up, roll over and accept defeat? I hope not. Objectification, whatever its form, is not something anyone should have to ‘just deal with’,” she wrote.
We hope Laura’s epic beat-down of online misogynists only continues from here. CHVRCHES’ sophomore album Every Other Lie is due for release on 25 September.