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Ethel Cain is speaking out after controversial comments from her past resurfaced.
The singer-songwriter, whose legal name is Hayden Silas Anhedönia, shared a lengthy statement July 9 addressing a series of social media posts made public recently in which she used derogatory and racist language.
Cain, 27, verified that the screenshots (mostly from Twitter and the now-defunct platform CuriousCat) were authentic, and launched into an explanation of her late teenage years, seemingly to explain the surfaced comments. In them, Cain uses a racial slur, makes a rape joke, and employs fatphobic and xenophobic language.
USA TODAY has reached out to Cain’s reps for comment.
“I spent my later high-school years being extremely progressive and ‘SJW’ as they called it at the time, as a way to reject the indoctrination of my environment and rebel against the prejudice, hatred, and ignorance of the culture I grew up in,” Cain wrote in the statement posted to a shared Google Drive. “SJW” refers to social justice warrior, a person who has taken up several social causes sometimes overzealously.
“After moving out of my parents’ house, I fell into a subculture online that prioritized garnering attention at all costs. I flip-flopped again, rejecting all notions of my former ‘cringe SJW’ behavior and intended to be as inflammatory and controversial as possible,” she continued. “I would have said (and usually did say) anything, about anyone, to gain attention and ultimately just make my friends laugh.”
Cain, a Florida native, catapulted to popularity in 2022 with her debut album “Preacher’s Daughter.” Her dreamy, ambient sound explores American Gothic themes, drawing on her own upbringing in the Southern Baptist church. With singles like “American Teenager,” Cain turns her pen to the holes in American exceptionalism, tearing apart her religious raising and the tragedies of a state at war. Her comments, dating back to 2017 and ’18, stand at odds with the version of herself projected in the music.
“I could tell you that I had no idea at the time the platform I would have in the future, or tell you I just have a dry and extremely sarcastic sense of humor, or make any other kind of excuse, but there’s no place for excuses in this matter,” Cain continued in her statement. “At the end of the day, I am white, so while I can take accountability for my actions, there’s no way for me to fully understand the way it feels to be on the receiving end of them. All I can say is that I am truly sorry from the bottom of my heart, to anyone who read it then and to anyone reading it now. Any way you feel about me moving forward is valid.
“This was a chapter of my life I look back at shamefully. I am not proud of my actions, and I have done my best to bury it as I feel strongly that no good can come from it,” she wrote. “As I move forward through my life, I aim to use my platform for good, for change, and for progress.”
Shifting from atonement to anger, Cain went on to accuse a group of intentionally leaking the screenshots, not to promote dialogue but to smear her online.
“All of these things resurfacing are not the actions of a well-meaning individual concerned by something they discovered easily and casually on the internet,” she argued. “These are screenshots obtained through extensive digging, hacking, and cooperative effort amongst a group of individuals who do not care who else is hurt by witnessing this media as long as I am ultimately hurt the worst in the end.
“I’ve known that all of these separate pieces of my past have been found and hoarded over the past couple years as I’ve been tipped off in various ways,” Cain continued. “This massive smear campaign has been a long time in the making, waiting for the right moment to be unleashed, and now it finally has.
“All they crave is the complete emotional destruction of me as a person,” she wrote. “Personal accounts of mine have been hacked, my family has been doxxed and harassed, photos of me as a child and intimate details of my past have been passed around for fun.”
Cain, who is transgender, went on to address one by one the series of accusations made against her by what she called a “transphobic brigade of individuals.” The accusations run the gamut, drawing not only from the social media screenshots but from deep dives into the art that she used to promote her music. Taking accountability for the racism baked into many of her earlier comments, Cain said that’s where she would stop, and that the other “ridiculous material” was mere “brutal slander.”
“No I am not a violent misogynist fetishizing the ‘female experience’. No I am not the creator of child pornography, nor am I a pedophile, a zoophile, or a porn-addicted incest fetishist,” she said. “I urge you to recognize the patterns of a transphobic/otherwise targeted smear campaign, especially in this political day and age.
“This entire situation is negligent, sensationalized, and extremely dangerous not only for myself but for all my loved ones.”