About an hour ago, TMZ reported that a judge has rejected Kesha's legal appealto a judge's decision in February not to grant an emergency injunction to free her from her contract. According to AP, NY Supreme Court Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich, ruled today that "Kesha's claims against Dr. Luke (real name: Lukasz Gottwald) can't go forward because the alleged incidents happened outside New York and beyond the legal time limit."
The legal action turns on the claim that Kesha's contractual obligation to Sony and Kemosabe, a sub-label/production company owned by Gottwald, constitutes "slavery" because Dr. Luke, whom she alleges raped and abused her, has enough influence within Sony to ensure any future recordings would not be properly promoted. She also claimed that the alleged rape and abuse constitute hate crimes.
On Monday, Kesha posted a photo to her Instagram account with a caption that read, "so. I got offered my freedom IF i were to lie. I would have to APOLOGIZE publicly and say that I never got raped. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS behind closed doors. I will not take back the TRUTH. I would rather let the truth ruin my career than lie for a monster ever again."
Dr. Luke has denied all charges and denied ever making any such offer, telling ABC News that "Kesha's Instagram posting is false."
However, USA Today reported that Sony offered to release Kesha from her contract with Kemosabe (though not with Sony) if she "rescinded her rape accusations against" Gottwald. "According to the judge, Kesha acted unreasonably by rejecting this offer," the article stated.
All of this will be familiar to pretty much anyone with internet access, and though it's unclear what recourse the singer has in the wake of this decision (TMZ also reported that Kesha has filed a similar action in a Los Angeles court), this is unlikely to be the end of the saga. Regardless of the outcome, or the legal ramifications of the specific charges being made, the way people are talking about this story illustrates a massive gulf in contemporary society.
On one side: a chorus of sympathy for a woman coming forward with charges of rape and subsequent psychological abuse at the hand of a former mentor figure who continues to exert power over her personal and professional life. On the other: a wave of relativistic-at-best, barbaric-at-worse commenters safeguarding the moral minefield between "innocent until proven guilty" and "she was asking for it." In between, the first principle of believing and backing women who say they were raped and the ultimate quandary that you know you weren't there.
Irrespective of the decision's legal merits, the most revealing phrase of the whole sordid story came at the very end of the judge's decision. TMZ quoted Justice Kornreich's ruling on the hate crime element of charges: "Although [Luke's] alleged actions were directed to Kesha, who is female, [her claims] do no allege that [Luke] harbored animus toward women or was motivated by gender animus when he allegedly behaved violently toward Kesha."
This is not to say that hate crimes don't represent a thorny moral and legal area, but in light of all the emotion stirred up by the many uncertainties and assumptions at work in this case, the line that followed reads like a declaration of sympathy with the wrong philosophy:
"Every rape," said the judge, "is not a gender-motivated hate crime."
Though it's unlikely she intended it this way, as she was clearly delineating a fine point of legal distinction, it's impossible not to read her judgment as a tacit defense of some kinds of rape (the kinds that aren't motivated by gender?), and difficult not to read it as an argument that the cultural and species-level power dynamics between men and women don't really enter into the question of what constitutes "hate" or "crime," for that matter.
