She actually wrote a third letter on her Facebook page two hours ago, which reads as follows:
"Third letter to Miley
Miley
I have no interest whatsoever in meeting you. You had plenty of time yesterday to abuse Amanda Bynes .. an entirely innocent party.. and myself.. who also did nothing to deserve your abuse.. along with every other sufferer of mental health problems and every person who suffered abuse at the hands of priests. You can take five minutes today between g- string fuckin' changes to publicly apologise and remove your abusive tweets. If you do not then you don't give a shit who you mock and what damage you do by being so ignorant. When you publicly apologise to Amanda and myself and all mental health sufferers as well as all who were abused by priests that will end the matter as far as I am concerned. what you did yesterday was designed to damage me and my career and has caused me enormous distress and harassment and has potential to damage my career, since you deliberately gave the impression those tweets of mine were not two years old but reflect my current condition. If you cannot apologize I will have no choice but to bring legal proceedings against you since it is extremely hard to be given work when people think one is suffering from mental illness. I have no interest in or desire to cause you trouble but if you do not apologise for having deliberately tried to cause me hurt and trouble personally and professionally I will have to bring pressure upon you. When you end up in the psych ward or rehab I'll be happy to visit you.. and would not lower myself to mock you. Be a proper woman and make the public apologies I have listed above. Your hosting SNL is a bullshit reason for not taking five minutes to do the right thing and your behaviour yesterday will rebound upon you very badly. You have no business abusing Amanda Bynes or anyone else. How do you think you made her feel yesterday? How do you feel when your friend Britney Spears is mocked and humiliated for having had mental health problems? I know I personally want to bash those who treat her that way. If she is your friend and more importantly if you are a true friend to her.. you ought apologise for joining those who mock and humiliate women who have been too nice frankly, to manage the music business without sensibly losing their minds. Cease behaving in an anti-female capacity. You will become the victim of it shortly. Soon it will be you the media 'crazy' .. and you will not enjoy it.. and you will appreciate people (like myself) standing up for you. Which I will be happy to do.. if you earn my respect today by apologising publicly."
While I was okay with the tone of the first letter, this second one really rubs me the wrong way. She's an old school feminist, no doubt, and it really shows how outdated some second-wave ideas are. What I'm mostly referring to is this absolute maligning of prostitutes. She constantly refers to how Miley should be faulted for "acting like a prostitute" and "showing young girls it's okay to act like a prostitute." My sex-positive, pro-sex-work leanings really find this so deeply problematic. Miley is not acting like a prostitute. A prostitute is one who performs sexual services for her clients in exchange for money. As far as I know, Miley has yet to do that. Sure, it wasn't nice of Miley to respond in the way she did, but O'Connor should have really left it at that. She's far too old to be getting involved in public name-calling like this. It just all feels very childish.
Is it? I thought that it sparked an interesting discussion about how women could/should manage their image in the entertainment industry. I felt that Amanda Palmer's addition was quite thoughtful and welcomed as well, and so I deemed interesting to show Cyrus' reaction to the letters. (But then, I happen to be interested in women's image and place in the society, and very much into O'Connor's and Palmer's music, so surely that biased my point of view).
It started off well. Even if people don't agree with O'Connor's point of view they can still appreciate that O'Connor speaks from experience and went about it respectfully and sincerely. She came across as genuinely caring. Right now it's mudslinging and legal threats. The dialogue is no longer meaningful as the parties involved have stopped talking to each other and instead are only discussing what has already been said. This doesn't look like it will end well.
I would call the first letter semi or pseudo respectful. While she iterates over and over that she is writing the letter because she wants to help (who does she want to help? miley, or her own view points on feminism. highly debatable), she goes on to say things like "Yes, I’m suggesting you don’t care for yourself." and "Please in future say no when you are asked to prostitute yourself." While I agree with O'Connor's main points, and she may truly care, if you write a letter to a 20 year old and somehow think that you can conclude that they dont care for themselves and that they are prostituting themselves when you dont even know them, you better be ready for a backlash where they insult you. As far as I am concerned, O'Connor should have never sent the first letter, or sent a way toned down version that was actually meant to be caring and helpful to miley. Not an open letter that was, imo, a chest beating exercise to point out that she acted for a real reason in the past where as miley is not, was insulting, and was meant to push her views of how women should act into the public. It was not a respectful and sincere letter to help miley.
"Yes, I’m suggesting you don’t care for yourself." and "Please in future say no when you are asked to prostitute yourself."
in no way would I be okay being on the receiving end of such judgments. First stones were thrown by Sinead, but I agree with others here that it's all a bit silly and reality TV-ish.
If I did something I was ashamed of or regretted and someone said I was their role model in that insurance I would probably over react. She definitely holds pretty intense views regarding feminism and it would be strange if those views did not form a practical day to day part of her thinking or use of language. I think you have a good point. I tend to try and take people at face value. I also think a consideration of her sense of social responsibility as the role model in this situation and how her own hurts and regrets would influence that along side her views and beliefs are necessary as well. Yes, she is punting feminism. Is she using her position as a rule model to push it or is she pushing her personal views as a heartfelt way to try and prevent Miley from being hurt the same way she was, driven by the sense of accountability that comes from being mentioned as the inspiration for the video? I can't make that call.
Perhaps, but that worthwhile discussion can be bought up without the inclusion of this silly situation. I just fear that the involvement of a celebrity back-and-forth threatens to dilute the real issues at hand by focusing to much on the embroiled parties.
You're right. I stand corrected and will try not to post such low-quality content next time.
Is it wrong of me to hate twitter more and more with each passing incident like this? Sure, you can blame the celebrities -- the two in question here are obviously not the cream of the crop -- but twitter is just a bad idea. I can barely stand to watch our society go in this direction. It hurts.
It's not wrong of you at all. I used to use Twitter until I found out I was being stalked using it. It really turned me off to it all. Like I needed to take a shower, I felt so gross. It's protected and un-used right now, and I plan on deleting it soon. It has its pros, but to me the cons outweigh it.
well, that went south really quickly. the tone went from one of concern (if a little judgemental) in the first letter, to complete derision in the third. yeesh.