This article is taken from the October 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £25.
In the annals of celebrity clarifications, this one is a standout. “To try and sum everything up, no I am not a violent misogynist fetishizing the ‘female experience’,” wrote the feted singer-songwriter Ethel Cain in a 2,000-word statement this July. “No I am not the creator of child pornography, nor am I a pedophile, a zoophile, or a porn-addicted incest fetishist.”
It is all very reminiscent of the “A Lot of Questions Already Answered by the Shirt” meme format — which in this case would go: “My ‘I am not a violent misogynist, creator of child pornography, pedophile, zoophile or porn-addicted incest fetishist shirt’ has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.”
Cain, now 27, tried to fix the offences in the past by blaming them (particularly some racist comments) on having been a teenage edgelord. Cain grew up in a conservative family in Florida, and according to the statement, became a high school social justice warrior “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”.
After moving out at 19, Cain “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. I would have said (and usually did say) anything, about anyone, to gain attention and ultimately just make my friends laugh.” But not everything could be attributed to a youthful desire to shock.
One of the contentious posts (now deleted) refers to “dumb bitches” before going into further graphic misogyny, and was published in 2023. A month after Cain’s statement, the singer Lana del Rey released a snippet of a diss track aimed at Cain, then clarified that it was a response to Cain’s repeated and recent trolling and body-shaming of her. (Cain hasn’t confirmed or commented on those allegations, but has acknowledged del Rey as an influence.)
All of this is startlingly unusual behaviour for a twenty-something woman, even one with the conflicted background Cain alludes to. On the whole, it’s boys, not girls, who “fall into” those nihilistic, extremity-obsessed subcultures. It makes more sense when you know that Cain was, in fact, a boy rather than a girl: Cain is trans, and came out at 20.
And for Cain, being trans explains the entire furore. “I urge you to recognize the patterns of a transphobic/otherwise targeted smear campaign,” read the statement. “This is a common tactic used against minorities, specifically trans people in this case, with no goal besides the destruction of an individual.” Well, up to a point — it’s true that being trans makes Cain a flashpoint in the culture wars.
But it’s also true that a lot of the material under discussion is unambiguously disturbing: one of the posts that Cain sort-of-but-not-really apologised for was a selfie taken whilst wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “legalise incest” scrawled on it. And Cain has been given leeway for some things that female artists have been sorely punished for, like working with the producer-slash-alleged-abuser (he denies the claims) Dr Luke.
What’s worst about all this is that Cain’s music is magisterially, eerily brilliant. Preacher’s Daughter, Cain’s 2022 debut album, is the first part of a Southern Gothic concept trilogy built around the character “Ethel Cain” (a stage name — although Cain’s legal name is the even-more-made-up-sounding “Hayden Silas Anhedönia”). The narrative continued this year with Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You.
Ethel (the character) exists in a sinister realm of Americana, the universe of David Lynch films and Cormac McCarthy novels. Ethel rebels against her religious background and runs away with an abusive man called Isaiah. The final song on Preacher’s Daughter, “Strangers”, is written from the perspective of a murdered, cannibalised Ethel addressing Isaiah.
Though sonically it passes as a wistful love song, the lyrics are a succession of bad-taste gags. “You devour like smoked bovine hide/ How funny, I never considered myself tough,” coos Cain. “You’re so handsome when I’m all over your mouth.” As it rises to its climax, dense guitars wrap around Cain’s sweet and soaring vocals.
All this morbid romance has won Cain a sad-girl fanbase, who are entranced by the heady performance of masochistic femininity. If that strikes you as perverse of the audience, remember that girls made the Twilight books (sexy vampire can barely resist devouring his crush) a success.
Themes of eroticised violence are all over del Rey’s work. Women have even been known, God help my sex, to build fandoms around serial killers.
Still, I feel differently about Cain doing it — however enthralling I find the music. This is a male idea of what it means to be female, rather than a female attempt (however distortedly) to make sense of the perils of sexuality. It’s not very far from Cain’s roots as in those shock communities, where everything is a grotesque joke.
You can see “Strangers” as belonging to a particularly unpleasant porn subgenre called “vor”, consisting of fantasies about eating and being eaten. It’s exactly the kind of thing a too-online young man might once have used to horrify his friends. Cain, in other words, is the world’s first chanteuse of shitposting.
