The BRITs’ Loudest Feminists Were The Men Of The 1975

When Matt Healy went up to the stage at the o2 to collect the 1975’s Brit award for best group, he carried a little piece of paper, and on it were some incredibly wise words of feminist critique. Those words call out not only abuse, but the differing treatments of male abusers and female victims in the music industry.

Shaking a little bit, the band's frontman said: ‘In music, male misogynist acts are examined for nuance and defended as traits of difficult artists, whilst women and those who call them out are treated as hysterics who don’t understand art.

The band were quoting a recent article by music journalist Laura Snapes, in which she analysed the responses to recent allegations made in a New York Times article against Ryan Adams. The singer-songwriter, was, until that seismic article, perhaps best known for covering a Taylor Swift album in full because of course he could do it better than her.

He is now known for, it is claimed, harassing women - such as his wife, Mandy Moore, as well as younger women he made his protégés - sexting teenagers, demanding certain sexual acts and stymying women’s musical endeavours if they didn’t comply.

Laura’s and Matt’s statement takes aim at, say, R Kelly, who has been accused of multiple offences against women and children (he’s still denying them), and, importantly, also at people closer to home. Laura and Matt called out the abusers we haven’t all heard of yet. And their apologists. And their enablers. And the people who leverage double standards against women to protect these abusers.

Matt's decision to read out Laura's words would have left certain men in the o2 trembling harder than the little piece of paper it was written on, and got an audience of millions thinking about the different ways we treat men and women, especially post-#MeToo.

The 1975 are an all-male band, and it’s very dull to congratulate men for doing the bare minimum i.e. being nice guys, when it comes to feminism. However, it’s also very dull to expect women to do all the heavy lifting of feminism. So by quoting a woman’s righteous - and true - words tonight, The 1975 didn’t only speak feminism in a male register that other men are, sadly, more likely to listen to, they allowed all the famous women around them to take a night off.

The women of the Brits still made big points about women's status in the world and in music: Jess Glynne did a performance taking her make up off, to make a point about women not needing make-up to look presentable. And Jorja Smith, collecting her best female award, shouted out ‘all the little girls and women being themselves and loving what they’re doing’. Ariana Grande, after all the stuff she's been through, is an icon of female resilience simply for still functioning, and Radio 1’s Annie Mac, presenting an award for Calvin Harris as best producer, announced how proud she was to be part of an awards ceremony where there were as many women as men in each category. Plus, if you squinted hard enough, you’d have noticed P!nk's closing performance saw her wear a ‘Me Too’ embellished bodysuit. She also performed in front of a screen that, at some point, flashed up a placard reading ‘men of quality respect women’s rights’.

These are all great and good actions, and if they’re not as headline-grabbing as Matt’s speech, that’s not because they’re not worthy, it’s just because we're just so used to women doing feminism on a big stage. In fact, famous women doing feminism is now so expected that it's formed another double standard: last year, Ellie Goulding's Brits statement of female empowerment was actually scripted, meanwhile no-one's asking Olly Murs his solutions to abuses of power in the music industry. If it took a boy band to step up and say something vital in order for it to be heard across the living rooms the country over, then so be it. Here’s to a future of more men like The 1975, who give their platform up to the wise words of women who spoke before them.