#FreeKesha: Court Ruling Enrages People All Across Social Media

On February 19th, a U.S. Supreme Court finally had the court case Kesha Serbert filed against Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald for rape opened. A New York judge ruled that Kesha was unable to break away from her recording contract due to the “lack of evidence” and mass amounts of money the producer has contributed to Sony Music.

After the ruling was heard, outbursts of anger were poured onto social media sites, expressing the injustice that was committed. Serbert has received tremendous amounts of support from her fans and non-fans as well on social media, where the hashtag #FreeKesha and #SonySupportsRape were trending for hours on end nationally.

Twitter users expressed their discontent with:

“This is why feminism exists. Because a rapist can get away with raping his client and force her to still work with him. #FREEKESHA”

– briana (@danielpredas)

“I am disgusted with humanity. Instead of helping a woman be free you punish them. Then proceed to mock women who ask for equality #FreeKesha”

– (@harryiscurvy)

“if everyone still believes that the music business is happy go-lucky and truly about music please stop being so naive #SonySupportsRape”

– scarlett loves louis (@encagedbravery)

Inclusively, stars like Lady Gaga, Lorde, Snoop Dogg, HAIM, Lily Allen, Anne Hathaway, Zedd, and Demi Lovato displayed support for the artist by tweeting the hashtag, among others. Taylor Swift even donated $250,000 for her legal needs.

Demi Lovato, upset at the lack of support Taylor Swift was showing for Kesha, called her out via Twitter. Lovato later apologized through a powerful Instagram post that demonstrated that amount of people who were raped, to the number of cases filed, and the amount of rapists jailed for their crime.

As most people know, I tend to get fired up about the things I believe in, and although my heart and intentions are always in the right place, unfortunately sometimes my passion gets the best of me and causes me to say things that I probably shouldn’t say. And when doing so it takes away from the real reason I am speaking up in the first place. Our focus should be on the topic of victims of sexual and physical abuse being afraid to come forward with their stories. They’re more likely to face retaliation and harassment than to see justice being served. Especially women. It baffles me that when it comes to serious issues like equality and abuse, too often women are not taken as seriously as men. All I want to see is women coming together and actually making a difference. A real change and shift in society. Everyone has their own way of giving support to others , and at the end of the day, helping victims is all that matters. Ultimately, the message I want people to hear is it’s okay to come forward with your abuse and if you do decide to take action, you are not alone.

A photo posted by Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) on Feb 22, 2016 at 4:02pm PST

A couple days later after the trial, Dr. Luke tweeted that he will not make any comment in regards to the trial.

“This is an ongoing legal case so I won’t be responding / talking much about this. This should be tried in a court of law.”

– Dr. Luke Doctor Luke (@TheDoctorLuke)

This legal case is a problem much deeper than what meets the eye. Artists that have previously worked with Dr. Luke, aside from Kesha, have nothing but rude remarks about their experience when working with him.

Dr. Luke has been sued multiple times for plagiarizing other songs and committing copyright infringements, the most recent with a Jessie J song in August 2015. He has body-shamed Becky G and Charlie XCX on multiple occasions, Becky G posting a tweet subtly directed towards him quoting the words he called her. He stole a song once and gave it to P!nk, as if it was own material. Once P!nk found out, she was enraged.

Kesha’s mother had also been threatened by Dr. Luke to be blackmailed for attempting to speak the truth about him. And to this day, nothing has been done in regard to these actions and comments.

Lady Gaga has shown tremendous amounts of support for Kesha, inclusively by spending the day with her this past February 24th, telling Sony to free Kesha from Dr. Luke and the label.

Kesha has thanked her fans for the loving amounts of support through a Facebook post, establishing that “at this point, the issue is bigger than just about me”.

Clearly, the situation is much more complicated than we originally thought, because more celebrities among the entertainment industry have spoken up about sexual assaults. Activists and fans of Kesha hope that this will be the beginning of a mass movement against rape culture and sexual assaults within the music industry that have gone silenced due to money.

“#freekesha has shown that we live in a rape culture; this is a clear example.”

– Affinity Magazine (@TheAffinityMag)