Lauren Mayberry: I still won’t ignore internet rape and death threats

Lauren Mayberry was 27 when she was sent rape threats after wearing a black mini dress in a music video.

The frontwoman of synth pop band Chvrches had become the target of a torrent of online abuse, following the release of the track Leave a Trace from the band’s acclaimed second album.

One person offered to hand her a gun, if she couldn’t deal with the backlash.

She decided to respond in an interview with Channel 4’s Cathy Newman, in which she branded the abuse “ludicrous”.

But Mayberry also warned “cyber misogyny” was experienced by women and girls every day, with harmful and isolating effects.

“I don’t think the ‘just ignore it and it’ll go away’ argument is working,” she said.

As good as her word, Mayberry, from Thornhill in Stirling, is continuing to challenge the extreme threats of violence and abuse she has received in over a decade in the music industry.

She is one of a number of artists taking part in Change The Tune – an on-air, digital and social media initiative by BBC Radio 6 Music to raise awareness of the impact of online abuse.

Mayberry, now 36, told the BBC that even at the beginning of her career, “a lot of men” wanted to tell her she was sexually desirable – and if she was deemed not desirable this was “the worst thing” they could say.

Mayberry added: “It’s all very sexual and sexualised all the time.

“And I look at that and I’m like, I was a 23-year-old girl, trying to do my job, just to write some silly songs. I didn’t know.

“I didn’t know that that was going to be such a big part of it.”

Chvrches were highly regarded on home turf, but also grew in popularity in the US after performing at the SXSW festival and appearing on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in 2013.

As their visibility increased, so did the abuse – aimed largely at Mayberry.

In 2019 she received rape and death threats after expressing disappointment in EDM star Marshmello’s decision to work with Chris Brown and Tyga.

Brown, who previously admitted assaulting his then girlfriend Rihanna, hit back at the band, calling them a “bunch of losers”.

Tyga, who was sued for sexual assault, said: “Everyone makes mistakes”.

Mayberry shared some of the messages she received following the exchange on social media.

One person said he would “bash her skull in” if she continued to make comments about Brown.

It prompted Chvrches to increase security at their shows while Mayberry also hired private security at her home in California.

Then, at the start of 2021, she learned she had appeared in “deepfake” pornography.

A deepfake is an image or video that has been digitally altered with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to replace the face of one person with the face of another.

In recent years the technology has been increasingly used to add the faces of celebrities or public figures – most often women – into pornographic films.

Mayberry told the BBC it was damaging but would have had a far more powerful effect on her when she was younger.

She said: “It just felt like another version of the same thing, if that makes sense. And I do think that’s odd. It’s like a decade of intermittently receiving rape or death threats on the internet.

“Even though people say ‘It’s not real, it’s not real’ Your brain does not perceive that, I don’t think. The impact of it on your psychology, it doesn’t really matter whether you think that’s real.”

Initially Mayberry said Chvrches were not so well known that they could afford to hire security, even when she was receiving “specific” death threats about venues and timings.

She added: “Something like that was very scary and people saying to you ‘oh it’s just the internet, it’s probably not going to happen’ doesn’t really make you feel better when you have to go on stage.

“I definitely did a lot of panic crying before gigs and then I think I do remember us specifically getting to the end of that tour and it was the first time in the band that I was like, ‘I’m gonna take two weeks off and I’m not going on my emails’ – and I’m never not on my emails.

“I took two weeks off and went to a little remote location and cried a lot in baths.”

Mayberry shared her experience alongside a number of artists – including Self Esteem and Craig Charles – in a special interview with BBC Radio 6 Music, as part of the Change the Tune initiative.

DJ Jamz Supernova told the programme of the racist abuse she had experienced including being called a “token” or “diversity hire”.

And composer Nitin Sawney said comments made about him online had triggered memories of violence and racism in his childhood.

Mayberry, on the cusp of launching a solo career for the first time, has also made an iPlayer film about her experiences of online abuse and misogyny in the music industry.

Initially, she said she did not want to draw any more attention to the subject that had taken up so much head space over the years – but was persuaded to do so because she believed the women in bands she loved would have taken action.

“If we’re going to have a conversation about gender and violence and all those things, at least it can come back to the art,” she said.

“That was the beginning of the path to the solo stuff, because it feels like there was more space for my perspective within it.”