Singer/guitarist Laura Jane Grace formed punk rockers Against Me! back in the late ‘90s, and the band was consistently active up until the pandemic. Grace, who became one of the first and most highly visible punk rock musicians to come out as transgender, has since started a solo career with the help of her wife and co-writer Paris Campbell Grace.
Sadly, Paris has taken to social media with a lengthy thread accusing Laura Jane of spousal abuse. Laura Jane first posted a thread saying she felt “unsafe,” which prompted the lengthy reply. Paris wrote: “This is another example this week of my wife using her massive platform to attempt to hurt me. I am currently locked in my office with all my belongings, and actually really scared. I don’t know what to do here, and I have nobody to turn to. She has thousands of people who love her, and it’s a great inequality of power. She’s been yelling at me since we woke up, I have remained calm (although admit I have cried a bunch after) and begged her to please be kind to me and try to have a good day.”
She continued: “We are a day away from a major album release. Our first collaboration together. But I am not being treated with kindness. Everything from my past of having to turn to SW, to my alarm going off too much has been setting Laura Jane to a place of sheer irrational rage towards me daily. I am trying my best here, but I FEEL unsafe. Laura Jane is perfectly safe, upstairs, tearing the house apart as I type this.”
“I am the one unsafe in this situation, I am publicly asking my wife to please stop this and leave the home. What is happening to me is very real. I love my wife dearly, but I believe she needs serious help. I have countless times begged for us to go to counseling, to which she often blows up at me over even the suggestion. On the few times she’s halfway agreed, it leads nowhere. I have no options than to publicly state what’s happening to me because I don’t have a personal support network, everyone in my life is there for/because of my wife. I feel very alone…”
Paris then detailed years worth of turmoil apparently stemming from the fact that she used to be a sex worker who wound up being trafficked.
“More and more, my wife seemingly started to become resentful towards me for multiple things, but primarily my short lived experience as a SWer. My wife has found a way to tie it into everything. This threw me… HARD. I couldn’t understand, and still don’t understand, why suddenly for the last OVER A YEAR I find myself daily getting my trauma thrown in my face…”
“Everything from her scouring the internet for any remains she can find of my deleted OF leaks, or telling me she spends time watching massage parlor porn out of “concern” she will see me in one of the videos, or her saying her telling me her findings of videos of me I have explained are non-consensual in their distribution—to throw in my face moments before sound check on a show day, I COULD GO ON FOREVER…”
“I feel used. Which is crazy, because that’s what my wife tells me every day, that I’m an “asshole narcissist,” that I’m “in cahoots with” this person or that to execute a “secret plan” in which I take all her money, it’s endless. Our relationship has become a revolving door of my wife yelling at me while I cry, then hours later coming around with only the words…”wanna f*ck?” And THAT is the only tenderness I am shown. I feel like an object. Then every night, I get on stage and I sing and try has hard as I can to do a good job, sometimes while she throws death stares at me during words like “as if it were an obligation” during Black Me Out, or sometimes she won’t look at me at all to make me feel disconnected…”
“I sound crazy saying these things because IT IS crazy, but it is also the f*cking truth. I am not a bad person, I love love love this woman, but I don’t deserve any of this sh*t!! I feel invisible, I feel like nobody will believe me, and I know it’s not right. I feel like I’m living in a dystopian nightmare, everyone every day telling me how much this woman loves me…while on the daily she tells me she hates me, wants me gone, but if I try to leave that’s an issue too!! I am not okay!!!!!”
