Remember last year?

Um… so there's a new Es­cape-ism record out and the sit­u­a­tion around last year's awk­ward self-can­cel­la­tion of Ian Sveno­n­ius is still murky as fuck.

Quick re­fresh­er: Last year, around the time when it be­came known that the Cal­i­for­nia garage la­bel and record store Burg­er Records had been a hotbed for sex­u­al preda­tors and creeps for years at that point, reig­init­ing the dis­cus­sion around sex­ism and preda­to­ry be­hav­ior in the punk scene (al­so lead­ing Burg­er Records to cease op­er­a­tions soon af­ter), Wash­ing­ton D.C. scene leg­end Ian Sveno­n­ius (of Na­tion of Ulysses, The Make-Up, Weird War, Chain and the Gang, Es­cape-Ism, XYZ…) did a weird kind of self-can­cel­la­tion post on in­sta­gram, ad­mit­ting to preda­to­ry or at least very creepy be­hav­ior to­wards women in the past and apol­o­giz­ing for it, then delet­ing the whole thing soon af­ter.

The re­ac­tions were var­ied. Merge Records seem to have gained some deep­er knowl­edge about the ac­cu­sa­tions and deemed them se­vere enough to sev­er ties with Ian Sveno­n­ius.
Dischord Records, on the oth­er hand, who should al­so know a thing or two, are still work­ing with him, keep­ing his old records in print and in-stock. The new Es­cape-ism record, while not a Dischord re­lease, is be­ing sold via the Dischord Records web­site right now. No clue how to in­ter­pret that com­ing from a la­bel that has been so well known for their strong ethics in the past.

I'm just gonna say, the whole sit­u­a­tion stinks. It's been over a year and we know pret­ty much noth­ing about what was hap­pen­ing around Ian Sveno­n­ius. As a fan, mu­sic blog­ger, we­b­cast­er, i am es­pe­cial­ly con­flict­ed. What kind of per­son am i sup­port­ing if i buy his records? Can i still jus­ti­fy post­ing his stuff? Should i re­move all of his mu­sic from 12XU Ra­dio?

At first, i re­al­ly want­ed to give Ian Sveno­n­ius the ben­e­fit of the doubt. It seemed like he was ac­tu­al­ly feel­ing re­morse for his ac­tions (their sever­i­ty still be­ing un­known) and some dude ac­tu­al­ly apol­o­giz­ing, be­ing hon­est about it and will­ing to work through his shit would have ac­tu­al­ly felt kin­da re­fresh­ing at that point.

In­stead, it looks to me like the punk scene has col­lec­tive­ly agreed to shove the whole thing un­der the rug, not de­mand any an­swers and move on as if noth­ing ac­tu­al­ly ever hap­pened. Once again, every­one gets the si­lence treat­ment. I think that's the worst pos­si­ble way to go about this. This. Sucks. So. Much.