Love wrote about sexual violence with a snarl, too, but a heavier, more knowing one. “Was she asking for it?/Was she asking nice?” she poses on the seething “Asking for It.” “If she was asking for it/Did she ask you twice?” The song, she’s said, was inspired by a stage dive that took a wrong turn. She leapt into the audience to crowd-surf during a show, and found the crowd ready to devour her. “Suddenly, it was like my dress was being torn off me, my underwear was being torn off me, people were putting their fingers inside of me and grabbing my breasts really hard, screaming things in my ears like ‘pussy-whore-cunt,’” she said. Whatever covenant binds fan and artist, whatever gives the latter power over the former, didn’t apply to Hole—not in totality, at least; not to the extent that it would keep a singer who was also a woman from being molested by her audience in public.
From Sasha Geffen’s in-depth look at Hole’s Live Through This
