You have to defend your honor. And your family.

I dont think gender is aesthetically defining for me.

My mother wanted me to understand that as a woman I could do pretty much whatever I wanted to, that I didn't have to use sex or sexuality to define myself.

That said, I've never thought the fact that I'm a woman was important to my work.

I think that if you have a strong narrative, if the idea of the song can be boiled down to the basics, it won't change that much.

But I never want to get to the point where I write a safe song or one that represents my sense of a subject in order to appear civilized.

A lot of my writing is not terribly civilized. Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that. That's why I write the way I do.