On Friday, October 13, three stories broke regarding sexual assault allegations in the independent music world. That morning, the L.A. producer known as the Gaslamp Killer was accused on social media of drugging and raping two women four years ago, a detailed story that quickly led to event producers Low End Theory severing ties with him. A few hours later, on the heels of victims coming forward, the indie rock band Real Estate released a statement explaining that they’d parted ways with guitarist Matt Mondanile last year over his “unacceptable treatment of women,” a long-due admittance of an open industry secret. By late afternoon, Brooklyn label Captured Tracks made its own announcement: Alex Calder, formerly of Mac DeMarco’s early band Makeout Videotape, had been dropped as a solo artist after they’d learn of sexual assault allegations against him. Instead of protesting the allegations like Mondanile and Gaslamp Killer initially did, Calder posted a long, mournful apology addressing his past misunderstanding of consent.

I’ve been working in the daily music news cycle for the last seven years and I do not remember a day like this before, when multiple sexual assault allegations not only broke all at once, but were met with actual consequences.

When the truth about Harvey Weinstein came out, it turned on a faucet that’s still running, and will keep running. As the world has been forced (again) to acknowledge what women have always known, the conversation surrounding sexual harassment and assault is growing and changing at a breathtaking speed, with more men finally acknowledging that it happens in their communities.

The music world makes plenty of money off the talent, labor, and patronage of women, and it purports to be liberal in the vague way that creative industries must be these days. But make no mistake, music is a hard place to be a woman—whether you’re an artist, a behind-the-scenes player, or a fan. Perhaps especially if you are a fan, the role that keeps this whole thing running.

“All sexual assault and harassment stories turn, to some degree, on power imbalances,” wrote feminist writer Rebecca Traister in a piece on the recent Bill Cosby trial. The power imbalance is key to understanding many of the sexual assault allegations coming out in the music world, involving inappropriate interactions between musician and fan. There are cultural traditions that say girls, girls, girls come standard with success, and that the transitory nature of being a musician facilitates these fleeting sexual encounters.

Some fans want to be groupies—no judgment, that is their right of sexual agency, and it is a tradition shrouded in as much lore as performing onstage. But some young fans find themselves in uncomfortable situations where the power imbalance is so sharply off-kilter—maybe where substances are involved, where they’ve been communicating with a musician via social media—that they either think they can’t escape unscathed or they actually, physically cannot leave. Sometimes they just don’t know what to think, or who to tell.

One Mondanile accuser, then a 19-year-old fan, remembered “marveling at the opportunity to actually talk to a member of a band she loved” following a 2013 Real Estate show. Minutes after meeting and seemingly out of nowhere, Mondanile shoved her in a broom closet and stuck his tongue down her throat. Similarly, a woman allegedly assaulted by PWR BTTM’s Ben Hopkins following one of their shows described feeling powerless because of Hopkins’ social status. Fame, even just indie rock prominence, can embolden musicians and intimidate fans, throwing the latter off their guard. The bigger the star, the bigger that effect: Kitti Jones, who spent years enduring R. Kelly’s sickening physical, sexual, and mental abuse, underscored her brave recent chronicle with her bona fides as a longtime Kellz fan, illuminating how smart women find themselves in the most extreme of these situations.