‘Lady Gaga’s refusal to be shamed over gender rumours changed my life as a young trans person’

“Why the hell am I gonna waste my time and give a press release on whether or not I have a penis? My fans don’t care and neither do I.”

If you grew up in the late-2000s/early-2010s, you almost certainly remember – or, at the very least, vaguely recollect – the widespread conspiracy theory that pop star Lady Gaga was assigned male at birth.

Growing up at a time when trans representation amounted to a one-time gag in crude films such as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective or shock-horror tabloid dumpster articles about blokes discovering their dates had a wang, this clown-circus of a harassment campaign against the then newcomer to pop was, retrospectively, nothing short of disgusting.

Hindsight is a hell of a thing. Looking back, the media should be ashamed of the way it perpetuated the conspiracy theory. The way we consumed news was different at the time and it was easy to get swept up in the ignorant glossy-mag furore, right alongside pictures of a bald Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan leaving court. What judgmental fools we all were.

I was 12 at the time. Much like my classmates, I didn’t understand the true extent of how problematic this whole ordeal was and, either through peer pressure or juvenile ignorance, laughed at the idea of a girl having a penis, but there was always a subconscious pit in my stomach whenever the subject was brought up.

As time went on, the laughs waned and the press moved on to their next flavour of the month, but Lady Gaga, through all the ridicule and mockery, stood firm, never fully clarifying her gender identity. This was the first time I had ever seen the general public engage with trans people outside a joke, and she was putting these societal prejudices to task, while absolutely smashing it.

There’s a reason the old ABC News articles calling Gaga a “he-she“, and cringe-worthy blogs analysing freeze-frames of the singer supposedly with a bulge in her crotch, have been left to obscurity, while her 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper is still shared today – because what she is saying makes complete sense: who the hell cares?

“Maybe I do [have a penis], would it be so terrible?” she asks in the clip. It’s hard to overstate, in an era where stories villainising trans people are a dime-a-dozen, just how impactful this was for me and so many other pre-transition kids growing up at the time.

Suddenly, being a trans person was no longer a crude joke, often heavily associated or confused with crossdressers and bottom-of-the-barrel “transvestite” stereotypes. Lady Gaga had just used an attempt by the tabloid press to ruin her career, to make a great point about the way that women, cis and transgender, are judged by their appearance or perceived identity rather than for their actions.

This is something I have constantly admired about the pop star. In the years that followed, especially in her early days, there have been so many attempts to paint her as an atypical outcast who doesn’t belong in the industry, from her infamous meat dress to her outlandish sense of style.

Instead of denying that she is all those things and more, she embraces them. It’s not about denying rumours to conform to the perceived rules of normality, it’s about questioning why those rules exist in the first place.

Say, hypothetically, she was a trans woman. Say when Cooper asked her that question, she confirmed that she was, indeed, pre-op – what changes?

Lady Gaga is who she is, and she is prepared to quite literally face the dregs of the celebrity press to stay true to herself. It’s in part because of her unabashed willingness to be herself that I embraced who I am and eventually transitioned years later.

It’s allies such as Lady Gaga who stood side-by-side with the transgender community and helped make our voices heard without there needing to be a laugh track to accompany it. For that, I have nothing but admiration and thanks.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.