Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoneix in the upcoming Joker: Folie à Deux – Photo: Niko Tavernise
Lady Gaga has explained how she became a target of Internet misinformation at the start of her career and why she refused to address rumors claiming that she had a penis or may have been intersex.
Last week, Netflix dropped its new show, What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates, a five-episode series looking at cutting-edge technologies with the potential to reshape the world or society. The second episode addresses Internet misinformation, something that has become more prolific in the past eight years as political actors have sought to manipulate public opinion by spreading falsehoods in the hope of shaping world events.
For insight, Gates interviewed Lady Gaga about her experience with Internet rumors.
In June 2009, following the release of her debut album TheFame, the Grammy Award-winning singer performed at the Glastonbury Festival.
Some concert-goers and self-appointed Internet sleuths began circulating footage from the performance, speculating that Lady Gaga was sporting a bulge under her skirt. Rumors then spread like wildfire online, asserting that the cisgender superstar had a penis and had either been assigned male at birth or was intersex.
The rumors were so intense that there were reports by mainstream media outlets on quotes allegedly attributed to Gaga seeking to fact-check whether she was indeed born with male genitalia. Gaga’s manager told ABC News at the time that such speculation was “completely ridiculous.”
Two years later, in 2011, Gaga was asked by gay journalist Anderson Cooper during a 60 Minutes interview about the rumor that she had a “male appendage.” The clip did not air during the regular program, but was shown in 60 Minutes Overtime, a web series of bonus content cut from the broadcast.
Gaga, swirling a fake diamond around in her mouth as she responded, was confronted with the fact that she had joked about having a penis in response to the controversy.
“Maybe I do,” she responded. “Would it be so terrible? Why the hell am I going to waste my time and give a press release about whether or not I have a penis? My fans don’t care and neither do I.”
In her recent interview with Gates, however, Gaga reflects on why she was so glib about the rumors and being “transvestigated.”
“So, when I was in my early twenties, there was a rumor that I was a man,” she said. “And I went all over the world. I mean, I traveled for tours, for promoting my records, and almost every interview I sat in they said, you know — well, there was this imagery on the, on the internet that had been doctored. And they were like, you know, like, ‘There’s this rumor that you’re a man.’ Like, ‘What do you have to say about that?'”
Gaga explained that while she wouldn’t be personally affected by baseless rumors, there were plenty of other people, including members of the trans community, who would be if she acted offended by the questions.
“The reason why I didn’t answer the question was because I didn’t feel like a victim with that lie,” Gaga said. “But I thought about, like, what about a kid that’s being accused of that, that would think that a public figure like me would feel shame?
“I guess what I’m saying is, I’ve been in situations where fixing a rumor was not in the best interest of — I thought — of the well-being of other people,” she concluded. “In that case, I tried to be thought-provoking and disruptive in another way. I tried to use the misinformation to create another disruptive point.”
U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson, one of several Democrats targeted in Texas's latest gerrymander, says she will seek reelection after a federal three-judge panel blocked a Republican-backed congressional map that would have drawn her out of her Dallas-area district for 2026.
The lesbian congresswoman is one of five Texas Democrats whose districts were reshaped to give Republicans a 2026 edge, and among several Democrats who were effectively drawn out of the seats they currently represent.
In Johnson's case, the proposed map would have stretched her Dallas-based 32nd District into Republican-leaning Rockwall County and rural East Texas, while shifting her hometown of Farmers Branch into GOP Rep. Beth Van Duyne's 24th District, a seat Trump won by 16 points in 2024.
When Martha Nell Smith was a child, she was given a book called The Golden Treasury of Poetry. "I was a nerdy kid, I liked to read," the 72-year-old academic says, adding, "I also liked to play. I was a very sporty kid too. I was a tomboy."
The book contained several poems by Emily Dickinson. "I thought these look so simple, but when you think about it, they are really weird," she says. "But you could say that about almost any Dickinson poem."
Smith recounts the long and winding path that led her to become one of the foremost experts on Emily Dickinson, with a particular focus on the poet's secretly romance-laden letters to her sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson.
"I am my worst critic," says Cesar Toledo, executive director of the Wanda Alston Foundation. "I set really ambitious deadlines for myself, sometimes unrealistic goals, but somehow, through my tenacity and just that call to public service -- and being raised in a humble home where my mom worked three jobs to raise us -- I carry that very hard work ethic with me every day. And because of that, I've been successful in my career path."
Toledo assumed the role as head of the nonprofit dedicated to serving LGBTQ homeless youth earlier this year, succeeding longtime executive director June Crenshaw, who announced she'd be stepping down last fall.
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