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.”
Organizers of the annual Nashville Pride Festival & Parade have launched a fundraiser to help sustain future events after several longtime sponsors withdrew their support.
In an Aug. 20 press release, Nashville Pride said sponsorship revenue is down $270,000 from previous years.
Nearly 40% of the festival's longtime sponsors withdrew support for this year's Pride -- some just days before the festivities kicked off in late June -- according to Nashville Public Radio station WPLN. Among them were Bridgestone Americas, a presenting sponsor for 11 years, and Nissan, which ended its presenting sponsorship after four years.
A new report published by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law finds that an estimated 2.8 million Americans aged 13 or older identify as transgender.
According to NBC News, that figure represents about 1% of the U.S. population within that age group. The breakdown is nearly even: 34.2% identify as transgender men, 32.7% as transgender women, and 33.1% as nonbinary.
One statistic drew particular attention on social media: younger Americans are far more likely to identify as transgender than older generations. About 3.3% of those ages 13-17 identify as transgender, compared to just 0.3% of those 65 and older.
Gun rights groups are blasting the Trump administration after CNN reported that senior Justice Department officials have been discussing the possibility of restricting transgender U.S. citizens from owning firearms, following the recent mass shooting at a Catholic church in Minneapolis. Although officials described the talks as "preliminary," critics warn that even floating such a proposal scapegoats transgender people and threatens their constitutional rights.
The internal talks appeared to draw on a theory promoted by conservative influencers and media outlets: that transgender people are mentally ill, and that transition-related hormones negatively affect mental health, making them more prone to violence.
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