Man enough to be a woman and still rock'n'rollinghttp://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/man-enough-to-be-a-woman-and-still-rocknrolling-7766426.htmlMatilda Battersby, Saturday 19 May 2012Following the news about punk singer Tom Gabel, Matilda Battersby hears about the pressures faced by musicians who dare to cross the gender divideIt has been all over the newspapers that Against Me! singer Tom Gabel has decided to live as a woman. The Mail Online's headline shrieked: "Punk rocker says he is having a sex change operation to become a woman... but he's STAYING with his wife." Another read: "Drugs, Sex(uality) and Rock'n'Roll".
It was quite a surprise that the frontman of a rather macho band (all black jeans, tattoos and growling guitars) should have felt this way. During an interview with Rolling Stone magazine she described plans to take hormones and undergo gender reassignment surgery, after which he will be named Laura Jane Grace. "I'm going to have embarrassing moments," she said. "But [I'm] hoping people will understand, and hoping they'll be fairly kind."
The news reports have not all been "fairly kind" and a couple were not very understanding at all, revealing thinly disguised ignorance about ->-bleeped-<-. Several made inferences about Gabel's sexuality and the implications for his marriage, confusing Gabel's gender dysphoria (where you feel trapped in a body of the wrong sex) with questions about whether being a woman and having a wife makes her gay. Most strikingly, several of the reports lauded Gabel as "the first major rock star" to come out as transgender. While it is undoubtedly the case that in 2012 ->-bleeped-<- is still a taboo, the statement that it has taken this long for a major musician to "come out" as trans simply isn't true.
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