Originally posed on Fierce and Fabulous on May 20, 2010
The Lady Gaga Debate
DISCLAIMER: So we thought that we’d lighten up this site with some light reading/humour, i’d love to continue this pointless debate with anyone who wants to challenge the points i make here….
by: justin timberdick
So yeah, its obvious…Lady Gaga is clearly not an anarchist, and not queer positive, well she’s not rad. queer positive at least. She’s a fucking celebrity who makes millions and millions of dollars, she’s an assimilationist asshole just like every other celebrity, but even still i have a hard time even calling her assimilationist at all…im tempted to say that she’s the exact opposite but i know better.
The question that i think is important to ask is whether or not she fucks with/challenges the gender binary, societal norms, and what it means to be obscene/perverse. Whether or not she does these things intentionally or not doesn’t really matter. Its also interesting how much she has been coming up in conversation/debates within the anarchist community. In my experience the only folks that i’ve gotten into debates about her with is cis-gendered, straight, male, anarchists. Thats also something thats really interesting (but not surprising at all) to me. Most queer/trans identified anarchists i know love her! All the cissy straight anarcho boys seem pretty upset, furious and just generally disgruntled over the fact that queers could like her. Ya know.. usually when i start pissing off straight cis boy anarchists i know i’ve been doing something right…. i mean really the fact that she’s getting this sort of repulsed response from anarchists is hilarious! Lady Gaga pisses off cissy anarchist straight boys like she pisses off Fred Phelps and any conservative, just for different reasons. Ya sure she’s a sell out and has marketed herself to make millions, but seriously guys im sure you never listen to any artist that has sold out….right? Only crust and D.I.Y folk punk….mmm hmm sure.
There’s also another question that comes into play now that we’re talking about marketing yerself for money. I feel like having a job is the equivalent to this, you create a resume, you go to the interview and try to market yerself to a potential employer. Then you hope to get the job and make some cash by selling a service, sure its on a smaller scale, and ya there are some differences, but in the end its all the same. The way im feeling more and more of the time is that lady gaga is more queer positive, and is fucking with gender norms way more than most cis straight boys i know. Whether or not she’s a rich snob isn’t relevant to me, what is is that id still probably feel more comfortable sitting in a room with 10 Lady Gaga’s than 10 insurrectionary rhetoric spewing macho cissy straight anarchist boys. Maybe thats a problem?
