Boy George Keeps Saying Stupid Things About Trans People

The singer said trans people who insist on being gendered correctly think “whatever’s going on for them is much more important than anything else.”

By Nico Lang

May 5, 2020

Boy George performs at Eventim Apollo in London England

Boy George isn’t one to let a little thing like a global pandemic stop him from being on the wrong side of history.

In a new interview with Britain’s The Sunday Times, the former Culture Club singer returned to his familiar criticism of modern pronoun usage, a favorite topic of George’s. He claimed that transgender and nonbinary people who ask to be referred to by pronouns that are consistent with their identities “want to be offended because they think that whatever’s going on for them is much more important than anything else.”

“When I was growing up nobody used the term ‘transgender,’ because it was almost like a medical term,” he told the conservative-leaning newspaper. “So this transgender thing is new, and, for our generation, it’s just getting our heads round it.”

George, whose androgynous appearance made him a queer icon in the mid-1980s, added that he is “reluctant” to “pander” to others’ ideas about gender because of what he “went through” to be who he is. “The area we get into trouble is what it is permissible to say to a gay person: ‘Address me as this, address me as that,” he said.

The comments are particularly ill-timed given that the U.K. government is currently floating the idea of banning medical transitions for trans and nonbinary children under the age of 18, but they are nothing new for George. Earlier this year, the musician caused controversy on Twitter after referring to individuals’ pronoun preferences as merely a “modern form of attention seeking.”

“Leave your pronouns at the door,” George tweeted in January.

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When his followers voiced their disappointment that someone whose gender-expansive persona had been formative for many trans and nonbinary people would express such views, George doubled down. He suggested that being referred to in a manner that corresponds with one’s sense of self is just as “ridiculous” as someone calling him “Napoleon.”

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George has denied, however, that he is transphobic. In a statement provided to the U.K. LGBTQ+ public PinkNews earlier this year, a representative said that “asking whether Boy George is transphobic is so stupid it doesn’t warrant a response.”

To his somewhat dubious credit, George’s suspect opinions are not limited to transgender and nonbinary people. In 2017, he told the British queer publication Gay Times that he doesn’t understand labels like “sexually fluid” and “pansexual,” calling himself “a little bit old-fashioned.”

“I’m kind of like, ‘How many flavors can there be?’” he asked. “I feel like there’s girls and boys and there’s people that like both. What else is there?”

A biopic of the singer’s life written and directed by Sacha Gervasi is currently in development. George expressed to the Sunday Times that he is concerned how the film will portray his 2009 imprisonment for assaulting and kidnapping a sex worker, for which he was sentenced to 15 months in jail.

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