Lady Gaga, a response

So a while back a friend of mine wrote a blog entry that I thought was note worthy and though I naturally respect her opinions and think very highly of her, I have some disagreements with some of her points in this matter.

When I first came across Lady Gaga I thought what I always think when I hear a new female pop voice singing about blahdi-whatever: nothing. For those who know me, you know I indulge in pop music often, for whatever reason. But I certainly don’t care about it. But I quickly realized that even though Lady Gaga attracted mostly the same crowd as every other female pop wonder, she was different. Weirder. Way weirder. And if there’s one thing I appreciate, it’s weirdness. Her music is mostly mainstream in it’s sound but she experiments in performance art and has somehow gotten away with existing in the top charts while subtly breaking their molds before their eyes. That and ain’t she just so dern catchy?

But that’s not really the point. My friends post mostly talks about how Lady Gaga addresses the gay community.

When Lady Gaga won her VMA award, she stood up and thanked, with the entirety of mainstream media watching, “God, and the Gays.”

The offense my friend mentions is in short that in doing this she groups all homosexuals together into a stereotype, and since she’s suggesting that the “gays” make up a good portion of her fan-base, also suggesting that the gay stereotype indulge in many of the socially negative things she sings about in her mainstream songs. (i.e. drinking excessively, promiscuity.) That is assuming that those things are actually negative outside of the realm of popular opinion.

So with that all in mind, I have to say that my main argument is that the gay community is actually a community. For now. Yes, that does not excuse stereotyping and the like, but at this moment in time LGBT refers to itself as a community, and I think there is good reason for that. Right now, of the many groups of people in America who struggle for equality, LGBT are in a current fight. I think it’s important during this time period that a group of people as oppressed as the LGBT community should be sticking together, and let the struggle for individualism come after they’ve gotten basic human rights out of the way. I think seeing the insult in Lady Gaga’s thank you might be thinking too far into things, when really, strong females in pop culture have always been associated with the gay community for a lot of reasons, and she definitely breaks the mold and stands out among other female pop stars.

I think it really is just a gesture towards an oppressed group of people, thanking them for their support towards her, rather than the other way around. Say if the first female CEO or something, and in a speech thanked all American women for my success. That’s not to say that the women of the country had anything to do with my success, or that they all supported me, or that they’re all anything like me in any way. Just saying that I’ve made a step in a good direction for women’s equality and I want to acknowledge my fellow ladies.

Okay, I know that Lady Gaga hasn’t made any strides in the gay community, but she is breaking the mold for pop music by bringing an aspect of performance art, irony, and a new kind of vulgarity to the top of the charts, and I think it’s cool that in front of an audience of people who think Paparazzi is just a funny upbeat love song and the mass majority of whom on a daily basis are not concerned with anything to do with the gay population…but she just casually acknowledged them in a positive way. I think all around, no harm done and maybe even just a touch of a positive light. But that’s just me.

I have a lot of other things to say in respect to Lady Gaga but they aren’t really related. So I’m just going to leave this as this. If you don’t like it, you can suck my gay.

*Little known fact, I really enjoy using the word gay where it doesn’t belong. Like just now. Or like this: “Hey man, let’s gay up a fire in your fireplace.” Just sayin’.

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