I know Boy George and David Bowie and the New Romantics are referred to on FWR as examples of men who sometimes dressed flamboyantly and presented in a feminine manner without ever claiming not to be men. Now here's a twist. Louis Theroux has interviewed Boy George for a long lockdown conversation, lightly edited and put out as a podcast called "Grounded". I've transcribed a good chunk. BG turns 60 next year, tells the youngsters on social media to "leave their pronouns at the door", uses the ladies toilets ("much cleaner"), is prodded by Louis to discuss having had sex with women as well as men, and reminisces about being a teenager:
BG: When I was about 17 there was a brief moment when I started wearing heels and stuff and taking it a bit more seriously. I did contemplate briefly, I wonder if I'd be any good as a girl, but then I realised that no, no I like my man-tackle too much, and I just thought, you know....[one of the only times in an hour that BG just trails away]
JR: You can be a girl with man-tackle now I think.
BG: You can! That's the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it.
If I knew how to, I'd make an archive of the whole transcription. I'll have to just dump it here. Boy George has never claimed to be a feminist, as far as I know, despite his professed admiration for all the strong women in his childhood and adult life. But as feminists sometimes point to him as an example of healthy playful gender variance, I thought it might be interesting to hear his thoughts.
23:50
Jon Ronson: Mick Jagger and Bowie had both, I think, worn dresses on stage, right?
Boy George: Again, that’s a very journalistic way of looking at it because yes, to a certain extent, what Mick Jagger did, what David Bowie did, gave me the kind of desire and the kind of bravery to do it, but I wanted to add some of me in it. I suppose I had Bowie, Carmen Miranda, I had Mother Superior, I had all these iconic things that influenced me and I just threw them all together.
JR: I was going to say, because when they did it, it you're still conscious that you're looking at a man in a dress, but you seem to blur the lines much much more.
BG: Once I discovered makeup, once I started to see what could be done to this face, with a little bit of structural maneuvering, with pencils and crayons. There was that great song on Transformer, Lou Reed’s album, called “Makeup”: “Your face when sleeping is sublime and then comes pancake factor number one”. That was a soundtrack to that moment.
...
25:40 (Voice-over.) We're about halfway through this podcast and by the way you're listening to “Grounded with Louis Theroux”, and I wanted to hear what Boy George as someone who has made a career out of teasing the world with his gender identity and who is also active on Twitter and Instagram, what he makes of the sometimes heated exchanges on the subject on social media.
BG: To a certain degree it's over explaining. Listen I've run into trouble with people online, because I've said “leave your pronouns at the door” and people take umbrage.
JR: “You should leave your pronouns at the door.” What, when you come--
BG: when you come to my yard, because if you think the first thing that's going to happen with me is that you're going to have to explain who you are and what you are, based on how you look, then we're not going to start off on a good foot anyway. I will treat you with love and respect, whatever you look like, whoever you think you are, whoever you say you are, that's your choice, I respect that, but please have a sense of humour about it, because I'll tell you what if, I wasn’t able to laugh at myself through some of the things that I've been through, and the times when people have punched my face in because I looked a certain way or called me things, whatever. When I first went on Top of the Pops, the tirade of abuse afterwards wally of the week, is it a bird is it a plane that's Boy George, a poof with muscles -- I was super unsophisticated when I was that age in terms of my knowledge of the world and my knowledge of anything. I’d never been out of the country before I met John Moss. I'd never eaten a prawn or a courgette; I didn't know what these things were. I grew up on stew. I'm not trying to make myself out as faking [?] but you know I came from a very big Irish family with a gambling dad and a mum that often had to make dinner out of whatever was around.
...
29:00
Jon Ronson: So I could put a construction on this that says that you're someone who grew up in a world where just to dress differently was to take your life in your hands, at the very least to get chased around by casuals and teddy boys and skinheads, and occasionally to be beaten up. And in a world where people are saying, I feel violated by you because the words you’re using don't reflect the me that I feel myself to be, you see that, maybe, with less patience. Is that fair to say, or am I overstating?
Boy George: I think probably at this point with more patience. I think initially, like everyone, I was like, oh my god, and then I actually thought about it does it really matter. I just think, explain it to people. I get sniggered at all the time, even now. I get into a lift with a bunch of businessmen and I'm me and it's like everyone's trying not to look. And the worst is when you go into a male toilet and you're in full regalia. Like I used to have to go into men's toilets to dress and make up. And for all purposes I look like a girl. I don't know why they don't just build more toilets for different types of people, you know. I usually try to use the ladies toilet even now.
Jon Ronson (surprised voice): Do you?
Boy George says: Oh yeah. Much cleaner.
JR: You could get into trouble with the ladies though, if they saw you in there, no?
BG: Yeah sometimes.
JR: Has that happened?
BG: Not enough for it to be a concern. It does help when you're in full make-up though. (his voice becomes more playful) because it’s like, I'm kind of a woman. I'm a bearded lady.
JR: There's a little bit of a turf war going on between some elements of the more effeminate gay men and then the trans women, some of whom are saying, well, if you went all the way, if you were honest with yourself, you’d accept that you’re really a woman.
BG: I don't really agree with all this - you have to do this, you have to do that. There's too many rules. I think the trouble starts when people start thinking that every person who calls themselves a transgender or a transsexual is also in agreement politically with the next transgender person. They never match. But I would say anyone other, for any reason, whether it's because of their sexuality or their religion or their race or anything, anyone like that, I am 100% on your side always, because I am one of you. I am you. I am an outsider.
…
31:25
JR: We were talking about the sensitivities that people have now, in a completely understandable way, to do with gender and sexuality. Once or twice, I don't know whether to say you've got in hot water, but there have been many flare-ups, could we put it like that? Nevertheless you are an enthusiastic adopter of Twitter and also Instagram, is that right?
BG: If you appear on my timeline with a comment and I disagree with what you said, I will hijack your tweet and say what I think. Mostly people don't really come back at me. They know what I'm capable of, in terms of being a bit of a cat. People don't generally respond. I've got much better at not replying. I generally try to keep it in a surrealist humorous kind of a little bit jokey pocket so it doesn't get If I feel I've offended someone, I will say, and I'm happy to take tweets down if I’ve changed my mind the next day. If somebody explains something to me, and says this is how I feel about the use of this word or that word, there's no way that I'm going to fight for my right to upset someone. It just makes no sense.
…
40:10
JR: Are you all right talking about your love life?
BG: Depends on the question.
JR: Early on you said and it was one of your most famous quotes I'd rather have a cup of tea than have sex.
BG: These days it's coffee, with a little cream.
JR: Was that a wind-up or did you really mean it?
BG: No I didn't mean it at all, it was just something to say.
…
48:05
JR: So are you single by choice?
BG: I'm just single by circumstance. When I was younger I fell in love at the drop of a hat. Now I'm older, I realise that what I thought was love wasn't love; it was hysteria.
JR: You seem to have had a knack for attracting straight men.
BG: if you believe that’s even a thing! (BG laughs) I think that sexuality is what it is, you know. I had a great conversation with Eddie Izzard about this. He’d been on a show with these drag queens. He was talking, he was saying he was straight, and these drag queens were going “Liar!” It was really rude. So I talked to him about it, and he said if you look at sexuality like a ruler, you've got extremely straight, extremely gay, and then everyone else comes somewhere along that line. But you can also tip over here -- a little half of this. Are you a shoe-sniffer? There are people on the internet buying used underwear (laughs).
JR: You mentioned your friend Leigh Bowery, Australian performance artist. He married a woman, didn't he?
BG: Married Nicola, who is a very very dear friend and a close friend of mine still. First of all, he loved Nicola, he absolutely loved her. The love between -- all my best friends are women. All the people I love in the entire world are women, strong women, those are the kind of women I loved when I was a kid: Joan Collins, Shirley Bassey.
JR: Have you ever been physically intimate with a woman?
BG: Oh yeah yeah I've done a few things, Louis. (laughs)
JR: Forgive me if this is overly intrusive. So you can be physically attracted to a woman?
BG: Well I think you have to be pretty unimaginative not to look at a beautiful person per se and go, you know. What's the difference between all these straight men who basically have these Fans Only sites for gay men to watch them take showers and do whatever they're doing, play with themselves. It is such a phenomenon of the times, really interesting times. I know I went off the subject. What was the question again?
JR: The question was to do with --
BG: -- can I find women attractive? Absolutely.
JR: Not just attractive but sexually arousing.
BG: If somebody, regardless of their sexuality, causes you to look longer than you should --
JR: Is there a physical response?
BG: But how could it be anything but a physical response?
JR: Are parts of you getting bigger or moister?
BG: But that's not exclusively a sexual experience. You know when I was at school I remember my English teacher Mrs King. She was quite severe. She used to have pencil skirts, silk blouses with the ruffle, and she always had her hair done. She was like Mrs Slocombe. She used to come near me and her perfume -- I remember I used to go all aquiver. BRRRR! I’d to shake like Little Richard, because she was strong and confident. I think there's something very sexy about confidence.
JR: Did you ever think you might be a girl?
BG: When I was about 17 there was a brief moment when I started wearing heels and stuff and taking it a bit more seriously. I did contemplate briefly, I wonder if I'd be any good as a girl, but then I realised that no, no I like my man-tackle too much, and I just thought, you know.
JR: You can be a girl with man-tackle now I think.
BG: You can! That's the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it.
JR: What I get from you George is that you've got an admirable level of self-possession and a sort of sense of self but also life skills. I want to call it toughness. Is that what it is? You’re not afraid of speaking your mind, and you're not overly worried about what people think about you. That's quite good I think.