Boy George doesn’t think queer identity politics have ‘helped anyone’

Boy George is opening up about his complicated feelings on queer activism.

The Culture Club frontman, who is gay, has addressed why he doesn’t support modern LGBTQ+ identity politics. “I don’t think it’s helped anyone,” George told U.K. outlet The Times in a new interview, emphasizing that queer people aren’t a monolith. “We’re not a thing. It’s like, ‘This is what Black people are, this is what Jewish people are, this is what trans people are.’ No!”

He went on to defend his views on the matter. “Everybody is diverse because nobody is like anybody else, so you’re starting from the wrong perspective,” George said. “Nobody gets to choose what color eyes they have, how big their penis is, how fat their arse is.”

Earlier in the interview, the “Karma Chameleon” singer discussed online transphobia and how the digital world differs from reality. “Trans people are the new people to hate, but I always say: How many trans people have you met today?” George said. “There’s the world on the internet, which is hideous and full of anger. Then there’s the real world, which is entirely different, so in reality people have nothing to be nervous about.”

George faced accusations of transphobia in 2020 after tweeting“Leave your pronouns at the door!” However, the musician has repeatedly defended the trans community in his social media feud with J.K. Rowling this year, calling the Harry Potter author “a rich, bored bully” for her transphobic views and saying she gets “fun from other people’s pain.”

In his conversation with The Timesthe musician said he believes his personal life is just a minuscule drop in the vast social-media bucket — and that sexual orientation shouldn’t matter so much to people anyway.

“If I’m really lucky my own sexuality takes up about three hours a month. We’ve all got cats to feed, families to visit, jobs to do,” George said. “I said in an interview when I was 17, ‘Being gay is like eating a bag of crisps. It’s so not important.’ I still think that now. What do you care about someone’s sexuality unless you’re going to have sex with them?”

George also discussed how he channeled his views on queer identity into his 2002 musical, Taboowhich tells the story of his friend Leigh Bowery, legendary queer performance artist who founded London’s Taboo club.

“What I want to explore in the show is the odd relationship between Leigh and his wife, Nicola Bowery,” the musician said of the play, for which he wrote the lyrics and played Leigh on stage. “Long before nonbinary, here’s a gay guy who married a straight woman, and there was real tenderness and love between them. Yes, part of the reason he married Nicola was to piss everyone off, but I do think he really loved her.”

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George, who is trying to revive Tabooadded that Bowery wouldn’t want to box himself into pre-existing notions of queer identity or expression. “Someone said the other day, ‘Leigh Bowery was the blueprint for gay identity,'” he recalled to The Times. “He would have hated that. Hated it!”