This isn’t really current news, although I just stumbled across it today, and wanted to post. Tommy Gable, 31, lead singer for Against Me!, has always known she is a woman, and will begin the transition. News became public after Gable talked about it in an interview with Rolling Stone. The interview is awesome and a great read for anyone. I especially appreciated it, in the sense of the way Gable talks about her feelings and her struggle to become move public about what she always kew to be real.

As Gabel explains it, “The cliché is that you’re a woman trapped in a man’s body, but it’s not that simple. It’s a feeling of detachment from your body and from yourself. And it’s shitty, man. It’s really fucking shitty.”

Singers and other performers are “brands” if you will, and so much of that brand identity is tied into how the audience perceives the person. I didn’t know Gable at all before reading this, and so of course, the first thing I did was search YouTube. The music won’t become a favorite for me, but I was astonished as I became aware of the stereotypes and assumptions I brought to it, and the expectations I had of Gable, simply from the sound as well as from the visuals. Learning more about me was great, and learning more about why a person, and in this case, this singer,felt the need to transition is really important stuff. I think the majority of people don’t know how to comprehend feeling as if you are a different gender, so the more trans persons talk about their journey and their feelings, it can really help others understand.

But the best part was reading many of the comments- some very supportive, some not, and some downright rude. For me the specifics are not the thing, rather, that dialogue is happening about what is gender, gender identity and expression, and what it means for someone who is already public to be public in a new way.

Hope you get as much out of this story as I did!

via The Secret Life of Transgender Rocker Tom Gabel | Music News | Rolling Stone.