“isn’t it a little bit anachronistic, judging him by 2022 standards, 2022 values?” excerpts from “Kurt Cobain will have revenge on the straights [cw: discussion of dysphoria, transphobia, homophobia, eating disorders, and suicide]“
You know what he said to Melody Maker in 1991? “I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn’t identify with any of the guys at all.” That’s what he said.
Kurt Cobain wore a lot of dresses. Like, a lot, both onstage and off. On MTV in 1991, he said “It’s ‘Headbanger’s Ball’ so I thought I’d wear a gown.” He said in a 1993 interview, “I personally like to wear dresses. I wear them around the house sometimes.” This is not some shameful secret he kept hidden from the world. He was open about this. He was proud about this.
Listen to his lyrics. “Should have been a son”. “I’m a lady, can you save me?” “Everyone is gay.” The original lyrics to “All Apologies” from his journals – “Boys write songs for girls. Let me grow some breasts.”
“Courtney had a bag of lingerie with her for some reason and Kurt ended up modeling the contents.” And then they went to Kurt’s hotel room and they fucked.
The whole album. In Utero. The collage on the back cover, the one Cobain described as “Sex and woman and In Utero and vaginas and birth and death". The occult symbols surrounding it, taken from Barbara G. Walker’s The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects. There was something inside Kurt Cobain, something inside waiting to be born
When cis people interpret things, their conclusion is never “they were trans”. Never.
Ed Wood wasn’t a trans woman. He was just a transvestite. He was a man.
Pete Burns from Dead or Alive wasn’t a trans woman. Sure, he got all sorts of feminizing surgeries, but he never said he was a woman. Man.
Prince Nelson adopted a female persona, feminized his voice, and recorded a song about wanting to be a woman’s girlfriend, but he was also a Christian and believed that being queer was wicked and sinful, and that’s the identity of his we need to respect. Man.
Richard Wright, who wrote the Phish song “Halley’s Comet”, spent most of the 1980s telling everyone he knew he was a transsexual lesbian named Nancy, but after being consistently treated like shit changed his mind about that, so none of that counts for anything. Man.
Dave Carter was on HRT when he died, but he was just questioning. He didn’t tell anybody for sure that he was a woman. Man.
Quentin Crisp said just before he died that if he was younger, he absolutely would have transitioned, but wanting to transition isn’t the same as actually transitioning. Man.
All men. Always, always men, whatever they do, whatever they say.
And nothing can make him a girl. Because he’s dead.
If I was to go out there and say that Kurt Cobain was a cisgender man, would anybody say I was wrong? Would anybody object or complain? Even though my saying that is an anachronism, is meaningless. The word, the concept, it literally didn’t exist when Cobain died.
Kurt Cobain wrote, thought, talked, died like eggs do. I don’t care if he never said the magic fucking words.
To be queer is to be erased, to experience erasure. I still hear straight men arguing, as if they have any right to argue, as if they know, that Emily Dickinson was not a lesbian. Emily Dickinson! I’m supposed to listen to people who say this shit? I’m supposed to take them seriously when they say well, actually, calling Dickinson a “lesbian” is historically anachronistic, we can’t apply the standards of the present to the past, and Jesus fuck have you read her letters? She liked girls. She really liked girls. Kurt Cobain was a trans woman. Kurt Cobain was every bit as much a trans woman as Emily Dickinson was a lesbian. Refusing to say it isn’t “respect”. It’s perpetuating the crime perpetrated against Cobain
“isn’t it a little bit anachronistic, judging him by 2022 standards, 2022 values?”
excerpts from “Kurt Cobain will have revenge on the straights [cw: discussion of dysphoria, transphobia, homophobia, eating disorders, and suicide]“
https://hexbear.net/post/920492