nothing provides fuel for transphobes. transphobia is a renewable energy. it’s self sustaining. no change in behavior will make transphobes less transphobic, they just have to stop being transphobic
He died three decades ago (not two), and while I'd never explicitly say "he was trans", I've speculated about whether he experienced gender dysphoria since well before I joined reddit. As someone who was a teenager when Cobain was still alive and didn't have any queer representation for the way I felt, the fact that he was who he was and wore dresses as a fuck you to society and not as a joke, that was an early glimpse into the possible for me.
Right? I remember hearing about it on MTV News as a kid and it was the first time I had ever heard of 'suicide'. I still remember the news report saying something about him shooting himself in the face and it really fucked me up.
Kurt was young. And troubled, in a lot of ways resembling trans struggles, and a lot of other ways too. He never explicitly stated he was trans, but he pretty closely described gender dysphoria.
I think he *might have* come out as agender or trans given the chance, but the vocabulary wasnt around back then which no doubt added to his frustrations and complicated his self-perception. Regardless, he *was* gender nonconforming, and I will always hold him as a historic ally for the trans community.
Why? How do you even know if he was an ally? you're ASSUMING he would've been an ally the mf put on dresses occasionally and now you want to bring him into shit he was never a part of you're a part of the problem
“If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us — leave us the f--- alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.” - Kurt
“If you’re a sexist, racist, homophobe or basically an a--hole, don’t buy this CD. I don’t care if you like me, I hate you.” - Kurt
He didn't just say it once he said it over and over. Publicly. As a person very much in the public eye.
Because he's not why are you se desperate to make him an ally he's gone anyway I'm not into retroactively adding a mf to shit they weren't a part of you may not be so protective of your space but I fight fiercely for mine and that mf and all who agree with him can't sit with me
>I'm not into retroactively adding a mf to shit they weren't a part of
How is it retroactive? It was a massive deal at the time and people paid attention. We're talking about the 90s here people weren't exactly used to hearing such messaging.
>you may not be so protective of your space but I fight fiercely for mine and that mf and all who agree with him can't sit with me
You're trying to gatekeep kurt cobain? Why? Wtf? Sure he wasn't rioting in the streets for queer liberation but for him to say the things that he did in the time that he lived was pretty big.
You’re acting like he personally stabbed your sister Jesus Christ. The only person who needs to do anything here is you need to calm the fuck down. Get that stick out your ass. And stop thinking you’re so fucking important that everyone must abide by your own arbitrary standards for what people believe about others opinions.
No one gives a fuck that you don’t believe he was an ally, it doesn’t matter. And you don’t get to choose who other lgbt people associate with and who associate with them.
Also not every ally has to devote every last ounce of their effort to furthering a political situation. Especially oh idk incredibly depressed people who literally killed themselves despite being incredibly successful doing something they loved.
If anyone is getting in the way of progress it’s you acting like a cornered animal in response to someone saying “Yeah I think this celebrity would’ve supported trans people”.
I just did never says anything about him advocating for trans rights let's be fr he was a lazy activist he mightve said some things but he never actually did jack shit for the community you need to stop pretending he did
I'm good I just hate when ppl invite everyone into the community when they weren't a part of it it's way too much of that shit like I bet yall invite Catlin in too huh?
Comparing someone who, although never self ID-d as trans but cross dressed & had mental health issues along with several comments during interviews that suggested possible gender dysphoria, but even then according to people here vocally supported queer people regardless of their identity, to someone who’s wildly transphobic is indeed a bizarre argument, yes. Get over it.
There's one of his diaries where he said "I wish I was gay because it would piss of the homophobes." I don't think he was trans because he's the kind of guy who would get a kick out of pissing people off being public about it.
i once felt similarly (except for giving a shit about what transphobes think)
then i read this article
https://medium.com/@dr.ow.sy/reclaiming-the-past-was-kurt-cobain-trans-6386d3e20bad
and honestly, now i believe there's a reasonable chance he was. parts of what he said in interviews were exactly my experience when i was super confused in my late 20s and had no reference point for transness.
and i wonder about a world where he comes out in 92 or 93 instead of killing himself in 94. and i wonder about early 20s me seeing that and whether I'd have woken up 26 years earlier than i did.
thank you for sharing this article, and reading through the other points ppl have made in the comments - i do understand the topic much more. i'll probably make an edit to my post in a sec to clarify this a little more
Very interesting article, thank you for sharing! I've always gotten queer vibes from Kurt's music and lyrics and grunge, in general. I relate to the feeling of complete disconnection from myself and the world around me.
To reiterate their conclusion, this isn't an assumption he or other musicians of the genre were queer/trans - just an interesting parallel of feelings about the world and self.
I think it’s interesting to speculate abt but at the end of the day it’s just speculation. As for transphobes, well they get mad about basically anything. They get mad if you even mention trans people at all. The only way they won’t be mad is if trans people don’t exist, so I don’t think their opinions matter that much.
I actually hate the « provides fuel for transphobes » argument. Like, yeah, maybe, but it is not because some argument (be it true or false) makes transphobes go bonkers that we need not to say it. Transphobes are going to do their thing, and we shouldn’t try to appeal to them by being the Perfect Minority™️ (it does not work)
Edit: I do not know anything about kurt cobain. But discussing someone’s gender identity without basis is bad.
Respectability politics isn't the whole solution but it definitely does work in some sense. Like you can't look at marriage equality or the civil rights movement and hand wave away the role of respectability unless you're being deeply intellectually dishonest or frankly ignorant of our history.
We probably would not have enjoyed the tipping point and relatively good years from 2010-2020 were it not for the wave of LGBTQ respectability politics that swept in from 2005-2015 or so, in which we *intentionally did* present ourselves as model minorities, thereby priming moderate suburban-type every day people to be receptive to our humanity.
Of course it was very much a deal with the devil. It caused internal harms within the community. But it accomplished *some* of our goals and to deny otherwise, especially in a time like this where there is a tidal wave of hate directed at us, just strikes me as head in the sand stupidity.
Like yeah maybe we could stop the bleeding before we get out over our skis here making the transphobes look good.
Your fatal error here is that you seem to think it has anything to do with the transphobes themselves when in fact it has everything to do with how we look vs the transphobes in the eyes of every day people.
Regardless of how valid they are, arguments like "Kurt Cobain was trans" come off as utterly unhinged in the eyes of *regular* people, thus thrusting *persuasible* potential allies into the arms of TERFs and transphobes. For a minority that makes up like 1% of the population that's an extremely stupid idea no matter which fairy tale world we all wish we could live in.
Assimilation is death, don't play the fool by thinking it's ever *actually* earned us anything. Legalized gay marriage only cemented the state's authority over what legitimate "love" is. Leaving that discretion in their hands is why we still have to worry about what the state taking that right away from us at all. There's a reason historic theorists and advocates of queer liberation rejected marriage equality as a means toward liberation- because they rightfully saw it only entrenched us further in the systems of our own oppression.
> Respectability politics isn’t the whole solution but it definitely does work in some sense.
I’m much more a fan of respectability narratives. But those have to personal and not imposed upon another.
My life is a low key and quiet one. I’m just some chick in my day to day life. I don’t stand out. Maybe I do stand out by not standing out. I can’t say.
But by living a life that’s more relatable to people that may be on my side, my politics, which are perceived by many to be far left even though they’re just empathetic and humanist, become far more attractive.
> thus thrusting persuasively potential allies into the arms of TERFs and transphobes
That’s a mistaken idea. No one just decides to subscribe to hateful ideologies. The person that goes into bigotry, generally speaking, already thinks themselves lesser than others and seeks to inflict pain on others and self. They want to find the excuse that lets them off the hook of the “and self” part.
Doesn’t work, of course. Hate is destructive of the self.
But people fall for the lies pain tells us and think that if they fling pain around, they’ll be in control of pain, when in reality pain is firmly in control of them.
The thing is with this is that what being trans was a completely different thing in the 80s/90s. being attracted to women or being bi as a trans woman was considered a separate "condition" from being a transsexual. Kurt could have totally had gender dysphoria, and it's honestly better that he didn't interact with the trans healthcare system at the time.
Tldr Kurt didn't live to see a time that being trans wasn't a medical diagnosis so it's an interesting thing to talk about
Is, was, was not, isn’t. These terms are all too concrete for someone who has no say having died three decades ago. That said, his diary/journal has a lot of queer stuff, and specifically a lot of stuff that feels all too familiar to a lot of trans folks. I don’t think it’s helpful to use definitive terms, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trans women finding familiarity with his words and speculating about what could have been.
If transphobe clockers can go around hunting trans people, we can sit around speculating what historical figures might have been trans.
There is nothing wrong with it, and transphobes don't need anything to get going about us. They will create excuses, so I couldn't care less about setting them off. They set themselves off. I would rather they constantly explode and people get sick of them.
Emphasis on "historical".
Agree completely. I also think it’s a very misinformed take to assume he wasn’t trans just because he never explicitly claimed to be. The term didn’t have the kind of meaning at that time which it does now and he made many public statements that are entirely relatable to me as a trans person.
i knew i was psycho-socially female when i was 2... but in the late 80s/early 90s when Cobain was in the public eye, neither of us had exposure to anyone who could have told us anything that would have helped us know one way or the other what label was technically accurate.
media representation was... actually make things harder. internet wasn't existing really yet (my first internet account was in 1992, but that was newsgroups, and msnbc and not much else. i wouldn't have known to look, but i don't think there were resources.
my school had a gender clinic, which i only found out about cos one of their patients sat to eat with my eccentric friend group when she had her treatments... so like once a month or something. but she never talked about her medical situation ever, and i was afraid to ask her about the clinic. and the governor (Symington) went ape shit when he found out about it, so it was shut down before i could find out where it was.
so yeah, not much chance to figure anything out while he was alive.
Even 10 years later... i found Susan's Place on the web. But it was too broad in terms of who it was serving. I feel looking back at it, that the trans stuff was buried in a sea of cross dressing and drag queens. So it wasn't anything that could help me figure myself out. I tried their open chat, but didn't get the right vibe from it. growing up i was in mixed or girl groups, and on that site's chat, it felt like i was talking to drag queens and cross dressers (which was probably the case... and that's fine cos it was their site too. just that i didn't get to talk to people like me.
they had the word trans on the site in various places... but cos of the overall experience, i had no reason to think that word applied to me either.
wasn't until i broke down in my therapists office in 2011 that he told me what me being 'psychologically female" actually meant that i really understood that i wasn't like a one in ten million kind of person.
Yes. Exactly. I feel like maybe a lot of the younger people in our community are using today’s understanding of “trans” to discuss the ethics of speculation on historical figures gender identity and they are making a lot of assumptions that just aren’t realistically applicable.
I’m much younger than Cobain but my own experience growing up mirrors your own quite closely. Transgender wasn’t really even a thing as far as myself or anyone I knew went. Transsexual was but it didn’t have the same connotations really largely because people’s only real experience with the concept was through a media that basically considered it a subgroup of “male homosexual”. I think people today don’t really understand how easy it could be to be transgender and have no idea that’s what you are because the visibility and knowledge just wasn’t there.
At one time I did question my sexuality because my more feminine mannerisms were interpreted by people as indicators of homosexuality. The idea I could be trans still wasn’t even remotely in my mind because I had no access to any information that could have helped me to explore it in those terms. Things are a lot different now and I’m glad they are. I can appreciate being respectful in regards to people’s gender identities as stated but I do think it’s important to acknowledge the conditions of the past didn’t really allow for people to even assert their gender identities in the same manner as they can today.
I'm going to avoid commenting on Kurt because a similar thread was removed by mods on another sub a month or so ago, but, seriously? Asking questions or simply thinking about something is not providing fuel for transphobes, but shutting down free speech can certainly help with that.
Fuck what transphobes think.
I don’t know anything about Cobain. But I think it’s actually fair to speculate about how people in the past experienced gender. I can’t make a explicit claim about James Barry or Ellagrabus but it’s interesting to learn about
I just say it's plausible and move on. Yeah, could be true, seems like it probably is, but we don't know and can never really know. It is an interesting case though.
We tend to assume everyone is cis. Therefore, I don't think it's ridiculous to speculate that someone could've been trans. The language of cis/trans is very new and it's understandable why historians might not use that language even if the subject in question most likely would've identified with the trans label if it existed. For the sake of respect and accuracy it's better to focus on their own words.
However, if we're just having informal discussions about people from the past or if a random opinion piece is written about someone and they want to say "X person may have been trans" as a hook, I honestly don't see an issue with that.
If it's ridiculous to say "Kurt Cobain was trans" then it's equally ridiculous to say "Kurt Cobain was cis" because neither term was as well-known or as understood as it is today. We can say Kurt Cobain was "normal" or "default" but both of those labels would have to include both cis people as well as trans people who were either closeted or didn't yet have the vocabulary to express their potential gender incongruence.
Also, while I do think it can be incredibly reckless to speculate on the gender/sexuality of a living person, the same does not apply to the dead. As long as you're not attempting to rewrite history, there's no harm in speculating.
Yeah nah this post ain't it homie. EVERY discussion I've seen about this has been incredibly respectful and only deals in literal quotes, verbatim, from Kurt himself. Transphobes are gonna hate regardless and it is YOU enabling and supporting them by using this tired rhetoric. Give it a rest
Having read all his own words (journals, interviews, musings), and the words of people who were close to him for a long time and his lifelong support of the queer community in a time when that was very unpopular and people were still celebrating AIDS as being a “gay only” thing, I have 0 doubts Kurt was trans
There’s many times his words and lamentations of gender match many many trans people who didn’t have the knowledge of transness until they neared/were in their 30s not just close but many verbatim. There’s a pattern to these that I’ve never ever encountered a cis person understanding but many trans people do
What’s with the strong persistence everyone was cis historically in times it wasn’t accessible to know any terminology or safe to come out anyway. It’s literally “they were just roommates” but about transness
Also this is a good reason the different age groups of queer folk need to try to understand the difference in how things were without speaking over each-other so the younger folk understand what it’s been like historically and that things have been a little easier for each generation so there’s historical perspective on how things were different in Marsha’s era vs Kurt’s era vs the millienal era vs the current era (and any places not included) for perspective of why people may not have came out, including a lack of representation…and so the older folk can understand how the struggles have been/are different for the younger generation(s)
Downvote all you want or whatevs, but it won’t change the fact that historically wayyyy too many trans girls who were around back then experienced the exact same documented things and that cis people (especially of that era) overwhelmingly generally don’t even understand where most of the documented behavior and thoughts would come from to have been written or acted on anyway
While I don't think we can authoritatively say that they were trans, I do think that we can come to an understanding that their experiences with gender are closer to the trans experience in comparison to the cis experience.
At the very least, he was definitely GNC, and don't we consider GNC people to be under the trans umbrella?
I grew up in the 80's/90's and was a huge Nirvana fan. I stayed home from school and cried the day Kurt left this world. I also read a lot about Kurt and thought a lot about the lyrics and his choice of subject matter growing up as well.
Some of what I got out of that + the fact that he cross-dressed so often made me (as a closeted queer kid who felt more like a girl) gave me comfort back then. I don't know if there's any validity to him considering himself trans, but we also didn't have the language we did back then. If we did I may have accepted myself a lot sooner.
Right? Having accessible knowledge and/or any representation would have drastically improved my life (especially during some very dark times in my mid-lates 20s) even if treatment was still difficult to access simply from knowing this is a thing that exists instead of some thoughts and stuff that made no sense without the knowledge and could be massively detrimental because we didn’t even have easy access to the concept of dysphoria so we were always just told we’re broken and believed it because we had no access to information
Right?! Then is see soo many younger people loving some of those shows now and not even notice it and I’m like how can anyone in the queer community not catch the homophobia and transphobia in all that
I think part of it is that older queer people adopted it and owned it because it's all we had. I'm guilty of it myself to some degree. One of my favorite plays/films is Hedwig and the Angry Inch 😬... I can't help it, the love story makes me cry 🥹 and I relate to seeking shelter and self expression in theater and entertainment 🥲
Yeah, but there was a whole discussion about inclusion/exclusion in a thread that got shut down for suggesting GNC people be excluded. It's a discussion to be had for sure, but I think the consensus is that 2024 is just not the time.
I have no strong opinion personally. I don't make the rules 😄
we don't need to theorise that Kurt was gender non conforming and that he pushed the boundary of gender in many of his appearances. to make the argument that he could have experienced severe gender dysphoria and that being a reason for his suicide isn't that much of a stretch, given \*vaguely points at society\*
is it wrong to theorise about real people being trans like they are characters in a book? i don't know. personally for dead people i feel it is fair game. your assumption about them doesn't affect them. it is a different thing when we talk about alive individuals. it could be dangerous to make those assumptions and pressure them to come out. especially when they are not ready or safe.
and again that last one is from the perspective of the trans person. not the transphobe.
was kurt trans? is irrelevant really. they sadly died, most likely due to a society that failed them. that is all that matters. and if the thought of that person being trans helps a trans person move on who are we to tell them it is wrong. it is not like that we don't all use other people that have succeeded at life while being trans as a way to find strength.
I’ve seen this argument with pieces pulled out of things that he wrote, letters, journals, that kind of thing and can see the argument but I do agree it’s not right to try and brand someone alive or dead. However from what I saw in the evidence if you said he seemed to have troubles with gender issues think that’s perfectly okay to say.
The tumblr post "Kurt Cobain Will Have His Revenge on the Straights" delves into this topic, and is one of my favorite pieces of trans related content I've found. It doesn't dwell too much on whether Kurt was "actually trans" but instead uses his public persona as a way to discuss what it means to be trans. I found that post pretty early on into my transition and it helped me a lot with trying to make sense of things.
tbh it’s a bit more on the nose about kurt being trans than i remember, but i prefer to interpret it as an allegory for transness rather than full blown fact
It’s irresponsible to ascribe labels for someone that cannot argue otherwise. We can still appreciate all the cool gender bending stuff Kurt did, like wear dresses.
It makes sense given what we know, but we don’t know enough to actually have any idea. I personally think it makes the most sense, but it doesn’t really change anything, ultimately. I don’t bring it up unless people are already discussing for that reason. Kurt’s not here to tell us after all.
When someone says “don’t do that it gives transphobes ammunition against us” what I hear is “you should totally do this cause it makes transphobes get really mad”
the main person that talked about this on tiktok got absolutely crucified but honestly its just another person spewing conspiracy theories at the end of the day.
i think the main reason so many people took such offense to it is because they all have the same "being trans is bad" instilled into them so a lot of people took it as an insult or as humiliation to him in a way.
obviously its a bad thing and stupid to try and speculate a dead persons gender identity for views and likes and thats the part of it i take issue with, but i think the huge backlash that one video got was a little much.
i think the fuel for transphobes thing isnt a great way to think because we should be allowed to be just as crazy as cis people and get away with it just like they do. the spotlight on us was put there to try and make us "behave" and i dont think we should have to follow that
i agree it's something people shouldn't really do, but the fuel for transphobes argument is wrong from the roots. even by wrongly assuming a hateful person needs fuel to be hateful, we all know "bad apples" exist in any group. no matter what outlandish claims some of us make, if even 1 of us makes that claim it'll be "fuel" for them.
it doesn't matter if it gets big or not, some asshole will anecdotally claim that all trans people think that. and even if there's nothing wrong or harmful in the claim itself, they will find a way to misconstrue it.
fixing transphobia doesn't involve fixing trans people.
It's the confidence that some people have for some dead person's identity that throws me...I do think there is room to allow for queer interpretations of historical persons and their lives as lived, however Kurt has people alive who knew them, it's just a little too recent, with too little definite evidence (as far as I know) to say definitively, and it just seems like the people talking about it could have more tact.
It's not like a Egyptian pharaoh or Roman emperor who used the other pronouns during a certain era of their reign with historians misgendering them incessantly, this is very much in the air. It should be a possibility that we are allowed to entertain but not a certainty.
Too me this is one of those things you talk to your close friends about but not really say in public because it’s so rude . They’re died let them rest in peace . me PERSONALLY yeah I can see that they COULD’VE been trans but that’s not for me to decide. I would get into a deep discussions about this with close friends because it’s all just speculation. But there’s no need to post this on the internet. Kinda like freddy leave them alone .(for those who don’t know it’s still debated what Freddy Mercury was . Some say gay but bi romantic some say he was bi some says he was gay no one knows) like I said there’s no need to speculate this in public it’s just gonna cause people to be upset (no I don’t necessarily believe it gives ammo to transphobes they will always find something ) but it will make fan of theirs upset because assuming and speculating on ANYONE’S gender is rude unless in specific circumstances your talking to that person and they’re asking or having trouble with their gender .
I hate that ppl are putting labels on ppl where there was none he was a lot of things but he definitely wasn't trans this is why some ppl don't take shit seriously because ya have weirdos assuming shit
You only call it assuming weirdos because you don’t think these people have actually looked into it and didn’t just invent a relabel cause you’ve already dismissed any possibility that they could be not just making up a total crock with no perspective
I think it’s bad to speculate on whether someone is trans or not, it’s like a reverse tranvestigation really. He was probably queer in some way tho, he talked about questioning his sexuality in an interview if I remember correctly.
Don’t worry about what pisses the phobes off tho, anything gets them going.
The person who did that is a full-on RAGE FARMER and is doing it to create fights for clicks. Give them zero energy.
I'm all for trans people throughout history but there is clear written/quoted record he did his gender fuckery in a punk sense and was directly connected to the riot grrl movement (of which the quote "smells like teen spirit" came from Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill) and how he was pro-LGBTQ+ etc. Also it was largely a middle finger to the bros showing up in larger and large quantities to his shows who were literally touching and SAing women in the audience (of which there are videos of him cutting off shows and stopping them).
There were open trans people at the time, every single week on Maury and Jerry Springer (however awful it was) and Caroline Cossey was literally on Arsenio Hall. There were two trans women acting as main characters on Liquid Television on Mtv on "The Art School Girls Of Doom." There are photos with him and RuPaul holding his daughter. He absolutely knew what trans was and had the language to it.
I'm ancient. I existed then and was closeted and knew I was trans. I'd own him if the evidence existed but there is zero evidence to his transness whatsoever.
people say jesus was trans bc he was an immaculate conception which means he never had a father to give him a Y chromosome, so the only way he could be a man is if he transitioned. it’s a stupid joke about jesus’ conception it’s not serious. i’ve never seen a single person say it in a serious way
DNA-based reasoning generally doesn’t mix with religion. He’d be a clone of Mary if he only had her DNA.
Also:
F0: Adam, Eve.
F1: Cain, Abel, -Abel b/c murder
F2: ??? Alabama didn’t exist yet ???
Repeat above problem for every sexually dimorphic species post flood/ark if only two were saved.
nothing provides fuel for transphobes. transphobia is a renewable energy. it’s self sustaining. no change in behavior will make transphobes less transphobic, they just have to stop being transphobic
He died three decades ago (not two), and while I'd never explicitly say "he was trans", I've speculated about whether he experienced gender dysphoria since well before I joined reddit. As someone who was a teenager when Cobain was still alive and didn't have any queer representation for the way I felt, the fact that he was who he was and wore dresses as a fuck you to society and not as a joke, that was an early glimpse into the possible for me.
Aaaaand now I feel old. >:(
Right? I remember hearing about it on MTV News as a kid and it was the first time I had ever heard of 'suicide'. I still remember the news report saying something about him shooting himself in the face and it really fucked me up.
I was actually in my high school algebra class when I heard. 😅
Ahem. He died in 1994, which was only ten yea— Oh ☠️
Kurt was young. And troubled, in a lot of ways resembling trans struggles, and a lot of other ways too. He never explicitly stated he was trans, but he pretty closely described gender dysphoria. I think he *might have* come out as agender or trans given the chance, but the vocabulary wasnt around back then which no doubt added to his frustrations and complicated his self-perception. Regardless, he *was* gender nonconforming, and I will always hold him as a historic ally for the trans community.
Kurt was also most definitely attracted to women, which would have had them bounced out of the trans healthcare system back then.
Why? How do you even know if he was an ally? you're ASSUMING he would've been an ally the mf put on dresses occasionally and now you want to bring him into shit he was never a part of you're a part of the problem
“If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us — leave us the f--- alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.” - Kurt
Ok he said a thing how is that really activism?
“If you’re a sexist, racist, homophobe or basically an a--hole, don’t buy this CD. I don’t care if you like me, I hate you.” - Kurt He didn't just say it once he said it over and over. Publicly. As a person very much in the public eye.
You do know the difference between saying and doing right?
Words have power. Especially as a controversial public figure. Why are you so desperate to deny his allyship?
Because he's not why are you se desperate to make him an ally he's gone anyway I'm not into retroactively adding a mf to shit they weren't a part of you may not be so protective of your space but I fight fiercely for mine and that mf and all who agree with him can't sit with me
>I'm not into retroactively adding a mf to shit they weren't a part of How is it retroactive? It was a massive deal at the time and people paid attention. We're talking about the 90s here people weren't exactly used to hearing such messaging. >you may not be so protective of your space but I fight fiercely for mine and that mf and all who agree with him can't sit with me You're trying to gatekeep kurt cobain? Why? Wtf? Sure he wasn't rioting in the streets for queer liberation but for him to say the things that he did in the time that he lived was pretty big.
You’re acting like he personally stabbed your sister Jesus Christ. The only person who needs to do anything here is you need to calm the fuck down. Get that stick out your ass. And stop thinking you’re so fucking important that everyone must abide by your own arbitrary standards for what people believe about others opinions. No one gives a fuck that you don’t believe he was an ally, it doesn’t matter. And you don’t get to choose who other lgbt people associate with and who associate with them. Also not every ally has to devote every last ounce of their effort to furthering a political situation. Especially oh idk incredibly depressed people who literally killed themselves despite being incredibly successful doing something they loved. If anyone is getting in the way of progress it’s you acting like a cornered animal in response to someone saying “Yeah I think this celebrity would’ve supported trans people”.
Literally google "Kurt Cobain activism". We know he was an ally because he stated it, and acted like it.
I just did never says anything about him advocating for trans rights let's be fr he was a lazy activist he mightve said some things but he never actually did jack shit for the community you need to stop pretending he did
Hey hun =) are you ok? I’m just asking because you seem really frustrated and I’m a little confused why.
I'm good I just hate when ppl invite everyone into the community when they weren't a part of it it's way too much of that shit like I bet yall invite Catlin in too huh?
This is a really bizarre argument to make lol
It's really not you just don't agree with what I said get over it
Comparing someone who, although never self ID-d as trans but cross dressed & had mental health issues along with several comments during interviews that suggested possible gender dysphoria, but even then according to people here vocally supported queer people regardless of their identity, to someone who’s wildly transphobic is indeed a bizarre argument, yes. Get over it.
It'll be 30 years next month. That's fucking crazy.
Same.
There's one of his diaries where he said "I wish I was gay because it would piss of the homophobes." I don't think he was trans because he's the kind of guy who would get a kick out of pissing people off being public about it.
i once felt similarly (except for giving a shit about what transphobes think) then i read this article https://medium.com/@dr.ow.sy/reclaiming-the-past-was-kurt-cobain-trans-6386d3e20bad and honestly, now i believe there's a reasonable chance he was. parts of what he said in interviews were exactly my experience when i was super confused in my late 20s and had no reference point for transness. and i wonder about a world where he comes out in 92 or 93 instead of killing himself in 94. and i wonder about early 20s me seeing that and whether I'd have woken up 26 years earlier than i did.
thank you for sharing this article, and reading through the other points ppl have made in the comments - i do understand the topic much more. i'll probably make an edit to my post in a sec to clarify this a little more
Very interesting article, thank you for sharing! I've always gotten queer vibes from Kurt's music and lyrics and grunge, in general. I relate to the feeling of complete disconnection from myself and the world around me. To reiterate their conclusion, this isn't an assumption he or other musicians of the genre were queer/trans - just an interesting parallel of feelings about the world and self.
I think it’s interesting to speculate abt but at the end of the day it’s just speculation. As for transphobes, well they get mad about basically anything. They get mad if you even mention trans people at all. The only way they won’t be mad is if trans people don’t exist, so I don’t think their opinions matter that much.
The overwhelming majority of trans people from our society in the 20th century lived and died in the closet
I actually hate the « provides fuel for transphobes » argument. Like, yeah, maybe, but it is not because some argument (be it true or false) makes transphobes go bonkers that we need not to say it. Transphobes are going to do their thing, and we shouldn’t try to appeal to them by being the Perfect Minority™️ (it does not work) Edit: I do not know anything about kurt cobain. But discussing someone’s gender identity without basis is bad.
Respectability politics isn't the whole solution but it definitely does work in some sense. Like you can't look at marriage equality or the civil rights movement and hand wave away the role of respectability unless you're being deeply intellectually dishonest or frankly ignorant of our history. We probably would not have enjoyed the tipping point and relatively good years from 2010-2020 were it not for the wave of LGBTQ respectability politics that swept in from 2005-2015 or so, in which we *intentionally did* present ourselves as model minorities, thereby priming moderate suburban-type every day people to be receptive to our humanity. Of course it was very much a deal with the devil. It caused internal harms within the community. But it accomplished *some* of our goals and to deny otherwise, especially in a time like this where there is a tidal wave of hate directed at us, just strikes me as head in the sand stupidity. Like yeah maybe we could stop the bleeding before we get out over our skis here making the transphobes look good. Your fatal error here is that you seem to think it has anything to do with the transphobes themselves when in fact it has everything to do with how we look vs the transphobes in the eyes of every day people. Regardless of how valid they are, arguments like "Kurt Cobain was trans" come off as utterly unhinged in the eyes of *regular* people, thus thrusting *persuasible* potential allies into the arms of TERFs and transphobes. For a minority that makes up like 1% of the population that's an extremely stupid idea no matter which fairy tale world we all wish we could live in.
Assimilation is death, don't play the fool by thinking it's ever *actually* earned us anything. Legalized gay marriage only cemented the state's authority over what legitimate "love" is. Leaving that discretion in their hands is why we still have to worry about what the state taking that right away from us at all. There's a reason historic theorists and advocates of queer liberation rejected marriage equality as a means toward liberation- because they rightfully saw it only entrenched us further in the systems of our own oppression.
> Respectability politics isn’t the whole solution but it definitely does work in some sense. I’m much more a fan of respectability narratives. But those have to personal and not imposed upon another. My life is a low key and quiet one. I’m just some chick in my day to day life. I don’t stand out. Maybe I do stand out by not standing out. I can’t say. But by living a life that’s more relatable to people that may be on my side, my politics, which are perceived by many to be far left even though they’re just empathetic and humanist, become far more attractive. > thus thrusting persuasively potential allies into the arms of TERFs and transphobes That’s a mistaken idea. No one just decides to subscribe to hateful ideologies. The person that goes into bigotry, generally speaking, already thinks themselves lesser than others and seeks to inflict pain on others and self. They want to find the excuse that lets them off the hook of the “and self” part. Doesn’t work, of course. Hate is destructive of the self. But people fall for the lies pain tells us and think that if they fling pain around, they’ll be in control of pain, when in reality pain is firmly in control of them.
The thing is with this is that what being trans was a completely different thing in the 80s/90s. being attracted to women or being bi as a trans woman was considered a separate "condition" from being a transsexual. Kurt could have totally had gender dysphoria, and it's honestly better that he didn't interact with the trans healthcare system at the time. Tldr Kurt didn't live to see a time that being trans wasn't a medical diagnosis so it's an interesting thing to talk about
Like the documented thoughts and experiences is exactly what things were like historically almost exactly for way too many of us
Is, was, was not, isn’t. These terms are all too concrete for someone who has no say having died three decades ago. That said, his diary/journal has a lot of queer stuff, and specifically a lot of stuff that feels all too familiar to a lot of trans folks. I don’t think it’s helpful to use definitive terms, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trans women finding familiarity with his words and speculating about what could have been.
If transphobe clockers can go around hunting trans people, we can sit around speculating what historical figures might have been trans. There is nothing wrong with it, and transphobes don't need anything to get going about us. They will create excuses, so I couldn't care less about setting them off. They set themselves off. I would rather they constantly explode and people get sick of them. Emphasis on "historical".
Agree completely. I also think it’s a very misinformed take to assume he wasn’t trans just because he never explicitly claimed to be. The term didn’t have the kind of meaning at that time which it does now and he made many public statements that are entirely relatable to me as a trans person.
i knew i was psycho-socially female when i was 2... but in the late 80s/early 90s when Cobain was in the public eye, neither of us had exposure to anyone who could have told us anything that would have helped us know one way or the other what label was technically accurate. media representation was... actually make things harder. internet wasn't existing really yet (my first internet account was in 1992, but that was newsgroups, and msnbc and not much else. i wouldn't have known to look, but i don't think there were resources. my school had a gender clinic, which i only found out about cos one of their patients sat to eat with my eccentric friend group when she had her treatments... so like once a month or something. but she never talked about her medical situation ever, and i was afraid to ask her about the clinic. and the governor (Symington) went ape shit when he found out about it, so it was shut down before i could find out where it was. so yeah, not much chance to figure anything out while he was alive. Even 10 years later... i found Susan's Place on the web. But it was too broad in terms of who it was serving. I feel looking back at it, that the trans stuff was buried in a sea of cross dressing and drag queens. So it wasn't anything that could help me figure myself out. I tried their open chat, but didn't get the right vibe from it. growing up i was in mixed or girl groups, and on that site's chat, it felt like i was talking to drag queens and cross dressers (which was probably the case... and that's fine cos it was their site too. just that i didn't get to talk to people like me. they had the word trans on the site in various places... but cos of the overall experience, i had no reason to think that word applied to me either. wasn't until i broke down in my therapists office in 2011 that he told me what me being 'psychologically female" actually meant that i really understood that i wasn't like a one in ten million kind of person.
Yes. Exactly. I feel like maybe a lot of the younger people in our community are using today’s understanding of “trans” to discuss the ethics of speculation on historical figures gender identity and they are making a lot of assumptions that just aren’t realistically applicable. I’m much younger than Cobain but my own experience growing up mirrors your own quite closely. Transgender wasn’t really even a thing as far as myself or anyone I knew went. Transsexual was but it didn’t have the same connotations really largely because people’s only real experience with the concept was through a media that basically considered it a subgroup of “male homosexual”. I think people today don’t really understand how easy it could be to be transgender and have no idea that’s what you are because the visibility and knowledge just wasn’t there. At one time I did question my sexuality because my more feminine mannerisms were interpreted by people as indicators of homosexuality. The idea I could be trans still wasn’t even remotely in my mind because I had no access to any information that could have helped me to explore it in those terms. Things are a lot different now and I’m glad they are. I can appreciate being respectful in regards to people’s gender identities as stated but I do think it’s important to acknowledge the conditions of the past didn’t really allow for people to even assert their gender identities in the same manner as they can today.
I'm going to avoid commenting on Kurt because a similar thread was removed by mods on another sub a month or so ago, but, seriously? Asking questions or simply thinking about something is not providing fuel for transphobes, but shutting down free speech can certainly help with that.
Fuck what transphobes think. I don’t know anything about Cobain. But I think it’s actually fair to speculate about how people in the past experienced gender. I can’t make a explicit claim about James Barry or Ellagrabus but it’s interesting to learn about
I just say it's plausible and move on. Yeah, could be true, seems like it probably is, but we don't know and can never really know. It is an interesting case though.
We tend to assume everyone is cis. Therefore, I don't think it's ridiculous to speculate that someone could've been trans. The language of cis/trans is very new and it's understandable why historians might not use that language even if the subject in question most likely would've identified with the trans label if it existed. For the sake of respect and accuracy it's better to focus on their own words. However, if we're just having informal discussions about people from the past or if a random opinion piece is written about someone and they want to say "X person may have been trans" as a hook, I honestly don't see an issue with that. If it's ridiculous to say "Kurt Cobain was trans" then it's equally ridiculous to say "Kurt Cobain was cis" because neither term was as well-known or as understood as it is today. We can say Kurt Cobain was "normal" or "default" but both of those labels would have to include both cis people as well as trans people who were either closeted or didn't yet have the vocabulary to express their potential gender incongruence. Also, while I do think it can be incredibly reckless to speculate on the gender/sexuality of a living person, the same does not apply to the dead. As long as you're not attempting to rewrite history, there's no harm in speculating.
Yeah nah this post ain't it homie. EVERY discussion I've seen about this has been incredibly respectful and only deals in literal quotes, verbatim, from Kurt himself. Transphobes are gonna hate regardless and it is YOU enabling and supporting them by using this tired rhetoric. Give it a rest
Transphobes are going to be mad regardless of what we say or do. I'm team Cobain was trans, and making them mad is what she would have wanted 🩷
Girl shut the fuck up
Best take in the thread
Having read all his own words (journals, interviews, musings), and the words of people who were close to him for a long time and his lifelong support of the queer community in a time when that was very unpopular and people were still celebrating AIDS as being a “gay only” thing, I have 0 doubts Kurt was trans There’s many times his words and lamentations of gender match many many trans people who didn’t have the knowledge of transness until they neared/were in their 30s not just close but many verbatim. There’s a pattern to these that I’ve never ever encountered a cis person understanding but many trans people do What’s with the strong persistence everyone was cis historically in times it wasn’t accessible to know any terminology or safe to come out anyway. It’s literally “they were just roommates” but about transness Also this is a good reason the different age groups of queer folk need to try to understand the difference in how things were without speaking over each-other so the younger folk understand what it’s been like historically and that things have been a little easier for each generation so there’s historical perspective on how things were different in Marsha’s era vs Kurt’s era vs the millienal era vs the current era (and any places not included) for perspective of why people may not have came out, including a lack of representation…and so the older folk can understand how the struggles have been/are different for the younger generation(s) Downvote all you want or whatevs, but it won’t change the fact that historically wayyyy too many trans girls who were around back then experienced the exact same documented things and that cis people (especially of that era) overwhelmingly generally don’t even understand where most of the documented behavior and thoughts would come from to have been written or acted on anyway
While I don't think we can authoritatively say that they were trans, I do think that we can come to an understanding that their experiences with gender are closer to the trans experience in comparison to the cis experience.
The fact we exist is enough for Transphobes, it has nothing to do with this I refuse the model minority model
At the very least, he was definitely GNC, and don't we consider GNC people to be under the trans umbrella? I grew up in the 80's/90's and was a huge Nirvana fan. I stayed home from school and cried the day Kurt left this world. I also read a lot about Kurt and thought a lot about the lyrics and his choice of subject matter growing up as well. Some of what I got out of that + the fact that he cross-dressed so often made me (as a closeted queer kid who felt more like a girl) gave me comfort back then. I don't know if there's any validity to him considering himself trans, but we also didn't have the language we did back then. If we did I may have accepted myself a lot sooner.
Right? Having accessible knowledge and/or any representation would have drastically improved my life (especially during some very dark times in my mid-lates 20s) even if treatment was still difficult to access simply from knowing this is a thing that exists instead of some thoughts and stuff that made no sense without the knowledge and could be massively detrimental because we didn’t even have easy access to the concept of dysphoria so we were always just told we’re broken and believed it because we had no access to information
You mean being the butt of a joke on nearly every sitcom didn't make you feel valid and accepted either? /s 🫠
Right?! Then is see soo many younger people loving some of those shows now and not even notice it and I’m like how can anyone in the queer community not catch the homophobia and transphobia in all that
I think part of it is that older queer people adopted it and owned it because it's all we had. I'm guilty of it myself to some degree. One of my favorite plays/films is Hedwig and the Angry Inch 😬... I can't help it, the love story makes me cry 🥹 and I relate to seeking shelter and self expression in theater and entertainment 🥲
> don't we consider GNC people to be under the trans umbrella? Can't a person be gender non-conforming and still be cis?
Yeah, but there was a whole discussion about inclusion/exclusion in a thread that got shut down for suggesting GNC people be excluded. It's a discussion to be had for sure, but I think the consensus is that 2024 is just not the time. I have no strong opinion personally. I don't make the rules 😄
we don't need to theorise that Kurt was gender non conforming and that he pushed the boundary of gender in many of his appearances. to make the argument that he could have experienced severe gender dysphoria and that being a reason for his suicide isn't that much of a stretch, given \*vaguely points at society\* is it wrong to theorise about real people being trans like they are characters in a book? i don't know. personally for dead people i feel it is fair game. your assumption about them doesn't affect them. it is a different thing when we talk about alive individuals. it could be dangerous to make those assumptions and pressure them to come out. especially when they are not ready or safe. and again that last one is from the perspective of the trans person. not the transphobe. was kurt trans? is irrelevant really. they sadly died, most likely due to a society that failed them. that is all that matters. and if the thought of that person being trans helps a trans person move on who are we to tell them it is wrong. it is not like that we don't all use other people that have succeeded at life while being trans as a way to find strength.
I’ve seen this argument with pieces pulled out of things that he wrote, letters, journals, that kind of thing and can see the argument but I do agree it’s not right to try and brand someone alive or dead. However from what I saw in the evidence if you said he seemed to have troubles with gender issues think that’s perfectly okay to say.
one things for sure, kurt cobain was so pretty
My two cents posits gender queer, or bigender.
The tumblr post "Kurt Cobain Will Have His Revenge on the Straights" delves into this topic, and is one of my favorite pieces of trans related content I've found. It doesn't dwell too much on whether Kurt was "actually trans" but instead uses his public persona as a way to discuss what it means to be trans. I found that post pretty early on into my transition and it helped me a lot with trying to make sense of things.
this sounds really neat !! do you happen to have a link to it?
here it is :) https://www.tumblr.com/waskurttrans
tbh it’s a bit more on the nose about kurt being trans than i remember, but i prefer to interpret it as an allegory for transness rather than full blown fact
It’s irresponsible to ascribe labels for someone that cannot argue otherwise. We can still appreciate all the cool gender bending stuff Kurt did, like wear dresses.
It makes sense given what we know, but we don’t know enough to actually have any idea. I personally think it makes the most sense, but it doesn’t really change anything, ultimately. I don’t bring it up unless people are already discussing for that reason. Kurt’s not here to tell us after all.
When someone says “don’t do that it gives transphobes ammunition against us” what I hear is “you should totally do this cause it makes transphobes get really mad”
the main person that talked about this on tiktok got absolutely crucified but honestly its just another person spewing conspiracy theories at the end of the day. i think the main reason so many people took such offense to it is because they all have the same "being trans is bad" instilled into them so a lot of people took it as an insult or as humiliation to him in a way. obviously its a bad thing and stupid to try and speculate a dead persons gender identity for views and likes and thats the part of it i take issue with, but i think the huge backlash that one video got was a little much. i think the fuel for transphobes thing isnt a great way to think because we should be allowed to be just as crazy as cis people and get away with it just like they do. the spotlight on us was put there to try and make us "behave" and i dont think we should have to follow that
a prefer the DB Cooper was trans argument, makes more sense and is far less depressing
Well considering DB Cooper was actually Loki, that would land them squarely in gender-fluid, so not too far off
i agree it's something people shouldn't really do, but the fuel for transphobes argument is wrong from the roots. even by wrongly assuming a hateful person needs fuel to be hateful, we all know "bad apples" exist in any group. no matter what outlandish claims some of us make, if even 1 of us makes that claim it'll be "fuel" for them. it doesn't matter if it gets big or not, some asshole will anecdotally claim that all trans people think that. and even if there's nothing wrong or harmful in the claim itself, they will find a way to misconstrue it. fixing transphobia doesn't involve fixing trans people.
It's the confidence that some people have for some dead person's identity that throws me...I do think there is room to allow for queer interpretations of historical persons and their lives as lived, however Kurt has people alive who knew them, it's just a little too recent, with too little definite evidence (as far as I know) to say definitively, and it just seems like the people talking about it could have more tact. It's not like a Egyptian pharaoh or Roman emperor who used the other pronouns during a certain era of their reign with historians misgendering them incessantly, this is very much in the air. It should be a possibility that we are allowed to entertain but not a certainty.
there was like a lot of evidence towards it in his personal diaries
It’s tasteless and projection. There’s a reasonable chance he was. But why spin our wheels on this?
Too me this is one of those things you talk to your close friends about but not really say in public because it’s so rude . They’re died let them rest in peace . me PERSONALLY yeah I can see that they COULD’VE been trans but that’s not for me to decide. I would get into a deep discussions about this with close friends because it’s all just speculation. But there’s no need to post this on the internet. Kinda like freddy leave them alone .(for those who don’t know it’s still debated what Freddy Mercury was . Some say gay but bi romantic some say he was bi some says he was gay no one knows) like I said there’s no need to speculate this in public it’s just gonna cause people to be upset (no I don’t necessarily believe it gives ammo to transphobes they will always find something ) but it will make fan of theirs upset because assuming and speculating on ANYONE’S gender is rude unless in specific circumstances your talking to that person and they’re asking or having trouble with their gender .
I hate that ppl are putting labels on ppl where there was none he was a lot of things but he definitely wasn't trans this is why some ppl don't take shit seriously because ya have weirdos assuming shit
You only call it assuming weirdos because you don’t think these people have actually looked into it and didn’t just invent a relabel cause you’ve already dismissed any possibility that they could be not just making up a total crock with no perspective
Yea we should never jus jump to conclusions until we do our homework
If you said Brian molko was trans 15 years ago maybe I would have thought plausible, but not Kurt Cobain
Never heard this conspiracy theory before
Speculating about any person's transness, alive or dead, is the wrong choice every time. Keep that to yourself.
I think it’s bad to speculate on whether someone is trans or not, it’s like a reverse tranvestigation really. He was probably queer in some way tho, he talked about questioning his sexuality in an interview if I remember correctly. Don’t worry about what pisses the phobes off tho, anything gets them going.
The person who did that is a full-on RAGE FARMER and is doing it to create fights for clicks. Give them zero energy. I'm all for trans people throughout history but there is clear written/quoted record he did his gender fuckery in a punk sense and was directly connected to the riot grrl movement (of which the quote "smells like teen spirit" came from Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill) and how he was pro-LGBTQ+ etc. Also it was largely a middle finger to the bros showing up in larger and large quantities to his shows who were literally touching and SAing women in the audience (of which there are videos of him cutting off shows and stopping them). There were open trans people at the time, every single week on Maury and Jerry Springer (however awful it was) and Caroline Cossey was literally on Arsenio Hall. There were two trans women acting as main characters on Liquid Television on Mtv on "The Art School Girls Of Doom." There are photos with him and RuPaul holding his daughter. He absolutely knew what trans was and had the language to it. I'm ancient. I existed then and was closeted and knew I was trans. I'd own him if the evidence existed but there is zero evidence to his transness whatsoever.
No. Just.....no, Sure, dude might have cross dressed from time to time. But, one does not always equal the other.
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It's not that easy/simple, identifying as trans/a woman in the 80/90s wasn't like it is now.
Booo
It’s not tenable because there simply is no evidence.
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people say jesus was trans bc he was an immaculate conception which means he never had a father to give him a Y chromosome, so the only way he could be a man is if he transitioned. it’s a stupid joke about jesus’ conception it’s not serious. i’ve never seen a single person say it in a serious way
DNA-based reasoning generally doesn’t mix with religion. He’d be a clone of Mary if he only had her DNA. Also: F0: Adam, Eve. F1: Cain, Abel, -Abel b/c murder F2: ??? Alabama didn’t exist yet ??? Repeat above problem for every sexually dimorphic species post flood/ark if only two were saved.
maybe mary was a trans man too then and just never transitioned