The lyrics to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” are alternately condescending, patronizing, melodramatic, cliched, obnoxious, and grating. Delivered with all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer, they represent all of the constricting, insulting stereotypes that normal gay people have fought for three decades. I thought we’d done a good job of burying this crap. Now, with Lady Gaga as the media’s appointed spokeswoman for gay people, we’ll have to deal with this bullshit once again — for months, at least.
The lyrics are worse than I imagined they’d be, and every reader of this site knows that my expectations were rock-bottom to begin with. But Gaga’s stans have already come up with their go-to defense of these insulting lyrics: If you don’t like them, you’re clearly homophobic. Gaga Daily is all abuzz with that meme. “The gays” need songs like this, we’re told; ‘Mother Monster’ unites us all in her unbounded love.
Ah, yes: “the gays.” Her old standby. Lady Gaga dedicates awards to “the gays.” She asks at her shows where “the gays” are, and dedicates songs to “the gays out there.” And this song, too, will be for “the gays.” But in fact, “Born This Way” is, at its heart, an anti-gay song. It is restricting and narrow; it looks at gay people and sees nothing but their sexuality. The truth about homosexuality is that it’s really not that big of a deal: it’s not a lifestyle and it’s not an ideology. Speaking as someone gay, I want people to look at me and see not homosexuality — but my values, ideas, and aspirations. My sexuality is an incidental part of my life. But people like Lady Gaga look at me and sees nothing but gay, gay, gay.
The lyrics are certainly horrific for their lack of poetry, but they are even more horrific because they reinforce every stereotype of gays of identity-obsessed fashionista queens. There is nothing tongue-in-cheek about the song.
In the final analysis, Lady Gaga is nothing but the other side of the same coin that the Religious Right occupies. Pat Robertson sees gays as a flaming bunch of queens who are completely obsessed with their sexuality. Lady Gaga sees us in the same way. She should not be excused, let alone glorified, for this insulting attitude, merely because she likes the stereotype. Fag-haggery is not pro-gay. It is demeaning, condescending, and constricting. Every gay person with any respect for himself should boycott this song and this album. And I am supremely confident that this song will produce the much-needed backlash against this delusional woman.
lady gaga is a fraud. 