Boy George made headlines in early 2020, and not in a way that he would have liked.
At the start of the new year, the former Culture Club frontman tweeted to his fans “leave your pronouns at the door,” which eventually spiraled into a series of tweets where the singer referred to preferred pronouns as a “modern form of attention seeking,” sparking outrage from the LGBTQ community.
In a brand new exclusive clip from Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter’s Pride Summit & Pride Prom, George says that he feels his comments were taken out of context as a result of vigilant “policing” online. “There is a lot of bullying online, like ‘You have to do this, you have to do that,'” he tells Billboard‘s Taylor Mims. “There is this sense that our lives are being run by the internet.”
Many labeled his comments as transphobic, which George wholeheartedly rejects, saying that he wants the same things the trans and non-binary community wants. “I’ve been gay for a long time,” he says. “I see the world has changed a lot, and that’s what I wanted! I wanted people to be able to be free to identify as whoever they want.”
As for the initial comment itself, George clarifies that he intended his tweet to be a message of non-judgement, even though it was directly perceived as the opposite. “My point when I said the thing about the pronouns was, you will never have a situation, when you encounter me, where you’ll have to explain yourself to the degree where it’s uncomfortable for you.”
The new clip is a snippet of George’s full conversation with Mims, which will air during Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter’s Pride Summit & Pride Prom on Saturday, June 13. George is just one guest in a star-studded lineup, where LGBTQ stars will appear for conversations, performances, cameos and much more.
Check out the new clip from Boy George’s interview above, and be sure to tune in to the Pride Summit and Pride Prom this Saturday at 12:30 p.m. ET here.
