Mistress of Troon
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2021
In Arca's case he quite literally is doing performance art. His debut album included songs exploring his "alter ego" Xen, who represented his "confident, sassy, feminine side". At the time (2014) he was a decently attractive gay man:
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Then he started working in some more gender bendy cross dressing stuff into his performances by his third album in 2017, although he was still very much a gay man (some of the album was inspired by his experiences crusing in London's Abney Park Cemetery)
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By 2018 Arca was non binary (using it/its pronouns)
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and then by the end of 2019 Arca came out as a trans woman and started transiton, recently featuring in a Calvin Klein advertising campaign.
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Arca at least said that he doesn't really care if people refer to him as he, she, they, it or whatever, he just has a preference for a particular pronoun and he's happy being a trans woman. It doesn't seem like he's precious about his identity in the way most sideshows in this thread are. Still, just a shame that a good looking gay man who was just a bit quirky/gender non conforming has ended up pumping himself full of hormones and wrecking his body.
SOPHIE was part of PC Music, which had a huge thing about early 2000s sugary female pop vocals and artifice. Grimes actually criticised SOPHIE before SOPHIE was out, saying that a man masquerading as a woman in electronic music was undermining women's gains. SOPHIE even appeared at Boiler Room disguised as a security guard while a drag queen pretended to DJ as SOPHIE. Eventually SOPHIE came out etc etc etc. There's an argument to be made that it's performance art.
And yet troon activists will claim that gay men trooning out is because of more acceptance instead of a mind virus that claims that even liking the slightest thing that could be conceived as feminine makes you trans. Well, it doesn't. There is a half Gypsy and half Bulgarian singer who was one of the first openly bisexual man in postcommunist Southeastern Europe. What people have to understand is that Southeastern Europe is quite different from the West and Eastern Europe. Southeastern Europe is much more conservative than Eastern Europe, but takes a more pragmatic take about things like gay rights or acceptance. People might not like it or even be disgusted by it, but tend to be more tolerant when it's about laws. It's also not uncommon to see a female popstar who behaves like a slut on stage, but is actually a tradwife with six children who goes to her Orthodox church every week. I think this is because of the lower influence of Protestantism who was very obsessed with purity. Being a part of the Ottoman empire for several centuries might also have helped to be more tolerant, even if you don't accept something. You had to learn how to be a Orthodox Christian in a Muslim empire for example, so the goal of absolute Christian domination was just not possible and compromises had to be made. This was the same for the Ottoman empire who knew that it wasn't a good idea to make your Christian subjects angry.
So my point is that Azis was a very controversial singer who appeared in the late 90's. He often dressed like a woman (the concept of drag queen was unknown) and he played two different characters: Azis who was the more masculine and male version of him, whereas Azia was the more feminine side of him and sung as a woman. What he did was actually quite brave, especially in the 90's when Bulgaria was still very conservative about sexuality. This is totally different from today's gender goblins who don't risk anything in the West. What is interesting about Azis is that he didn't become more feminine or even trooned out, he actually grew a bit tired of the Azia persona and now mostly only goes on stage as a man. He also never claimed to be a woman and is obviously aware that he's a man. But it might be quite that if he had had his career in the West, he might have been already trooned out by now.
Here some examples of his songs:
And here a video where he answers some fan questions (with english subtitles)