I’ve been hoarding this picture for too long. Please enjoy this picture of Gerard as Jackie Kennedy from September. And no, this wasn’t using zoom.
Gerard Way
Riot Fest - Chicago Illinois
September 2022
(Edit to add: my old URL is 12+ years old and I no longer even thought about what it was. Thanks to tags on this post I will be changing it immediately and want to be clear that I’m extremely anti-JKR and anti-TERF)
Okay we’re gonna talk about the Gerard Way she/her thing because y’all are being weird about it.
When most of us call Gerard Way she/her, it’s in the same way the queer community has used it generically for years.
Queer people have been using she/her pronouns in scenarios involving drag, cross-dressing, and general fun and celebration, for both ourselves and our friends since before most of us were born.
I have not seen ANYONE legitimately claim that Gerard wearing a dress makes them a woman. I HAVE seen people being excited that Gerard feels comfortable enough to express themself. Exited that he feels safe enough to finally explore the feminine styles he has always said he’s drawn to. Excited that Gerard is trusting us with this side of themself. That all calls for celebratory, in good fun use of she/her!
Gerard has historically expressed feeling a looseness in regard to pronouns applied to them, and has never expressed anxiety about fans giving them feminine compliments or calling them words like mom, queen, etc. Because, yeah. My Chem fans have literally been doing this for years already! It’s just picked up in popularity, again, out of feelings of celebration and love…
If you know that pronouns do not equate gender, understand that WE know that too. If you know that gender is a performance, understand that WE know that too. We are using she/her because it is fun, it is lighthearted- it is literally part of our community’s way of acknowledging that gender is a performance.
Assuming we’ve suddenly forgotten this and are treating gender and gender presentation as strictly binary / are forcing an identity upon someone, just as our oppressors have done to us our entire lives, is honestly kinda offensive!
We do this because we’re happy for her. Because she finally gets to be whoever the fuck she wants to be, to look however the fuck he wants to look, and we’re excited.
oh GOD i was looking through videos from riot fest to relive some memories and i never fucking noticed ray said ‘it looks beautiful!’ on the mic when the crowd lit up for kids from yesterday