Back when even Freddie Mercury and Elton John were closeted, David Bowie announced he was gay. He gave an identity to being different, that it existed, and showed the world some of that difference. That you didn't have to fit in to a traditional mould, even a "traditional" sexuality. That there was life beyond conformity that could be lived with great effect.
Not least because there was the image that he entwined with the words – a succession of characters and costumes that defied gender boundaries, subverting everything that men were supposed to be.
He was called, in the 1970s, a “gender bender” – a term today we might shudder at. But he became a beacon for all who felt straitjacketed by having to be straight, or a man, or having to conform to any imposed definition of gender or sexual orientation. He made being different possible.
On Monday, LGBT people celebrated the scope of Bowie’s identity revolution by paying tribute to an artist who proved that to give gender constraints the middle finger was the ultimate liberation. To be different no longer meant being a victim; it meant triumphing. Buzzfeed
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