KISS Lead Singer Who Spent Decades Bending Gender Draws the Line at Trans People

KISS sucks. They have always been one of rock and roll’s worst bands. They make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a joke (if it weren’t already). Their music represents the absolute worst aspects of rock and roll: corporate greed, misogyny, and don’t forget about pedophilia! They are shallow, empty men in leather and makeup singing the same stale “let’s rock!” anthems over and over again. Yet, all their glitz and glamour proves that you can indeed polish a turd and somehow walk away with millions. And in doing so, they became a part of the very establishment that they claim to rail against. Fellow Hall of Famer Neil Young would be ashamed.

And now, their lead singer Paul Stanley has decided to cement his place in the Conservative Hall of Fame by taking aim at trans people.

In a tweet that reads like a third grade essay, Paul Stanley wrote a rant titled “Thoughts On What I’m Seeing” in what appears to be a feeble attempt to wrap his drug-addled brain around the idea of trans people. With third-grade reasoning, he claims that children exploring their “sexual identification” as “some sort of game” eventually “confuses” them into “participation in a lifestyle” that they “have no real sense of.” I realize that, in reorganizing Stanley’s nonsense, I am actually making him sound somehow more coherent than his original tweet. Please, just try and read through it once without your brain hemorrhaging. I’m still trying to get my own bloodstains out of my carpet.

Stanley misses the point entirely, just as I’m sure he misses the bowl every time he tries to go to the bathroom. Trans children are not the victim of sexualization; they do not become trans children because they were “groomed” by an adult into questioning their sexuality or gender, and if Stanley is really worried about people sexualizing children, maybe he should take a look at his own lyrics. The KISS song “Christine Sixteen” features the lines “I don’t usually say things like this to girls your age /
But when I saw you coming out of school that day / That day I knew, I knew, I’ve got to have you.” ICK.

The most delicious piece of irony here is that Stanley has spent DECADES dressing up in women’s clothing while drenched in heavy make up, inspiring an entire generation of young people to do the same. As much as it sickens me to say it, KISS played an integral role in bringing androgynous and gender-bending style into the mainstream. The fact that Stanley is so incognizant of this fact that he would raise alarm bells to warn parents of the “sad and dangerous fad” of gender exploration is laughable. But then again, everything this man does is laughable. Here’s hoping that history repeats itself and that after this hiccup Stanley once again fades into irrelevance like he did when punk music first hit the scene. I’m certain that moment is coming soon.

(featured image: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for SiriusXM)