Alice Cooper: “There are cases of transgender, but I’m afraid that it’s also a fad”

Alice Cooper has shared his thoughts on gender-affirming healthcare for young people, describing being transgender as “a fad”.

The 75-year-old shock rock star was speaking in a recent interview with Stereogum when he said that he believed things had “gone now to the point of absurdity”.

Cooper was asked about his thoughts on comments made by his “theatrical” rock peers about gender identity – including KISS’ Paul Stanley, who called children’s gender reassignment surgery “a sad and dangerous fad”, and Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, who backed Stanley’s comment. Stanley later walked back his statement, while Snider denied transphobia accusations.

The musician said that he was “understanding that there are cases of transgender”, but that “I’m afraid that it’s also a fad, and I’m afraid there’s a lot of people claiming to be this just because they want to be that”.

He went on: “I find it wrong when you’ve got a six-year-old kid who has no idea. He just wants to play, and you’re confusing him telling him, ‘Yeah, you’re a boy, but you could be a girl if you want to be’.”

Cooper also said that he thinks it’s “so confusing to a kid. It’s even confusing to a teenager”.

He elaborated: “You’re still trying to find your identity, and yet here’s this thing going on, saying, ‘Yeah, but you can be anything you want. You can be a cat if you want to be.’ I mean, if you identify as a tree… And I’m going, ‘Come on! What are we in, a Kurt Vonnegut novel?’ It’s so absurd, that it’s gone now to the point of absurdity.”

The ‘School’s Out’ singer then addressed to the “whole woke thing”, asking who was determining the agenda. “Is there a building somewhere in New York where people sit down every day and say, ‘OK, we can’t say ‘mother’ now. We have to say ‘birthing person.’ Get that out on the wire right now’?”

He also said that the “woke” thing was “getting to the point now where it’s laughable”, saying: “Everybody I talk to says, ‘Isn’t it stupid?’ And I’m going, ‘Well, I respect people. I respect people and who they are, but I’m not going to tell a seven-year-old boy, ‘Go put a dress on because maybe you’re a girl,’ and he’s going, ‘No, I’m not. I’m a boy’.”

The musician added that he thinks someone should “at least become sexually aware of who they are before they start thinking about if they’re a boy or a girl”.

He explained: “A lot of times, I look at it this way, the logical way: If you have these genitals, you’re a boy. If you have those genitals, you’re a girl. There’s a difference between ‘I am a male who is a female, or I’m a female that’s a male’ and wanting to be a female. You were born a male. Okay, so that’s a fact. You have these things here.”

He also said that transitioning was “something you can do later on if you want to”.

When challenged by the interviewer that parents aren’t necessarily encouraging doubt in their children, but that they should indeed listen to them and find the right healthcare, Cooper said he could “see somebody really taking advantage of this”.

He used the example that “a guy can walk into a woman’s bathroom at any time and just say, ‘I just feel like I’m a woman today’ and have the time of his life in there”.

Cooper added: “Well, that’s going to happen. Somebody’s going to get raped, and the guy’s going to say, ‘Well, I felt like a girl that day, and then I felt like a guy.’ Where do you draw this line?

“Something’s going to raise its ugly head, and all of a sudden, people are going to start going, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. We’ve got to get this under control.’”

The musician’s response is hugely at odds with recent comments from Nick Cave, who said: “I love my trans fans fully and wish them the best.”

Hozier, meanwhile, stated that he feels the LGBTQ+ community are being targeted as scapegoats, sharing: “I think we’re witnessing that increasingly with the LGBTQ+ community and particularly the trans community.”