Lady Gaga Explains Why She Never Addressed Rumors She's a Man

Originally appeared on E! Online

Lady Gaga was, in fact, born this way.

The 38-year-old, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, recently opened up about a rumor that plagued the start of her music career.

“I’ve been used to lies being printed about me since I was 20 years old,” she shared on shared on the Netflix series What’s Next? The Future With Bill Gates. “I’m a performer. I think it’s kind of funny. When I was in my early 20s, there was a rumor that I was a man.”

Gaga said the rumor followed her as she traveled “all over the world” to promote her music after a doctored image appeared on the Internet.

“Almost every interview I sat in,” she recalled, “they said, ‘There’s this rumor that you’re a man. What do you have to say about that?’”

The Grammy winner opted to ignore the speculation at the time, purposefully declining to release a statement about the validity of the rumors.

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“The reason why I didn’t answer the question is because I didn’t feel like a victim with that lie,” she explained. “But I thought, ‘What about a kid that’s being accused of that, who would think a public figure like me would feel shame?’”

She continued, “I’ve been in situations where fixing a rumor was not in the well being of other people. So in that case, I tried to be thought provoking and disruptive in another way. I tried to use the misinformation to create another disruptive point.”

And while she doesn’t address all rumors about her, back in June, Gaga had the perfect clapback after fans speculated that she might be pregnant and expecting her first child with fiancé Michael Polansky.

"Not pregnant," Gaga wrote atop the clip shared to her TikTok June 4 before quipping, "just down bad crying at the gym."

And in true Gaga form, she took the opportunity to pivot attention to what she felt as more pressing matters, sharing a link to "register to vote."