Jeffree Star chose Valentine’s Day to call nonbinary people “made up.” During an appearance on a podcast, the makeup mogul went on a minute-long, expletive-ridden rant on how he’s “not into” nonbinary identity.

After teasing an “NFL Boyfriend” for weeks, Star revealed that it was all a promotion for his appearance on NFL player Taylor Lewan’s podcast, Bussin With The Boys.

While in the past Star has been implicated in everything from racism to Nazi imagery to alleged sexual assault and hush money paid for said allegations, he took the podcast as an opportunity to set the record straight: he also thinks nonbinary people are “stupid.”

“I’m not into all the other bullshit—the ‘they’ and ‘them’ and all that extra shit we added during the pandemic ‘cause everyone was so bored in their fucking houses and started to make up more shit,” Star said.

Hopefully it goes without saying that gender-neutral terminology was not invented during the pandemic. Long before historical nonbinary figures like the “genderless prophet,” people have been using the singular “they” for gender neutral situations since the dawn of the English language.

Star went on to lay claim to a conservative fanbase. “That’s why the conservatives like me, because I’m just real,” he said. “You’re not ‘they’ and ‘them’, you’re trans, you’re male or you’re female. People get so mad when I say that.”

To be clear, bigots don’t “like” him. Star is, at best, a convenient prop for conservatives to claim they aren’t queerphobic because a queer person agrees with them.

He essentially made this point himself, saying, “It’s stupid is what it is. But you need someone like me, who looks like me, to say it. Because if you say it, it turns into: ‘You’re homophobic, you hate trans people, you hate gays.’”

No matter how one rationalizes it, this rhetoric coming from someone whose career is built on genderqueer expression is giving hypocrisy.

While it’s not surprising that someone with such a controversial history would cut their losses with progressives and pander to conservatives, maybe Star could put that energy into working on himself?

But why go to all that trouble when you can latch onto the current political climate and dehumanize an entire community already facing risks of violence?

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