The Beastie Boys and My Genderqueer Identity

On reconciling sexist lyrics with my feminist and Genderqueer awakenings

Beastie Boys mural by Danielle Mastrion that shows all three members of the group and an RIP MCA message to Adam Yauch, the member of the group who died. Photo: Bill Tompkins/Getty Images

As a young tomboy growing up in a lefty commune in the mid-’80s, I sat in a wood-paneled TV room with my older brothers repeatedly watching the “Fight For Your Right to Party” music video from the Beastie Boys’ first album. I did not realize then that, just a decade or so later, I would openly identify as Queer. Watching the Beastie Boys rap in the foreground of the video, while their hairsprayed, mini-skirted backup dancers shimmied in the background, I had little inkling that decades later, I would fully understand my gender identity as Genderqueer, or that I would eventually use they/them pronouns.

What I did know was that I did not recognize any aspect of myself in the backup dancers on screen. Instead, I was drawn to the trouble-making, swaggering, East Coast-accented rappers, who were Jewish and mischievous and tomboyish like me.

The Beastie Boys reminded me of my teenage brothers’ friends who let me tag along with them through…