LCD Soundsystem band member Gavin Russom is coming out as a transgender woman. The 43-year-old keyboard/synth player opened up about being transgendered during an interview with Grindr published on Thursday, July 6.
“Over the last year and a half, I went from my trans identity being something I was in touch with and worked through in one way or another, to suddenly this shift where it’s on the front burner,” Russom said. “Now it’s time to become a whole person.”
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Russom revealed that she was “on [her] way to coming out into transitioning,” but she encountered “a lot of violence and harassment” and decided not to go through with it for years.
“Sometimes, if [people] happened to be walking behind me at enough distance where they would read me as feminine, they would catcall me,” she said. “Getting closer to me, they would see me as masculine and then become very angry. I was assaulted on a number of occasions.”
Russom opened up about the difficulties with dealing with her transition.
“[They] led me into some self-destructive behaviors, particularly around addiction and substance abuse. In the past, it consistently clouded or interrupted my ability to get into the kind of relationship with myself I needed to. I had to really work on that stuff and get it out of the picture,” Russom wrote.
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Russom took some time off after touring with LCD Soundsystem last year. She wanted to focus on self-care and seek the support from groups that she describes as “trans-identified people of color.”
“I feel a tremendous gratitude to know there are people out there — many of whom have much less of a degree of privilege than I do — who have been fearless enough to do the work,” she said. “I think the most helpful thing was talking to people with different transgender experiences, especially those with upbringings, economic circumstances and ethnic backgrounds different than my own. It allowed me to hear all these different perspectives and see the ways in which the trans experience is so varied and so individual.”
Russom is going to DJ publicly for the first time as a trans woman at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago on Thursday, July 13.
