Margaret Cho
Margaret Cho
Margaret Moran Cho is an American comedian, actress, fashion designer, author, and singer-songwriter. Cho is best known for her stand-up routines, through which she critiques social and political problems, especially regarding race and sexuality. She has created music videos and has her own clothing line of crotchless underwear for men and women. Cho has also frequently supported LGBT rights and has won awards for her humanitarian efforts on behalf of women, Asians, and the LGBT community...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComedian
Date of Birth5 December 1968
CitySan Francisco, CA
CountryUnited States of America
People have a lot of shame and suffering around it and I felt that the best thing I could do was to share my experiences, which I have been doing for a long time, and let people know that of all the things that I've endured.
All the songs on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are the encapsulation of heterosexual love. I have different records for gay sex.
Anything Vince Clarke, whether it's Erasure, Yaz, or Depeche Mode. It's basically R&B with synths. It's very sexy music and perfect for gay sex.
Your goal is to write that masterpiece. Yello's masterpiece was "Oh Yeah." Whatever I say about the song doesn't matter, because it has a huge impact on how we remember the era.
If you're a songwriter, you want to write a song like "Oh Yeah" that radically shifts everything. You can definitely retire on that song. You want to have something you can put in your songbook that everybody can recognize, whether it's a good or bad thing.
Christ's purpose was to really show how everyone can be loved and how everyone should be loved and accepted.
What happened in the 80's was that all the men died of AIDS. That was a particularly depressing time because so many people passed away and it was a very desperate and lonely time, so I think a lot of people felt that we were somehow, unreceived. Not only by the disease but also by the public image of the disease. It really gave homophobia a real shot in the arm and changed the way people viewed gays, queers. It became an entirely different atmosphere.
Where do people get off telling people what to do? It's their bodies. If you legalized sex work and legally protected the sex workers, you wouldn't see anything like human trafficking. All of that would be obliterated.
I'm a survivor. But I'm also victim, too. Surviving has the connotation that you've been through it, you lived through it and that's wonderful - but a victim is what I was. "Survivor" is the more healing way to look at it.
My philosophy is, "murder the rapist in your mind so you stop killing yourself." I've seen, in my lifetime, that sexual abuse has turned into self-abuse. When I kill the rapist inside of me, I will stop killing myself.
I use my work as catharsis. That's often the best thing that we can do, is to allow ourselves to rage because it's so rare that we get to. We're told to forgive - I don't want to! I don't want to forgive my abuser! I don't care to and I don't like that assumption that forgiveness makes me a better person. It's not authentic to me, my feelings and what I need. But everyone has their own way.
I think I started out okay but with AIDS came a great deal of silence about gayness and this period of lose and morning, but at the same time a kind of feeling like you wanted to get back into the closet because being gay was such a terrible thing at that point.
It's okay for you to have relationships, but it's not okay to talk about them. It's not okay to be out or to be public about it. It's not okay to be photographed with your partner.
I don't like catchphrases either. A current one would be, "Bye, Felicia." It's used so much that we don't even know the origin anymore.