My Guilty Queer Conscience: Resolving the Contradictions of Being a Transgender Eminem Fan

Content Warning: The following article contains discussions of transphobia and the deadnaming of a transgender celebrity on the new Eminem album.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
-Kurt Vonnegut

Nobody expects me to be an Eminem fan. If you met me, you’d never think that this transgender lesbian anarcho-communist punk rocker would be a fan of the controversial white rapper. I won’t deny, it surprises me too, to an extent. And, as Eminem’s latest album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace) has been criticized for its perceived transphobia (amongst other egregious offenses), I feel like I’m suddenly under a spotlight. People ask how I can continue to support him after all the things he’s said over the years, and especially after what he says on this album.

So I wanted to talk about Eminem, and in particular his controversial new album, from the unique perspective of a transgender person who has been a longtime fan. I don’t have some sort of illusion that Marshall Mathers is a perfect person, but I think he’s a greatly improved person from the man who burst onto the scene in 1999. Maybe he was right all along: Feminist women do love Eminem, at least sometimes. It’s a complicated relationship, and I need to explain it from the beginning.

’97 Jekyll and Hyde

I don’t know who came up with the idea to get Eminem’s early singles played on alternative rock radio when he first came out in the 1990s. It always felt like a vaguely racist marketing strategy. The logic seemed to be that the Beastie Boys were a white band who had a lot of success playing on rock radio to the largely-white rock audience, so why not try it again? The problem with that logic is that the Beastie Boys started as a punk band and, even after shifting to hip-hop, they continued to play the occasional rock song, or even instrumentals. Eminem wasn’t like that at all. Aside from his friendships with rap-rockers like Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit, he had no connection to rock music. But somehow, the fact that Eminem was all over rock radio is what got me into him.

I wasn’t into a lot of hip-hop artists at the time. This was before I got involved with slam poetry, which would ultimately put me in the orbit of a lot of amateur (and a few professional) rappers and turn me on to hip-hop music. But the rap-rock bands that came on rock radio strangely fascinated me. I secretly loved rap, but felt like my rocker friends would never approve. So Eminem had me riveted. He was a clever wordsmith who was deeply transgressive, and my 16-year-old self delighted in the moral panic that formed around the Detroit rapper.

Even though I was young, and my sense of morality wasn’t fully formed yet, it didn’t take long for me to realize I would have to reconcile my own ethics with Eminem’s deeply offensive lyrics. At the time, I spent a lot of time reading music reviews and histories, mostly from AllMusic.com, and it was in the AllMusic review of Eminem’s second (or third, it depends if you count Infinite) album The Marshall Mathers LP that I found the justification I was looking for: “Eminem doesn’t care if you understand exactly where he’s at,” explained reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine, “and he doesn’t offer any apologies if you can’t sort the fact from the fiction. As an artist, he’s supposed to create his own world, and with this terrific second effort, he certainly has.”

I’m not sure if casual observers and non-fans have an understanding of exactly who Slim Shady is. When Eminem’s first single came out, I certainly couldn’t have been the only one confused by the fact that a rapper named Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers, was singing a song and announcing “Hi, my name is Slim Shady!” I think some people started to see Slim Shady as simply another name for Eminem the way Lil Wayne became known as Weezy and Kanye West was shortened to Ye, and often that is the way it’s used—sometimes even by Eminem himself—but that’s not the original meaning of the name.

Slim Shady is a semi-autobiographical fictional character that Eminem created. Shady is not afraid to speak his mind about what he thinks, even if—in fact, especially if—it offends everyone. Shady is an unhinged lunatic, a murderer, a narcissist, and a misanthrope. Yet, at the same time, Shady seems to have the same biography as Eminem. He grew up with the same family; his ex-wife is Eminem’s ex-wife; his children are Eminem’s children. But Shady is an excuse to go into dark depths that Eminem himself wouldn’t want to go to on his own. And one thing that Shady has tended to be is wildly homophobic.

There’s something to be said about making a fictional character who’s the center of Eminem’s art. One could call it a form of satire, or an unreliable narrator. I’ve always been a fan of satirical characters like Archie Bunker, so the dark, twisted psyche of Slim Shady was a lot of fun for me to explore. At one point in my poetry career, I experimented with creating my own Slim Shady-like character named Liam Blueridge: a poet not entirely unlike me who said extreme things that I never would.

But the homophobia of the Shady character seemed like it might be more than satire based on some of the things Eminem started saying in interviews back when he first rose to fame. At the time, he was still a fairly young man who seemed a bit overwhelmed by his sudden stardom, and he didn’t seem prepared for the kind of scrutiny that came with it. His statements were condemned, with good reason, and Eminem developed a reputation of being a homophobe.

So how did I, a long-time leftist and a staunch ally of the LGBTQ community who later came to realize that I was part of that community, continue to justify my love of Eminem? I had a few years when I thought I outgrew him, but he continued to grow both as a rapper and as a person in ways that impressed me. In 2001, some absolute genius came up with the idea of Eminem performing his song “Stan” with openly gay singer Elton John at the Grammy Awards. Eminem has stated that he didn’t know John was gay (how!?), and the two developed a deep friendship which ultimately helped Eminem to change his views on queer people.

While politics has never been a huge part of Eminem’s career, whenever he has made political statements, he has proven himself to be left-of-center. He came out against George W. Bush and the Iraq War on his 2004 track “Mosh,” and he came out against Donald Trump in the freestyle he did at the BET awards in 2017 where he drew “in the sand a line” and said he didn’t want fans who were Trump supporters.

Another big moment of growth was when the rapper, who often made songs bragging about his unchecked, unapologetic drug use, came to his senses and realized he had a problem and kicked his addiction to pills. Judging by the things that Eminem said in his early songs, I never imagined he had the strength of character to realize he had a problem and do something about it, and the fact that he did showed that he was growing up.

A lot of things about Eminem changed with his 2010 album Recovery, the second (and better) of two albums that he made about getting clean. Starting with Recovery, Eminem’s reliance on the Slim Shady gimmick didn’t end by any means, but he started to lean on it a lot less. He rarely made songs that were just insult after insult directed at celebrities he didn’t like. He still made off-color comments from time to time, and he would occasionally still call himself Shady, but it wasn’t as front-and-center in his career anymore. Almost as if a symbolic method of shedding the Shady character, Eminem stopped dying his hair blonde and started going with his natural, dark-brown hair color.

Returning to the Shady character in 2024 for The Death of Slim Shady meant that Shady started to open up about modern celebrities and modern issues, and transgender people became one of his main targets. In the few days since the album came out, a lot of news outlets have reported on The Death of Slim Shady as being transphobic for its complaints about pronouns and the fact that Eminem misgenders and deadnames Caitlyn Jenner on several occasions.

But it’s important to recognize that The Death of Slim Shady is a concept album about the relationship between Eminem and his alter-ego, which contains layers of fiction and reality and, as always, the line between the two is extremely hazy. To really figure out what Eminem is trying to say about trans people, you have to understand what the album is saying as a whole. Love it or hate it, realize that The Death of Slim Shady is Eminem’s most consistent and complete artistic statement, and we can understand what it’s supposed to mean.

So, what follows will be a textual analysis (not a review) of The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace) which seeks to understand what Eminem is trying to say in this album and how transgender people fit into that statement.

The Real Real Slim Shady

At the beginning of the album, the villainous character of Slim Shady returns, seemingly from a grave, and starts to take over the personality of Eminem, whom I’m going to refer to as Marshall when we’re talking about him as a character on the album. While Shady is a part of Marshall’s psyche, Shady overpowering Marshall is depicted in a literal way, with Shady tying up Marshall and holding a gun to his head.

One of the first things that Shady does is force Marshall to take pills and drink again, ruining his sobriety. In some ways, Shady represents Eminem’s addiction, but that’s only part of what he represents. Shady represents the younger version of Eminem’s personality, the person he was when he first came into the spotlight in 1999. Shady also represents his offensiveness, his toxic masculinity, and his destructive lifestyle. The second track, “Habits,” explains how even being Shady is a sort of addiction in itself.

Shady is mad that Marshall used him to become famous and then turned his back on him and, as revenge, Shady sets out to create an album that will get Marshall canceled. Shady starts taking over the album, with Marshall relegated to the background, occasionally protesting Shady’s antics. Shady rattles off a string of wildly offensive songs that return to Eminem’s early style, and transgender people are one of his favorite targets.

Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. It might be more accurate to say that one specific trans person is Shady’s favorite target: Caitlyn Jenner. The first reference to Jenner comes up in “Habits” where Shady misgenders and deadnames the celebrity, but, at the same time, says that he supports Jenner’s right to be who she wants to be:

“But when it comes to givin’ it to anybody, boy, is Bruce generous (Marshall)
And I’m ’bout as much of a boy as Bruce Jenner is (Damn)
‘Cause I’m not a boy, I’m a man, bitch, man-bitch (Haha)
My speech is free as his choice to choose gender is (Man)
This shit is like opioid abuse, isn’t it? (Yup)”

This is only the first reference to Jenner. On my first listen to the album, I counted out seven distinct references to Jenner before I stopped keeping track. Jenner is an odd main target to go after, as it’s been nearly a decade since she was the primary, go-to celebrity that people talked about when bringing up trans people. A lot more famous trans people have come out since then, and most of them better represent the trans community, as most trans people have largely rejected Jenner as a role model due to her conservative politics and toxic personality.

But Jenner isn’t the only dated celebrity reference that Shady makes. While Shady does go after some current, culturally relevant celebrities like Kanye West, Amber Heard, and Megan Thee Stallion, he also seems to be strangely fixated on some celebrities that haven’t been in the news in a while, such as R. Kelly who hasn’t really been talked about since he was imprisoned in 2022. But the weirdest fixation is Shady’s obsession with making jokes about paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve, who has been dead for 20 years. In fact, one entire song, “Brand New Dance,” is entirely a Christopher Reeve joke, although dialogue later in the album reveals that the song was originally written for Eminem’s 2004 album Encore but taken off because of Reeve’s death. Now, 20 years later, Shady is set free and won’t be censored anymore, digging up an old (and badly outdated) song just for the sake of being offensive.

Shady spends all of his tracks attacking trans people, handicapped people, little people, and a lot of other marginalized groups. He constantly makes weak arguments about free speech and complains that the “PC Police” are after him, echoing problematic arguments commonly heard on the right. On the track “Road Rage,” Shady goes off on a patently offensive rant against body positivity movements where he favors shaming overweight people instead of accepting them. Then Shady tells Marshall that he’s taking control in a very real way: He’s going to dye Marshall’s hair blonde again.

Right after Shady threatens Marshall with hair dye, he explains his feelings about trans people and, while it’s certainly problematic, considering that this is supposed to be the villain of the piece talking, it’s almost tolerant:

“So transgender rights, where do I stand? Oh (Uh)
I’m all for ’em, I really am pro (Nah, for real)
But intercourse with you (What?), would I have? No (Nope)
I’m just bein’ honest (Yeah), now I’m an asshole (Ho)
Call me a transphobe (Really? Yeah) ’cause I just can’t go (What?)
And try and pretend you was never a man though (Sorry)
I mean, damn, bro (Yeah), it’s just the way I feel (Uh)
But if I say it will (Mm), it get me cancelled (Yup, shit)
My music get banned (What?), or can it withstand? (No)
This shit is quicksand (Help), man, I’m just sayin’ (Ha)
I gotta participate for us to co-exist? Damn
I gotta memorize pronouns of a cis man? (Really?)
How come can’t we just show solidarity with a wristband? (Or somethin’ like that, you know?)
And this ain’t even a diss, trans
People, my dick just won’t expand
Them tits won’t make it stand
But Caitlyn, big fan (No, wait)”

So Shady talks about supporting trans people, but only to a point. First of all, he doesn’t want to sleep with trans women, which, even as his fan, I wasn’t offering. He also doesn’t want to put in the work to respect us in using the correct language. He seems to want to be able to ignore people’s pronouns when he can’t remember them. It’s an attempt to “support” trans people that comes off as transphobic in the process. But is this Shady’s opinion, or is it Eminem’s real opinion on trans people?

“Guilty Conscience” on The Slim Shady LP featured Shady and Dr. Dre playing the evil and good side of peoples’ conscience in different situations. On this album, “Guilty Conscience 2” is a completely different concept: a verbal argument between Slim Shady and Marshall Mathers. While Marshall tries to distance himself from Shady’s antics earlier on the album, Shady hits him with a hard truth:

“I gave you power to use me as an excuse to be evil (I know)
You created me to say everything you didn’t have the balls to say (Yep)
What you were thinking but in a more diabolic way
You fed me pills and a bottle of alcohol a day (Okay)
Made me too strong for you and lost control of me (You’re right)
I took over you totally
You were socially awkward ’til you molded me (Yeah)
You was a loner, a nobody
‘Cause of me, you didn’t take shit from nobody”

Shady starts to accuse Marshall of being just like him. Is there even a difference between what Shady thinks and what Marshall thinks? Or is Shady just an excuse to be offensive? From this point of view, it might seem like Eminem himself is transphobic, but we’re only on track 13 out of 19, so hang tight. At the end of the track, Marshall tries to kill himself and Shady to get rid of them both, then wakes up seemingly as if from a dream. But it quickly becomes apparent that the nightmare might not actually be over.

As we get towards the end of the album, Marshall starts to contemplate his own death. “Temporary” is a song that Marshall sings to his daughter, Hailie, for whenever he should happen to die, leaving his last message for her. In some ways, “Temporary” exists outside of the narrative of the album because it is literally a letter from the real Marshall to his daughter. In another sense, it represents a fear of death that becomes prevalent on the later songs on the album.

On “Bad One,” we get Marshall this time admitting that he uses Shady as an excuse to say terrible things, and he starts to take responsibility for the fact that that’s a cop out. He seems to start to realize that the Shady character is immature and a part of his past that he needs to leave behind. “Tobey” came off as a song about Eminem showing off his normal bravado when it was released as a single, but in the context of the larger album it seems to be the moment when Marshall starts to regain confidence in his abilities as a rapper without Shady.

Finally, on the closing track “Somebody Save Me,” Marshall looks back on his life at his own funeral after relapsing from his addiction. Whether or not this represents a real relapse in his actual life is none of our business, but he seems to be regretting his decisions as he apologizes to his various children. But remember, Shady represents his addiction, as well as his overall reckless personality. In that sense, “Somebody Save Me” is about the fate that Marshall will meet if he continues to fall back on being Shady.

Conclusion: He Just Might Give a Fuck

So where does this leave us in terms of Eminem’s real views on the transgender community? It would seem that the views Shady expresses in “Road Rage” might be close to what Eminem really believes, that he supports the community but doesn’t want to put in the effort to respect us in language. But notice that he also specifically gave those lines to Shady, and then came to the conclusion at the end of the album that he’s better off without Shady. It seems that his views might be toxic, but he’s also self-aware about it and realizes that those toxic views are part of the person he has to leave behind to survive.

That doesn’t necessarily leave us in a place where we can say that The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace) isn’t problematic. If you wanted to make the criticism that Eminem made trans people props in his own redemption story, that’s absolutely valid. If you wanted to make the argument that Eminem uses satire as an excuse to make completely unacceptable jokes that probably tie into his actual problematic beliefs, that would also be absolutely valid.

In fact, I’m not even arguing here not to cancel Eminem if you want. All I’m saying is that I, personally, am not canceling Eminem in my own life because, while the statement “Eminem is transphobic” might not be an entirely untrue statement, it is an un-nuanced way of looking at what he’s trying to say in a larger context.

A friend of mine, in response to one of my posts about Eminem on Facebook, told me that I should go to Paris for the Olympics for how much I’m bending over backwards to defend him. Undoubtedly, some will accuse me of things like internalized transphobia and queer assimilationism. To them, I’ll say that I’m not trying to let Eminem off the hook completely—far from it. I’m saying that Eminem is a deeply flawed person who just might be trying to fix those flaws.

Eminem is not someone who came into the spotlight with the maturity of a fully-grown adult; we’ve watched him grow from a child to an adult in the public eye, and he’s made a lot of great progress. I believe he has the potential to grow even more, and I believe he has the potential to get to a better place in his attitudes towards trans people. That might not make him a good person right now, but he seems to be trying to become one, and I’m willing to give him the chance.

Photo courtesy of Jeremy Deputat via Instagram