IT’S TIME TO CANCEL THE VILLAGE PEOPLE:

Forget the fact that the music video was made with the help of the US Navy. The Village People, despite cashing in on military trappings, have remained silent on the struggle for trans people to serve openly in the military.

Silence is violence. And the name of the group itself is violence against trans womxn of color. Manhattan’s Greenwich Village today is emblematic of cis-het gentrification and a painful reminder of white real-estate terrorism. Take a stroll down Christopher Street on any given Friday night and see for yourself: trans womxn of color banished to basement stairwells and parked cars to perform sex acts for money in the shadows rather than high on a pedestal wearing golden knee pads.

Caitlyn Jenner, at the time operating under her slave name Bruce, starred in a 1980 biopic about the Village People that flopped, and was even voted the worst movie of that year, further proving that transphobia has always followed this group around.

So has cultural appropriation. The Village People’s original studio band was called Gypsy Lane, an offensive slang term for itinerate Romani people. They were still at it as late as 2000, when the Village People released a single called ‘Gunbalanya,’after an Australian aboriginal word they believed meant ‘in the tribe,’ but was actually just the name of an aboriginal settlement.

Then there’s the complicated issue of Felipe Ortiz Rose, a founding member of the group who played the Indian character until 2017. Usually dressed in a warbonnet and loincloth, Rose has claimed Native American ancestry, but we’ve yet to see the 23andMe results. The Brooklyn native currently says he’s of Lakota and Taino descent, yet in the past said he was Apache. Something tells me his actual tribe might be Puerto Rican. Is that racist? The professors have yet to tackle that one.

It’s satire, but let’s not give the left any ideas, huh?