The Blessed Madonna says she privately dropped Róisín Murphy from birthday line-up before public fallout (EXCLUSIVE)

The Blessed Madonna does not do media training answers. Over the course of an hour, the musician veers from memories of her mother sheltering queer teenagers in Kentucky to furious monologues about trans rights, fascism and the dangers of political silence, all while preparing to perform at Brighton & Hove Pride’s landmark 35th anniversary celebrations in August.

At times reflective, at others explosively blunt, Marea speaks with deep reverence about queer history and the people who “risked anything to build a life there for the rest of us”. She condemns anti-trans rhetoric on both sides of the Atlantic, calling out artists who refuse to engage politically as “cowards” and warning against what she sees as history repeating itself.

She also addresses her very public fallout with Roisin Murphy in detail, revealing she first tried to contact the singer privately before later branding her “a fucking crumb” over her comments about trans people.

Elsewhere, Marea discusses Caitlyn Jenner, the fear experienced by her trans friends after the US election and the emotional impact of sharing a stage with Brianna Ghey’s mother at the Attitude Awards.

“We have one life,” she says during our conversation. “We have to decide whether or not we’re gonna fight on the side of the angels.”

Brighton & Hove Pride turns 35 this year. What does it mean to be a part of that?

Marea: Well, you know, I’m from Kentucky. It was actually quite a gay place to grow up, oddly enough. We had the first fairness ordinance in the nation in my little town.

But I don’t remember there being Pride in the way we think about it now. I was out very young. I had a girlfriend that I lived with before I could drink, and my friends were out too. My mother used to hide gay kids that had either been thrown out by their parents or didn’t want to be sent to what we would call now conversion therapy. This was around 1990 and conversion therapy was still very big in the South in America.

One kid was getting sent off somewhere because he’d been caught being gay. There was another kid we were housing and all of us were like 14 or 15, and he’s like, “I’m so excited. My parents found a place and there’s like a drug that I can take that’s going to make me not gay.” And we were like, “Oh wow, OK.” I looked him up the other day and he’s still gay. He’s gay as a picnic basket. Whatever they gave him didn’t work.

It really wasn’t until I was older, particularly in Chicago where Pride is such a big deal because we have Boystown and Smartbar and Market Days. Pride there is basically two months long and it’s completely insane. Our drag scene is popping. Queen Sundays at Smartbar is such a special thing. The whole place just kind of is a drag show. It’s chaos and it’s wonderful.

And going back to Brighton Pride, it’s just wonderful any time you go to someone’s local Pride that isn’t your own. There is its own special importance attached to it and you have to have a certain reverence for it because there are places where they can’t have it. We have to remember that every year.

So to be invited into someone’s home for something that is well fought for – some fought very, very, very hard to make that happen, and there are people that didn’t make it – I think probably growing up as I did, I always still feel that pull towards the history of what Pride is.

Brighton has its own story, but no matter what, when you step up into that, you want to know that story. The feathers and rainbows and confetti are fun, but Pride, no matter where you go, is hard fought. I feel a sense of reverence for whoever risked anything to build a life there for the rest of us.

Why do you think Pride still matters?

I think that in general, even inside your culture, we would do well to remember that whoever threw the first brick at Stonewall – trans women of colour, black or brown, were amongst them. And those women are still in danger now.

And now even within our own communities we’re saying, “Well, we don’t need the T. We need the LGB but not the T.” If we’re at threat within our own communities of sacrificing a minority for no purpose whatsoever, for the imaginary monster that enters the bathroom and looks under the stall…

What I’m afraid of is trans women being thrown into men’s prisons. That’s what I’m afraid of.

For one thing, we have to stay together and make sure that the T stays on there and it’s surrounded with love and laws and big mouths because believe you me, when the Nazis started, the first people they picked off were the T.

Pride has to be not only a celebration, but a restatement of solidarity across all of those groups. And not just that, but to put those most threatened among us not just allow them in, but put them first and lock arms around them. That is an absolute necessity.

I’ve been to countries where Pride was legal one year that I played and not the next. I was in Turkey after they made Pride illegal. Of course they still had it anyways. I was in Budapest when Pride was made illegal. It’s a big deal no matter what because everybody has their own story.

You are very outspoken and you’ve never shied away from politics. Do you think artists have a responsibility to speak up when rights are under attack?

Yes. First off, I would say to those artists: you don’t belong here. And you’re a coward. And an embarrassment.

The second thing I would say is that the very definition of art – which is a very big word, art is a word almost as big as the word God – anyone actively involved in the creation or display of that, it is a sacred job.

You’re not cleaning floors, you’re not flipping burgers, you’re not filing things. You are making a thing that has meaning.

Artists are the guardians of symbols. We guard them, we make them, we manipulate them, we help them into different shapes and forms and books and songs and movies and whatever. No matter what, we are the people dealing with symbols.

You’re doing that whether you take responsibility for it or not.

You can say, “I don’t take responsibility for it, this means whatever it means to you,” but then you’re leaving the symbols that you make open for whatever purpose they become.

Before the camps, before Kristallnacht, before any of those things, there was a swastika, which was a symbol from another people that was flipped in reverse. There was a look. The aesthetic works first. Hugo Boss was Hitler’s tailor. They made themselves appealing by using symbols.

And people don’t think about this, but the first Nazi book burnings were them burning all of the books and papers ever collected on trans medicine. They burned it down, killed half the people associated with it and destroyed all the books.

So now we live in a time where people think that being trans is a trend embedded on TikTok when there was actually a whole institute for it and it had been running for 20 years before the Nazis burned it down.

That is where letting go of symbols gets you.

I feel shame and anger not just at the people getting it wrong, but at the people who could get it right and choose not to.

Why is this issue so personal to you?

I grew up with trans girls buying bootleg hormones and all that stuff. I mean, I was out of the house at 16. I saw the worst of some of that.

People need to remember that Pride started with a brick thrown at a cop. That’s what Stonewall is. That’s what we’re commemorating.

People go, “Just be nice. Negotiate for your rights.”

I don’t have to negotiate for shit. My rights are our rights. That is the definition of a right. You’re born with it.

Once you say, “Well, it’s just the T and not the LGBT,” it will never stop there.

Judith Butler said anytime you decide that you can sacrifice a minority like trans people, you’re entering into a fascist logic. That sentence really hit me.

You publicly criticised Roisin Murphy over her comments about trans people. What prompted you to write that post?

I’ve known Roisin… I met Roisin in Palestine. I’ve always admired her, of course. Every time I saw her I’d say, “You’re so talented, but you’re also just so incredibly beautiful.” She has that perfect silver-screen beauty. And she used to be a huge ally to the community.

The initial issue was when she made comments on Facebook about “confused little kids” and Big Pharma and all that stuff. She was actually planned to be on the lineup for my birthday party in Amsterdam and I privately cancelled her.

When I tell you I was gracious, I said: “I understand what it’s like to be yelled at on the internet. I know what it’s like to be wrong. I know what it’s like to hurt somebody’s feelings when you’re not trying to.”

I said: “If somebody tells you they’re hurt, you have to acknowledge that. If you step on somebody’s foot, you say, ‘Oh my God, I’m sorry.'” She never wrote back.

I saw her in the airport once. She didn’t say anything to me. I mean, send a voice note to my friend talking your shit, but yes, other than that.

Then there was that second round and she’s standing outside at TERF rallies, which are also kind of nationalist rallies. And then she went to Westminster.

That was the moment where some kind of light went off in my head because she keeps talking about being silenced.

And I’m like, if you are talking into a microphone at the House of Commons, you are not being silenced. You are literally being amplified. You are being enlarged. Your voice is going out in a way that it would never go out to millions of people.

And this thing of women walking around worried about the scary trans woman in the bathroom who just wants to pee – it’s absurd.

Most gender-affirming care is for cis kids. Let’s get that on the record. When little girls get their periods too early, or start to grow breasts precociously, or when young men start to develop a little bit more breast tissue than they’d like to have in the locker room – that’s who gets surgery.

No one is doing top surgery on 12-year-old children unless it’s to take breast tissue out of a cis boy who would prefer not to have breasts in middle school.

Puberty blockers are a miracle for kids who may grow up to be trans because they don’t stop puberty forever. It’s a pause button. It says, “Hey, hold up. Let’s take a second.”

If a child socially transitions during adolescence and they decide that they were mistaken, there is an off-ramp.

There are very few kids who want to be trans. The hell that we put trans kids through – nobody would sign up for it.

My grandmother was a lesbian and almost got a lobotomy. She missed it by one day because her brother came and got her out of the mental institution my grandfather had put her in. That’s the kind of world we want to stay out of.

I said everything to her privately first. Nothing that ended up publicly started without me trying personally first. She’d block me or send me one little dumb sentence and then block me again.

The last thing she ever said to me was: “You’re losing your cool girl in more than one ways.” And I just thought, “That is the worst comeback.” I called her “a fucking crumb”. That’s my own insult. Original material. I’m ashamed of her.

The day of the election, my best guy friend from America who’s trans was calling me sobbing. He was like, “I made a mistake. They’re gonna come get me.” We spent eight months and needed a senator just to get his passport back marked male.

Meanwhile Caitlyn Jenner is whining and I’m like, “What exactly did she expect?” Now all the luxuries of richness and whiteness are being stripped from her. She’s experiencing being a second-class citizen for the first time and she doesn’t like it. Welcome to the party, Caitlyn. Now you’re officially trans.

We do not debate the existence of people. Anytime you have “the trans question” or “the Jewish question” or “the Palestinian question”, that’s just a nice way of saying we’re getting ready to do a genocide.

And it won’t stop there. Shame on Roisin. Unlike her, I am not a coward.

I was on stage at the Attitude Awards with Brianna [Ghey]’s mother. And just ugly crying. The courage that she summoned – though she should never have had to summon it – I don’t know how a mother walks on stage and does what she did.

How could you know that woman exists and tell her that her child is not real and is in a cult? I don’t really have anything more to add to that.

Finally, what do you hope people take away from Pride this year?

We have one life. We have to decide who we’re gonna be. We have to decide whether or not we’re gonna fight on the side of the angels.

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Tickets for Brighton & Hove Pride, the UK’s biggest Pride festival, are available to buy here.