Controversial rapper slammed for calling LGBTQ+ identities ‘trauma response'
Azealia Banks has sparked backlash for a recent social media post in which she called LGBTQ+ identities 'a trauma response.'
'Well being gay and transgender is not actually a natural thing. At all, it's a trauma response,' Banks, 34, wrote in an X post from Sunday, July 27.
'Science lied to you all and told you, you were normal but being homosexual and on the more extreme end — transgender in any regard is in fact — a trauma response," the rapper wrote. 'No one is born gay, and no one is born in the wrong body. You guys have mental disorders that science is doing you guys a major disservice by not medicating. Bet you didn't know that.'
Social media users were quick to ridicule Banks, calling her words hateful, transphobic and scientifically inaccurate.
'Attraction to the same sex and living outside assigned gender roles aren't modern concepts. They've existed for as long as humans have recorded history, across cultures, continents, and centuries,' one X user commented.
'Being gay is 'unnatural' in the same way that a healthy woman of birthing age can be barren, or a hermaphrodite has genitals unaligned with either sex,' another comment read. 'Out of the ordinary, but definitely still a part of the human condition and nature at large. The trauma thing does not hold up.'
Major health organizations have affirmed that sexual orientation is natural and not a conscious choice that someone makes. Planned Parenthood's website states that 'research shows that sexual orientation is likely caused partly by biological factors that start before birth.'
Meanwhile the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association have found evidence 'that homosexuality is a normal variant of human sexual orientation as opposed to a mental disorder,' according to a study published by the National Institute of Health — therefore refuting Banks' claim.
'Well someone never bothered to advance their own education,' another X user wrote on the rapper's post.
'It's more ignorant than anything and admittedly embarrassing that you'd want to simplify our entire species down to the smallest boxes that even the entire animal kingdom doesn't follow,' they continued. 'I am embarrassed for and of you.'
Banks, best known for her 2011 hit song '212,' has a history of sharing controversial thoughts on social media and has long been accused of homophobia and transphobia.
In 2015, the rapper was caught calling a flight attendant a '(expletive) faggot' and, in 2016, was banned from X for making racist and homophobic comments about One Direction singer Zayn Malik. A more recent incident happened in 2020 when Banks posted a meme accusing gay people of 'appropriating horse culture,' MetroWeekly reported.
Banks has also made transphobic remarks, most notably in 2021 when she she said that trans women are 'just gay boys on hormones using male aggression to force their ways into women's spaces,' PinkNews reported.
However, in February 2025, Banks started to show support for the transgender community when she criticized author J. K. Rowling's views on trans women.
'All of the insane anti-trans paranoid people like @jk_rowling feel their femininity is threatened for whatever reason and try to mask that insecurity with 'science' like anyone is stupid and doesn't already know these things,' Banks wrote in an X post.
In a follow-up post, Banks shared her experiences of watching her brother, who she said identifies as trans, struggle with their sexual identity.
'I have witnessed first hand the type of misery, pain, ostracism, suicide attempts, unnecessary and unwarranted abuse my mother doled out to my brother, the discomfort with his body,' Banks wrote. 'It's not a mental illness it's a spiritual thing.'
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