In order to discuss what it means to be a man today, Sleek invited two experts on the trials and tribulations of masculinity: Glenn O’Brien and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
Interview by Francesca Gavin
Photography by Paul Mpagi Sepuya
The changing boundaries and definitions of gender is something close to the heart of Glenn O’Brien and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge alike. Ex-Interview editor, TV presenter and Warhol affiliate O’Brien’s latest book How To Be a Man is a manual on “style and behaviour for the modern gentleman”, hinting at modes of masculinity for an audience looking for sartorial and social advice. Performance artist, musician and Throbbing Gristle maestro P-Orridge has made a career out of breaking all set notions of gender. He underwent dramatic plastic surgery with his wife Lady Jaye in an attempt to turn them into a united pandrogynous figure. Speaking of himself as “we”, he has continued this project after her death in 2007; it is the subject of a new cult documentary, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye. Although they used to move in the same circles, O’Brien and P-Orridge only met for the first time for this interview, at P-Orridge’s Lower East Side apartment.
Sleek: Let’s dive right in and talk about redefining the connections between creativity, gender and identity. Glenn, you’ve written a book titled How To Be a Man.
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Have you? I didn’t know that.
Glenn O’Brien: Yeah. Actually the title is a bit of a joke.
GP-O: I wish someone had told me that.
GO’B: I thought the title would make women want to buy it.
GP-O: And did it work? Probably did.
Sleek: Do you think we live in a time where the idea of how to be male or female is confused enough to warrant a guide book?
GO’B: I think men are really confused, more confused than women about what they’re supposed to be today. There’s a lot of pressure on men to confirm a certain image but they are a bit clueless as to how it should look. Maybe it has to do with parents not educating boys the way they used to.
Sleek: Your childhood, Genesis, trained you to be a certain type of man and you rebelled against that completely.
GP-O: Nearly 100 percent. I went to this school in England that considered its students the future leaders of Britain. I was a scholarship boy, and the others were from privileged families, diplomats’ sons, aristocracy, industrialists. When I needed to get boots to play Rugby I got them from a thrift store. When one of the boys in my class got his driving license he got a Rolls Royce – to have something to go to the golf club at weekends. I lived in a house with three generations of women, my grandmother, my mother and my sister. Father was always travelling with work. It only recently dawned on me that this could’ve had something to do with being in such a split situation – a completely feminised home setting and this ridiculous masculine daytime. When I was in the army cadets they trained me to be a sniper. No joke, I was a first class sniper with a 303. Interestingly the targets were American soldiers. This was 1964-68, so obviously we weren’t going to Vietnam, which was good news.