Against Me!'s Tom Gabel comes out as transgender

Against Me!'s Tom Gabel comes out as transgender

In a story to be published Friday in Rolling Stone magazine, the 31-year-old singer says that as a kid she felt disconnected from her body and has a condition called gender dysphoria. She plans to take hormones and undergo electrolysis. She also is considering gender reassignment surgery.

Says Gabel: “Growing up, my experience with transsexualism was nothing but shame.”

Gabel says her new name will be Laura Jane Grace. She says she’s not attracted to men and will still be married to her wife. They have a 2-year-old daughter.

Against Me! is best known for the song “Thrash Unreal.” The group is originally from Naples but found success after moving to Gainesville in 1999. A tour with The Cult is planned for later this month.

While the singer and other members of the band weren’t available for interviews, manager Tito Belis said on Wednesday that others who worked with the band in Gainesville praised the singer’s courage in discussing her transgender status publicly.

“Maybe this is the final frontier, that after this, there shouldn’t be any barriers,” said Ed Kellerman, communications director for the Harvest of Hope Foundation, a Gainesville-based charity that benefits migrant farm workers and for which Against Me! has performed a number of benefit concerts since 2006.

“That definitely takes a huge amount of courage. I willed myself to higher academia, had all sorts of doubts and fears, but I changed myself to do graduate work and do what I felt was capable of making me happy,” Kellerman said.

“If he is uncomfortable in his own gender, who are we to judge?”

As one of Gainesville’s most prominent and critically praised punk bands in the 2000s, Against Me! recorded a host of acclaimed albums, including 2002’s “Against Me! Is Reinventing Axl Rose,” on Gainesville’s No Idea Records, and “Searching For a Former Clarity” in 2005 on the San Francisco-based Fat Wreck Chords.

For the 2007 album “New Wave” â€" which was proclaimed the album of the year by Spin magazine and listed among the year’s Top 10 in Rolling Stone â€" the group signed to Warner Bros.’ Sire Records. Famed punk producer Butch Vig, who produced Nirvana’s breakthrough album “Nevermind,” produced “New Wave” as Against Me!’s major-label debut.

As the band’s lead singer and chief songwriter, Gabel has explored the subject of being transgender in such songs as “The Ocean,” the final track of “New Wave.” In “The Ocean,” Gabel, who today lives in St. Augustine, sings: “And if I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman / My mother once told me she would have named me Laura / I’d grow up to be strong and beautiful like her.”

For its forthcoming new album, Against Me! has recorded a previously unreleased Gabel song called “Transgender Dysphoria Blues,” which some reports have said will be the title of t he new album, as well.

â€" The Associated Press contributed to this report.