Last week, Arcade Fire released a video for their latest single, “We Exist.” The video features Amazing Spider-Man star Andrew Garfield as a man dressing as a woman and finding solace after being accosted in a bar. The video has garnered considerable praise from fans and music writers, but one shouldn’t count Against Me! singer and LGBTQ activist Laura Jane Grace among them.
Grace, who came out as transgendered in 2012 and has been a vocal activist for trans rights, took to Twitter to voice her issues with the video. “Dear @arcadefire,” Grace wrote, “maybe when you make a video for a song called ‘We Exist’ you should get an actual Trans actor instead of Spider-Man?” Arcade Fire have yet to respond to Grace’s statement.
Arcade Fire singer Win Butler has claimed that “We Exist” was written from the perspective of a young man coming out to his parents, and the band have explicitly described the video as being about “a young person’s struggle with gender identity.” Grace detailed her own struggles with those issues on her band’s new album, Transgender Dysphoria Blues, earlier this year.
Watch the video for “We Exist” below:
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