Powerful reason Lady Gaga never addressed rumours she was a man

Lady Gaga has made an unforgettable appearance in a brand new Netflix documentary, confronting rumours that were ascribed to her at the beginning of her career that she was a man.

Lady Gaga first shot to fame in 2008 after releasing her hit 'Just Dance' - and let's face it, it's only been up from there.

The 38-year-old artist has won 13 Grammys over the course of her career, and starred in A Star is Born opposite Bradley Cooper in 2018.

During an episode of the Netflix documentary What’s Next? The Future With Bill Gates, which was released yesterday (18 September), Lady Gaga faced some rumours head on.

For years, a theory persisted that she was a man pretending to be a woman, claims which started after a doctored photo of the star circulated online.

Despite the pervasiveness of the rumours, Lady Gaga never confronted them directly - especially at their most potent, during the first years of her career.

In the documentary, she told Bill Gates: "The reason I didn’t answer the question was because I didn’t feel like a victim with that lie.

“But I thought about, what about a kid that’s being accused of that, that would think that a public figure like me would feel shame.”

Lady Gaga appears in What's Next? The Future With Bill Gates (Netflix)

Despite the baselessness of the claims, interviewers still pressed Lady Gaga on it.

She continued to Gates: “There was this imagery on the internet that had been doctored and they were like, ‘You know there’s this rumour that you’re a man. What do you have to say about that?'

"I’ve been in situations where fixing a rumour was not in the best interest of - I thought, of the well-being of other people.

“So in that case, I tried to be thought-provoking and disruptive in another way. I tried to use the misinformation to create another disruptive point.”

Back in 2011, Anderson Cooper pushed Lady Gaga to address the claims.

Lady Gaga's early career was hit with rumours (Larry Marano/Getty Images)

The then 24 -year-old retorted: "Why the hell am I going to waste my time and give a press release about whether or not I have a penis? My fans don’t care and neither do I.”

She later quipped: "Maybe I do. Would it be so terrible?”

Later on during her conversation with Gates, she added: "People, I think, assume that someone like me who performs, that my performance is what’s not real. To me, that’s the most real thing that you’ll see about me."

She concluded: “That is so much more real than all of the rumours that are designed to orbit me to gain more clicks.”