Madonna: Women Most Marginalized, ‘Either a Virgin or a Whore’

In her continued push to promote her new album Rebel Heart, Madonna told Out magazine that women are more marginalized than any other group of people, because living as a woman means “you’re either a virgin or a whore.”

In a wide-ranging interview, the “Queen of Pop” told the LGBT publication of her early career failures to titillate gay men, compared her struggles to those of Joan of Arc, and said she feels as if women’s rights come in dead last, as compared to those of other minority groups.

“People are a lot more open-minded to the gay community than they are to women, period,” she said. “It’s moved along for the gay community, for the African-American community, but women are still just trading on their ass.”

“To me, the last great frontier is women…Women are still the most marginalized group. You’re still categorized—you’re either a virgin or a whore. If you’re a certain age, you’re not allowed to express your sexuality, be single or date younger men.”

Madonna also admitted to Out that she has always connected with gay men, saying, “I didn’t feel like straight men understood me.”

As for straight men:

They just wanted to have sex with me. Gay men understood me, and I felt comfortable around them. There was only that one problem, which is that they didn’t want to have sex with me! So…conundrum! I was like, ‘How am I ever going to get a date? Maybe if I cut my hair and I lose a lot of weight, someone will mistake me for a guy and ask me out.’

The Material Girl also opened up about the inspiration behind a track on Rebel Heart, titled “Joan of Arc.” The song offers a first-hand retrospective of her history with pushing boundaries, something she believes equates her to a modern-day Joan.

As for Joan of Arc, who was burned as a heretic in the fifteenth century, “I can relate,” Madonna says. “Sometimes I’m getting burned at the stake metaphorically.”

Madonna has had multiple run-ins with negative press in regards to the newly released album. In January she was put on the defensive after she altered and posted a series of images of famed civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela to social media.

In February, Britain’s Radio 1 announced a decision to remove Madonna’s music from its lineup, as she was deemed “irrelevant.” Weeks later the 56-year-old became an Internet sensation after she fell off the stage during a performance at the Brit Awards.

In December, several tracks from Rebel Heart were hacked and stolen from Madonna’s personal computer, something she describe as an “artistic rape” and “terrorism.”

“This is artistic rape!! These are early leaked demo’s half of which won’t even make it on my album the other half have changed and evolved,” she said. “This is a form of terrorism.”