Lady Gaga at 'Billboard' Women in Music: Biz is a 'F*cking Boys' Club'

Lady Gaga has been speaking out lately. At Billboard's Women In Music event Dec. 11, she laid into the music industry as being "a f*cking boys club."

"What I really want to say is that it is really hard sometimes for women in music. It's like a f*cking boys club that we just can't get into," she said in her speech at the event, according to NME.

"I tried for so long, I just really wanted to be taken seriously as a musician for my intelligence more than my body even in this business," she said. "You don't always feel like when you're working that people believe that you have a musical background, that you understand what you're doing because you're a female."

Last week, Gaga publicly spoke about her own rape at the age of 19. She has always been a staunch advocate for victims of sexual violence through nonprofits and more recently a song she wrote with Diane Warren for the film The Hunting Ground, which brought campus rape to the public's attention. At a TimesTalks panel last week, the singer shared some of her own experience shortly before being honored at the Billboard event.

"I didn't tell anyone for, I think, seven years," she said, according to US Weekly. "I didn't know how to think about it. I didn't know how to accept it. I didn't know how not to blame myself, or think it was my fault. It was something that really changed my life. It changed who I was completely."

Gaga explained that the trauma came with repercussions for her mental and physical health long afterward.

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Lady Gaga, Billboard