Article #5516

The singer is not only a hero for gay men. For a young lesbian like me in the 1990s, she was an object of desire and an inspiration

Recently, when Madonna deleted every post from her Instagram profile, it was as if a gay flare had been fired around the world.

Cue a flurry of texts from gay male friends, with one declaring that this “purging of the Sistine Chapel” meant the release of Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II was imminent, 20 years after her original disco masterpiece, because Madonna had pulled the same stunt on Instagram in 2023 before announcing our gay Christmas: the Celebration tour.

Tiff Bakker is a New York-based writer who specialises in arts and culture