Britney Spears and the #FreeBritney movement have been gaining a lot of social media attention since the New York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears debuted last week. The documentary, now available on Hulu, goes into Britney’s current struggle with her conservatorship and the star’s battle with entertainment news outlets in the mid-2000s.
While this documentary has made many people rethink how the media has treated Britney, it’s also making people rethink Chris Crocker’s famous “Leave Britney Alone” video and causing Chris to talk about how people never had a problem with him defending Britney, they just had a problem with him being a “gender-bending teenager.”
The 2007 video featured a 19-year-old Crocker passionately defending Britney. While the video quickly spread online and propelled Crocker into the spotlight, most of the coverage and fanfare surrounding the video was at the expense of Crocker. He became a figure that was repeatedly mocked online and in the media.
Now it seems that some people are changing their tune. After viewing the New York Times documentary on Britney Spears, many have taken to Twitter to say that “Chris Crocker was right” about Britney and some have even expressed remorse for making fun of his video. This has now led Crocker to issue a statement regarding his Britney video.
In a notes app screenshot posted to Twitter, the internet star and OnlyFans performer states that the act of him saying “Leave Britney Alone” was “never really the issue.” Crocker, who can be seen with long hair and visible makeup around his eyes in his original Britney video, instead says that the issue many took with the video was the way he presented his gender.
“Michael Moore said it & no one batted an eyelash,” Crocker wrote. “Maybe people reaching out to tell me ‘Chris, you were right.’ would feel good, if I knew that people could unpack that the reason no one took me serious was because I was a gender-bending teenager and the reaction to me was transphobic.”
In the statement, Crocker goes on to reveal that death threats were sent to his grandmother’s house and that in addition to hate from straight people, he also received verbal and physical attacks from members of the queer community.
“…Physical attacks were made towards me at gay bars and out in the streets,” Crocker wrote. “By LGBT people who were embarrassed of me because of the way the media made fun of me. Which made them feel I gave them a bad name. This was during a pre-Drag Race time, before everyone & their mom was saying ‘Yass queen!’. It was a time of only embracing the HETERONORMATIVE people in media.”
You can read Crocker’s full statement below:
The New York Times Presents Framing Britney Spears is now available on Hulu and you can follow Chris Crocker on Twitter, Instagram, and OnlyFans.