Lady Gaga is opening up about a chapter early in her career where rumors spread she was a man — and why she never denied those claims. The Oscar and Grammy Award winner said she was intentional not to take the bait surrounding the scuttlebutt about her gender.

She said, "They were like, ‘There’s this rumor that you’re a man, what do you have to say about that?'…The reason I didn’t answer the question was because I didn’t feel like a victim with that lie.'”