By Betty Boob

Photos by Wendy Idele

About his childhood - being raised by his Mom, gay men and bodyguards:

SEAN: There were a lot of gay men around me, raising me, and there were a lot of men with guns, ex-vets [and] detectives who spent a lot of time with me. So it was kind a yin-and-yang thing. Or a yang-and-yang thing. I just feel lucky enough that I had people to take care of me, you know what I mean? I wasn't ignored. My mom thought it was necessary for me to have bodyguards. I don't even have to say why. It didn't damage me or anything.

BETTY: Did you understand (what being gay meant)?

SEAN: Yeah, I knew what gay was. I come from obviously a very liberal household, so I wasn't like, "Oh my God, you're gay? Get the hell out of here!" At the same time, I was going through puberty and just figuring out my sexuality. It made sense to me. I grew up with a lot of gay people being kind of parental figures, friends of the family, like Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. There was a time when I, in fact, was wondering why I wasn't gay. Andy and Keith and all these men around me were gay. I was like, "Is there something wrong with me?" I don't know what defines your sexuality but I just know that I get turned on by women. A lot of people think I'm gay, though.

BETTY: It's because you're so evolved as a man. SEAN: That's right. I'm a sensitive kind of guy, and I have a higher-pitched voice. I don't know what it is. They just ask me, "Are you gay?"

BETTY: So let's talk about how your mom influenced you.

SEAN: Well, my mom is my only parent, so she helped define my personality a lot. I think the reason I'm comfortable with women and that I have a lot of women friends is because of my mom; she always gave me the woman's perspective.

(BETTY asks Sean why he feels women should have anger men.)

SEAN: Well, because society is obviously run by men. Historically, it's because men are physically stronger and that's the only reason. As a result, we have war and death and murder and rape, all things that we can attribute to manliness. If women were included in the leadership of countries, I feel like things would be a lot more balanced. And that goes for relationships, too.

BETTY: Are you a feminist?

SEAN: Yeah, I'm definitely a feminist. My mom is probably one of the more famous feminists. So I think by nature, I'm a feminist just because I'm on her side. Having her as a mom, I really was able to witness - witness, not experience - on some level what it's like to be a woman and try to be acknowledged for who you are as an individual and as an artist. Especially her working with my dad, and being next to my dad and being compared to my dad. Here I am talking about them again, but that's my only point of reference. Obviously you know this, but I'll just say it because maybe not everybody reading does, but my mom really struggled with being a artist after she met my dad.

Well, before she was struggling with sexism, too, but now that she was with a famous male artist, there was no way that anything she did could have any credibility because she was the "girlfriend." So, for instance, they would produce an album together. And to this day, people who call themselves feminists still don't really understand that she produced some of these amazing albums, like Imagine and John Lennon and Plastic Ono Band. It says "Produced by John and Yoko," but people who think that they're liberals are still thinking, "Yeah, well obviously John produced it and he just put her name on, just to be nice." People never fully acknowledge my mom for what she's done.

BETTY: So, how do you define your manhood?

SEAN: How do I define my manhood? I've never had to define my manhood. I don't even think about it. God, these are such deep questions. I don't know, man. I'm still figuring that out. I still feel like a boy, to be honest.


The entire interview is archived on the Shadows On the Wall web site.

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