The Spice Girls’ Mel B Opened Up About Her Five-Year Relationship With a Woman

Joe Maher/Getty Images

The Spice Girls have long been queer icons, so when Scary Spice confirmed that she once hooked up with Ginger Spice, that was just a cherry on top. Now, Melanie Brown a.k.a. Mel B has opened up about her sexuality even further in a new interview with the U.K. LGBTQ+ publication Attitude.

The interview comes on the heels of the release of the new edition of the singer’s memoir, Brutally Honest, which was originally published in 2018. When asked whether she considers herself a member of the LGBTQ+ community, Brown answered, “I feel like I am. I didn’t start off my sexual journey going, ‘I’m this, I’m that, I’m bisexual.’ I was, and always will be, very open.”

Though she’s indeed been open about her sexuality for a while, the singer also said, seemingly for the first time, that she “happened to fall in love with a woman and was with her for five years,”. Brown didn’t name names, but in classic sapphic fashion, she said that she and her ex “still talk to this day.”

“I don’t want to put a label on it, but I’ve always thought women are beautiful,” she added.

The pop group has a long history of support for LGBTQ\+ fans.

Even though she’s label-averse, Brown didn’t shy away from speaking about the heightened violence that queer women face. Her memoir discusses “the horror of her most recent marriage and her 10-year struggle to be free,” according to an official description. She divorced Stephen Belafonte in 2017 after marrying him in 2007, accusing him of emotional, physical, and financial abuse.

Brown also talked fondly about her diverse fanbase, telling Attitude that the crowds at her book signings consist of “such an array of people: old, young, gay, trans, multicultural, multiracial, multisexual.” “It was an eye-opener,” she said, adding that domestic abuse is “not discussed enough [in] the LGBTQ+ community because so many other issues take the forefront.”

One of those issues, especially in the U.K., is widespread TERFery especially aimed toward trans children. Though she didn’t explicitly reference that phenomenon, Brown shared her own nonchalant attitude toward her own children’s identities.

“I’ve always said, ‘You are who you are. I don’t care what you identify as. I’m going to love you anyway because you were for nine months in my tummy,’” she told Attitude. “I don’t have those old-fashioned ways of thinking. I’m not tarnished with that.”

Scary Spice isn’t the only member of the iconic girl group combating outdated attitudes toward gender. Emma Bunton, a.k.a. Baby Spice, posted a graphic to her Instagram account last year vowing to protect trans kids.

Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.

Originally Appeared on them.