From Rolling Stone:

I first heard about this last night. Good for her. I look forward to next month when AM! is playing here in Orlando I'm quite curious how her change may affect the sound of AM. Regardless i'll support one of my favorite bands. It's a shame that they wont be coming to Fest.

i just found out about this, and honestly i dont know what to think about it, im interested to see his/her future in music, hormone therapy will def. change his voice, but good for him, he is filling the ocean in his soul...

Taking feminizing hormones (estrogen, progesterone, testosterone blockers etc) doesn't change your voice; it only prevents the changes that testosterone causes at puberty if they haven't happened yet. (Clearly not the case with Gabel.) Trans women that sound more "female," speaking/singing in a higher-pitched range, etc. do so in nearly every case by practicing.

Good to know.
I think this would be a super rad time for someone familiar with the trans* community to drop some knowledge about how to refer to Laura/Tom from now on. I'm assuming the preferred pronoun is "she," but I have no idea when we should start calling her Laura.
Anyone know any better?

This reminds me of when Keith Caputo of Life of Agony came out as a woman. And just like I said about him, I wish Tom/Laura all the best...

hes going to make a hot woman. i dont give a fuck. itll make AM that much better.

Good for him, life's too short to not be yourself.

tl;dr: Refer to Laura as you would any other female. Also, this is really good for the transgender community since it brings issues like this to light.

Rant version: Always use female pronouns when referring to her, and she'd probably prefer to be referred to as Laura since that's what she's going to be legally changing her name to. Then again, changing your name as a celebrity is always tough since your fanbase is already familiar to calling you by your old name (which is why most famous women either don't change their last name when they marry or they hyphenate it). So she probably won't be offended if people refer to her as Tom or Tommy, but I can't speak for her.

The tricky part comes in when talking about Laura BEFORE she let the public into the picture. A friend of mine transitioned mtf a short while ago, coinciding with her band breaking up. A zine was written documenting the band's journey and whenever referring to Madison before transitioning she was referred to as Matt and masculine pronouns were used. But when in doubt, I'd just refer to transgender people with their current gender of pronoun (in Laura's case: feminine).

I haven't read the Rolling Stones article yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Should be quite insightful.

EDIT: I just read the article and I was right... quite insightful and interesting. Go pick up a copy of it and read it for yourself.

Is the article online anywhere?

top of the page, bottom of the post. or, you can google tom gabel, its on most sites ive seen now.

I actually bought it, and encourage other people to do the same, but here's a scan of it my friend found online: http://imgur.com/a/hydSB

After reading a bunch of RS pieces over the years, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this one. Usually they're all about scandal and vice and pushing the envelope– but I think they did an excellent job at telling Laura's story. Granted, I don't see how you could get much more dramatic than the leader of one of the biggest bands in one of music's bro-iest scenes coming out as a mtf transsexual.

I cannot properly communicate how stoked I am that one of punk's biggest bands is now fronted by a "chick." YAY FOR FIERCE PUNK LADIES!!