I Was Wrong About Queerbaiting

On the greatest question of our era: Celebrities Fake Sometimes? The first 1,000 people to use the link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare skl.sh/sarahz08231
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Some various queer art that I've been enjoying lately:
I Was A Teenage Exocolonist - amazing and super queer game developed by a small Canadian indie studio. Really fun deckbuilding mechanic. Designed to be super replayable. Absurdly good
What Happens Next - Indie webcomic about having committed a terrible and very public crime as a child, having to live with it now, and also spending your days on Tumblr. Really good. Really disturbing. I'm so excited for it to update again.
Misericorde: Volume One - Murder mystery VN with medieval nuns. I don't know if I'm just Locked Tomb brained but I've been seeking out queer nun content lately. Something about the art style here really tickles my brain.
Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast - Genre-bending and very trans TTRPG about a B&B owned by a witch and housing various misfits. Really difficult for me to accurately describe other than to say it's unlike any TTRPG I've played before and to please check out this game.

[@the_julia_fair]

STANLEY TUCCI IS STRAIGHT???

[@BullofCrete]

IT SHOCKED ME TOO.

[@gingerdog8203]

STAN WINX

[@pistonfists]

I believed it when Easy A came out

[@alexliu2864]

finding out he had a wife and kids was traumatic

[@Sandreline]

I knew he had a wife, but I remember it going around on the internet that he was bi? I think from a memoir or something?

[@atleyf3500]

I can't believe people are going around saying "men aren't allowed to wear dresses. Only gay men do that ", while thinking they're fighting against homophobia.

[@BladeX11883]

yes I agree, a man wearing a dress and saying that men aren't allowed to wear dresses and only gay men do that is homophobic. This thinking harms everyone, cis, trans, LGBT+ and more. why can't a cis straight man wear a dress. anyone should be allowed to wear what they want and it doesn't have to mean anything in less you want it to mean something

[@danang5]

fighting homophobia.... by being sexist and conforming to gender norm?

[@douggieeeee]

and fighting against toxic masculinity and femphobia

[@calvinlee8103]

I'm a straight, cis man with a beard, but I also wear dresses and have crazy-long, painted nails. Gender is dumb, so don't conform to it's norms. Just wear whatever you think looks cool, and allow others to do the same.

[@KookiesNolly]

It's crazy how much popular discourse even among younger generations nowadays is just conservative talking points rebranded with progressive terms. Like I grew up with queer elders telling me i'm free to experiment and that queerness is not prescriptive, it's about not conforming. But I see so many younger supposedly progressive people insisting instead that queerness is just about conforming to labels and they end up being more wildly regressive than most older queer folks i know. Similarly I thought we were done with NLOG's as I grew out of it, but with social media being even more ubiquitous than when I was a teen I see a lot more anti-feminist rhetoric circulating among younger audiences. It's just hidden behind feminists buzzwords, or "choice feminism" as a way to confuse raising kids with being "a trad wife" with no financial freedom or confuse abuse with BDSM etc. I geneuinly believe a huge amount of younger Gen Zs are on the path to grow into the current boomers. People who in their youth borrow the aesthetic of progressivism but deep down were just egocentric contrarians with a deeply manecheen worldview. They don't actual UNDERSTAND progressivism, they just recongnize some of its aesthetics and put their political stamp on whatever manages to SOUND progressive whilst also benefiting their self-intesrest. As they'll grow older their regressiveness will be more obvious and they'll stick only with their class interest, throwing everyone that makes them uncomfortable for not conforming to their worldview under the bus. When you add to that the fact that most teachers nowadays can attest to the fact that kids and teens straight up do not know how to use modern technology cause they grew up on apps and algorithms doing all the thinking, so they are much worse than millenials at researching and finding solutions, the parallel with boomers is even more frightening. But I don't blame them tho. We can't blame kids for the way they navigate the world their elders created for them. Their parents failed them by creating an environment that never truly understood progressivism and in the process mostly taught them, directly or indirectly, new funky brands of conservatism.

[@roger4fiona]

"Straight men wear skirts/dresses to be predatory/manipulate women" is just blatant repacking of terf rhetoric.

[@JamesLawner]

I find it extremely ironic, like haven’t we been through this already with JKR?! People are just so chaotic for nothing.

[@arikaaa69]

even looking past the blatant transphobia, what girls do these people think will be so vulnerable to a malicious effeminate man who wouldn't already be vulnerable to malicious manly men?

[@dopex89]

Yeah and it makes no sense. Most women prefer traditionally dressed men anyway when it comes to superficial attraction. I'm sure even harry styles' fans may moss his more traditional (for him at least) attiire.

[@kayla8402]

at least one flavor of it is the idea of "tricking" lesbians to sleep with them. That one gets targeted at trans women specifically as well, not just supposed "fakers".

[@namoma4922]

I want to posit the hypothetical: let's say that they do it to attract women: So what? You know what else people do often to attract women? Not being an asshole. And yet just because someone act nice once doesn't mean they are nice most of the time. Should men all act like dicks by this logic since it can be faked?

[@vanille]

"I would rather 1000 'fake queer people' get away with profiting off of queerness than one person be forced out of the closet before they are ready." THANK YOU SARAH

[@josepharmstrong6852]

If you believe that there is nothing wrong with being queer then why not force people out of the closet. Espically in countries where no one will actually attack them.

[@hobisdishwater9792]

@@josepharmstrong6852because people have families that are often not accepting and they don’t want to be kicked out

[@josepharmstrong6852]

@@hobisdishwater9792 why would you support such a toxic environment and allow people to suffer while not being fully supported.

[@dishwashee]

@@josepharmstrong6852because nobody should be forced to share that information??? do you go around and demand answers from strangers on the street about their sex life?

[@alim.9801]

​@@josepharmstrong6852 because even if we believe there is nothing wrong with being queer, it doesn't mean THAT everyone feels that way. It's unfortunately a very simple reason. I hope you're asking in good faith

[@neonlemurs4865]

I felt like I was losing my mind when the whole "men crossdressing is very bad actually" thing was happening in seemingly progressive circles.

[@thesealky6445]

Same

[@twistedelegance_]

Progressive online circles. I've never even heard of this before seeing this video. Probably cause I left Twitter ages ago, and TikTok doesn't appeal to me. It's just a bunch of people fighting for attention, branding themselves (literally meaningless term these days) and making "come at me"-content.

[@shioramenrabbit]

You weren't but they definitely were. People are really creative when they're trying to find a reason to miss the point

[@sourdoebread]

It's so surreal. Like you had the same people who were going "abolish gender roles" suddenly switch to "men are lying to prey on queer people if they dress this way" and "women who wear overalls are lying for attention" with absolutely zero self-awareness. Let people wear what they want ffs.

[@laurab1673]

i’ve never stopped calling him pumpernickel cabbagepatch

[@CatLady-9327]

He played a _bisexual_ character and was then spotted holding hands with a _woman_ , so they accused him of queerbaiting?

[@Superbajt]

Yeah, bi erasure is compounded here.

[@rruhland]

Don’t you know, every bi person in a relationship with the opposite gender is just a straight person pretending, and every bi person in a relationship with the same gender is just a gay person in denial. note: this is completely sarcastic

[@nanalove3819]

Yeah, and he was forced to come out to stop the harrassment even if the whole message of the tv show is "people should come out when and how they want to". Also people always forget that bisexuals are not gays.

[@SarahZ]

People tend to think bi men are actually gay and bi women are actually straight, so I guess their image of what they thought a bi guy was was disrupted

[@MayorOfEarth79]

And even after he came out, they claimed "Oh he's just doing that for clout, he's still not really queer"

[@LaurasBookBlog]

"they're wearing skirts for clout" vastly overestimates how much of the world we live in is welcoming to male-presenting people wearing skirts. like, the world is not your discord channel.

[@PassTheMarmalade1957]

"The world is not your discord channel." That sums it up, really. Some people never leave their small, one-church town and think the outside world is full of trans women trying to trick you into sex, and some people never leave their Twitter bubble and think the outside world is full of homophobes pretending to be gay.

[@Alucard-A-La-Carte]

Well put, both of ya'll!

[@KetsubanSolo]

AYYY THESE WEE LADS WEARIN' THEIR KILTS WRONG. LET'S GIVE ANOTHER CHEER FOR THE CLAN OF THE DUCK.

[@stanbasicidol9444]

In many countries men still wear skirts because that's their culture. Not every part of the world has western ideas of what can be worn and what can't. Some parts of the world have men in "dresses" even, to them it's not a dress it's just a piece of clothing that men and women alike wear, although in different cuts and colors or styles they are worn.

[@danielkeys8974]

Not sure I believe those critics are honest at all, but they do remind me of nerds who for some reason kept claiming attractive nerd women were just faking interest in the material to get attention.

[@Daffodils_1955]

Just wanna add on that Demi Lovato did not stop using they/them pronouns bc they weren't for them, they started using they AND she pronouns bc she got too tired of having to correct all the people who never used they/them for her to begin with.

[@cheesecakelasagna]

This! Hence why I wish Sam Smith all the best and strength. Luckily, I think Sam is more surrounded by sane people than Demi.

[@rookie4812]

Based on the press I happened to see about this, it was like the reporters didn’t understand that some people use she AND they. Reputable publications framed Demi almost like a detransition story.

[@wyomingfrenchfry1733]

THIS those news articles took their words completely out of context

[@lynxaway]

I was looking for this comment, thank you. Demi Lovato literally stopped using those pronouns because of overwhelming transphobia, not personal feelings about gender

[@madnessarcade7447]

Didn’t demi change back to previous pronouns

[@harnarius]

another thing about pressuring “queerbaiting” celebrities to come out is that everyone doing so is perpetuating the homophobic stereotype that being straight is the “default.” Unless they’ve specified that they are straight, don’t assume they are! It’s rude to assume people’s sexualities, no matter what sexuality you may be assuming. Dismantling the idea that being cishet is the default is the first step here.

[@pit2559]

Yeah exactly! Other people's sexuality isn't other people's business.

[@lainiwakura1776]

Its not homophobic to default to straight because most people are straight, otherwise the species wouldn't be able to breed like it has. Gay people are still a statistical minority.

[@KetsubanSolo]

We had an interesting case with Mr. Beast's crew, where Chris was essentially a straight dude for years, got married and started a family, and then earlier this year she suddenly came out as a transwoman and left her wife and kids. Like... I guess I'm okay with someone learning to be comfortable with themselves, but the circumstances just made it look horrible to the ex-family.

[@noraeable]

Yep, it's the internalized heteronormativity for me.

[@brie7399]

​@@KetsubanSoloI don't think she actually "left her kid", she's still active in the kids life, she just got a divorce that seems pretty amicable.

[@kuchikimakoto]

I am a straight man. I paint my nails and present non-conforming not because I wanna bait women into security, but because I wanna look like an anime villain.

[@toryizquierdo35]

10/10 motive, an inspiration to us all

[@Khaleb_0]

Someone is a fan of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

[@fansee1368]

GRIFFITH‼️

[@HeraldofProphecy]

God bless you, child

[@tallguy8389]

A worthy goal

[@SorasShadow1]

watching queer people loop right back around to sounding like far right conservatives is always really sad. attacking people for not performing "correctly" when it comes to *non-comformity* is mindbogglingly reductive, harmful, and hurtful and all it does is help the people who want us dead or in the closet.

[@MiloKuroshiro]

There's non-conforming and there's profiting from it.

[@LibertyMonk]

"all it does" is inaccurate, or it wouldn't be so commonly seen. It also constructs an outgroup that can be rallied against, giving them the warm fuzzies of belonging to an exclusive ingroup, and the smug satisfaction of performing righteous indignation in front of that ingroup for clout. Those are real effects that do bring comfort, and motivate conformity. It's the easy way out and does far more harm than good. We need to be good at identifying these things, or they *will* crop up without our notice everywhere.

[@becz9485]

Horseshoe theory strikes again!

[@dinkyboss]

To be fair a lot of these people come from privileged backgrounds and will always default to that mentality. I’ve noticed this too and it’s sad

[@BryanLu0]

​@@MiloKuroshiro? How would you like them to be non conforming in a way that doesn't make profit? Celebrities profit from their image, basically anything about them is turned into a profit

[@clottedscream]

one time an ex-friend accused me of queerbaiting in our private dms because i was questioning my relationship with gender at the time. im not a public figure. my job is in a small academic department and I dont even make money from the art i post online. she straight up actually didnt know my real name. who am I queerbaiting???? who am i tricking??? is mark zuckerberg reading my private instagram stories where i talk about markiplier's voice and going "what aw man she's not a real lesbo cuz she's obsessed with deep voices :(((("?????????? like. girl what?

[@EraofEra]

This just in, questioning your sexuality is queerbaiting

[@celisewillis]

I'm sorry that friend treated you that way! Especially at a time where it sounds like you needed some support.

[@luckyjay9562]

as a bisexual guy, I’m curious exactly how much eyeliner I’m allowed to wear before my motives become suspicious to these people

[@dukstedi]

😂

[@iloveband10000]

You can do wings but none on the actual lids

[@marissa7085]

​@@iloveband10000 Gotta have the wings so u can fly away from ur problems

[@neekos3084]

Any😂😂

[@stopthephilosophicalzombie9017]

Bisexuals are already suspicious. No eyeliner required.

[@brees3]

I feel like some people need to come to better terms with the fact that gender expression and sexuality are different. It's actually low-key homophobic to assume a man in a dress is queerbaiting or trying to get you to think he's gay.

[@atleyf3500]

It's not lowkey homophobic it's just straight up bigotry. Kind of like terfs trying to find ways to exclude trans people and accidentally looping back around to straight up misogyny. It's really interesting how fast a movement can just do a complete flip because they focus more on attacking others than protecting themselves.

[@Spamhard]

THIS. Normalising more fluid gender expression helps everyone in the long run. A guy doesn't have to be gay, bi or questioning just because he wants to wear a dress or a feather boa, and calling it queerbaiting honestly feels archaic. Same as the first women wearing trousers getting shamed lmao. I've been desperately trying to tell my straight male friends that if I, as a cis woman (altho genderfluid), can wear literally any clothing, men or womens, and walk around without anyone batting an eye, then why the fuck should they feel ashamed to wear a dress or pink leggings or whatever else they want. Straights can live their bliss too. We queers need to stop trying to gatekeep gender expression.

[@jerrodshack7610]

I agree but I reserve the right to think Harry Styles has negative drip

[@merrittanimation7721]

@@jerrodshack7610 Harry Styles isn't queerbaiting for wearing feminine clothes but we can still criticize his fit.

[@12me91]

Right? Going against gender roles is supposed to be a good thing in the eyes of progressives but I guess not anymore

[@Zosio]

As a bisexual, it really grinds my gears when other bi people get accused of queer-baiting because they're seen dating someone of the opposite sex What do you guys think being "bi" means? It means we're also attracted to people of the opposite sex. We don't have to "prove" our gayness to you.

[@babyblue3717]

Bisexual people will always be seen as "not queer enough" on the eyes of many of the lgbtqia+ community. If a bi person is with someone of the opposite sex, oh so they're straight and lied about liking the same sex, and if they appear dating someone of the same sex then they're actually gay and lied about liking the opposite sex. It's insane

[@OurLadyOfSorrows4]

This! Gatekeeping queerness hurts queer people more than it hurts straight people.

[@allieoop7024]

A lot of people tend to forget that historically bisexual individuals have not been very welcome in queer communities. Coming out as bi can be super alienating. You can simultaneously be looked down on for being queer, and for not being queer “enough”. You literally get told by both sides that you’re just going through a phase. It doesn’t surprise me that public figures are hesitant to come out as bi.

[@ardenboshier7431]

​@@allieoop7024there are more famous bisexual women than there are famous lesbians tbh

[@alim.9801]

This is exactly why I'm afraid to go to pride, im straight presenting ish? and my partner is a man 😂

[@aggiemionn5981]

The whole "don't trust feminine-presenting AMAB people because they're liars" trope is getting pretty fucking old at this point, and I'm getting real sick of it

[@diegojose4173]

What is an AMAB?

[@harrietamidala1691]

@@diegojose4173AMAB stands for Assigned Male At Birth.

[@felixt808]

​@@diegojose4173assigned male at birth

[@DragonSkul19]

​@@diegojose4173Assigned Male At Birth

[@ChristopherSadlowski]

​@@diegojose4173"Assigned Male At Birth". It's to help us understand that at birth a lot of gender stuff is placed on you immediately by family and friends. You may grow up and be like, "You know what? Fuck being "masculine" because I was assigned male at birth. I'm doing my own gender thing now." It's a helpful term to use in certain contexts, or all the time if you feel inclined.

[@mothkin5354]

The bisexual queerbaiting ones are particularly baffling to me because they see someone with the opposite sex and immediately gasp dramatically, pointing and start demanding they prove it, etc. Like... Sir, madam, neither and/or both, do you not understand the meaning of BI-SEXUAL???

[@emmakane6848]

Also a lot of them got flack for identifying as unlabeled (which I see as a queer experience in its own right) while making it very clear that they were queer through implication/innuendo, and you still got people invalidating them as straight. It really does seem like a bisexual erasure problem for the most part, because fans really only want people to come out as gay so they can put them in a box.

[@HiddenDarkHM]

It's the biphobia.

[@SunyCartoons]

According to the internet, you can be bisexual as long as you date someone of the same gender. If you date someone of the opposite gender, then it means you're not bi.

[@fedweezy4976]

@@SunyCartoons Schrodinger's queer. If a bi person dates someone of the same gender, they're actually just gay and bi is just a stepping stone for them. If they date someone of a different gender then they're actually just straight and pretending to be queer for attention. Bi people can never be bi and it's why I think it's different than being seen as half gay half straight.

[@MaggotInfestedGod]

Being bi and non binary is a wonderful experience....

[@H0pelessSapphic]

As a trans woman it's so frustrating when people get mad at people waring gender nonconforming clothing. Doing that just hurts the LGBT community not help it

[@oldvlognewtricks]

Are we back in 1903, or something?

[@straawberryfieldsforever]

yeah like, there's thousands of girls who are tomboys, and there's a surge in popularity for guys that are feminine (hence a lot of femboy memes) it sucks are if youre trans suddenly you're not allowed to dress in any way other than a stereotype of the gender you're living as. It got so bad for me that I straight up started telling people I'm non binary to avoid comments on "why are you wearing makeup? pink is a girl color why do you still wear it?" and the very not subtle misgendering done on purpose because they no longer view me as "valid"

[@galtenoble]

It doesn't make sense to me. are we trying to encourage people to free themselves of gender conformity or not

[@H0pelessSapphic]

@galtenoble we are, most of these accusations around GNC I've seen come from either Cis people who don't realize they aren't being allies, terfs (obviously) and LGBT people who lean more conservative or are very attached to labels and think that certain identities have carting aspects and what not (this is the flag and latter you use (like Sarah mentioned) kind of people)

[@Imperial_Squid]

I feel like most of it is non trans people white knighting for trans people and massively blowing stuff out of proportion, not dissimilar to the white progressive population standing up for "black issues" while not actually fixing the fundamental issues

[@roros9422]

tbh i feel like a lot of the "men who dress femininely are posers/deceivers" discourse hasn't actually died down, its just been absorbed into the anti-trans movement instead.

[@gota7738]

As anti-trans rhetoric has ramped up in the mainstream, I honestly think I've seen it followed by a rise of suspicion towards gay men and gender nonconformity. If I didn't know any better, I'd think that these concepts came from the same pool and that the acceptability of transphobia is also being used to erode the unacceptability of other forms of bigotry and gender essentialism.

[@tegann3698]

seriously. like, you know who loves to fearmonger about men wearing dresses to prey on women? transphobes!

[@CaulkMongler]

And also it’s kinda like…. Just because someone is into exploring their gender expression, it doesn’t automatically mean they can’t be crappy people still?

[@20storiesunder]

​@@gota7738But you know better? Not sure I follow.

[@carolinewheeler77]

Yeah it’s a huge radfem talking point

[@hondachk7992]

Castiel: "I love you..." Dean: "Sarah Z made a new video where she opened the VERY important discussion of the complexities of celebrity branding, where she questions the legitimacy of the ideal versus the actual, autonomous personhood when one becomes super popular."

[@Sunsetpomegranate]

People: “cishet men should be allowed to express themselves in feminine ways and should embrace feminine aspects of themselves, it’s important that we tell men to not belittle women and femininity!” Celebrities: do exactly that with their self expression and clothing These dudes: no not like that I dunno about y’all but this is so exhausting dude there isn’t suppose to be a “right way” to this, I thought the point was we wanted people to be themselves :/

[@cericat]

Yeah sadly not, people really want others to fit their narrow definitions, Sarah showed F1nnster and I've seen folks misgender him assuming he's trans just this week, and another femme presenting gay guy I follow I've seen have fights with the GCs and trans over his gender identity repeatedly. It's bloody annoying, they need to just let folks live their lives. Unless we're actively hurting someone why does our sexuality/identity matter right?

[@cranberrythecat4555]

Remember when most people knew it was awful to "out" someone before they were ready? And now people are using every justification they can think of to legitimize that kind of harassment.

[@FSmith-kv4fj]

These people will demand the intimate details of someone's sex life online and yet can't ask the nice lady at the McDonald's counter for an extra ketchup packet smh

[@JamesLawner]

@@FSmith-kv4fj LMAO!! 🤣🤣🤣 Where is the lie?! 😭

[@tiagogreenday0]

I keep remembering the poor Kit Connor and him being harassed to come out as bisexual

[@project_swift]

I'm pretty new to this whole idea of queerbaiting. But your comment was my very close to my initial reaction. "Doesn't this just feel like peer pressuring people out themselves? Isn't that quite wrong?"

[@lucialopez7030]

LMAO i have fought against gaylord, specifically Kaylors, bcs Taylor has never said anything about her sexuality and they want to say its valid bus of flagging but leave Taylor an her sexuality alone, its HER life, not ours. And im a part of the community but I firmly believe we should respect people's intimacy

[@basicwhitegirl3558]

hbomberguy putting on a fake british accent despite the fact he has a real one is truly an elevated art performance

[@PedanticPig]

Thank you for this comment as I was wondering who that voice was.

[@CharlotteSWeb-oh7ou]

@@j.wiegold There are accents that are British, which is what the term refers to. it does not mean a singular British Accent.

[@tidalgrunt6549]

​@@j.wiegoldYou're fucking with people right? A birmingham accent would be a British accent, as it is an accent native to, and present within, Britain. There is no singular unified british accent no, but there are *many* brItish accents.

[@cottage-core_]

I love him

[@user-qd8yy9lc4g]

In the vaccine video you can hear his mum speak some strong Yorkshire accent; that would be how he sounds at home. UK has a strong history of classism and just regional ribbing tied to accent and dialect, so don't be surprised it sounds blatantly fake.

[@anonymous_jug]

Lady Gaga and Katy Perry have been openly bisexual for years. Taylor swift has outright said that she is straight, and her fans refuse to believe her. Harry Styles is quite literally just ignoring the arbitrary binary that we've given for clothes, BECAUSE THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF ACCEPTING ALL GENDER IDENTITIES AND PRESENTATION. Demi Lovato went by they/them pronouns and later decided they weren’t for her. If someone in your life did the exact same thing Demi Lovato did, you wouldn't even bat an eye. Experimenting is the whole damn point of learning about yourself. People who police gender in any way are inherently harmful. No matter what direction you come from on the political compass. Edit: *I would rather let 100 "fake queer people" capitalize on the identity rather than force 1 queer person out of the closet before they were ready to disclose it.*

[@caitlin329]

Didn't Demi say the reason for the switch back to she/her was largely having to explain it so much/people not accepting they/them? I thought that was kind of sad

[@RandomHoodieNerd]

when has taylor swift ever outright said she's straight? as far as i'm aware she hasn't and assuming straight as default is heteronormative and queerphobic. just wish we could stop assuming everyone is straight until proven otherwise explicitly in a heartfelt coming out instagram story as seems to be the norm these days (looking at you homophobic billie eilish fans)

[@mhmhmbmltfapomtydt]

taylor swift has never said that she is straight. her only dating men absolutely does not erase the possibility of bisexuality which she has FLAGGED

[@anonymous_jug]

@mhmhmbmlttapomtydt SHE HAS LITERALLY BEEN ASKED IN SEVERAL INTERVIEWS AND HAS REPEATEDLY STATED *FLAT OUTRIGHT WITH NO WAVERING* THAT SHE IS *HETEROSEXUAL* If you want a Bi icon, try Lady Gaga, or Katy Perry, or any of the other artists that have been *openly queer* for years. Some for decades.

[@RandomHoodieNerd]

@@anonymous_jug she actually has never outright said it. ive looked into it now. i in no way support how intrusive people can be with the relationships they think she has (whether its with a woman or a man, seems to be worse when its a man by a longshot) but she has a lot of queer themes in her art and i don't understand why people get so angry when someone points it out especially when such vitriol against thinking someone might be queer and this obsession with a formal coming out leads to v harmful outcomes for queer people. a lot of us queer people who find comfort in her music also support openly queer artists, doesn't have to be one or the other!

[@alexandersmith2282]

I remember telling a queer co-worker that I was queer and specifically bi and non-binary, and they looked me in the eye and said "You don't dress queer" and I have never felt more invalidated

[@Abbiecarnold]

Did you tell them they don't dress like a bitch? Lol Sorry that happened babes

[@leeshapon]

what even is ‘dressing queer’?? we don’t have a uniform lol

[@nessie-from-earthbound1601]

@@leeshapon If we do I think I forgot to go the meeting that updated us about it

[@kookyzebra6550]

Don't you know, we're all obligated to wear a rainbow pin on our lapel- like politicians with the American flag! Clearly it was an oversight that the pin was not included in your welcome pack 😜

[@cousinmajin]

Bitch, whatever clothes are on my queer ass are queer clothes. I'm always dressing queer cuz I'm always queer. 💅🏼

[@Aogami20]

This is so weird to me. Shouldn't we be encouraging people to dress and act how they want whether it fits the gender binary or not? Who they date shouldn't matter.

[@livewellwitheds6885]

I completely aggree

[@emilybarclay8831]

Twitterheads have gone so far left that they’ve circled around to far right talking points: you can’t wear skirts because you aren’t the correct gender/sexuality! Breaking gender roles and norms is wrong!

[@ven5646]

Exactly!

[@marocat4749]

espcially cis dudesdoing itis breaking ground,it should be encourage.

[@Crabernacker]

Literally going so far left they went right

[@justcallmejay12]

"Dressing to attract women, dressing attractively for clout, both very normal things to do anyway, now suddenly become framed as duplicitous and deviant only in the context of gender noncomformity" SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE FOLKS IN THE BACK

[@starmaker75]

*don't dress up nice and be casual* be seen as a slop and neck beard *Do dress up nice/attractively and look nice* be called a creep and seen as duplicitous You can't win sometimes

[@Zectifin]

next time we see a guy in a leather jacket better start shouting manipulator. So if a woman wears pants and a T shirt to look casual and shes purposely doing it cus she wants to attract the kind of guy who is into a laid back woman who isnt going to wear makeup and a dress everyday, is she being manipulative and we should demonize her? wait, pants and T shirts were traditionally mens clothes. its queerbaiting. wait Sarah has beet wearing a t shirt and presumably jean pants (I doubt thats a jean skirt, but she is canadian so who knows lol), she was queerbaiting this entire video!!! (This is all sarcasm for those who have trouble discerning it online).

[@user-xm5ry2ld1j]

@@Zectifin people really are out there demonizing women who don't wear makeup and dresses as "pick mes" and also women who do as "the other kind of pick me" and really don't see the irony

[@user-xm5ry2ld1j]

I mean, we've been selling heterosexuality for profit at a far greater rate than real heterosexuality even exists since the dawn of capitalism but some people still aren't ready for that conversation

[@Hyenalowena]

The whole rhetoric of "well this person says they're bi but they've only ever dated [opposite sex] so they must be lying" is so frustrating and incredibly damaging. It's just another form of bi erasure. People should not have to prove their sexuality to you via their dating history! It didn't dawn on me that I was bi until I was 30 (3 years ago), so as a woman who mistakenly thought she was straight, I obviously had only dated men before that. And I made this realization while in a longterm relationship with a man, too. Like what do you want me to do, my dudes? Break up with my amazing partner of 6 1/2 years just so I can date a lady to check off a box to validate my bi card? I didn't have to date women to know I get cartoon heart eyes at people of all sorts of genders. Life just didn't work out that way for me. Still bi AF tho 👉😎👉

[@angietoonz6605]

it's literally like "you're not bi, you're just gay and using it as a stepping stone" but almost...opposite. It's so odd. Yes, some bisexual people prefer the same sex or the opposite sex more, but like, they still love the other sex??? I am very much more into women than men, but whose to say i don't stick with a man for most my life? Jeez, people just always want drama.

[@pheonixrises11]

also ignoring culture and just looking at it numbers-wise, there are just so many more straight people out there, even if you have a preference for the same sex, you’re more likely to date the opposite sex if you feel any attraction to them.

[@cericat]

@@angietoonz6605 hell the way some gay guys have acted towards me it's been a long time since I looked at dating another guy at all, way too aggressive and biphobic locally.

[@NapaCat]

​@@angietoonz6605Exactly. I am primarily attracted to women, but IS attracted to other genders.

[@lovesick_loser]

The biggest crime of Harry Styles wearing that dress was that the outfit was awful. Like, when it happened I was so shocked people were either HATING him, or praising him for breaking norms, and nobody was commenting on how absolutely horrible the actual outfit was.

[@pollux_the_insufferable.]

thisss like dude pls wear a nice dress man if ur gonna!!! whats with the fugliest , grandma's couch cover patter????

[@cheesecakelasagna]

FFR. If only people could just focus and be objective with the actual issue.

[@roselightz_3027]

This! All I saw was people praising him and all I thought was: ok, but why am I constantly confronted with this horrible outfit-_-

[@alvafairchild13]

My people his outfits are constant eyesores and he doesn't really dress like that normally its mostly a stage costume

[@gee8419]

You were not looking for the right criticism and were in a bubble then because there was plenty of criticism both for and against the ensemble in the fashion world and still is. But also it's insane to me that people remember and care whether or not an individual outfit out of a huge photoshoot was bad. A female celebrity in the same outfit in Vogue would never get hyperanalyzed to this degree because it's a pretty normal ball gown and suit jacket and it would not be a news story that a female celebrity was in Vogue magazine and one of the outfits was mismatched in some people's eyes.

[@peytonpalmour5368]

The idea that "this person is straight until they come out" is so heteronormative. Like, do you get mad at actors who play straight characters who have never come out as straight?

[@morinomajou]

Misha Collins is the only actor allowed to play straight people--

[@samkadel8185]

I feel like there's a lot to unpack in this statement. Yes, in principal you're right, but I think there is something to be said for the idea that some celebrities string fanbases along to avoid alienating conservative parts of their audiences. Also, it's important for minority groups to be represented by ourselves. The same isn't true of majority groups like cishets.

[@idvsmartiae]

​@@samkadel8185 There's a lot of nuance to this discussion, yes. It can't be boiled down to 'thing good" or "thing bad," but I think that that's the biggest point to this video: there's nuance, and when we talk about things like celebrities, that nuance seems too often to be abandoned.

[@potatorodka2795]

@@samkadel8185 Or their sexuality is a private thing to them and they want to keep it private? It is really a celebrities fault when their creative expression causes fans to speculate and obsess on their real lives? Is representation worth more to you than privacy?

[@Will-en6zj]

@@samkadel8185 Regarding your first point: As you said, that's just an idea. In reality, what do conservatives care if someone explicitly labels themselves as queer? Conservatives don't give a flying frick whether you're gay, trans or a man in a dress -- until recently (and to this day, for some), those meant the same thing to them! They care that you're not conforming to gender norms -- be it through presentation or desire -- regardless of what you do or don't call it. Not to mention, that 'idea' is more accurately referred to as a 'baseless accusation'. Regardless of why you think someone does not label themselves as queer, you have no good reason to think they're intentionally hiding it from you for nefarious purposes. That hypothetical celebrity does not owe you anything just to disprove whatever you throw at them. And, as others have said, your desire to confirm that everyone representing queer people is queer themselves does not trump someone's entitlement to privacy. Plus, if the only people who can be trusted to tell a story are those who are part of a marginalized group, then how in God's name are you supposed to direct any piece of media or write a screenplay? If feedback from members of marginalized groups isn't enough, then how is anyone supposed to tell a diverse story? Or are you just assuming that film is made by having the actors walk in front of a camera and improvise lines at each other for a few hours?

[@hannahb2306]

I’ve even seen people accuse Our Flag Means Death of queerbaiting before the entire first season was even out 💀 like y’all there’s such a thing as a plot developing over time lol.

[@brees3]

Yep! And then Taika was forced to come out as queer because he got a ton of hate for queerbaiting. Absolutely wild.

[@yurisei6732]

I think that just illustrates that people like "romance" as a genre a lot less than they think they do. The vast majority of romance in stories is just waiting for the writer to run out of bullshit they can use to delay the characters who are obviously going to get together from getting together. And at some point, even a story that's trying to be explicitly gay is basically just queerbaiting if the gay stuff is always coming next episode. I've seen things that are supposedly gay go 300 chapters without doing anything with that and eventually getting their gay tags removed from aggregate sites.

[@rat3905]

​@@brees3 Wait he actually came out as queer?? I haven't been on social media in a bit

[@flowerheit4512]

i mean, for me, i was convinced it was queerbaiting. i did not believe there was any chance the show would keep its promises because i have been strung along by dozens of shows before it. i didn't watch all the way through until someone told me that it wasn't bait, it was an actual gay relationship, because i didn't trust any network to make a show be gay without making a big To Do about it.

[@brees3]

@@rat3905 some time last year but it was a very vague "yeah I'm queer. I think everyone is queer." statement.

[@cjhunt9532]

the idea that i as a nascent trans girl could have been perceived as "just a guy doing it for clout" the first time i put on a shitty pleather skirt because it was the only gesture toward femininity I knew how to make safely is kind of existentially horrifying to me

[@cjhunt9532]

i like my shitty pleather skirt >:(

[@SpadesNoir]

As a trans girl who owns the (like same) shitty pleather skirt, I feel ya.

[@cjhunt9532]

@@SpadesNoir yes, you understand

[@biazacha]

Sending hugs, stay safe out there

[@nachgeben]

It's important to understand that there's more to it than that. You putting on that skirt for the first time doesn't broadcast 'danger' to any reasonable person, regardless of their thoughts on transgenderism. It's your following behavior that starts to generate whether you're going to be seen one way or the other. I'd like to point you in the direction of Jonathon/Jessica Yaniv, who was taking pictures in the women's restroom to capture young girls behind him, and was suing Muslim estheticians because their religion doesn't permit them to touch men who aren't a husband, because he wanted his junk waxxed. He would deliberately seek out Muslim estheticians and then file lawsuits that they were discriminating against him. There are ones who push their way into women's spaces and then enjoy helicoptering around and telling the women they're bigots for not wanting to see it. That's entirely different from someone putting on a dress/skirt and just trying to live life with respect, modesty and kindness. Your being trans is all yours, your business. As long as you respect others as you expect them to respect you (aka not be degenerate like the people mentioned above), no one will care how you look. There's a vicious level of nuance in this situation, and unfortunately both TRAs and terfs refuse to see that.

[@NotCrazyLimitedEdition]

God this is such a touch grass issue. A real issue, it affects people, but the most effective way to change your perspective is to leave online discussions for like a week and see if it actually affects your real life queer experience

[@wyomingfrenchfry1733]

THIS like who tf thinks this shit in real life

[@cousinmajin]

Deadass. Never encountered this shit at an actual pride event.

[@AnnekeOosterink]

Imagine thinking being constantly harassed doesn't affect people.

[@wyomingfrenchfry1733]

@@AnnekeOosterink op literally said “(this is) A real issue, it affects people,”. How can you misread something this bad

[@user-xr7ci8tf3e]

At one point do we admit that the “online world” is an actual part of the world we live in and some (!) of the things that happen online have material effects or consequences

[@JamieElli]

Real people can't queerbait. They have to live with the consequences of what they do. Fictional characters don't. That's the point.

[@pensivesoprano1637]

I love your take

[@diegoernestovarelaparra3820]

I mean, you can pretend and pretendin to be more queer than you are for clout in theory can happen

[@dreadwolfrising]

​@diegoernestovarelaparra3820 not in a world where widespread discrimination against queer and gnc people is on the rise. With legislation and criminalization targeting queerness and gender non-conformity, it's important for public figures to normalize both. It's also incredibly inappropriate to expect someone to state their sexuality or sexual behaviour in order to justify their self-expression

[@vlad5042]

@@diegoernestovarelaparra3820people exaggerate their personality traits for clout in all sorts of ways

[@movia8945]

@@diegoernestovarelaparra3820 I disagree. People act how they act. That is their personality. Whether or not someone is "performing" their personality is irrelevant. Everyone is to a certain degree. There are no thought police. There are direct lies like "I've dated a girl" but that would be the same lie a straight guy could tell.

[@daaara]

The "boys with skirts" conversation feels to me like the "fake gamer girl" thing from the 2010s, but genderflipped

[@seekerstheshy3842]

time is a flat circle

[@connorletkeman3539]

Extremely good take bestie

[@JamesLawner]

OMG, you’re so right! 🤣

[@PokeNebula]

Omfg thats so fricking true

[@PartanBree]

All my life I've been a tomboy; I'm a cis woman but I don't present very feminine. The feminism I grew up with told me that that was fine. I could just be a woman, and present how I want. By being a woman, I am definitive of what "woman" means. Now that the term "gender non-conforming" has entered the language, I'm not sure if it fits me or not. It's far from clear-cut. And the idea that I could be considered as doing harm just by being me, because I can't give a set of queer credentials to go with it, is really alarming. Now, I have actually realised that I am queer, in the form of being both bisexual and demisexual. But that doesn't have anything to do with my gender presentation. I'm still a cis woman. Still a tomboy. People are as they are. Let them be.

[@christineherrmann205]

This sounds pretty familiar. I'm technically straight and cis cause I tried being with a woman and found I just wasn't into it, but I'm OK _being_ one... as long as no one requires me to wear makeup or dresses or not train karate. I don't care what other people think of me; if they looked at my jeans and Tshirt, no makeup attire and told me I'm queer baiting; I should just 'man up and become a lesbian ' I'd laugh in their damn face. Why can't we just let people look how they look and love whom they love?

[@sovannah9219]

yes, we must allow the diversity in all genders. Ive been so frustrated with this era's conversation on this, it feels worse than critique disney princess femininism era. Like for me, I grew up with that feminism too and for a while it was helpful to feel validated that I didn't fit in to that box of womanhood and that was okay. But I also never considered myself and wasn't a tomboy. When I learned that genderqueerness/nonbinary was thing, it felt right and we're diverse too, I'm not perfectly androgynous as some would expect an enby "should" be. these discussions are putting everyone into a box again and isn't what we've been fighting for. The freedom to be yourself, no matter if you're cis, trans, queer, straight etc.

[@beepbooptop]

All this labeling made my anxiety so bad. I always was a tomboy to but now my anxiety is screaming at me to figure out my gender all the time. It's exhausting

[@RaineInChaos]

gender nonconforming people can be cis or trans (or nonbinary), and additionally I think that GNC cis people are welcome to decide if that on it's own makes them cis or not. I'm not going to tell a cis straight tomboy that she's queer just because she wears a ball cap or whatever, but if she tells me that she is based on her gender presentation, I'll accept that without hesitation. Identities are weird

[@RaineInChaos]

Also I love the term genderqueer (even more than nonbinary) because it makes me feel free to not have to figure out my exact label. I know I'm not a fully feminine cis woman or fully masculine trans man, and genderqueer can cover all nonbinary and GNC identities for me

[@bearowl4101]

I could be wrong, but I believe the whole “straight men being feminine is suspicious” idea might have been a bastardisation of an earlier idea, that “just because a guy presents in a feminine way does not mean he’s a feminist icon who doesn’t hold sexist views.” Emo band members have a reputation for this, presenting themselves in an androgynous way despite writing sexist lyrics and, in some cases, abusing their underage female fans. The original message was to warn teenage girls not to automatically put trust in every boy or man who wears nail polish. However, this message got corrupted into “never trust any boy or man who does something considered feminine or androgynous”, which is sad to see.

[@SemiIocon]

"They are not bi, they are in a relationship with a woman" Does... does the internet know what "bisexual" means?

[@cbnz2929]

Bi erasure at it's finest 😑

[@eflarsen]

bold of you to assume the internet can read

[@Hyzentley]

Honestly, as sad as it is, I can say from experiene... for many of these aggressive wannabe progressive kids bisexuality is only valid when you are exclusively with same sex people. Find the flaw

[@Lambda_Ovine]

"look at that guy being effeminate, shame him because that's for gays" That's like homophobia 101, how can people miss the plot so bad?

[@silentlyjudgingyou]

Not sure they missed anything except possibly stealth.

[@andrewcapra7153]

I've seen some people who will out-and-out accuse married queer couples of faking it because they "act too heteronormative" to be genuine gays

[@adiegrass1616]

I have been bullied for being queer before, called slurs, etc. All of that sucks but nothing has hurt me more than other queer people disregarding my identity based on my gender presentation. I am non-binary and bisexual and I also love dressing feminine and will always have a deep connection to the feminine. But this apparently means that I’m actually a straight girl and a liar and a faker. They don’t see the internal work I have to done to “come in” to my identity. They don’t see the years I have spent experimenting with my style to become the person I am. They just see a straight girl. It breaks my heart.

[@ronnitschka]

Question : how do you then define non binary for youself ? I mean, what is the factor to say you are ? Just sincerely asking

[@yoursonisold8743]

If you are bisexual then you are not straight regardless of what you wear. I can't fathom how the queer community could get that wrong. Non-binary on the other hand is vaguely defined and too individual to ever be quantified, so it's not easy for anyone to get it. But you are not straight no matter how you dress.

[@adiegrass1616]

@@ronnitschka I’m non-binary because that is more comfortable for me and what makes me happy. Non-binary is not defined by your gender presentation ; to me it’s literally about not accepting the rigid labels of “man” or “woman” and just doing what makes me feel comfortable. To say somebody has to “look” non-binary or androgynous defeats the point. I have experimented with clothing, makeup and sometimes I wear a binder but right now I like dressing feminine. It should also be noted that many trans/gnc/ non-binary people also can’t get gender affirming care, clothing etc. So somebody who looks cisgender may not feel safe or can’t afford what they need to reflect who they are.

[@ronnitschka]

@@adiegrass1616 so its just like when i say i am more like a Tomboy ( not only the clothes but like in my head ) you say you are non-binary ? Like did just the name change ? And why are so many people then offended when someone calls them their gender ? I am a full on tomboy but would never be offended just because someone calls me like they see me, whatever gender they use then. And just so it doesnt come across rude, i am really curious and trying to understand because the feeling of beeing non-binary i kind of get that, i think at least, but i dont get why people dont want to be called a gender. Its not like other peoples opinion on yourself matter, or do non Binary people think they do ?

[@adiegrass1616]

@@ronnitschka thank you for being respectful when asking questions. So, tomboy doesn’t necessarily equal non-binary. Tomboy is an identity that was used for years to describe cisgender women who have a masculine presentation but it could be its own identity separate from cisgender women. I think in my earlier statement, I may have come off like I didn’t like gender. Gender is a beautiful thing! I just don’t want to identify with a specific gender because 1. I’ve never felt like just a woman or a man 2. I don’t want to be told I have to act, dress and behave a different way because of my gender. Although I wouldn’t change how I identify because of what somebody else thinks, its important to be accepting of people’s identities. What makes me and many other nonbinary people uncomfortable is when people (especially people we love) disrespecting our identities because of the way we present ourselves. Like, if I have a name tag with my pronouns on it, and somebody blatantly ignores that and just calls me a girl, that would make me uncomfortable. It’s especially upsetting when that happens in queer spaces because in order to survive day to day, I’ll often just let cis people assume I’m a girl. So when I go to a queer space and say I’m non-binary and someone still refuses to call me by the right pronouns, that is when I get upset.

[@ianforsure]

It like really kills me that people be out here saying “straight men can’t wear skirts or dresses” like aren’t we suppose to be fighting gender norms? Isn’t the idea to abolish the idea of “this is for that gender” I don’t know, I just feel like if you go down that path you are actively sabotaging your own fight.

[@deimosphoibus]

Why do people seem to think that it would be ok for a man to wear a skirt if he's bisexual but not if he's straight? Like, what is the difference? Some people just like to wear skirts! I hate how some people are only accepting of gender non-conformity when they can easily put it in a box and label it.

[@FS-qk5uq]

​@@justheretocommentokdontwan685there's also that notion bi people get that they're not really bi. For bi men they're actually gay just not willing to admit it yet and eventually they'll come out of the closet completely. For bi women they're only doing it to garner the attention of straight men and are fetishizing themselves/lesbians. Cause you know everything revolves around men apparently.

[@SuperPal-tr3go]

Straight men are appropriating gay male culture, I guess?

[@JetstreamGW]

Because people really like yelling and getting mad about stuff. Like, I'm nonbinary, but I haven't changed my pronouns and don't feel any need to. There are some who would say that I'm fake. But, y'know... Fuck 'em :D

[@chrisspaight2955]

As a cis straight woman who is a bit of a tomboy I am very disappointed in the younger generation’s decision to reinforce rigid gender conformity. I really thought that as queer culture became more mainstream people like me would be carried along in the wake of a tide washing away all those hard lines. Instead it seems like if I were famous I’d be called a queer baiter or whatever just for being myself. Exhausting.

[@CorwinFound]

Which absolutely defeats the point! Queer the word means strange, off kilter, unexpected. If all the community has done is create new little boxes, then screw that. It stinks of acceptability politics with just some new lines drawn.

[@Yahoodoraze]

Imagine telling women in 2023 not to wear trousers because only lesbians can do that 🫣 the double standards are wild!!

[@leonardo.diCATio]

As a lesbian, I see MORE lesbians wearing dresses/skirts than I have ever seen a straight person wear. There's a lot of subcultures surrounding it, too.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@kaitlynryan3162woo, another femme lesbian called Kaitlyn haha

[@myonlyone8713]

Fems rise

[@Oxideist]

The pendulum swings to the extremes on both ends eventually.

[@starrychan33]

Love how this all dovetails with TERFs. Obviously the "men in dresses and suspicious and manipulative" is the most apparent parallel but the being confident that someone isn't gay also parallels the "we can always tell" thing

[@redrooster3420]

Ooh this is a really good point, yes!

[@hannajeggings9619]

Tell me you don't know what radical feminism is without telling me you don't know what radical feminism is.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@hannajeggings9619most terfs don’t follow any of the tenets of radical feminism nowadays either tbh. But the seminary books they worship were, and so the etymology of the label means it’s stuck despite many of them now being raging traditionalist misogynists.

[@TheThirdRail]

@@hannajeggings9619 Terfs aren't feminists.

[@BlackJenny997]

@@kaitlyn__L Then why use a label that generalizes so much? Stop calling ppl who aren't radical feminists 'teRFs' then. We all get how saying "men in dresses are suspicious and manipulative" is a shitty statement, then why turn around and imply "all radical feminists think X"? Don't you see how damaging that is? I don't think it wouldn't be as much of a problem if people weren't literally violent against ppl who claim to be radical feminists (the ones that ACTUALLY are radfem, btw). I'm nonbinary, I legally changed my name and my gender, and I associate with radfem activist groups because I know I'm welcome there. We get violent threats everytime we try to be part of marches or festivals or whatever, because people assume we are the same as those "traditionalist misogynists" you are conflating us with.

[@maksiiiskam2]

Some people saw that two boxes aren't enough to define everyone, but instead of concluding "No more boxes, mo more definitions!" they said "more boxes with more definitions".

[@cousinmajin]

MOGAI in a nutshell. Well-meaning, but missing the point

[@Bruno-jj2oi]

Exactly. I think it's even worse when someone who thought they "belonged" in a "box" suddenly realizes the other "box" is actually the one he identifies itself, like when a lesbian woman finds out she's actually bi or vice-versa, and people start attacking this person for this. It truly shows how some queer people tends to see ORIENTATIONS as some sort of RPG class

[@jameshulse1642]

to defend boxes as humans it is good to know we are not alone and feels good to have a box full of people like you. We should have boxes. what we shouldn't do is force people into boxes. if you want to be in a box be in one if you don't don't.

[@CeCeBookworm07]

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with boxes. For many people it’s a comforting thing (my friend recently came to terms with being gender-fluid and she said finding a word to define it felt like she finally understood herself.) The problem is when you shove those boxes on someone else. You should be allowed to define yourself, not another person (especially without there consent.)

[@dorotasokolowska2941]

I hate the concept of 'real-life people are queerbating' with passion. Not only it feel invasive, in my mind it's connected to putting everyone into these neat boxes with neat labels... when not everyone wants to be in one.

[@Homodemon]

I once read someone say that the "neat little boxes" concept is actually good and a staple of queer "culture" and not wanting to be labeled or "not believing in labels" is a copt out by the straights and shows how privileged you truly are cuz you never had to spend more than 2 seconds to realize who you were deep down and you never had to suffer because of it and I'm still in AWE at how backwards that person was...

[@kaykeunil]

@@Homodemonyikes what a terrible take they had for sure. Like labels are fine if you feel more connected to them and feel like they describe you, but saying that the queer community is defined around labels is crazy to me

[@katherinealvarez9216]

Yes.

[@robertlee2092]

The boxes are fine if that’s what someone needs to find comfort and community and acceptance, but I’ve managed to hit middle age without fully understanding what my sexuality is, and at this point I don’t really care. All these labels come with their own expectations and norms, and I don’t consistently relate to any of them.

[@vlad5042]

also just weird that like ur worried about homophobia and so u want all queer people to be easily visually identifiable and distinguishable from cishet people. like would it not be nice if queer people who dont wanna come out could still "blend in" while presenting in their preferred way bc its normal for cis/het people to do that?

[@alenor210]

It feels like a lot of these accusations of irl queerbaiting come from terminally online people with main character syndrome. “This guy’s clothing and appearance must be because of ME, because he’s trying to trick or hurt ME.” They can’t imagine a person doing something simply because it makes them happy, instead it must be a grand conspiracy

[@marburuu111]

Right. I feel like IRL queerbaiting, ironically enough, is a lot more limited to online spaces than this video seems to theorize. And the attempt to synthesize celebrities and their public personas is weak. Harry styles was wearing skirts on the cover of Vogue and curating flamboyant onstage looks for multi-million dollar tours. The conservatives who will dogpile a man for wearing a skirt at home or off stage are going to be nasty and conservative regardless. Why would we try to find ways to negotiate with them?

[@Psilo-gn1sx]

It's kinda the same logic people with tattoos have been hearing for years. "I don't like tattoos", I didn't get them with your tastes in mind "I wouldn't date someone with tattoos", good, then it's working

[@lemsavage9473]

it sucks because this thinking applied misogynisticly too but the direction of "inviting" sexually charge interaction, the common thread between them is feminine or effeminate presentation

[@ObtuseMori]

That's a perfect way to describe it. It never occurs to them that maybe people just present themselves a certain way or have certain hobbies/interests for their own sake, because it genuinely brings them happiness. There always has to be some deep, nefarious meaning behind everything. Everyone's always out to victimise or offend them personally.

[@Hevvvyyy]

They suffer from delusions of grandeur

[@joemagill4041]

'wearing a skirt for clout' Seriously. Go outside. In my experience abuse is much more likely than any kind of 'clout'. Whatver you want to mean by that.

[@dramaramasam]

When Claire and I were working on All or Nothing, she was scared we were going to be accused of queerbaiting because Annie is canonically pansexual but dates a man in the show. I had to be like …that’s not what queerbaiting is. She is queer. There is no baiting.

[@anomienormie8126]

You worked on All or Nothing…? The thing that got fundraiser money and never happened?

[@ps1hagridoufofcharacter]

@@anomienormie8126 probably the other one, the webshow

[@magicalgirlmel3289]

I think it’s fascinating the number of people who don’t seem to realize that the result of questioning your gender or sexuality can indeed end with you being CisHet. We should encourage people to experiment and explore no matter the potential end result as it gives them a stronger sense of self and, even if they aren’t necessarily queer, a greater appreciation for the queer experience as they have considered their own sexuality, gender, and expression.

[@edgarallenhoe3518]

Yes! If "no" isn't an acceptable answer to "am i queer?" than we make the stakes of coming out much higher. If someone does realize down the line that they were wrong or their identity has shifted, they should feel safe expressing that without feeling like they're going to lose the support of their friends. This also applies to how parents treat their kids; if you aren't supportive of them coming out in the first place, they aren't going to want to tell you that things have changed for fear of being hounded by "i-told-you-so"s for the rest of their lives.

[@chrisspaight2955]

Let’s be honest, gender and sexuality are probably more of a spectrum than a binary for all of us. I’m like 99% straight and even I get that I just land farther to the end of the spectrum than someone who’s bi or pan. It would make s much more sense for society to just allow people to have a “gay phase” or a “straight phase” or even an “asexual phase”

[@IceFireofVoid]

It's really sad how many people experiment with nonbinary identities and realize they are actually cis and feel like they can't go back because their queer friends would think it's some kind of betrayal. You don't have to be LGBT+ to support and befriend LGBT+ people.

[@nanalove3819]

I think it is because it doesn't follow the political discourse. People like this think : if someone is allowed to mistaken and go back to cis, then people will think that we are all mistaken as well. Except that it doesn't work like that. Not everybody got it right the first time and that's OK. Exploring is OK. Realize you are not LGBT+ after exploring is OK as well.

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

Maybe should also be a valid answer (which is why the spectrum is a good thing). You don't have to come with a clear identity. Maybe you really like the explorative phase. Maybe you don't care about the answer. Also, sometimes, it changed, you don't have to keep the same identity until the end of time, because otherwise the community would be much, much smaller.

[@Yttrium393b]

...so these people want dress codes then? They want strict dress codes based on sexuality and gender identity, so you can tell what little box someone fits in. Cool, love that

[@sivsi6598]

the enthusiastic walk backwards into all the bigotry and oppression the queer community has fought to dismantle is what really hurts to watch for me here. i don’t think people want to reckon with just how much bigotry and cruelty they’ve carried from childhoods surrounded by conservatism, and those that do acknowledge it are all too happy to slap whatever coat of liberal-sounding paint they can over it to justify their behavior.

[@mishikino]

young people (teens) like rigid no-nuance stuff because it helps them develop a solid, unchallenged understanding of who they are and where they belong which they feel like they need during a time when everything feels confusing and scary now that I’m an adult I realize people are constantly changing as they go through different phases of life and it’s best just to go with the flow rather than think too hard about your identity at the moment and restrict your self expression based on that. Hope these people learn how to let go and be happy

[@darrensanderson1031]

When talking about identity labels and all things related to them, it's always best to keep in mind the lessons we learn from cats. Being shoved into a box by someone else is *very* different to climbing into a box yourself.

[@livetwig]

I know I'm late to the party, but thanks for bringing up the point that the mindset that people aren't able to experiment (with their sexuality, pronouns, gender, etc) unless they basically already know the answer is something that kept me from really unpacking my sexuality for a very long time - I didn't want to mislead anyone only to realize I was actually straight in the end and so I never explored it

[@DJDownes100]

THANK. YOU. so surreal that online left wing-ness has just circled around to puritanical conservatism

[@merrittanimation7721]

We tried to break down gender norms but instead just made new ones.

[@randomjunkohyeah1]

These issues have been around for a long while. We’re still feeling the consequences of the most popular and ubiquitous “progressive website” of the early 2010s, often defining the discourse for massive swathes of the online left… also being the #1 place for teenagers who didn’t understand how the world worked yet to get together.

[@DJDownes100]

@@randomjunkohyeah1 absolutely. and i still don’t understand why morals seem to be dictated by literal children atp

[@randomjunkohyeah1]

@@DJDownes100 Part of it is that teens are often the single most “brazenly, loudly, unwaveringly confident in their own opinions” demographic. It’s the whole asserting independence from your parents and defining your individuality thing. But put a likeminded group of them on the internet, where vocal minorities can easily gain outsized influence with enough persistence due to social media algorithms and such… yeah, the result is pretty predictable.

[@DJDownes100]

@@randomjunkohyeah1 honestly put it better than i ever could, love it

[@enoms7873]

It feels very tied to the "transtrender" rhetoric that vilifies trans people with open gender expression and non binary folks

[@RadikAlice]

Not like it needs to be said, but I always like making it clear to people that aren't like you or me: Transtrenders don't exist

[@nyanbinarydisaster]

​@@Zadamanimwho is dylan mulvaney and how are they a transtrender?

[@nyanbinarydisaster]

@@HadenBlake oh, her! heard about the bud light stuff but couldn't remember her name, don't really know much about her tbh so thank you for explaining. yeah, by the sounds of it it's just hatred, bc god forbid we be open and happy with who we are 💀

[@hxjjdjd606]

@@HadenBlake If Dylan did something similar but with black stereotypes, would you be comfortable with saying she was just “exploring” the concept of being black?

[@crepezzzzz]

​@@hxjjdjd606no because she isn't black, but she is a woman, so the concepts are very different

[@Smulenify]

What annoys me about "fictional queer baiting" is that it's almost always used about two men, and often they're acting friendly in a manner that wouldn't be considered queer baiting if it was two women instead. Showing that it's okay for men to have close bonds that are just platonic is kinda important. It might be used to queer bait, but I find it more troubling that it's so hard to portray men being friends without it being "queer baiting". Men only communicating with each other in fluent sarcasm isn't the only way to be friends without being gay. My opinion on this might be because I'm Aro/Ace, and while I'm not blind to romance I don't assume it until it's clearly statet.

[@probsnooneyouknowtbh3712]

Yeah, definitely part of the toxic masculinity thing of "men aren't supposed to express any affection for each other and if they do they must be gay." But people who identify as progressive will be like "they're *obviously* gay because of such-and-such expression of affection that would be read as platonic if it were two women" when there's literally nothing in the story that would indicate that they are, and then when you say "orrr maybe they are friends who love each other because they're friends?" They accuse you of being homophobic (in my experience.)

[@tahereh9271]

as an aroace person, my relation with these "Queer-baiting" media is too complicated. for good omens, as an example, if you think about it the essence of the story itself is queer, but no, there "must" be a kiss or sex scene or physical intimacy for people to consider it queer.

[@pobbityboppity1110]

Exactly. Even in the context of real people, the basic set up is basically “you have to be queer enough for me” which basically translates to requiring romantic or sexual feelings expressed so everyone can hear. It’s weird!

[@amazinggrapes3045]

I'm hard-pressed to think of a single instance of queerbaiting that isn't "fans put on their shipping goggles and lost their shit rather than face the fact that they were engaging in wishful thinking"

[@asterling4]

​@@amazinggrapes3045 i mean, crowley and aziraphale are in love. and written that way intentionally, according to the word of god. the issue here isn't wishful thinking by shippers, it's that their relationship didn't play out as quickly or as typically as many fans would expect. but they're definitely in love

[@aconstantstateofbladerunne5251]

The comment about people treating sexuality like Divergent factions is spot on. I’m asexual and I’ve been called “a straight prude who wants to feel special” more than once because my personality and interests didn’t line up with certain perceptions of designated asexual behavior. “Real asexuals would never listen to music or watch shows that have sex in them!” Same deal when I came out as agender and didn’t immediately start shaving my head or using they/them pronouns. None of those things have anything to do with either identity, they’re just matters of taste. People demanding sexuality dresscodes are basically just rebranding gender norms. As for queerness as a marketing tactic, I tend to compare it to when gluten free became a fad diet. It doesn’t actually do much for people who aren’t gluten intolerant, but the fad created more demand for gluten free foods that tasted better and were easier to get a hold of, which benefited those who really needed it. Rising tide lifts all ships, and I will put up with some people being inauthentic (or just annoying) if it means the people who really need it are safer and more accepted.

[@Fumbann]

The "Real asexuals don't watch anything with sex in it!" Is so funny to me, my best friend is asexual and regularily sends me the vilest, most sexual and explicit music she finds and likes it because she finds it hilarious and drippy (I cannot find another word to use sorry), and I'm bisexual but can't listen to them for much because I get embarassed easily about these things! If reality were like the people putting everything in neat little boxes of what's correct or not, the corresponding stereotypes would be inversed! It's almost like people are their own individual and not a monolith! Can't believe it's so hard to understand

[@loverrlee]

“rebranding gender norms” THIS!!! 💯💯💯

[@reveur1782]

Hey, it's not everyday I see a fellow agender ace person in the wild! I know that certain individuals have insisted on using they/them to "respect" me even after I directly told them to use she/her and I continued to present feminine (kinda. I have long hair and an AFAB body so you get what I mean). That's not even mentioning how nasty people have been about me being ace. I'm always either too ace or not ace enough, and I've learned to rely on my own assertiveness to basically intimidate people into keeping those thoughts to themselves. Stay strong, and stay you!

[@loverrlee]

@@Fumbannhaha that’s so funny I’m the same way with explicitly sexual music. I get uncomfy with people sharing that kinda stuff with me cuz it feels on par with sharing porn lol

[@tintedpalette653]

I find it very funny that people both don’t accept aro/ace or agender orientation as a concept, yet seem very particular about what traits a person must follow like gospel to be a “valid” ace/aro/agender, what have you. It’s always the “I think you just don’t know what to feel about yourself” when it’s actually themselves who struggle to grasp the concept. So they assign strict and arbitrary ideas of what it ought to look like to make some sense of it. When in reality it’s a broad spectrum and not that deep™️

[@JulianSildenLanglo]

"Straight men are growing beards to attract women." They’re on to us, abort abort.

[@galaxychill9578]

ohno its working

[@vlad5042]

i love the emerging hot take industry of "straight men wanting to be attractive to women is bad and predatory". this projection of the men who hurt people onto any and every man is so unhealthy.

[@SarastistheSerpent]

Interestingly, as a bi guy with a beard, I’ve noticed that girls I’ve been with (and even ones I’ve known platonically) have preferred me clean shaven, whereas gay and bi guys usually like my facial hair. I think there have even been some surveys that have also shown that women generally prefer guys without beards. Personally I keep my beard because I like the way I look with it. Could not care less whether other people like it or not.

[@christopherdessources]

If I shave I look absolutely ridiculous.

[@littlekuribohimposte]

@@christopherdessources I started a beard during Covid (Because if it looked bad no one would know under the mask) and I feel a lot more comfortable with it. So if girls like my beard or not, well it's for me. Not them.

[@jumpbacktome]

I think it's very naive to assume that all people in heterosexual relationships or who presently identify as straight have no interesting perspectives to share on sexuality or gender expression. Experimenting to understand oneself or to share a perspective that could help someone else is healthy and should never be discouraged. Thanks for this video.

[@eldritchposts]

Another thing about the concept of "good queer rep" (which may still be mentioned idk i have a few mins left of the vid still) is the fact that people will critique queer characters and stories written by queer people based on their own experiences as "bad gay rep", just because it is not entirely representative of their own specific experiences of queerness.

[@Bala_Niranna]

i feel the same way about accusing real life people of queerbaiting as i do about accusing people of faking a disability. like, sure its happened before i guess, theres a chance it could be true, but the effects of being wrong is so, so much more harmful to everybody than someone lying

[@Saje3D]

The meme that grinds my gears is someone standing up out of a wheelchair to get something out of reach and it’s treated like a gotcha. “I witnessed a miracle.” No. Not a miracle. You witnessed a sacrifice.

[@saltdad5263]

as someone whos chronically ill, i absolutely DESPISE people who accuse others of faking disabilities. i remember having to use a cane in the 8th grade and i was treated like the scum of the earth just because i dont LOOK sick, and to this day despite my chronic pain and fatigue making my life difficult to live through im still hesitant to get anything like a cane or a wheelchair simply because i never want to be treated that way again. people just love to erase the chronically ill.

[@axtiexe]

yeah i was so angry the day kit conner was forced to come out as bi bc people were saying bc he didn't mention his sexuality he couldn't play a queer charatcer... even though the show literally teaches people that you do not own anyone anything about your own sexuality

[@duffman18]

​@@Saje3D yeah people seem to think that everyone who uses a wheelchair is completely incapable of walking. The majority of wheelchair users CAN walk, just not very far at all. So they need to use a wheelchair to get anywhere and do anything. I can't stand up for more than 5-10 minutes, and need a walking stick to get anywhere. But I can quite easily do something like, say, walk up and down a flight of stairs, or move quite quickly. Cos it's more about time than it is about speed, for me. I can't stand up long enough to, say, wash some dishes, or cook some food, so I have a desk chair with wheels in my kitchen so I can sit on it and wheel about from the fridge to the stove to the sink etc. At times I've had to do performative disability in a sense, to prove to people I'm not just an asshole. Like, I need to sit in the disabled seats on trains, i.e. the seats by the doors. So even back when I could walk a bit further than I can these days, I'd always need to bring a fold up walking stick with me in a bag, and just take it out, otherwise I'd get people looking at me like I'm an asshole because I'm young and people don't think young people can be disabled (this was when I was in my mid 20s). It doesn't matter how much I needed to use a stick that day, I had to prove that I even had one to people, because otherwise I'd get the anxiety from people thinking I'm an asshole taking up a seat that "only elderly and pregnant people need". In a weird way, I'm less anxious these days, because I'm more disabled. I need a stick at all times when I'm outside. Cos I can't get far at all without it. And can't really get far with it either, cos only being able to stand up for 5 minutes at a time is incredibly restrictive. As I get older I'll probably need a wheelchair all the time when I'm out. And so now I'm thinking, if I'm shopping at a supermarket for example, and I can stand up to reach something on a higher shelf, will people think I'm lying that I need a wheelchair? Probably. People just have a complete misunderstanding of the capabilities of disabled people. Cos again, most wheelchair users can actually stand and walk. They just can't do it for very long. It's only a minority of wheelchair users that are paraplegic. You'd think, with disabilities being significantly more common than, say, the number of gay people for example, then everyone would know at least one disabled person and so would know how this stuff actually works. But people generally don't, for some reason. It's the same with every disability. Like the majority of blind people can see, they just can't see well. And the majority of deaf people can hear, they just can't hear well. Or, cos I'm the luckiest boy alive, I also have a mental disability, schizophrenia, and people are always really shocked when I tell them that. Because I'm just a normal person. Just like the vast vast majority of people with schizophrenia or any mental illness. We're all just normal people. Real life is not a movie. We're not all serial killers (actually according to the statistics, mentally ill people actually commit FEWER crimes on average per person than mentally healthy people do, including violent crimes like murder. Mentally ill people are actually way more likely to be VICTIMS of crime, including violent crime, than mentally healthy people are, but yet everyone thinks we're Kevin Spacey in Se7en or something). The percentage of people with schizophrenia is actually the exact same as the percentage of people who are gay, so think about how many gay people you know, and you probably know about the same number of people with schizophrenia, but have no idea until they tell you. Because it's INCREDIBLY easy to hide the symptoms of it. It's such a simple thing to act normal in public, mainly because we are just normal people. We're your friends, your family, your co-workers, etc. So when I tell people I have schizophrenia they either stop talking to me and completely ghost me forever after (which is by far the most common reaction), or they think I'm exaggerating or making it up it or something, because I don't act like I'm locked in a padded cell all the time. This is why people with mental disabilities like these don't tell many people in the first place. Do we have to act performatively crazy to get people to actually believe it? One day I'm finally gonna learn how to drive, once I move away from a city (luckily public transport in cities is good in my country). And I'll have to get one of the disabled parking badges. So what if I'm having a better day than normal, and can stand up for more like 10 minutes than 5 minutes, and so can quickly pop into a shop and buy something. Will I need to bring my stick with me even for those times I don't need it as much, otherwise I'll get shouted at by some idiot? It's really difficult to get those parking badges, they try their hardest to avoid giving them out to people, even when they desperately need them, like my mum who can barely walk at all. So it's just baffling to me that anyone can think someone can have one of those badges and be lying about it. You literally need multiple letters from doctors AND from other government agencies who already know you're disabled, for you to get one. I'm probably far too paranoid about this. Maybe people won't ever care. It's hard not to be paranoid when you have paranoid schizophrenia lmao

[@Janne_Mai]

Yes! I also immediately had to think of people accusing others of faking their Tourette's, DID, or whatever else they have going on. Over the internet. Ya can't diagnose people on the internet, and it's none of your business, and I'd rather 1000 people get to fake a condition for attention than one person get shamed out of accepting themselves.

[@tboyjaydee]

not to mention the obvious misogyny of mistrusting non-fem people who choose to dress fem. "who would WANT to be a female, how disgusting"

[@doreenbrandt3697]

Sarah: "Are celebrities actually real people?" (German pregnancy test) Advertisement: "I hope not" Dangers of watching without an ad-blocker 😂

[@summbuddie9120]

I was once followed into a train by a classmate at uni because I did theatre but wasn’t queer, it made no sense to her. It went from her telling me to stop being closeted and come out and I’d be happier when I did, it then turned to an accusation that I must be up to something, straight cis people don’t do theatre and act the way I do. The whole situation was actually kind of scary and mad and what makes it funnier is that she was straight herself, it’s up there with one of the most bizarre situations I’ve ever had.

[@holyfool5605]

Whatever happened in the end? That’s a terrible breach of privacy and it’s crazy how curiosity can breach into dangerous behavior

[@MadameCorgi]

Yikes

[@stingrae919]

She was straight herself??? That’s so hypocritical and scary. Maybe she should hang around my town, which is so conservative that there are, somehow, homophobes in the musical theatre department lmao

[@wakkaseta8351]

@@stingrae919 Not really. The stereotype of the loudest progressives being straight white women exists for a reason.

[@caspermcgonagle1532]

Real life Rachel Berry

[@gingerdog8203]

The tiktokification of "gaslighting" makes me so nauseous every time someone uses it. Someone lying to you or trying to trick you is not gaslighting. All gaslighting is lying, not all lying is gaslighting.

[@maxlap7855]

Tiktok is litteraly a word killing machine.

[@katherinealvarez9216]

I did say that once and someone argued with me about it. What is going on with people and not knowing what words mean?

[@silverkyre]

Gaslighting was already being misused since before tiktok to be fair.

[@katherinealvarez9216]

@@silverkyre true.

[@gingerdog8203]

@@katherinealvarez9216 same

[@pebblegosling]

I think the other piece here is that people seem deeply uncomfortable with fluid identities. Which sucks for people with fluid identities, obviously, but also everyone who is experimenting or figuring out who they are. It sucks.

[@cericat]

What really sucks about that is in truth most of us go to our graves without ever truly figuring out who we are, especially when folks make it harder to examine it properly.

[@adamgreenspan4988]

“Men wearing skirts are bad” regardless of the reasoning behind this statement or who’s making it, it is the same old prejudice at heart. It doesn’t matter whether it’s directed at gay men, trans women, or straight men; it’s just pressure to conform to societal expectations. If you don’t like toxic masculinity, don’t attack people for their deviation from masculine tropes.

[@GarageBandKing012]

The worst aspect of Queerbaiting discourse aside from how it hinders those exploring their identity is how riddled with biphobic sentiments it is. A lot of the bi community already struggle with a sort of queer imposter syndrome if they're not actively in a homosexual relationship. The discourse around policing who is and isn't queer only serves to compound these feelings.

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

With a good dose of enby phobia added to the mix, just to make sure we're extra welcome! Always great when you learn you're not queer enough to be part of the he community!

[@ealusaid]

@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 In fact, you are so queer, not even all the queers are quite okay with you.

[@user74027nh]

Fr. I keep thinking about how the Kit Conner situation only happened because he was *gasp* spotted holding hands with a girl?? Like idk I feel like a lot of people just view bisexual as "gay lite". Esp. In regards to how bi men tend to be portrayed in media as almost always in a same-sex relationship by the show's end

[@emilykawaii123]

​@@user74027nh AND for bi women, its either "you're faking it for male attention" or "you need to be functionally lesbian but you're allowed to have male celebrity crushes. You can have boyfriends in your past as long as you have Seen The Light. Admission price is one current girlfriend."

[@melasn9836]

Yeah, there's a new wave of biphobia that's really vile. We're practically back to the 90s of using it as a punchline, as though the concept is inherently hilarious.

[@emilyjones9787]

Personally I feel uncomfortable when people accuse celebrities of queerbaiting. Queerbaiting should really be seen as a malicious attempt at marketing used by media. As someone who had to go in and out of the closet to keep myself safe in the republican south, something as simple as a label can mean a lot to an individual. In essence, parasocial fans are not entitled to an answer.

[@freedom_mayor]

i talked to one of my young queer friends about Harry Styles, and they said “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” lol, and im like yeah! we should be happy that if harry is straight hes redirecting the hate he gets for dressing femme onto himself and maybe making a space where everyone can dress how they want and being queer will be less stigmatized?

[@Creshosk]

It's amazing the amount of queerphobia that actually goes into accusing real people of queerbaiting. No, seriously, think about it. Look at the blatant biphobia in that one accusation. "That guy was playing a bi person in a tv show, but they were later seen holding hands with a person who presents as a member of the opposite sex!" "You're not really bi if you're dating a person of the opposite sex!" "You're just a straight person pretending to be bi!" Legitimate biphobia.

[@sourgreendolly7685]

THIS. I'm nonbinary and bi while AFAB and with a guy. people are so quick to deny my experience both with gender and sexuality that I can't even be surprised anymore... And my bf isn't straight either, our relationship is a very queer one.

[@helloofthebeach]

A monogamous person who is perfectly bi/pan (as in, equally attracted to any gender) and appears to be masc and AMAB or femme and AFAB is overwhelmingly likely to end up in a cis- and straight-appearing relationship, because that's the dating pool available to them. Letting the outward appearance of a relationship define its participants is destructive.

[@nanalove3819]

He wasn't even pretending anything, he said multiple times in interview that he was exploring and didn't want to label his sexuality right now. Something very healthy for a teenager if you ask me : just taking the time to figure things out. But internet decided he was not allowed to do that.

[@MCAndyT]

It's amazing how normalized bi erasure is. Like, all my bi friends have countless stories about people they know, love, and trust feel the need for their bi-ness to be demonstrated and/or proven...

[@FS-qk5uq]

Can only be bi if you're single🙃

[@YellowNekro]

"they wear skirts for clout" is so funny to me because in June we saw a certain beer brand supporting trans people and some people were SO pissed off they stopped buying those beers. The real world is not twitter, and sometimes we should be thankful for the famous people giving visibility to LGBT topics (or saying that gender rules are so dumb, which is also valid!!)

[@laurenherb3899]

Literally tho they were so pissed off they even tried to cancel Garth Brooks for saying he wasn’t gonna partake in the stupid-ass boycott when his bar opened in Nashville (granted he said so a lot more politely, but you get the point)💀

[@brendaleelydon]

The best part of that whole boycott, was watching outraged people wasting beer *they had already purchased* in order to "make a point" and then saying they were boycotting BL in favour of...other varieties of beer owned by Anheuser-Busch. 🤣🤣🤣

[@mtns340]

it's not even new, pop stars have been doing this since at least the 70s

[@ciaxx]

As an asexual person i remember i was kind of offended when i learned about the concept of queerbaiting because it suggested that portraying a very close relationship between two women or two men in fiction without including sex was somehow offensive. Meanwhile my favorite character relationships were usually the ones that other people considered to be queerbaiting. Once sex is explicitly brought in I often lose interest lol

[@fuumiku]

It sucks too because so often asexual headcanons and gay headcanons just… Battle it out. So often, people latch onto a character as gay because they express disinterest in hetero relationships or relationships in general, but even without expressing interest in gay relationships people see that as a sign/confirmation that the character is gay. Like, without expressing interest in someone, zero is still zero, but people take that as a "maybe they’d just like something they haven’t been presented with yet". "Asexual people are claiming gay characters for themselves grrr!!" has been recurrent discourse :/ Like Artemis for one. And then yeah let’s not even mention that things don’t have to be romantic or sexual, platonic or queerplatonic can be very strong too. But yeah like, everyone in the LGBT+ community is hungry for representation and of course I get that, but often the community tends to do infighting over the saddest stuff

[@InakaGames]

I think it is incredibly important to remember just how *small* tumblr's userbase was, even at it's peak, compared with the wider media landscape. Many of the hyper-specific terms for sexuality and identity worked out in these blogs are akin to the labels in a private forum. While there is great merit in much of that exploration, there's also a lot of errant chaff in that data, and only a tiny sliver of any of that reaches the wider non-queer culture. Much of the controversy covered in this video, I promise you did not even exist on the radar of 70-80% of the population of the US, at all, to put that into perspective. (if not more). I just found it worth remarking on given how much tumblr was referenced in this video. Tumblr in particular had a very large problem with creating very self-selecting self-reinforcing groups, which was both its strength and it's incredible myopic weakness.

[@asterling4]

yeah... sometimes i feel like ppl need to calm down about weirdo tumblr hyper-activists. most of them are kids or VERY young adults. most people don't really act like that, including most leftists. this video is a little disingenuous in framing it as this massive sweeping societal problem. most people are either hyped about harry styles' clothes, or republicans screaming that he's the antichrist. the kind of person who says "men who wear dresses are queerbaiting" is just not a very common person lol

[@root2109]

Thank you for treating Demi with kindness. They were misquoted over and over again about their pronoun change. They said they were exhausted of having to explain their personal feelings about their gender to every single person who asked their pronouns and started including 'she' to save herself the grief. It's an emotional burden that a lot of trans people are forced to take on when they start identifying differently, needing to explain your life every single time someone asks.

[@sivsi6598]

It really hurt to watch a nb person try and be open about their struggles with bigotry concerning how they identify, and for have that *immediately* be twisted and invalidated BY OTHER QUEER PEOPLE like holy fucking shit. as if it wasn’t bad enough that conservative bigots were trying to use the out-of-context quote to validate their shitty beliefs, now we gotta contend with other queer people too? like do they not realize that they’re apart of the problem when Demi talked abt being exhausted by the bigotry they’ve faced??

[@rowanmccracken5041]

As an enby who uses they/them pronouns, my heart breaks for Demi, I understand exactly what they were talking about and the backlash was infuriating

[@llynxfyremusic]

Yep, i feel that too

[@Raya-xw5ud]

+++ it's frustrating ppl thinking they "went back to" *just* using she/her. like it'd be totally fine if that was what happened. ppl are allowed to experiment and change their minds, but also that's not what happened here, and I'd imagine if she was exhausted before, this whole situation where ppl think they only use she/her now has just made things even more frustrating. need ppl to fact check more thoroughly and to just be kinder in general about this stuff.

[@nerdychocobo]

the worst part about the scrutiny towards demi lovato is that they still use they/them pronouns, they readapted she/her pronouns purely because they were drained and found it exhausting to constantly explain using those pronouns to people. Obviously if they had decided they/them pronouns weren't for them it still would not be okay to say that's queerbaiting, but people are just... Actively ignoring what they've said to create their own narrative to excuse scrutinising afab nonbinary people for being too close to femininity

[@TheHoliestCow]

Yeah I feel bad that people misinterpreted they're words

[@DeathnoteBB]

It happens so damn much I legit forget their pronouns

[@Sandwhaler]

So, you're telling me that Alestorm aren't actual pirates?

[@comfyghost]

every now and then i forget there are real people who don't consider bi people queer if they date someone of the opposite sex, and then i'll just be hit by a lorry of sentence like "this actor is being accused of queerbaiting, because he played a bi character but was seen holding hands with a woman" and i never quite know how to process it.

[@halbarroyzanty2931]

We better treat queer terminology as descriptors of identity raher than inforcers, lest we build ourselves another gender cage right outside the one we left

[@petegaslondon]

Right ON Sis/Bro/Other :) 💜💜💜💜

[@KetsubanSolo]

​@petegaslondon I honestly use "dude" and "guy" for everyone because I'm a boomer from the "tits or gtfo" Era of the internet, where you just assumed everyone was a dude unless, well, they showed their boobs lmao As "problematic" as that attitude is nowadays, it was a great way of making sure that people focused on stuff that mattered like personality and contributions to whatever community you were in.

[@kenon6968]

​@@KetsubanSolodude is just they

[@hexlart8481]

THIS! omg this. I thought we had already been doing this, I know in circles I run in we all agree that labels are tools. If they help you awesome but none of us need them. All we need, is to be ourselves. Whoever that is, whatever sexuality that is, whatever gender and expression that looks like, however you feel romantically.

[@mykal4779]

right, confusing the map for the territory

[@athenajaxon2397]

We've literally just looped back to homophobia. I think the obsession with labeling things is so toxic, no one owes you anything, celebs are not tv show or movie characters. They can act how they want without people constantly needing them to label themselves.

[@ariannay766]

yeaahhh. Like, I'm in a position where i have the priviledge to label myself as queer and as more specific queer identities while still being safe. And I want to. So I do that. But people shouldn't have to, whether it's becuase they're not comfortable or becayse they CANT

[@ioncekilledamanwithmyshoe]

Yeah, and just to being bigoted in general but in a strange “progressive” way. Like now being a feminine man is bad if they’re not gay? They think they “know” they’re just “dressing up” this way for an ulterior motive? And this leads back to the re-rise is TERF feminism. They think it’s super progressive now to literally be vicious towards trans people, using the same arguments that conservatives use but framed in a “progressive” way. I also see this a lot in the uprise in traditional gender roles as well. They romanticize the idea that men should be the breadwinners (and making a lot of money) and that they should be treated like “princesses” and not like an actual person. They say things like “why aren’t men acting like men anymore” but it’s all framed in a feminist way. The posts on TikTok if you search “sprinkle sprinkle” (a woman on TikTok who is well known for making this kind of content) is quite disturbing because it’s FILLED with women like this.

[@cmmosher8035]

As a straight guy who isn't the height of masculinity I see a lot of misogyny in it. It feels like if you are a straight guy you have only one way to put yourself out there or suffer the consequences from all sides.

[@athenajaxon2397]

@@cmmosher8035 that's true too. Harry Styles wear feminine clothing and everyone demands he come out as gay or bi, women like Billie Eilish can wear male clothing and it's considered normal

[@twistedelegance_]

​@@cmmosher8035The opposite happens to gay men. If we're masculine we get shunned. I see it more and more in my community.

[@buggy9094]

Holy shit this perfectly sums up all of the weird feelings I’ve been getting about how we’re treating queerness recently. I identify as genderqueer but ever since I started openly identifying that way I felt like I had to “prove” my queerness by dressing and acting a certain way. I wish I could go back and revoke all the weird comments I’ve made that totally shove people into boxes, including myself, but I’m so glad to have this video to remind me that I still have a chance to change my perspective and actions.

[@jerrys.9895]

10:40 I'm (ostensibly) cis and very masculine-presenting (beard, clothes, hairstyle, affect), and have been in the questioning zone for ages, but to take the plunge in experimenting with a different form of presentation means having people pressure me to "make a choice," even among my queer friends who would see themselves as being supportive. I've seen it in the past, where a questioning friend tries out new pronouns or presentation and their new identity gets glommed onto so quickly it removes the option to change again or backtrack for comfort. Folks' good intentions can wane over time if a person seems to be waffling in their identity, as though they forgot how exhausting it is/was for them to come to their own truth.

[@kyleb4781]

"You can't do art that society considers queer unless you're willing to explicitly label yourself as queer" is one of those positions that really should make people stop and, like, really reflect on how fucked up the moral position they've ended up at is. Like, it's such a horrific encapsulation of a really, really gross sentiment, and it's boiled down to a single sentence so you can't even really hide from it. I don't understand how people can consider themselves both to be supportive, progressive people who fundamentally support flexible gender presentation, AND can, without even blinking, basically tell people that it's their fault they're being bullied because they didn't come out before they started making art. Some of the tweets shown here are just like, the most vile shit, and it's said with a straight face by people who legitimately don't understand that they're the bad guys. Harry Styles doesn't owe us performing his gender in a way that we like, or find attractive, or find marketable. Harry Styles shouldn't need to fuck a boy in order for his artistic choices to be valid. Ashnikko doesn't need to eat a certain amount of pussy before her weird deconstruction of gender becomes socially acceptable. Nobody owes society that. I think that Sarah actually nails this most clearly when she talks about "we learn not to SAY bigoted things before we learn not to DO bigoted things", and that comes through incredibly clearly when people who don't understand how not to be bigoted try to enforce "not being bigoted" onto other people, and in the process, are just incredible bigots.

[@yurisei6732]

I agree Sarah explains this well: It's easy to figure out the language of progress, but the actual mindset and ideology of progress takes a lot of self-reflection and nuance to build, and it's something a lot of people will just never manage. "You have to be queer to write queer stories" is really just "cultural appropriation" under a different flag, and it ends in the same place: You are defined entirely by your ethnicity, sex, gender and sexuality, and you absolutely cannot ever be interested in anything other than the thing you have been defined as. End of the day, there are a lot of people who basically just think that people who aren't them shouldn't be allowed to do or say anything. Those are people that we would traditionally call fascists. The only real difference is which arbitrary group of people you think should be the benefitted group, and if your favourite fascists are a minority group, you get to hide behind progressive facades.

[@isabelledummer3857]

@@yurisei6732​​⁠ i just want to respectfully point out that your understanding of fascism is limited and incorrect. It is not wanting just “only wanting some people to have the right to say things.” Fascism is a much more complex beast. It is specifically a far right ultranationalist and militaristic authoritarian form of government. I think it’s quite harmful to call things fascism when they aren’t, especially since we have seen a rise in fascist rhetoric against queer people.

[@fionatastic0.070]

@@yurisei6732The concept of cultural appropriation is different to this. It’s a description of the phenomenon of a group of people being stripped of their culture and then having it be literally sold back to themselves or other people who don’t have a meaningful affiliation with that culture, the reproduction of which is usually steeped in fetishization and stereotypes. There are some instances of gate keeping around it that I personally consider excessive, but it’s not always a straight up “hands off” mentality.

[@yurisei6732]

@@isabelledummer3857 Do you not think that people can be fascist without being straight white men? have you been living under a rock?

[@yurisei6732]

@@fionatastic0.070 That's what it started as, but one of the major points being made in this video is what happens when people adopt the vocabulary of progressive politics without understanding the meaning of the words. Cultural appropriation *today* is nothing more than an internet gotcha you can use when the wrong colour person makes an art.

[@tobigrantlbart]

I always hated this double standard of it being okay for women to wear "men" cloths (even if it's just a sweater from the men section, an oversize shirt, a suit, pants), but men wearing "women" cloths is seen as deviant, perverted, kinky or wrong. Because I think skirts are fun to wear, women's cloths are fun to wear. And damn I think I look good in it okay. It has nothing to do with gender to me. And can't that be okay?

[@PhilipWester]

Within your grand-parents' lifetime, it actually wasn't societally acceptable for women to wear pants. I kid you not, PANTS.

[@bosstowndynamics5488]

Ironically, it's a consequence of misogyny - men wearing women's clothes is seen as degrading so they must have some sort of ulterior motive and therefore be evil. That and general suspicion towards gender nonconforming and trans people - men are seen as default so at least these days men's clothes are seem as neutral (see the difference between the response to a woman wearing pants and the response to a trans man)

[@sparkymularkey6970]

Hell yeah, brother!

[@lemondork5689]

I wear leggings and yoga pants because they’re super comfy and lots of them have fun patterns, nothing wrong with any of that! I’m still a dude no matter what shape of cloth I put on my body

[@leopurrdheart]

I think its partially because of masculinity being seen as more "neutral" than femininity. A woman wearing pants is (At least now) seen as more neutral than a man wearing a skirt. It probably stems from masculinity being perceived as the "default"

[@alexatascher7500]

i’m agender and i think it’s a social good when people act outside of their gender role (eg men wearing skirts) because it can desensitize unaccustomed people to it and normalize living outside the boxes. more men should wear skirts-they’re cool and good for building outfits. i’ve known 2 skirt wearing men who were abuser/predators but i don’t think they put thought into it like “ha i’m going to trick these women into trusting me with this clothing” i think they were just terrible people. in both cases the people being abused were non binary or trans. it’s true that it’s easier to trust someone when they seem similar to you (operating outside gender binary) but that can’t really be distinct from other ways people get others to trust them, like giving lots of compliments or being chivalrous or whatever. so it doesn’t really merit its own discussion unless every other method of gaining trust does.

[@brendaleelydon]

"so it doesn’t really merit its own discussion unless every other method of gaining trust does." THANK YOU!! Also, I don't understand this whole "as a WoMaN, I should be able to feel safe around/trust anyone wearing a skirt, but men are untrustworthy, so how DARE they wear skirts tO tRiCk uS!!!!" mindset?? Are mothers really out here telling their daughters *ALLLLLL* women are inherently trustworthy??! Cuz, uh...that's certainly NOT a message I've ever given MY kid. 👀 Attacking people is ALREADY ILLEGAL. Men ALREADY follow women wherever they might go, including public restrooms, in order to attack them. They aren't going to throw on a dress to "make you lower your guard" before following you. And EVEN *IF* they did...again, it's ALREADY against the law to attack people; it's not like they'd get away with it because they're transgender??!!!?! Such a dumb argument.

[@user-xm5ry2ld1j]

Like, sorry but more feminine-presenting men ARE less likely to be predators, they're more likely to have been on the receiving end of toxic masculinity themselves and more able to empathize than someone who hasn't. That's not a guarantee, of course it isn't. Nothing is. You know who's also more likely to have experienced toxic masculinity and be able to empathize....other fucking women. And women can still also be predators. Are they manipulating women's trust just by also being women? How many of us have assumed we could trust another women with our stories of assault at the hands of men and they victim-blame and gaslight us anyway because they believe they would have handled it differently? Happens quite a lot and no one is saying they shouldn't be allowed to wear nail polish anymore because of it because that would be unbelievably stupid and not at all relevant to whether or not that individual is a trustworthy person. Assumptions might make logical sense and still be wrong.

[@beksxp]

this video is very healing for me. when i came out to my non binary, pansexual best friend of six years on my birthday they told me i wasnt being a good straight ally 💀 we are not friends anymore

[@jayefromspace3070]

Isn't it funny how lady gaga has consistently expressed that she is bi from the very start of her career, so much so that there's whole compilation videos about it on here, and yet people still think she's just saying it to sound edgy because she doesn't appear "bi enough" whatever that's supposed to mean

[@nicholascooper945]

They’re mad she’s not fingerblasting a woman on stage I guess. I’m surprised they think a straight person wrote a song called “Born This Way” that makes very open allusions to being queer even in a world that doesn’t support it 4 years before Obergefell v Hodges made it legally okay to be gay and everyone could start slapping rainbows on things.

[@lucialopez7030]

and, correct if im wrong, later she said she doesn't feel like she belongs in the community because isn't queer enough :(

[@FoxGameCZ]

​@@lucialopez7030that's really sad, no one should feel this way. I heard that people often call her just ally instead of one of us

[@harper8842]

i had no idea she was bi. bi erasure sucks :/

[@georgeosborne1854]

@@FoxGameCZ honestly I thought she was just an ally up until very recently because people around me just gaslit me into thinking that she was just one of those straight women that suddenly become gay icons

[@lomiification]

It feels silly that people are trying to enforce specific gender stereotypes on straight men.

[@oliviabusteed5331]

Right? Aside from the fact that straight male musicians often push gender boundaries, policing Harry Styles doesn't only do a disservice to closeted people watching it and being discouraged from experimenting with gender identity, it discourages straight boys from pushing back against patriarchal gender norms. As a woman I can have short hair and dress masculine sometimes and it's fine, but boys don't have that freedom. It's not necessarily about sexuality, historically men's fashions haven't all been drab and utilitarian. Boys don't pop out of the womb predisposed to navy and grey.

[@wakkaseta8351]

@@oliviabusteed5331 *"As a woman I can have short hair and dress masculine sometimes and it's fine,"* --------------------------- I thought that means that you're trans/nonbinary/an egg these days?

[@bird3938]

@@wakkaseta8351fam's onto nothing 🔥🔥🔥

[@felixt808]

​@@bird3938THIS REPLY KILLED ME HAJSHFBS

[@prettypic444]

Honestly, The discussion about how people learn language before they learn context also really hits me as a disabled person. I've had online conservations where someone called me ableist for using the word "crazy" to describe a webcomic character's erratic behavior and then criticize me for discussing the dark themes in said webcomics because I might "trigger a disabled person who doesn't have enough spoons!"

[@christineherrmann205]

Wow, when you got to 29:00 and started talking about the "rules" that had to be adopted to be performatively "queer" it felt like a eureka moment. I've tried being with a woman, it didn't work. I don't dress like a girl or wear makeup, but I look feminine enough to be identified as a cis woman, and I'm fine with that as long as it doesn't mean I have to show up to things in a skirt. But I've been in and out of the BDSM scene, and yeah, I've kissed a girl. WHY LABEL ME? Just accept I'm on your side as long as you're not a complete douche, that I don't care what you want to wear or who you want to sex with. I'll be me, and you be you!

[@thisusserisacat]

Queer bait and queer code should be only used in fictional character, in my opinion .

[@lilamee7447]

I agree, but it does get a little messy when you also hold the thought: You only ever see the public persona of celebrities not the real person

[@HoKa303]

@@lilamee7447I see where you’re coming from, but a public persona is still based on the actual human presenting it. Also the whole “persona” concept easily supports the idea that real people can’t queerbait. We only see the persona they present. We don’t know (nor are we entitled) to their personal inner lives and journey of gender and/or sexual identity.

[@gryficowa]

Or for someone who literally pretended to be queer for years and finally admitted it was for fame, that's the only real exception, not Harley Styles in a dress, just someone who says they're queer for years, it's a big difference, but I have the impression that hardly anyone sees it and then we have what happens

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

Strongly in favor of this. Queerbaiting can be an issue in fiction (Supernatural is the textbook example lol) but it is NEVER fair to apply that line of thinking to a real person.

[@guytrashgurtdog]

@@gryficowagood point. Only time it should apply in real life is when someone *actually* pretended to be queer

[@prageruwu69]

i hate when real people get accused of being queerbaiting. i feel bad for harry styles, no one should be forced to disclose their sexuality just to be allowed to wear skirts.

[@JDM-is-my-name]

I think the one and only time a real person should be called out is when they specifically "come out" to gain more support while knowingly lying about it. For example, Demi Lovato comes out and wants to use they/them? That's totally fair because she, at the time, was just trying to figure out how to portray themselves. When she came out and said, "Actually, found out that didn't quite fit" that's 100% ok. If Demi had just had a giant scandal or big dip in support, then it'd drastically changed the behavior and reasoning. Harry Styles is okay being portrayed in a way that is very queer-friendly and that's cool as hell! Good on him! The way he chooses to portray himself does not mean anything about who he is unless he says so himself. He has chosen to be queer-friendly while also seemingly comfortable in his cis-ness. If he one day comes out and labels himself differently, then it's up to him. He makes choices for himself and expresses himself and that's supposed to be the thing we, as queers, praise as good.

[@genericname8727]

@@JDM-is-my-name I think the best example of real people queerbaiting is creators doing “coming out” pranks, pretending to kiss members of the same sex in thumbnails, etc. Stuff that is very explicitly and undoubtedly the creator having misrepresented their sexuality to bait people. I don’t care how someone wants to dress or anything like that though. Nor do I have an issue with someone exploring their identity and changing their mind as they discover new things about themselves.

[@louiscarter1320]

A good 15+ years ago, a friend wrote something that's always stuck with me. It went something like: "The LGBT community often comes across as more 'LG b ... t?'" Which is difficult to say in words so I rarely get to quote them. (this was a long while back, adding other letters or the + wasn't the norm back then) The community has evolved a lot since then, but this video bought the phrase to mind and I thought I'd share in case it helped anyone else? The idea that people aren't actually queer if they date someone "of the opposite gender" suggests there's still a lot of people who still see 'queer' as being synonymous with those first two capitals above and before any of those pesky lower case letters.

[@thekarret2066]

I get what you mean pretty clearly. It's funny that asexuality isn't even considered, even though it's just the opposite of bi basically. XDDD Should be one of the big four branches of sexuality, but it's brushed under the rug. xP

[@asterling4]

shudders as i remember the existence of "gold star lesbians" .... yep, you're exactly right

[@RisingSunfish]

His name is Harry *Styles*, people. Not Harry Justonestyle. He’s doing his best to become a living Ace Attorney character and I support his journey. 😤

[@Leftistattheparty]

Did we just forget Gay Icons? Annie Lennox is a straight woman who became a gay icon and did advocacy work for the aids crisis. Should she not be allowed to be part of the community? This is ridiculous. What people's identities are shouldn't really be our concern. What matters is what they do for the community either by charity or creating content that makes the community feel safer. I think Queerbaiting is actually happening from corporations more than other people and it's way worse.

[@katbairwell]

100%!

[@hymospheir989]

Not even trying to be exclusionary, it’s great when straight people advocate for LGBT, but that doesn’t make them part of the community. That’s silly

[@FadzaiSimango]

​@@hymospheir989I agree with that sentiment. I always explain in like this: I am a black person. I am part of the 'black community'. If a white person supports black people + believes that black people deserve all the same rights as white people + speaks out against racism, it _still_ doesn't make that white person a part of the 'black community'. Allies are allies. They are not literal members of the marginalised communities they support.

[@fluffyphoenix8082]

@@FadzaiSimango THIS EXACTLY. I am not being exclusionary when I say a cis straight person shouldn't be part of the queer community. I am grateful for everything strong allies do, but they are still not queer. I'm white asf and VERY strongly against all the racist bs that is still super prevalent, and I can be supportive and still not expect to be part of the "black community". That's ridiculous, I'm white!! So I feel that same sentiment about cis straight allies being expected to be "part of the community", like... that's not how this works

[@DeadCanuck]

Also, I just gotta add: a hetero actor playing a non-hetero character is…well, that’s just acting. Tilda Swinton played a 80 year old German man in 2018’s “Suspiria.” Like, actors ACT.

[@ps1hagridoufofcharacter]

100% agree. to me it becomes a problem only if the actor were to fall into a stereotype (example: i once saw this polish film where one of the side characters was a gay man, so of course he was affeminate, pampered, spoke with a high-pitched voice etc, etc)

[@daze-0621]

For me, a real life example of this being an issue for me was James Corden playing a Gay character in "The Prom"; he very poorly played a stereotypical Gay man when one of his co-stars, Andrew Rannells, is actually Gay and ended up being cast as a straight character who from what I remember was not nearly as significant as Corden's character. Having seen some of Rannells' previous works, he could have just as easily been cast as the Gay character and had James Corden play the straight character and not have had any kinds of stereotypes become an issue, but instead we're left with Corden yet again making a fool of himself while leaving one of the actually queer actors in a movie centered around queerness being stuck as an insignificant character who contributes very little to the plot.

[@DeadCanuck]

@@daze-0621 I mean in fairness, you said “James Corden”. There’s the problem right there. The man’s a notorious spotlight hog and general prick.

[@alvafairchild13]

Tilda over here doing any and all genders and rocking them all

[@emmakane6848]

Cordon could not have pulled off the Love Thy Neighbor song though. I think the casting was somewhat acceptable for Rannel’s part, although I would have liked a different actor in Cordon’s place.

[@Atmatan_Kabbaher]

Everyone says 'support indie creators' till a broke artist shows up with something cool they made asking for enough food to eat or make their next cool thing. Then suddenly the internet is a ghost town.

[@littlemissmello]

As an ace person, season 1 of Good Omens felt like such an obvious ace fest that it annoyed me to no end lowkey felt like erasure every time people said it was queer baiting and I am wholly convinced it's these people that made the show go into a more traditional allo direction with the character and now people complain it feels out of character and I am just like "NO FUCKING SHIT, OF COURSE IT FUCKING IS, THEY HAVE FUCKING BEEN ACE SINCE THE FUCKING BEGINNING" or somehow even worse, the people who say they were "just" friends, because allo people always reduce ace and aro relationships to "just friends". I have a lot of emotions about this haha

[@esserefveermold]

As a queer person from Russia, I have to admit that Tatu was pretty much the most visible, even if not authentic, representation of gay people in Russian media, and their music did guide my early self-exploration to a noticeable extent. That said, looking back their perforative queerness was obviously a part of unethical exploitation of teenagers to produce fetishised image for clout. Their management in general was cruel in many ways towards them, so I wouldn't judge the girls themselves in their youth for queerbating or anything of sorts.... Although I will judge the hell out of nowadays Volkova who worked for the United Russia party and participated in spreading government propaganda, which included a lot of conservative bullshit. So, yeah, the situation with them is complicated.

[@bufflinguist]

for context: i am 34. for me, growing up in russia, the most visible mainstream queer representation was actually boris moiseev lol (not that he did anything for my understanding of my sexuality). when t.a.t.u. came to prominence, none of my peers believed they were actually lesbians/a couple. in my circles, when i was a teen, the most important wlw icons in music were 'nochnye snaipery' (diana arbenina and svetlana surganova) and zemfira---even though, afaik, to this day, the only one of them who's more or less out is svetlana surganova. (this is not to deny your experience, of course, but to add another perspective =))

[@esserefveermold]

@@bufflinguist well, I'm younger than you, and at the time of tatu's prominence I was like in elementary school, so my media analysis might have been flawed, lol And Moiseev I mostly perceived as boomer music, so I didn't pay him much attention. Looking back, yep, he was a pretty significant figure.

[@bufflinguist]

@@esserefveermold "Moiseev I mostly perceived as boomer music"---lol i did, too. i never listened to his music, but growing up, his name was basically synonymous with "gay man".

[@lloroshastar6347]

It's really useful hearing this perspective from both of you, from a Western viewpoint so little is made clear about life in Russia as the media here complicates matters. We consistently hear about more and more draconian laws being passed and can't help but wonder if it's even possible to exist openly as a queer person in Russia, but our perspective is skewed by the media. Here in the UK for example, the government is very transphobic, but trans people still exist and are more open about being trans than I've ever been aware of in my lifetime, yet when I hear US streamers talk about the UK it's like they think trans people all hide away in secret bunkers or are in prison, like trans people are being collected up by the government and put into forced labour camps. That's not true in the slightest, things are tough for trans people here but they can still exist openly as trans people.

[@bufflinguist]

@@lloroshastar6347 well, i haven't been living in russia since 2014. but my impression is that things have changed for the worse significantly since late 90s--mid 2000's, which is mostly the period i was talking about here. in fact, even just ten years ago, we could and did walk with rainbow flags as part of a larger protest march in the center of moscow---but you can't do this anymore, neither the rainbow flags nor any kind of protest. (also, as, i imagine, with any country, things vary a lot depending on where in russia you live.)