Stop Forcing People Out of the Closet

Real people are not queerbaiting you

A few weeks ago, Taylor Swift released her latest album, Midnights. Being the obsessive Swiftie I am, I spent the days leading up to the release listening to Taylor’s old music and watching fans’ TikToks theorizing about the album. I also kept up with Taylor’s Midnights Mayhem, short Instagram videos in which she revealed a new track listing every day. One of these tracks was “Lavender Haze.”

Reader, the Internet lost its collective mind.

For a solid 24 hours, my TikTok feed was inundated with fans and haters of Taylor alike accusing her of queerbaiting. Apparently, lavender is a color that is associated with the lesbian community and people saw this song title as just another example of Taylor baiting her LGBTQIA+ fans (there’s a very long and weird history of Taylor’s fans accusing her of being a closeted lesbian and referring to long-time boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, as her beard — I won’t get into all that now, but look here and here if you’re curious).

Ignoring the fact that the term “lavender haze” literally just describes the feeling of falling in love and is not unique to the LGBTQIA+ community, it is just so creepy to speculate on a real person’s sexuality. Maybe Taylor’s straight, maybe she’s gay, or bi. The fact is, you are not entitled to know and even wealthy celebrities deserve some degree of privacy.

But hey! Taylor fans have always been a little kooky (I am one, so I can say that), digging into the hidden meaning of every lyric she’s written, every Easter egg she’s hidden. Surely this isn’t a widespread phenomenon, people hassling straight-passing celebrities about their sexuality, right?

Right?

Last week, Hearstopper actor Kit Connor took to Twitter to say, “back for a minute. i’m bi. congrats for forcing an 18 year old to out himself. i think some of you missed the point of the show. bye.” This came after months of the young actor being harassed and accused of queerbaiting after playing a queer character on the popular Netflix show.

Nice one, assholes. The decision to come out is a deeply personal one and you just robbed this young man of making that decision. Good going.

Here’s the thing: real, living people are not queerbaiting you. It’s a marketing tactic that movie and show creators use to draw in an LGBTQIA+ audience without doing any of the work to craft a compelling queer story. It’s harmful. But it doesn’t exist outside the television screen. And when you bully these people into coming out before they’re ready because you think you’re entitled to that information, or that they somehow owe it to you, just keep in mind that you’re hurting real people with beating hearts, not fictional characters.

Leave them alone, go outside, and touch some grass, dickheads.