A recent PinkNews article — which really gives up the game by admitting at the top that its whole purpose for existing is that “is Harry Styles bisexual” is a trending search on Google — got me thinking about this whole question of Harry Styles and sexuality (which, honestly, is rare for me: I think I’m one of the rare women who is attracted to men who found the video for Watermelon Sugar wildly unsexy*).
Here’s the thing: I think Harry Styles has a right to dress how he wants. He has a right to wave all the Pride flags he wants. And he is under no obligation to publicly discuss his sexuality or “label” himself, as he has said that he is averse to doing. He has a right to be whomever he chooses, and he does not owe us, the random strangers of the general public, anything.
However.
There is something a little bit disingenuous about a person who has publicly been in — and publicly made statements about — heterosexual relationships declaring their sexuality to be private. It reminds me a bit of the Don’t Say Gay laws which “ban mentions of sexuality” in schools but have no problem with those mentions of sexuality when they’re straight. When you say, “I don’t want to label myself, but here’s my girlfriend,” you kind of are labeling yourself — not necessarily as heterosexual, but certainly as gynosexual, which, when you’re a man, is of course considered the “normal” type of sexual attraction to have.
If your sexuality is private, shouldn’t it all be private? And if you’re using “privacy” as a shield to refuse to confirm or deny your potential bisexuality —
It’s so thorny for me, guys. I’m torn between feeling like a creep who’s putting pressure on a celebrity whose sexuality has been obsessed over since he was a teenager to make statements about his sexuality, and feeling like I’m being manipulated by someone who’s using the sheen of “I don’t like labels” to reinforce the stigma of same sex attraction.
Because I don’t care about whether or not Harry Styles is queer. It makes no difference to me one way or another. But I do care about this double standard of saying you don’t like to talk about your sexuality when you’ve made your hetero relationships very public; of, again, reinforcing this idea that it’s only “sexuality” when it’s the gay stuff. No one should feel pressure to make their sexuality public — but if we really mean that, we gotta mean keeping the mixed gender stuff private too, you know?
* It just gives me creepy hippie sex cult vibes? IDK it just makes me want to peel all my skin off.
Leave a Reply