Coming out of the closet is one thing, but pulling someone out of the closet is another. Kit Connor, an 18-year-old actor, who famously starred in the Netflix series “Heartstopper,” was forced to reveal his own sexual identity on social media.
Kit portrays a young teenager in the romcom series, named Nick Nelson, in which he shares an endearing friendship with Charlie Spring, who identifies himself as gay, played by Joe Locke. Their friendship slowly unravels a different path as they find themselves slowly developing feelings for one another.
The show promotes inclusivity in regards with the LGBTQIA+ community, and actions out significant happenings a member of the community could be experiencing or has experienced, providing a sense of mutuality, and understanding. Supposedly, the series attempts to address certain issues that queer teenagers may face on a day-to-day basis, however, some fans have chosen to look at it on a different scope and take a jab on the personal life of its actors, specifically their sexuality.
As some might say, the term “Queerbaiting,” can be a form of technique in hinting a particular audience into assuming a person’s sexuality. Kit has stated that over the past few months, he has been pressured by social media users in revealing his sexual identity despite not feeling the need to do so.
A similar issue that involves queerbaiting was when Ariana Grande, in 2019, released her song titled “Monopoly”. She was accused of queerbaiting since a portion of her lyrics mentioned liking “women and men.” Some of her fans interpreted this as a hint of her bisexuality, even celebrating such assumption. On the other hand, other listeners were outraged as they felt that Grande was teasing her fans by hinting her sexuality through her music.
In a society where people are quick to arrive at conclusions through personal biases and speculations, media influencers suffer from such ignorance in a way that they are led to make rash decisions as they shoulder the demands and expectations of their audiences. People, more often than not, tend to crave representation for a cause that they passionately partake in, that they forget the damage implicated along the way in exchange for mere satisfaction.
Indubitably, it is no one’s right to force someone to disclose their gender, let alone conclude it for them regardless whether they feel concerned to do so as it was not their business to snoop into. The choice of coming out only resides with one person, and that should most definitely not be anyone else’s agenda.
Kit, on November 1st, proceeded to write on Twitter, “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.” The aforementioned tweet has garnered social media traction – accumulating over a million likes in just a week.
It would be imperative to also point out that previously, on May 3rd, Kit tweeted his frustrations stating that people on Twitter knew his sexuality better than he did, citing an ongoing tug-of-war between him and Twitter users which led to his most recent tweet. No doubt that it is quite distressing to see one’s sexual orientation be tittle-tattled on by thousands of people on the internet.
This whole fiasco is indicative of the tendency of the audience to explicitly conjoin an individual’s role in entertainment media with their identity in real life, regardless of whatever it may be. This truly creates room for discomfort for an individual, evident with young actor, Kit Connor.
The culture of social media has birthed a toxic habit in ousting an individual into unfamiliarity — outside the closet, unready and unprepared. People attempt to make assumptions, specifically ones that appease our convenience and demands, and at the expense of someone’s comfortability and dignity. Queerbaiting is a practice that needs to be discouraged as it exploits the very essence of a person.
