(Basically) I’m Gay: Pop Culture, Pride, and Privilege

September 2019

Published: CAMP Magazine Volume 2

On the 14th of June, British YouTuber Dan Howell posted a video entitled ‘Basically I’m Gay’. The video went for 45 minutes and 28 seconds and touched on many important topics, such as growing up in a conservative English town, bullying, and the pressures of social media fame, but it had one clear central message: basically, he’s gay. I followed his YouTube career a lot when I was younger and was still aware of him in my periphery, so when this video was released I was instantly informed. I knew about the rumours that surfaced of him being queer through the years, and was distantly aware of the pressures some of his fans used to place on him to reveal more of his personal life. Nevertheless, coming out publicly was something that I had not expected of him. I watched the video when it was released and cried; I watched it again a few days later and tried to really listen. And though it was well made and the story was beautifully told, there was something about it, something that I couldn’t put a finger on just yet, that didn’t sit quite right with me.

Two days later, on the 16th of June, another YouTube channel, The Try Guys, released a video in which one of their four members, Asian-American Eugene Lee Yang, came out as gay. It was very simply titled ‘I’m Gay – Eugene Lee Yang’, and that was the most context we were given. The video was five minutes and eight seconds of choreographed dance featuring Eugene and a cast and set to an instrumental piece by ODESZA. The dance itself was split into seven segments, each representing a different point in Eugene’s life and the seven different colours of the rainbow. The piece was beautiful, filled to the brim with visceral emotion as it showed the struggles of being queer and Asian, of feeling different, of finding a community, of being rejected. It ended with Eugene walking solemnly through a crowd of people dressed in black or white as they argued with each other. His eyes were focused only on the camera. I could feel the heart and passion behind the video, but something within me needed more information. Luckily, the information I was craving arrived in the form of another video they posted two days later entitled ‘Why I’m Coming Out as Gay’. And as I watched this man sit on the floor of a dance studio, anxious and exhausted, struggling to even say the word (gay), the pieces finally clicked.

In Dan’s video, there’s a vein of tension that underlies the words he says. One of the first points he makes, only 50 seconds into the video, is that “in the list of things that identify a person, one of the most important for other people to know is their sexuality”. He goes on to talk about how when he first began to be widely recognised, people felt entitled to information about his sexuality that he wanted to keep personal. He wanted to be able to discover himself on his own timeline. The reason he’s sharing his sexuality publicly now, he admits, is mainly because he feels like he has the capability to help people who might relate to his story or find comfort in it. He explains that he has a large following and a public platform, and he feels the need to use it for good. Many of these sentiments are echoed in Eugene’s video, ‘Why I’m Coming Out as Gay’. Eugene was relatively open about his queerness before his coming out video, but it was all still very ambiguous. He mentions his difficulties accepting himself and labelling himself as specifically, unambiguously gay. He also says that there are people in his life who may react negatively to the revelation. His motivation for the coming out video was that recently, since he started being more open about his queerness, there were many people who came up to him and thanked him for it, and told him that he gave them the courage to come out to their families. Eugene came out because he wanted to do good for the community and he felt he owed them authenticity.

While both coming out videos have similar good intentions – to help young people struggling with their sexualities– they also both allude to similar tensions. Tensions such as the pressure to come out and represent, feeling like they owe their stories to the world, not being fully in control of their own lives. Both creators hint at the feelings of obligation and responsibility they have towards the queer community,  simply by virtue of being ‘not straight’. Eugene takes this even further by mentioning the pressures to be a good role model, not just as a gay man, but as a gay Asian man in the public eye. This pressure to represent, to turn the personal into the public and the political, even to the detriment of real-world relationships and against the wishes of the person in question, seems questionable to me. Yes, there are still people struggling, and yes, it’s always good to have more role models, and yes, we should all aspire to authenticity– and yet...

It seems almost counterintuitive to me for this burden of representation to be placed on the unwilling shoulders of individuals that already suffer the difficulties associated with being openly queer in this heteronormative world. How much of themselves do queer creators owe to the world – or the ‘community’ – simply for being queer? Both Dan Howell and, to an extent, Eugene Lee Yang, were pressured by their audiences to ‘reveal themselves’, to ‘be a good example’, to ‘represent’, with little to no thought as to how this may have affected their real-life situations. Dan revealed in his video that for the majority of his career he didn’t feel safe coming out, and the online commentary on his sexuality, even if done by members of the community who had good intentions, posed a real risk to his safety. These creators are watched with such a close eye, are pressured to such an extent, and through the act of coming out or standing up for their sexualities, they risk so much. They sacrifice portions of their audiences, real-world relationships, even potential career opportunities, in order to fulfil the obligations they feel they owe to the queer community. Queer creators are effectively being punished through this pressure for not being out by the community, only to be punished for being queer by the outside world if they do come out. It is a double-edged sword, one sharpened on one end by feelings of entitlement within the queer community, and on the other by the toxic culture of our wider heteronormative society. Yet, despite all this, I can’t help but feel that coming out is necessary; how else would we normalise queerness if not by coming out and forcing people to acknowledge who we are?

This is the mindset I was in when Taylor Swift released the music video for her newest single ‘You Need to Calm Down’ on the 17th of July. The video was released during Pride month, which, in my opinion, took focus away from actual queer creators and redirected it to Swift’s upcoming album. I didn’t like how the queer cameos in the video were treated like props, popping up around Taylor’s straight, white form and following her through the colourful set. Mostly, I felt frustrated at the apparent lack of awareness of Taylor’s position of pure privilege in this scenario. Keeping in mind the nature of other content released by members of the queer community in the preceding days, it seemed obvious to me that she was not sacrificing anything. She was not putting herself in a position of vulnerability and had not gone through a personal journey to get to the point where she was strong enough to release this message. She was also not opening herself up to personal hate. Yes, there would be people who disagreed with her message, but not people who disagreed with her existence. She would not be on the recieving end of the type of personal attacks that queer creators often face. Instead, it simply felt like she was using the community for clout, to brand herself as ‘progressive’.  It felt like Swift did not – perhaps could not – treat the subject with the weight it deserved, and the only reaction I could muster was one of indignation.

This is not a personal attack on Swift or her music. Instead, I consider it a reflection on the times we live in and the evolving landscape of queer advocacy. The fight for representation and awareness in the public sphere is still ongoing. Yet, we need to be careful about the way it is undertaken. We live in a time where, thankfully, more and more queer individuals feel safe to come out, share their stories, and self-represent. This type of visibility, one that empowers queer individuals through the stories of other queer individuals, has been missing for so long, and thus must be encouraged and prioritised. As more public figures choose to place themselves in a vulnerable position by coming out, it is time for straight, cis ‘advocates’ to step back and listen to what the queer community has to say. They should be using their privilege to amplify the voices of queer people, and not to speak themselves. There will always be a space for allies, but right now, it should not be in the spotlight. 

All of us, queer or not, should be working to create spaces – both online and in the real world – where queer individuals feel that they are safe and able to come out. Rather than forcing other queer individuals to bear the burden of our society’s homophobia by pressuring them to come out before they are ready, we should focus on doing what we can to improve the situation. By finding small ways to empower ourselves and each other, rather than relying completely on the visibility of large creators, we can begin to take some of the pressure off of them and create our own change. That being said, in our current heteronormative world, one where being queer isn’t completely accepted yet, it’s only natural that queer individuals in the public eye feel some pressure to come out. And so, for the time being, perhaps we are stuck. Highly visible queer people will often be pressured to come out to normalise queerness, despite the personal sacrifice and difficulty it may entail. What we can change is how we respond moving forward. These acts of solidarity should be treated with respect. We should give each story the weight, attention, and space it deserves. We should encourage people in the community to tell their own stories in their own time. If we use our privileges wisely and treat each other with love and consideration, perhaps eventually we can make way for new kinds of stories to be told.