Sexuality Indicators: Why Just Assuming Isn’t Enough

Dating while being queer is like shooting darts while blindfolded. Sometimes you will hit the board and manage to spark a connection with someone who isn’t straight and other times you are just shooting in the dark. As ridiculous as it is, there are certain stereotypes that queer people consider when looking for a potential partner. For gay women; rings, dyed hair, and an obsession with frogs and mushrooms are all telltale signs a girl is queer. But is it harmful, to assume someone’s sexuality based on what they wear or what they like?

It most definitely is yet we as a society can’t seem to stop. It seems harmless, and in some cases it is, but it can turn murky real quick when someone who isn’t in the LGBTQ+ community, or who isn’t an ally, uses these stereotypes against us.

This is not only unique to queer women. Society also labels certain attributes and fashion trends “gay” when men participate in them - this is often used as an insult. For some reason, if a man has his nails painted or wears makeup, he is assumed to be queer. While assuming that a person might be queer because of fashion choices such as these isn’t a terrible thing to do, assuming and then putting someone down for wearing it is a different story. Some people (often conservatives) become extremely threatened by the idea of someone exploring outside of gender and sexuality binaries. So they find themselves labelling certain activities and fashion choices as “gay” to put down the people that participate in them. But queer people have been expressing themselves through fashion for generations because often that was the only way we could truly be ourselves.

Being queer often feels like the idea represented in the image above. Today, so many people are able to come out as LGBTQ+, and the idea of not being fully heterosexual or cisgender is becoming a part of our society. Yet, it still feels like as a queer person, all eyes are on us at all times, judging, assuming, and analyzing. This feeling of exposure is often what prevents many people from wanting to come out in the first place. It can become very overwhelming, especially if you don’t choose to label yourself. When so many people are assuming your sexuality and you have not figured it out yet, it feels like you are being placed on a faulty pedestal, not because they want to see you succeed, but because they want to see you fail and crumble. The whole problem with assuming people’s sexualities based on outside appearances or interests is that it places people in boxes, even if it’s not intentional. It is always best to get to know someone before assuming, and never holding their sexuality or gender expression against them. Assuming and making general assumptions about queer people also places all queer people under one umbrella. This can be problematic because then you are assuming all queer people are the same when we most certainly are not.

This can most easily be seen in TV and other media formats. There is a lot of straight people casting and writing queer characters, and then failing to give them complex identities outside of the fact they identify as LGBTQ+. An example of this could be in the latest Scream movie, where directors must have felt in order to be diverse and represent Gen Z correctly, there should be at least one queer character. I applaud them for this, but the way she is depicted is so lacklustre. In her first scene, I noticed she was wearing a rainbow heart pin, and I thought to myself, there is just no way that Scream’s idea of trying to be more inclusive is including a queer character who wears a rainbow pin as if that is a token item all queer people have. Last time I checked, when you come out they don’t just mail you one.

Some might think I’m overreacting here, that any representation is a good representation, and what’s the problem with a little pride pin? The problem for me was this queer character felt like she was written by a straight person - it didn’t feel genuine. If movies and TV shows are going to make the effort to include queer characters, they should just do it right.

The Netflix show, Sex Education, is the perfect example of a TV show that revolves around queer storylines and does it flawlessly. Sex Education portrays queer people across sexuality and gender spectrums without sticking to usual stereotypes but instead explores characters’ complex identities. Sure, Ola, one of the characters from Sex Education, also wears a pride pin, but her presence on screen is so much different than the surface level queer character from Scream. Ola is authentic, real and someone I and other queer people can relate to. To be fair, Scream has never been and never will be a soul searching coming of age masterpiece. It’s just a slasher series, but their representation of queer people could have gone beyond the pride pin.

Queer people recognize that we are extremely lucky to be living during a time where we can be so open about our sexuality and genders. At least in the United States, we have the privilege to love one another equally on the legal level. But with this acceptance also comes passive aggressive homophobia and transphobia from people who claim to be “woke” but just come off as clueless. This ignorance and lack of understanding of the complexity of queer identities can be felt by heterosexual and cisgender people through basic assumptions about what queer people should be, as opposed to who we actually are.