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tippitytap · 8 months

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On Harry Styles' 'queer icon' status and the problem it bears

Fair warning: I went a little off the rails and this is going to be looooong. I don't expect anyone to read it, but a little forehead kiss to everyone who does actually sit through the entire thing. Mwah.

Alrighty. Let's get to it:

The past three years in particular, but also ever since 1D days, there has been many, many, many conversations and opinions on Harry Styles, his love life and his status as a so-called 'queer icon.' (I personally don't agree with that term for him, but it's what people sometimes call him, so...) People who don't know a lot about Harry, straight and queer people alike, have pointed out countless times how he is hurting and appropriating the queer community, profiting off of us, not standing up enough for us, and so forth. Those voices are almost always met with an uproar from his fandom, shouting on about how Harry does not owe his label to anyone and how he is allowed to dress the way he dresses without having to publicly claim a group he belongs to, be that sexual orientation or gender identity.

And while I do think his fandom is right to do so *to a certain degree*, I think they also quickly shut down many conversations we really should have as a fandom, as a society, as a queer community and I don't like how a lot of harries don't create the space to have these important discussions.

I think there is a disconnect in the two conversations - conversation A being what the general public and media want to say, conversation B being what the fandom wants to say - and they're both valid discussions but they don't necessarily answer to each other. I think it starts with what Harry Styles has actually *done* over the years:

This is an incomplete list of all the things Harry has *done* over the years, but they're the ones brought up most often. I will exclude the things he has *said* after having been asked about his sexuality directly because I will talk about that later. In no particular order, Harry Styles has: used gender-neutral pronouns to talk about his 'ideal' partner, very publicly grown into his sex and love life as an adult man, hooked up with various women (here: either dated them in actuality or presented himself as a couple with those women for the media), said 'female' is 'not that important' as a trait for things he looks for in a lady, experimented with fashion (starting as soon as he felt comfortable to do so/ was allowed to do so outside the band), continued to have fun with clothes and sometimes wore things that are deemed outlandish - extravagant - colourful - gender neutral or 'belonging' to the female sex - sexy (as in he has sex appeal in those clothes), appeared on the cover of Vogue wearing a ballgown as well as a skirt in another part of the photoshoot, waved pride flags that fans have thrown on stage, made various speeches about how he supports all of us no matter who we want to be, wore nail polish, wore pride pins or other rainbow items (particularly in 2017/18), wore a necklace around his neck with a banana that looks like a dick, wrote songs based on his life experiences without ever stating who those songs were about, and he has played a gay man in a movie role. So far for things Harry has *done*.

What most (not all, but most) of these things have in common in my opinion is that Harry does them without feeling the need to justify himself on it. He does what he enjoys, and he kind of doesn't give a fuck about whether there is an appropriate and socially-accepted label for it or not. Harry doesn't wear dresses to tell anyone he isn't cis or he's gay, and I don't think he wears dresses to break gender-norms and be a role model - he wears them because he liked how they looked, enjoyed how he looked in them, and it was fun. I don't think that is a crime, and I also think that cis-het men are allowed to wear dresses or nail polish just as much as anybody else in this world. If you don't agree with this, then your problem is not Harry Styles, your problem is somewhere else entirely and, quite frankly, we will never agree on this unless you change your mind because I certainly won't.

Now, I think the fundamental problem is that a lot of people are not very good at accepting people just do things for fun or that they do things that lie outside their category of 'normal, acceptable societal behaviour' without having a 'reason' for it. (With reason I mean that many people couldn't accept certain behaviour from people, but when they know that the person is gay for example, they can 'blame' it on that. I don't support this, but I've seen it happen way too many times to deny it isn't a real thing that happens all the time.) People *want* to say 'Look, Harry Styles is wearing a dress on the Vogue cover! He does that because he's gay!' This is the point where I would find it acceptable for the fandom to chime in with their conversation and patiently explain that, actually, you don't need to be queer to do any of these things, and you especially don't need to publicly label yourself as queer to do these things.

However, the general public has moved on from that and I would like to argue that they also kind of don't give a fuck about Harry's past, what he said ten years ago, or even what he said in a setting that only ever reached the fandom. They care about what is in the big media, and they care about what is *currently* happening. And they're not satisfied with the fandom's answer of 'he doesn't owe us an explanation' which is why they prod and ask until we get to the point where we also have a category of the things Harry has *said*.

To this, I want to make a petty disclaimer as a fangirl before I go further because a lot of people have used the things he has *said* as their evidence to why he is a bad person/queerbaiter/etc. but: If you had never asked him, he would have never said any of those things. If it were just okay to be himself without this incessant need for a label, you wouldn‘t have half the arguments you love to use to call him out. We know Harry isn't the best public speaker, and I find it a little vile to hold people to this level of accountability over things they said when you specifically cornered them into this corner and you *wanted* them to say something fucked up. It doesn't mean I support everything he has said in those situations, but there is a line imo that we shouldn't cross. At one point, you need to accept that he didn't have a good reaction in that moment and then move on. Okay, pettiness over.

As a huge Harry Styles fan, I have no problem admitting that some of the things he has said in those instances *were* fucked up, infuriating and purposefully misleading. I can 100% understand why he has said the things because I've been a fan for almost a decade and I know his patterns when it comes to interview replies, but my understanding of it doesn't make his answers into a good thing or gives him an excuse for them. Personally, I interpret his vagueness around the topic as many other fans do too and it means he is queer as well (or at the very least was questioning his sexual orientation at the moments of the interviews), but that still is an *interpretation* and I could end up being fully wrong one day, yeah. Maybe this is an instance of seeing the good versus seeing the bad in someone, accusing someone until proven innocent or rather giving them the benefit of the doubt. If you're wired to accuse rather than doubt, then I can't change you, as you can't change me for rather seeing the good in people. I don't think it makes your opinion superior to mine though.

I think it's totally valid for fans to defend Harry *to a certain point*. I want to emphasise the last point because I recognise that many fans also take it too far and defend him for things he shouldn't be defended for. I will never have that type of attitude about anyone, and I definitely think that that type of fan behaviour is very dangerous and problematic. Every single person on this planet makes mistakes, including my favourite artists. Their name does not - and should not - obtuse them from anything. Ever. At the same time, there's definitely things that the media likes to twist about Harry that look a lot different when you contextualise and explain them. And I'm glad the fans are doing that work because we all know Harry or his team won't ever say shit in their own defence.

I think it's also totally valid to question the things he has said, get a little angry over some things and demand a better explanation or conversation around it. Some things he has said *are* infuriating and contributing to an ongoing, harmful conversation about queer issues. That's not Harry's fault by any means (the harmful conversations I mean), but since his words do have a lot of reach, he also has to be aware of what people do with them and how they could potentially contribute to ongoing debates. Sometimes it does cause problems when he's evasive and avoidant on his own label and a lot of it could be solved if he just said it, yeah, and I think it's okay that other people get frustrated by those situations. Personally, I haven't really seen any situations where I would have said that situation has higher priority to Harry's rights of privacy and choosing or not choosing to come out, but I don't know. Maybe I haven't seen all situations either. I think what's important to remember for both sides is: There's a side for whom the situation is more important than Harry's individual experience, and there's a side for whom Harry's individual experience is more important than the collective situation. The underlying issue is not Harry himself, but rather a fundamental difference in politics, societal etiquette and sometimes also morals.

To be 100% honest as a fan of Harry's: Do I like whenever something like this happens and people demand an apology from Harry or try to cancel him? No, in all honesty, my knee-jerk-reaction is to say 'fuck off and leave him alone.' But I don't think that's very fair, so I do hear out a lot of people and read through what they have to say on the topic. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't. That doesn't mean that these things should never be allowed to be talked about, even if the voices are wrong, sometimes it really is necessary to have that civil conversation to determine what's 'right' and 'wrong.' (Most of the times there isn't a right and wrong anyways.) Trampling down any voices who dare to speak up 'against' Harry with no rhyme or reason, or even not hearing the person out first needs to stop in this fandom because it's so fucked up. Dismantle the arguments that you *can* dismantle, but you also have to accept that not everyone likes Harry and sometimes he does fucked up shit.

I think both sides could profit from some nuance, and realising what they're actually arguing with. The fandom side is right in advocating for the right of privacy, the right to choose when and how to come out, and the right to do certain things without having to be queer for it. They're also right to defend Harry when the media twists his words or leaves out important context. At the same time, the media is allowed to discuss over how Harry's public appearances and interviews (sometimes negatively) shape the media landscape, how they have negatively contributed to queer conversations, or how they're not sure whether it's still okay for him to do some things without being out. Those two sides don't always necessarily reply to each other, but everyone acts as if they do and it ends up in a huge mess that doesn't actually resolve anything.

Another disconnect that I see happening quite frequently is when the media dares to publish a think-piece on the whole topic and sometimes overly blames Harry for things that aren't actually fully his fault, but rather the fault of how the general public has reacted to it and twisted it. (Think waving a pride flag for example. There's nothing wrong with waving a pride flag, even straight musicians wave them around constantly in a show of allyship and support. But when it comes to Harry, a lot of it has been twisted around so much that I've seen people demand Harry stop doing it and that he's a bad person for waving it around in the first place.) To those think-pieces, fans also swarm and demand it to be taken down because the author didn't do any research and Harry is well in his right to do thing xy. Again, that's not the argument you should have, and you're not doing anyone any favours by having the wrong conversations. You'll only turn in circles and never reach an end.

At the end of the day, I understand how emotional this whole topic can be. Of course I also get angry and frustrated when I see people calling Harry out for being harmful towards the queer community. How can a person who has helped me SO IMMENSELY in my own queer journey be hurting us? That doesn't make sense, does it?

It's a difficult and complex and maybe even harsh truth but: I think every person can do good for one person while simultaneously also hurt others. Two people are never in the same context, and in this particular case, there's two very distinct sides on opposite ends of Harry. For the fandom, his actions do a lot of good because we see a lot of him, we listen to his words that don't reach public media and (most importantly) everything we see of him, we receive in a context of other fans who love him and who get the helpful sides of him. Non-fans receive those bouts of information in a completely different environment, one where people around them get frustrated by it or misinterpret it or have someone else misinterpret his actions to use it specifically and directly against the person. Obviously that sucks and isn't in Harry's control, but I think we should also cut the people some slack who're not on the good side, and they deserve the space to be frustrated just as much as we deserve the space to be grateful and celebrate.

I can't even remember where I was going with this all, but I think the TL;DR truth is: When it comes to this topic, there's no right side and no wrong side. Both sides have fucked up, both sides have good intentions and good arguments, and both sides also talk utter bullshit at other times. And I'm kind of getting tired of it because it's the same circle-arguments just reheated every time something happens or someone publishes an article, all the while there's so many more important conversations we should have on the issue.

#harry styles #rambles #just needed to get this off my chest somewhere #im probably not making any sense lol #but I've been thinking about this for years now #hopefully someone writes a good article on it soon that can go viral and shut everyone up #at least for a little while #lets have the more important conversations and stop circling around this one

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