CNN —
The pressure on 18-year-old actor Kit Connor to come out had been building on social media for months.
Connor, a star of Netflix teen rom-com Heartstopper, said Monday that he feels he’s being pushed out of the closet — a worrying new development at the intersection of abandonment culture and identity police.
In the coming-of-age series with a refreshing queer storyline, Connor plays British high school rugby Nick Nelson, along with his classmate Charlie Spring, played by Joe Locke, who falls in love with him. Over the course of the eight-episode series, based on Alice Oseman’s graphic novel of the same name, Nick begins to question his own sexuality as his feelings for Charlie grow.
The show was so well received when it launched this year that it has already been renewed for two more seasons. It’s one of the first to feature LGBTQ characters – both Nick and Charlie, as well as others in the main cast – and is aimed at teen and young adult audiences. Unlike shows like “Sex Education” and “Euphoria” which, while also wonderfully sexual and gendered, are more explicit.
Calls for Connor to address his own guidance began this spring with taunts on Twitter that he addressed in a tweet, and said, “Twitter is so funny man. apparently some people here know my sexuality better than I do…” Still, that pressure didn’t let up, and Connor became the target of what social media mobs dubbed “queerbaiting,” with claims the show was trying to attract people with broader ones LGBTQ-inclusive themes without intentionally revealing his character’s identity — and perhaps Connor did the same.
The truth about Nelson’s character, as well as Connor’s real-life identity, is possibly much more nuanced. Nonetheless, Connor, who clearly felt cornered, tweeted on Halloween to his 1 million followers that he is bisexual: “back for a minute. I’m bi,” he wrote. “Congratulations on forcing an 18 year old to come out. I think some of you missed the point of the show. Goodbye.”
There’s a lot to unpack in this story, not the least of which is that a young adult was forced to very publicly share parts of his own identity that are very private — and may still be in flux.
Connor felt the pressure of a moralistic social media mob, a quick attacking, slow forgiving force that requires you to answer their questions immediately with no room for nuance or context. This is not how we should act as a culture.
Sometimes the Twitter mob pushes real issues to the surface and converts them to favorable outcomes more quickly. Sometimes it just blows everything up and walks away, not caring what victims it leaves in its wake.
Connor’s outing is the latest in a string of celebrities recently forced to come out to prevent tabloid media from revealing or “leaking” it, and stands in contrast to the long history of Hollywood celebrities being forced to stay in the closet to stay or risk their own careers.
From the closed-off actor Rock Hudson in the 20th century to the openly transgender actor Elliot Page today, performers have long had to live double lives and hide their true identities to stay on the A-list — even to stay safe and alive. It took Ellen DeGeneres decades to rebuild her career after appearing on the cover of TIME magazine in 1997, at the same time as her character on the ABC sitcom of the same name.
It’s true that many LGBTQ characters in contemporary media — from murderers, murder victims, sex workers, and one-dimensional characters who deliver a punch line — have evolved into real people, including those who are not just the sidekick, but the leads.
These include Michaela Jay Rodriguez, Billy Porter, Dominique Jackson and Indya Moore in FX’s ‘Pose’; Sara Ramirez as Callie Torres in Grey’s Anatomy (and, yes, as Che Diaz in Sex and the City spinoff And Just Like That); the cast of this year’s films “Fire Island” and “BROS” and Zendaya as Rue Bennett from HBO’s “Euphoria”, just to name a few. As far as representation in the media is concerned, we have achieved a lot in a short time.
(HBO and HBO Max are both owned by CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.)
Now LGBTQ audiences are rightly asking the tough questions about who gets to play LGBTQ characters. Is a cisgender person playing a transgender character a black-faced white actor or is she playing the role of a BIPOC person, or is there some other litmus test? Does acting mean playing a character that is distinct from the actor’s personal identity, or are there rules we still need to appropriately establish and abide by?
Cisgender actors like Eddie Redmayne, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as a transgender woman in The Danish Girl, later said he regretted stepping into the role and that she had a transgender woman should be reserved. But other casting choices, like Cate Blanchett or Mara Rooney, who play lesbians in the stunning 2015 film Carol, feel more forgivable. Perhaps it’s more palatable to cast someone to play a character they don’t identify in their personal life if they were cast by a director, producer, or writer who authentically embodies that identity.
Who is allowed to create queer art and media – and what counts as accurate representation? Would a television series or film garner attention if a star-studded cishet cast was substituted to host the representation? What if the show’s writers or directors are queer but the actors aren’t?
While casting openly queer actors in leading roles is progress, using criticism of queerbaiting and appropriation as an excuse to force a teen or other actor out of the closet is not the answer. These conversations have reached a climax, and the outcome hurts people who should be allowed to make their own decisions about when and how to come out, if at all.
For thousands of years people have felt the need to categorize things in the world in order to make sense of them. Younger people are breaking through this rigid framework with more fluid gender identities and romantic expressions. That makes some people uncomfortable (read: the current culture wars targeting trans children, LGBTQ rights, literature, and school politics, among other things). But many of these disruptors also call for people like Connor, who now put a box with a label on the front – and share it with the world in a short time.
Coming out isn’t a one-off act or something fixed, and why should it be? Identities are shifting and many young people are still searching for themselves. What we shouldn’t do is publicly get someone to share a part of themselves that they may not be ready or want to share.
As LGBTQ rights face heightened threats in the United States and around the world, coming out requires a very different assessment of risks and impacts. There’s only one person who should make that decision, and no, it’s not a Twitter troll.
Note: There are many resources for those who want to learn more about how best to support those coming out as LGBTQ and for people exploring the queer corners of their own sense of self.