#many people invested in policing a queerbaiting line

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

I shared that link for you to have context in case you hadn't seen it, not to out him to the ones who read your blog.  But yes I will never share that video again. That podcast had zero traction outside of its regular viewers who took little or no notice of the statement made in passing. It wasn't until days later a popular larrie tweeted it to her thousands of followers that it spread out to the fandom.  If I had come across that podcast on my own I would never have shared it with the intention of being proven right or to create theories out of it.  And that's the part that truly made me feel shameful and sick to my stomach. Some people were upset with him he made the comment but others were ok with it because they unfortunately have an understanding of Harry's closet that's a decade old. They said harry needs our help to come out and that normally outing someone is wrong but not in this case because harry is closeted against his will.  it's the ones who justified it or took pleasure out of it that will absolutely change the way I interact with harry/larry online queer discussion. Because of the way others reacted to it and made this whole thing into a bigger deal than it needed to be, maybe that's the control you're referring to. I want to control how others are interacting in fandom and I can't.   What I do want is for Harry to have his own control over when and if he comes out and not for someone else to do it for him.  And while the guy saying it might have been joking, saying Ed Sheeran told him harry is gay is more than anyone else said before in all the years of harry sexuality discussion. This was a definitive statement. Harry is gay. And if even one person now thinks he is gay as a result of this video,  which I have seen,  then he's been outed. And that's what makes me so upset.

Oh anon - I'm sorry this is causing you so much distress. I wasn't as considerate of that as I could have been with my response yesterday - I'm sorry for that.

I do think part of the distress comes from catastrophising - and I'm sure that's deeply rooted in your own experience. So I want to send you some love.

Also a lot of this is about other fans - you're super aware that you can't control other people - which is good. But I don't think it helps that you're giving them so much attention. Fans are incredibly annoying, but they don't matter that much. If what fans say is causing you a lot of distress the best step to take is just to walk away.

To move onto the more substative question. I want to start with a subtle distinction that is quite important. The fact that someone thinks that a person is gay does not mean that person has been outted. Outting isn't just about saying someone is gay, but involves authority in quite complex ways.

I think it helps to use that framework of authority to understand this interaction. An ex-youtube comedian told a story on a podcast about getting incredibly drunk with Ed Sheeran and said that Ed Sheeran said that Harry Styles was gay and this conversation took place at a time when people routinely used 'gay' as an insult to have nothing to do with who you were fucking. I think for most people that's not something that has a lot of authority.

I think it would be really helpful to step back a bit from a worldview that says 'if even one person thinks someone is gay, then that person has been outted'. It's super scary, but we can't control what other people think of us - and people do wonder if closeted people are queer.

With Harry in particular, it's useful to understand that people are not receiving that story in a vacuum. This story comes into the picture that people have already built up about Harry. What people have seen will vary, but the picture may include him dressing up as Dorothy, performing Medicine, dancing with pride flags, singing 'I will survive' to the biggest audience he's ever had and given a range of ambiguous responses to questions that come near his sexuality.

If the story was slightly different and the comedian had gotten drunk with someone who was talking about Ed Sheeran - then the response might be different. Some people would think 'I wonder if Ed Sheeran fucks men' more would probably think 'fuck it was terrible when people routinely used 'gay' as an insult'.

Harry doesn't have control over whether or not people think he's queer. But if you look at what he does have control over and how he's decided to present himself, I don't think your anxiety reflects what's going on for him. I think Harry knows that some people think that he's gay and has made decisions about how to present himself in that context.

Harry doesn't get, none of us get, the ability to control how we're perceived. But it is a little absurd to treat one person thinking Harry is gay as a result of watching a video as something that is hugely distressing and catastrophic, when he's dressed up as Dorothy on stage.