“Queerbaiting” as a concept has really been a part of the news cycle of the past few weeks, with singers Harry Styles and Bad Bunny both finding themselves part of the Internet Discourse™. The latest target of queerbaiting allegations is Kit Connor, who won over the hearts of millions as Nick Nelson in Netflix’s Heartstopper.
It all started when a video of him holding hands in Paris with Maia Reficco, his co-star in the forthcoming YA adaptation A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow, surfaced on Twitter. After seeing the video, some fans chided Connor for queerbaiting, since he plays a gay character on Heartstopper. Connor announced that he would be leaving the blue hellsite shortly thereafter, tweeting, “this is a silly silly app. bit bored of it now, deleting twitter.” Entertainment news account PopCrave tweeted a screenshot of the video.
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Some fans speculate that accusations of queerbaiting led Connor to delete his Twitter account, which led others to jump to the actor’s defense.
For those who don’t know, “queerbaiting” originally referred to a phenomenon wherein cishet creators allude to the possibility of queer relationships in fictional texts without ever actualizing those relationships. Experts say the term was borne out of fan cultures of the 2010s, at which point it was used to criticize shows like the BBC’s Sherlock. However, it has taken on new life online, where people often use the term to criticize celebrities who seem to adopt queer aesthetics without identifying as queer. Once it started being applied to real people rather than fictional texts, controversy ensued.
To reiterate: this is an 18-year-old we’re talking about, and one who plays a queer teenager but who has not spoken publicly about his own sexuality, likely because he is, again, 18.
Unfortunately for Connor, this isn’t the first time he’s faced such a social media firestorm. Earlier this year in May, he tweeted, “twitter is so funny man. apparently some people on here know my sexuality better than I do…” Connor also spoke more extensively about the “queerbaiting” phenomenon in a May appearance on the Reign with Josh Smith podcast, per Pink News.
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“I mean, for me, I feel like I’m perfectly confident and comfortable with my sexuality,” Connor said. “I’m not too big on labels and things like that. I’m not massive about that, and I don’t feel like I need to label myself, especially publicly.”
He also noted that it was “a bit strange to make assumptions about a person’s sexuality just based on hearing their voice or seeing their appearance,” adding, “I feel like that’s a very interesting, slightly problematic sort of assumption to make.”
This happens far too often with public figures, but it’s worth repeating: queerbaiting as a term was never meant to be applied to actual, real-life people. Calling Supernatural queerbaiting? Fine, and perhaps the best example of it. But real life people are not fictional characters and can’t be defined neatly by pre-determined narratives, so let this incident be another nail in the coffin for ever using that term to refer to celebrities ever again.
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