I want to preface the recent news on JoJo Siwa by saying that if a woman genuinely thought she was a lesbian – because she’d never been attracted to a male before – only to come out as bisexual (or “queer” as JoJo did), once she discovers she actually is attracted to men, then whatever. How mad can we be? Except that’s not the case with JoJo Siwa. In 2021, Siwa revealed she’s technically pansexual. “I like queer,” she said to Today. “Technically, I would say that I am pansexual because that’s how I have always been my whole life … my human is my human.”
We need to stop portraying JoJo as some clueless little girl on a journey of self-discovery. We need to admit that the lesbian community is once again facing the consequences of another non-lesbian woman identifying as a lesbian until she finds a man worth dating. Despite this news and real-world issue affecting the lesbian community so significantly, I don’t find us totally blameless in the appropriation of lesbianism: we have a habit of seeing a celebrity admit she’s attracted to women and, due to being so representation-starved, we hope so bad she’s like us that we ignore proof she isn’t. Let’s be more careful.
Lesbians are told we’ll “find the right man” who will fix us. That’s precisely the positive response to JoJo Siwa cheating on her female partner, Kath Ebbs, on Celebrity Big Brother UK, with a male reality star named Chris Hughes. The pair became close after Hughes defended Siwa when Mickey Rourke said he could turn her straight. We can all acknowledge Rourke was being homophobic. But a conventionally attractive 30-something year old fuckboy from Love Island courting a 21-year-old “lesbian” who apparently “invented gay pop” is just proof to people that “sexuality is fluid”? Right.
Which is exactly what JoJo said after leaving Big Brother. “Sexuality is a spectrum and is so, so fluid,” she said to Us Magazine. What’s with male-attracted women who previously identified as lesbian pushing fluidity as the peak of enlightenment once they find a man, as if they were *actually* lesbian but decided to level-up?
That’s the same thing a “lesbian” ex-co-worker once said to me. She agreed that lesbianism was female homosexuality, but said “sexuality is fluid” because she “used to be attracted to men.” She “was certain it wouldn’t happen again,” therefore she used “lesbian.” She later randomly left the job to pursue a trad-wife life, popping out kids for some gun-toting, Trump-loving man. She went from radical feminist “lesbian” to reconciling with her ultra-Christian family and cooking dinner every night for some bearded, lesbian-hating male. There’s a big difference between male-attraction and a lesbian forcing herself to marry, date and/or fuck men due to heteronormativity. Pretending to be attracted to males is seeking safety in what’s accepted. Male-attracted women appropriating lesbianism is fetishistic, no matter how you slice it. Women are capable of oppressing each other.
I should be calling JoJo Siwa Joelle Siwa, her real name, because she’s reclaimed it since being liberated from the shackles of lesbian association. Lesbian: a word she has admitted to being disgusted by, despite using. She also said “fuck the L, I’m going to the Q” while falling for Hughes. We’re automatically shown what was only a costume worn by non-lesbian women, while in the lesbian community, the moment they leave. Once with a man, many quickly conform to straight culture and become the traditional, pure, heterosexual-appearing Dream Girlfriend. He’s successfully debugged the “lesbian,” and she shows it by emulating heteropatriarchal visions of the Good Woman—no need to rebel when you’re not an outsider.
Joelle, a far more mature name than JoJo, is seen by homophobes to be growing up and out of silly games like lesbianism. Lesbians are viewed as childlike. Unformed. Traumatised. Only a Grown Woman can overcome the brutality of Man and submit to him. We’re just little girls unable to face our True Purpose. It’s not seen as possible to acknowledge female oppression, as a lesbian, without it being viewed as the reason you are lesbian. Lesbianism is unfathomable to a society that places too much emphasis on the role of males in female lives. Female homosexuality makes men feel irrelevant. That puts us in very real danger if he can’t justify it as an us-problem: she’s sick, she’s traumatised, she’s playing child games, she just hasn’t found the right man yet. No, you and every man on Earth are not as vital as you naturalise.
If I could wear an invisibility cloak where no man would ever see me again, I would. Not because I wouldn’t miss some of them. But because I am so tired of being seen as automatically at male disposal simply for being born female. I am so tired of them assessing my attractiveness, as if it matters, when there is not one cell in my body that wants a real dick close to my pussy. Whether I’m attracted to men or not isn’t even considered; his gaze is supposed to make me feel attractive because how women think about themselves is supposed to reflect what men think about them. I’m born female, so I am viewed as a hole for a man to fill. They weigh me up like the animals they hunt, whether I like it or not. Even in death, we’re not safe, when you consider how it’s not rare for female corpses to be sexually abused by males who work in funeral parlours and mortuaries. I am terrified of rape because I don’t even want to sleep with a man consensually. And I’m very aware that my sexual orientation is an erotic challenge to men. It could be why I get raped. I’ve had many near misses.
The problem in 2025 is that homophobes still be homophobin’, misogynists still be misogynistic, they’re just more clever about it. More clever than Mickey Rourke, who’s clearly copped too many jabs to the head. It can come in the form of courting an out “lesbian,” like Hughes did, rather than straightforwardly telling her he doesn’t respect lesbianism like Rourke. It can come in the form of non-lesbians identifying as lesbians, like JoJo did, and then accusing actual female homosexuals of being exclusionary for defending their oppressed class from appropriation. Being opposite-sex attracted is a privilege under heteronormativity.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a “lesbian” go into the Big Brother house and cheat with a man. In 2013, my then-girlfriend and I watched Big Brother Australia contestant Tully Smyth blatantly cheat on her then-girlfriend Tahlia Farrant with male Big Brother housemate Anthony Drew. Ironically, years later, my then-girlfriend flirted with men once we broke up to get my attention. Nothing is less hot to me than a woman flirting with a man.
Speaking on the Shameless podcast since, Tully Smyth said, “he was a rock star that turned a lesbian and I was a cheating slutty homewrecker.” Sure, I see how men get away with terrible behaviour more often than women do. But spinning “lesbian” women cheating on women with men on live television into a misogyny issue, so she’s the victim rather than her girlfriend or other lesbians, is the kind of ridiculous response you get when you ask bisexual women to stop identifying as lesbian in the first place. Lesbians are accused of misogyny for not wanting other women to cross their boundaries. Lesbianism is seen to be the ultimate sisterhood, so non-lesbian women feel oppressed when denied their feminist fantasy. Tell me you see lesbianism as man-hating, rather than a real sexual orientation, without telling me. How many times did JoJo performatively say she doesn’t like straight men in the Big Brother house? How many times have non-lesbian women tried to connect with you, a lesbian, by shit-talking men?
We cannot deny the fact that many bisexual women who are in relationships with women identify as lesbian despite not being one. Doing so is not only homophobic, but it also leads to perceived evidence that lesbianism is not real, like the Siwa Saga has. You can’t promise you’ll never act on your attraction to half the population again. And you’d still not be a lesbian if you succeeded in that commitment.
What happened with Joelle “JoJo” Siwa is naturally going to happen when “lesbian” is used so loosely. Female homosexuals are supposed to view these harmful outcomes of lesbian appropriation as collateral damage in the quest to use (or abuse?) lesbianism as a feminist strategy, rather than a real sexual orientation defined by ONLY being attracted to women. What word is there for women who aren’t attracted to men? We’re denied one because our experience of NOT being attracted to men isn’t viewed as possible. “Sexuality is fluid” is neo-homophobia.
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