Queer in the time of Selective Allies

Homophobia Sugarcoated: When Conditional Support Becomes Its Own Closet

In an age of instagram activists, being woke gets reduced to a hashtag, basic human rights becomes the new punch de jour and homophobia sometimes wears a rainbow. 

Let's be honest about what selective allyship really is: homophobia with better PR. It does not announce itself with slurs or legislation. It arrives softer — as disappointment, as accusation, as a fandom that claims to love queer stories while hounding the people who tell them into forced confessions. 

It is the friend who cheers for representation on screen and then demands proof of queerness off it. In theory, we have never been more supportive of queer people. And yet, the moment a queer person — or someone suspected of being one — refuses to perform their identity on cue, or doesn't live up to the fantasy and fetishization that comes straight out of a fan’s secret diary, the support evaporates with startling speed. 

We forgot to ask a simple question: supportive of queer people, or supportive of queer people who make themselves legible to us? The difference, it turns out, is everything. 

Queerbaiting was never meant to be a charge you file against a human, it was only designed as a charge against the system. 

In its legitimate self, queerbaiting is a corporate tactic – studios who come out with the kind of queer representation that has a release schedule — conveniently aligned with Pride month and conveniently forgotten by July, a feast that doubles as a farewell. 

These queer romances are made to attract many categories of audience, especially the LGBTQ+ audience, rather than to actually represent queerness in its most authentic self. 

This term – Queerbaiting – was coined to hold such studios accountable but somewhere between critique and sheer hate, this term seems to have gotten lost between a Reddit thread and an Instagram comment. 

Recently this has been very visible – almost crystal clear enough to understand – in the response to Heated Rivalry stars, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie. 

Both actors have received much underserved backlash over their sexuality, you might ask how that concerns us in any way? The answer makes all the difference. 

Hudson Williams (playing Shane Hollander) was met with a wave of hate comments after he posted his girlfriend on social media with fans expressing their “disappointment” after they found out about him being into women – as if these fans had signed a contract with him stating his sexuality on the record. Similarly, with actor Connor Storrie (playing Ilya Rozanov), when asked about his sexuality following the show's record-breaking debut, Storrie answered simply: "Who I date, who I sleep with — I'm gonna keep that to myself." A reasonable boundary, by any measure. 

The response followed accusations of queerbaiting from a significant portion of his own fanbase — a fanbase that, in the same breath, claimed to champion queer stories. 

A fanbase that should've pioneered the way of celebrating queer love went on to spew hatred disguised as comments of “deep concern” and “queerbaiting is such a big issue”. 

We have been here before. In 2022, eighteen-year-old Heartstopper actor Kit Connor was hounded off Twitter by queerbaiting allegations, ultimately coming out as bisexual before he was ready — not in

liberation, but in self-defence. A community that fought for the right to come out on one's own terms became the force that stripped that right from a teenager. The bitter irony has never been adequately reckoned with. 

This pattern keeps showing up in pop culture quite frequently. Dove Cameron was interrogated on whether she was 'queer enough' after releasing music for the community, simply due to her engagement to Damiano David of Måneskin. Similarly, Sabrina Carpenter was criticised—a rather polite use of words that diminishes the hatred she received—for portraying sapphic romance with Jenna Ortega in her 'Taste' music video. Finally, Billie Eilish was being judged on the pedestal of “Is she queer enough?” due to her public dating records.

The list is endless. From a certain perspective, this seems to be a direct result of the public’s entitlement to a celebrity’s private life. 

These stars are placed under a microscope and judged not by their art but by their willingness to disclose. 

This is what soft homophobia looks like. It does not burn crosses. It builds hierarchies. 

Real allyship protects the right not to come out just as fiercely as it celebrates the right to do so. Privacy is not betrayal. Ambiguity is not exploitation. A queer person's identity is not community property — not even the community's property.

The closet is built by fear. In an attempt to protect and represent, we have built even more closets than we have destroyed. 

Queerbaiting is not always accountability but sometimes homophobia that we forget to address, growing within multiple people unknowingly – no matter the number of rainbows painted and posters printed.