JoJo Siwa shared a TikTok recently clarifying some unexpected drama surrounding her personal dislike of the word “lesbian.” But let’s back up a second — what actually happened?
Towards the end of July, the 19-year-old did an interview with Yahoo!Life during which she touched upon the responsibility she’s felt to young LGBTQ+ fans after coming out as queer herself.
During this interview, she also mentioned that she doesn’t like to label herself using the word “lesbian.”
“I don’t like the word itself,” she said, in a statement classified by the interview itself as a “joke.” “It’s just like a lot. But I mean, at the end of the day, that’s what I am. … It’s like the word moist. It’s just like … ugh!”
Siwa has seemingly struggled to find the right terminology for her sexuality — a completely understandable thing for someone young and figuring things out. She has previously referred to herself as pansexual, queer, and, very frequently, simply “gay.”
But her comments about the word “lesbian” rubbed some fans who felt she was being disparaging to their identity and adding to existing stigmas surrounding the word the wrong way.
Siwa ultimately responded to the backlash on TikTok, hoping to clarify her stance and reassure concerned and hurt fans in the LGBTQ+ community.
“I never said that ‘lesbian’ is a dirty word, and I never, ever would say that it’s a dirty word, because it is not. It is not a bad word, it is not a slur, and it is especially not a word that I am ashamed of saying, or ashamed of identifying as by any means.
She went on to clarify that she doesn’t “hate the word ‘lesbian,’” she just doesn’t like the sound of it and doesn’t feel like it’s the right label for her personally.
“Whenever someone talks to me about my sexuality, I just say that I’m gay,” she said. “It’s not the word that flows off the tongue for me, if that makes sense.”
Terminology can be a contentious topic, even within the LGBTQ+ community, but Siwa is certainly allowed to have her preferences as to what labels she wants applied to her and how she feels the most comfortable describing her own sexuality. Calling a word “ugh” probably isn’t the best way to get that point across, however, but hopefully now everything is all cleared up!
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