How Sexual Identity Labels Fail Contemporary Queer Life

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
You are now tuned in to Vanisha R.
Dailey.
Please say the Dailey.
Hey, hey y'all! Welcome toanother episode of Please Say

(00:36):
the Dailey.
I am your host, Vanisha R.
Dailey, and this is episode 16.
I just finished my very firstsemester of grad school with A's
and B's, and you better believeI will be celebrating because
that was not easy.
But look, before we get intothis episode, I want to start

(01:00):
with something important.
If you've ever felt questioned,minimized, or erased in your
sexuality, especially insidequeer spaces, this episode is
for you.
And if you've ever foundyourself judging someone else's
queerness, even quietly, I wantyou to stay with me through this

(01:21):
conversation.
If this podcast resonates withyou, the simplest way to support
is to follow the show.
Share this episode with someonewho needs it.
Or send me a message with yourthoughts.
I'd love to hear from you.
Let's get into it.
So there's been thisconversation that I've been

(01:51):
seeing pop up on social media,mostly threads, TikTok as well.
But it shows up as jokes or hottakes and think pieces.
But underneath it all is thesame unresolved tension.
Studs dating so-called straightwomen is suspicious,

(02:13):
problematic, or somehow evidenceof harm.
Every time it pops up, thecomments explode.
And what people think they'redebating are labels or dating
preferences, standards.
But what they're actuallydebating is legitimacy.
Who belongs?
Who counts?

(02:33):
Who gets access to the queercommunity?
And under what conditions.
So today I want to slow thisconversation down, not to bring
even more heat to thediscussion, but to understand
what's really happeningunderneath it.
For context, if you're newhere, I'm a graduate student

(02:55):
studying digital sociology, andI'm also queer, bisexual, but
I'm interested in how sexualidentities are shaped not just
by personal desire, but bysocial structures, cultural
narratives, and power.
This topic matters to me notjust personally, but

(03:16):
academically, because thesedebates tell us a lot about how
communities reproduce harm evenwhile claiming liberation.
Let's just go ahead and saythis right up front.
If a woman is dating a stud,she is not straight.
That doesn't mean that she hasto have everything figured out

(03:37):
about her sexuality.
Nor does it mean that she hasto immediately claim a label.
Because some people have arguedthat some of these women call
themselves straight.
But that's what people forget.
Sexuality is very complex.
People have to go at their ownpace and feel out their own

(04:00):
unique situation before it makesperfect sense to them.
So it doesn't mean that herattraction has a neat narrative,
or at least it doesn't have to,but it does mean that calling
her straight is inaccurate.
And what's interesting is howcommitted people are to

(04:21):
preserving that mislabeling.
Instead of asking, what doesher attraction tell us?
People jump straight toquestioning her motives, her
sincerity, her legitimacy, herworthiness of queer space.
By calling her straight, weerase the complexity of her

(04:43):
sexuality, and we do itintentionally.
Because acknowledgingcomplexity would require us to
accept that sexuality is notsomething people arrive at all
at once, fully formed with theperfect language.
And that makes peopleuncomfortable.

(05:03):
This conversation doesn't existin a vacuum.
Studs, which the word studrefers to strictly black
masculine lesbians, and that'sif they actually call themselves
that term.
Please understand that the wordstud has cultural significance

(05:27):
to it.
Cultural and historical,actually, but my point in
mentioning this is the fact thatstud is not a word for all
people that are masculinepresenting lesbians.
Studs receive disproportionatebacklash in this topic.
They're framed as naive,desperate, predatory, or even

(05:50):
self-betraying for dating womenwho were earlier in their queer
journeys.
And that backlash mirrorssomething very familiar.
Just like we see the genderwars inside black heterosexual
communities, we see a lot ofthose same dynamics reproduced
inside LGBTQ spaces.

(06:12):
Patriarchy doesn't disappearwhen a person comes out.
It adapts.
So yes, if we're going to havethis conversation about studs
dating straight women, we needto have a talk about how
hegemonic standards shapedesire.

(06:32):
We can discuss how masculinity,even in queer spaces, is
rewarded, romanticized, andsometimes exploited.
But we cannot isolate studswithin this conversation as the
only issue without acknowledgingthe larger system shaping all

(06:54):
of us.
Because the truth is,heteronormativity and patriarchy
influence queer communitiestoo.
You see it when masculinity isglorified, femininity is
expected to be submissive.
Same sex couples replicatebinary gender roles.

(07:16):
Weddings require one tux andone gown.
Two masculine women togetherare marked as being too gay,
isn't that crazy?
I've witnessed this firsthand.
I remember being in queerspaces when I was in my early
twenties in Atlanta.

(07:36):
And any time there were twomasculine presenting women
together, people viewed it asstrange or excessive.
People made fun of this, as ifqueerness itself had rules about
acceptable presentation.
All of this tells us one thing.
We have been taught thatrelationships must look a

(08:00):
certain way, even when we don'tfit those standards ourselves.
Once you strip away the memesand the jokes, this conversation
isn't actually about studs.
And it's not really aboutstraight women either.
It's about policing who gets tobelong.
Who gets to be considered queerenough?

(08:22):
Are they allowed access intothe community?
Or what about respect?
Are they deserving of it?

And it also begs the question: how much experience is required (08:30):
undefined
before someone's identity istaken seriously?
And underneath all of that isthis very quiet hierarchy.
How long have you been queer?
How many same genderrelationships have you had?

(08:52):
How visible is your queerness?
And is it clear for otherpeople to read?
This turns queerness intosomething that you have to
qualify for instead of an actuallived experience by way of
identity.
I want to pause here becausethis is where people get

(09:15):
defensive, honestly.
When I name policing, samefolks hear accusation instead of
observation.
But when people police, itdoesn't always require bad
intentions.
Often, it grows out of fear,fear that something will be

(09:36):
taken away.

And let me say this (09:38):
queer people did not invent that fear.
It comes from living in a worldwhere access to safety, love,
and legitimacy have always beenconditional.
So when someone new enters thequeer space, someone still
figuring things out, it can feelthreatening.

(10:00):
But fear-based protection isdifferent from care-based
protection.
One builds walls, and the otherbuilds capacity.
And the reality is thatcommunities built around walls
don't actually stay safe, theyjust get smaller.

(10:20):
From a sociologicalperspective, sexuality is not

(10:57):
just fluid, it is shaped.
Most people are raised inenvironments where
heterosexuality is assumed,enforced, and rewarded.
Queerness is shaped as deviant,temporary, or dangerous.
So when someone comes out oreven considers it, they're doing

(11:21):
so against years ofconditioning.
And some people unfortunatelylearned early that queerness
meant family rejection,religious punishment, violence,
and even social isolation.
So they tucked it away, theysurvived, and they complied.

(11:41):
That doesn't mean that thedesire disappeared.
Masking is not erasure, andsuppression is not absence.
So when someone exploresqueerness later on in life, it's
rarely something new.
It's something delayed.
But here's where I've noticedone of the many double standards

(12:07):
within the queer community.
When men explore same genderattraction, even once, society
quickly removes the possibilityof him being heterosexual.
One deviation and the labelsticks.
He's gay.
And in rare cases, he would belabeled as bisexual.

(12:30):
But oftentimes, men aren't evengranted legitimate access to
that label.
But when a woman dates a woman,suddenly everyone bends over
backwards to keep them straight.
That's not accidental.
Women are socially framed asemotionally flexible,

(12:52):
experimental, and unserious.
Their desires are treated assoft, negotiable, and temporary.
Men's sexuality is treated asrigid and defining.
A woman's sexuality is treatedas something that happens to
her.
So when she expresses queerdesire, people dismiss it as

(13:16):
curiosity instead of identity.
Bisexual people, especiallywomen, are consistently erased
from both heterosexual and queernarratives.
Bisexuality is treated as aphase, as confusion, indecision,
something that disappearsdepending on who someone is

(13:38):
dating.
But bisexuality doesn't justdisappear based on a partner
choice.
A bisexual woman dating a manis still bisexual.
A bisexual woman dating a womanis still bisexual.
So a bisexual woman dating astud is what?

(13:59):
Yeah, you're right, it's notstraight.
It's bisexual.
When communities refuse toacknowledge this, they create
harm because research shows thatbisexual people experience
higher rates of anxiety anddepression, more rejection from

(14:19):
queer spaces, less access tocommunity support, and social
support is one of the strongestprotective factors for mental
health.
Erasure isn't abstract, it hasconsequences.
I want to be very clear aboutsomething here.

(14:41):
By erasure isn't just aboutlanguage, it's about access.
When bisexual people aretreated as not queer enough,
they lose access to communityknowledge, to mentorship, to
support systems that matter,especially during moments of
vulnerability.

(15:01):
And when queer spaces mirrorthe same conditional belonging
people faced in heterosexualenvironments, it reinforces
isolation rather than healing.
We talk a lot about chosenfamily, but chosen family still
requires choice.
And exclusion breaks thatpromise.

(15:23):
A little personal story.
I remember when I was hangingout in the LGBTQ scene, once
again in my early 20s inAtlanta, such a fun period of
time in my life.
But I definitely recall when Istarted to explore more in my
sexuality with dating men aswell.

(15:44):
My friends at the time startedto treat me differently.
It's like I was being shunned,I was being shamed in a way.
And it was because that sort offluidity made them
uncomfortable.
But remember, if you'velistened to any of my previous
episodes about sexuality, I'vealways known that I was

(16:06):
bisexual.
It's never been something thatgave me any type of discomfort.
So what did I do?
I stopped hanging out withthose people because if you
can't accept me for who I am,what are we really even doing
here?
And honestly, I kind of steppedaway from hanging out in the
LGBTQ scene because of that.

(16:28):
Once every blue moon, I'd hangout, but I really was not into
hanging out in those spaces ifthat was going to be the energy
that I'd receive.
And interestingly enough, oneof the women that I was hanging
out with back then said to memany years later in my inbox

(16:48):
that she admires just how solidI've always been in my identity,
regardless of if peopleaccepted me or not.
And I know that she had manychallenges navigating her own
sexual identity, with religiousfactors coming up as well.
Isn't that ironic?
But the sad part about all ofthis is where that judgment

(17:13):
comes from.
It unfortunately comes fromwithin the queer community.
If someone is being braveenough to explore a new side of
themselves that they haven'tbeen able to in the past, the
least that we can do is not pushthem out.
Allow them the space and thesafety that many of us wish that

(17:35):
we were given.
People who should understandwhat it feels like to question,
to fear, to grow, insteadreproduce the same barriers they
once faced.
They require proof.
They demand history.
They expect performance.

(17:55):
But how does someone gainexperience if the community
rejects them for not having it?
That's not protection.
It's exclusion.
Sexuality is not something youearn.
It's something you uncover.
Not everyone has the sametimeline.

(18:16):
Some people needed distancefrom their hometown, some needed
therapy, representation, someneeded safety, or even time to
outgrow the shame that they wereexperiencing.
You cannot judge someone'sjourney without knowing their
context.

(18:36):
And you can't build communityby punishing people for arriving
late to the party.
So when people say a studdating a straight woman, what
they're actually revealing istheir own discomfort with
ambiguity, attachment to rigidcategories, internalized

(19:00):
patriarchy, the fear of dilutingidentity, and anxiety about
belonging.
This is not about protectingqueer spaces, it's really about
controlling them.
If we want healthier, queercommunities, we have to let go

(19:35):
of the idea that queerness mustlook one way, arrive one way, or
prove itself on demand.
People deserve room to discoverwho they are without being
treated like visitors in theirown community.
Queerness is not a test.
So can we please stop hinderingother people's experience with

(20:00):
their queerness?
Allow them to be free, allowthem to venture and develop.
It's a process.
Before you go, I want you tosit with this question.
Where did you need grace inyour own journey?
And who could you offer it tonow?
If this episode resonated withyou, please share it with

(20:24):
someone who needs to hear it.
Follow the podcast, leave areview if you feel called to.
And continue theseconversations with care.
The entire goal of the show isto continue sharing the nuances
of identity slowly andthoughtfully without stepping

(20:45):
away from the complexities of itall.
I appreciate you all forlistening.
Until next time.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Vanisha R. Dailey

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Burden

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}How Sexual Identity Labels Fail Contemporary Queer Life