Actually fuck it I’m taking this out of the tags and turning it into a full reblog because I have more to say on this than I thought I would.
OP is 100% right that ‘queerness’ has, more or less, been made into an aesthetic. This isn’t some big revelation or anything, but it amazes me how many people think that this fact doesn’t have real world consequences. Consequences on how LGBT people are perceived, and how people profit off of our existence in the most shallow way possible, having never actually experienced any of the pain, joy, struggle, or otherwise unique experience with realizing and coming to terms with your sexuality and gender.
Actual LGBT artists get ignored, erased, and lost to time because our existence tends to make people uncomfortable, even though they wouldn’t readily admit that. Our struggles, how we experience the world, our raw, unfiltered emotions and perspectives aren’t actually wanted, no matter how many people tout that they support minorities and minority artists. Just like how cishets enjoy the shallow aesthetic of ‘being queer’, they also enjoy the shallow aesthetic of supporting minority groups, because it makes them feel better about themselves. But if asked to actually listen to those minorities, they’ll suddenly lose interest, because they’ll realize we’re whole, complex people and not marketable archetypes that exist only to service the cishets in their lives. I’m far from one of those “ew cishets are yucky” people, but it’s still gross how so many people who claim to be LGBT allies really only view us as accessories to their own person in some form.
People like Harry Styles, REGARDLESS of his actual sexuality, REGARDLESS of how he presents, contribute to this. He contributes to this idea that being LGBT is an aesthetic, a lifestyle. He wants to market to ‘the gays’ without any of the integrity involved. Have I seen people recycle biphobic sentiments to criticize Harry Styles? Yes, yes I have. People saying that Harry Styles only publicly dating women is an issue are 100% being biphobic, regardless of his actual sexual orientation. But, that doesn’t change the fact that Harry Styles is still a disconnected celebrity prick who can only be called an “LGBT artist” is the absolutely LOOSEST sense, with none of the integrity or emotional honesty actually involved in making your identity apart of your art. I guarantee if I made public art about my identity and my experience, I’d be accused of being homophobic, biphobic, transphobic, whatever else, because people are so used to these sanitized, unchallenging pieces of LGBT media and art that they feel uncomfortable with anything that’s too honest, too brutal, too reflective of our actual reality. SO many people call genuinely influential pieces of LGBT media problematic without at all considering the standards of the time, or even just the human experience of the person behind the film, art, or writing. People have become too comfortable in marketable, borderline corporate gayness. And while Harry Styles is not a sole contributor to this, he represents a piece of a larger problem with LGBT media, corporatism, celebrity culture, and disconnected activism as a whole.
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