“People have assumed that I am straight based on me being a fan, or called me a ‘fake lesbian’ because of it.”
“In my real life, people can’t seem to understand that I can like a band without wanting to sleep with them. ‘How can you be a lesbian and like One Direction?’”
“There are times when you don't feel included in the narrative at all, and some people work hard to not include you.”
“I think many people have the wrong idea about women in particular liking 1D - the general public seems to think that you have to be in love with them to support them which, as many queer fans are living proof of, is not true. Thank you for providing visibility to the LGBTQ+ community in this fandom!!”
“I love that people decide to analyse the one direction fandom phenomenon for academic purposes since it's so complex and has a lot of fascinating aspects to it. Maybe through the work of you lovely people fandom will one day be perceived as normal and not as a creepy and weird obsessive teenager thing .”
“Thank you for taking the time to do this study, visibility is key, and I love you for it. Things like this keep the fandom thriving, and content.”
~
As a queer fan of One Direction, I have first-hand experience with the legitimacy of my identity as both a queer individual and One Direction fan being questioned and invalidated. For a research project, I decided to survey other queer fans on their experiences within the fandom as queer individuals in order to see how others’ experiences have compared.
One common theme popped up in many of the surveys that I was not expecting, as the survey did not directly ask about this subject (although it played a significant part in its formation): queer fans feel excluded from the public narrative of the One Direction fandom, and they want this to change. Many fans mentioned their dissatisfaction with the lack of attention paid to queer fans outside of the fandom, and many actually thanked me for focusing my research project on the queer fandom and for providing visibility in at least some small way.
These responses made me realize that One Direction’s queer fans need their voices to be heard. Projects such as Rainbow Direction have successfully increased the visibility of queer fans within the fandom and created a safe space where fans can celebrate their identities. However, to the public, queer One Direction fans are an oxymoron. There is still the need to show those outside the fandom that queer fans of One Direction exist, and they are valid. This is why I decided to create the Queer Direction Project.
