hi! i am not a larrie and never have been, but your iron closet post came across my dash and i thought it was very insightful. as a gay man who spent my early twenties in the closet and only came out last year, i have always been incredibly uncomfortable with larrie culture. in my experience, larries care more about finding "proof" and gaining clout than they do about the comfort and safety of the men they claim to be helping. let's hypothetically say that H and L were dating in the early days of the band and were told not to come out for whatever reason. larries analyzing and picking at every single interaction likely would have made it worse for them, by making it necessary to do more to keep the relationship hidden. i have never been able to comprehend how larries thought they were helping by emblazoning their theories across every social media site and harassing everyone involved with the band. it's incredibly weird behavior and i am glad that some members of the larrie community are addressing it
Thanks for sending this! I’m proud of you!
There’s a few things that have made me reflect lately (apparently I’m not allowed to change my mind on certain things or I’m...a spy), and have been playing on my mind.
The first is that almost every other queer man I've encountered who I’ve spoken to about larries, or who I’ve seen speaking about them, really hates the whole thing. There are exceptions, I’m sure, I’ve seen a few Youtubers who enjoy playing up to the whole thing for the views, but I’ve noticed that that is definitely a pattern whether it be in queer spaces or on music reddit threads etc.
It’s interesting to me that women (some of whom are queer) are really interested in larrie, but queer men often find it uncomfortable. Like...you’d think the biggest closeting scandal in history would make queer men furious in the way they are furious about Britney but...a lot of them are completely the opposite and find us quite foul. When I first noticed that I tried to explain it away because I didn’t want to...listen to people telling me that my behaviour made them feel uncomfortable, which I now know wasn’t good of me.
But having listened to them now I think a lot of queer men, particularly gay men, see it as either a) fetishisation or b) people trying to uncloset people who might not be willing or ready, or a combination of both. I think I kind of wrote off that perspective for a long while because I didn’t understand the experience of cis gay men and their media portayal, and I didn’t care to think about how it might feel to see people who don’t identify as gay men creating cultures around the idea of gay men and completely ignoring their concerns with it. I think I was unempathetic by just assuming their perspective was dumb or ‘not getting it’ or making up a harm that didn’t exist.
Another thing that shook me a bit was Lauren’s reaction to Camren (which another anon brought up). When that first happened I felt really uncomfortable because...I totally understood what she was saying as someone who has lived a lot of years being perceived as a queer woman, especially about being portrayed as predatory and being made to feel really guilt...and yet here I was engaging with the same thing but just with allegedly queer men.
At one point in time I thought about writing a post trying to point out how what Lauren said ‘didn’t apply’ here but then I just realised I was actually full of shit on that point and trying to make excuses for myself.
But I’ve sat with it for a while. Because what Lauren said in her article, and what Louis supposedly said not long ago in a print article, weren’t that different. They both said that things got awkward between them and the other person because they were micro analysed.
And if I could empathise with Lauren and fully understand where she was coming from and feel bad for her....why didn’t I give a shit about Louis? Why did I just ASSUME he didn’t feel the same way because ‘it couldn’t have been him who said that’? Camren’s have lots of ‘evidence’ too but I immediately thought ‘wow I’m so sorry for Lauren’ but somehow didn’t think to question my own behaviour at all.
I genuinely can’t reconcile that even now. As much as I tell myself ‘well Louis has invited it in so many ways he shouldn’t have played into it’...well Lauren ‘played into it too’. She had a Tumblr for god’s sake. And then my brain wanted to BLAME HER for having a Tumblr and allowing herself to see those things, instead of thinking maybe real person fandoms should hold themselves to a higher standard. I basically wanted to victim blame Lauren and almost thought about doing it PUBLICLY just because I was so reluctant to reflect on my own behaviour and beliefs.
These things have been playing on my mind for more than just a week. I’ve been trying to understand what my feelings are on the subject for a little while now. So people may find my ‘sudden change of heart’ weird or suspicious (I mean of course some of them do, everything has to be a conspiracy and not simple apparently) but it’s simply the result of me...feeling like a bad person.
I can’t keep reading reddit threads full of queer people saying that some of our behaviour makes them feel absolutely awful or distressed, and tell myself their perspective is inherently stupid. And I can’t ignore that some of the behaviours they’ve pointed out totally occur and aren’t called out here - like the sexism, like the fetishisation, like the obsession with people who aren’t public figures.
The thing that has dawned on me is that if I’ve gotten to a point where Louis and Lauren can give some pretty similar quotes in an article about how ships have affected them, and my only agenda in interpretation is to find a way to excuse myself, that’s a me problem. It’s an us problem.
It dawned on me that there will TOTALLY be people still here in 2026 if Freddie still hasn’t been denounced, who refuse to take anyone’s words at face value. And there will be people here in 2030 who, if Harry got married to a woman, would STILL see it as some kind of stunt.
The point is not that none of these things have been stunts or lies, but that we’ve gotten to a point where everything imaginable MUST BE and Louis and Harry have lost their claim to speak truly.
Hence why I’m personally advocating for thinking about some of our behaviours and reflecting and realising that we aren’t completely innocent and maybe we should rethink what things are taboo in fandom spaces.
Isn’t it better that we revise and set some boundaries now than in ten years we get told we really fucked up either Harry or Louis’ perception of themselves?
