In November, following weeks of comments on social media targeting Kit Connor over his playing a queer character in Netflix’s LGBTQ+ coming-of-age drama Heartstopper, the actor tweeted a short, exasperated response: “I’m bi,” he wrote. “Congrats for forcing an 18-year-old to out himself. I think some of you missed the point of the show.”
Connor’s statement sparked another reckoning over the idea of queerbaiting, a term that has been in use since the early 2000s. Changing social media and celebrity culture has fueled a renewed interest in the concept, which originated as a criticism of books and films that hinted at a character’s queerness without explicitly confirming it. But it’s since expanded to encompass a broader critique of people who appropriate queer culture without publicly identifying as LGBTQ+.
