Jameela Jamil comes out as queer

It's amusing to see how celebs carry on like they're in secondary school and get applause for doing this.

Normal people would be called in to HR for a quiet chat.

The woke tend to choose Queer because bisexual might upset TRAs and pansexual has...connotations.

Well then, what a to-do.

Philip Schofield has now come out as gay, stealing JJ's thunder.

Does she risk re-igniting her own woke fire by commenting on it; or keep it zipped and lose her own publicity?

I totally agree you can know you're gay or bi without having experienced any encounters and many people do. I don't question whether she's bi because she's with a man. I question it - and what "queer" might mean - because the situation is so obviously suspect. She's done this right after getting attacked for not being "queer" enough. She's chosen the label "queer" as it can mean anything. And she has a long, long history of woke-signalling - so if she really had any non-straightness to reveal we would expect her to have done that long ago.

Now I could be wrong and she really have been bi all along and keeping it secret. Can't prove anything. But the suspicion is reasonable in the circumstances.

Agree @poota. Orientation is about who you're sexually attracted to. End of.

Jameela may have many flaws, but she still has the right to speak her truth about her own sexuality.

This has highlighted the way bisexuals are constantly forced into the gay or straight box depending on their current sexual partner. I've noticed more and more women in the public eye who are objectively bisexual ("i've slept with men and women") declining to even name their sexuality for fear of this kind of backlash. It's awful.

If you are a virgin you don't have a sexual orientation?

A virgin's sexual orientation is clearly like a bag of Revels then. You don't know what it will be till you put it in your mouth.

If you are a virgin you don't have a sexual orientation? That is a really odd position.

I'm very grateful for this thread as I was trying to work out what on earth this was all about on twitter yesterday and found it incomprehensible.

That is the thing about the woker than thou crowd - they tend to turn on each other. An academic I know (and like in real life! But her Twitter is unbearable) who is extremely vocally woke had to turn her account private after making a joke that did not acknowledge her privilege the other week. It was astonishing to watch both the swiftness with which her followers turned on her but also the rank hypocrisy of all her mates who said how awful it was that she was being bullied when they regularly try and get other people sacked for similar transgressions.

I disagree that you have to experience a physical relationship in order to determine your sexuality and I'm also uncomfortable with hetero as the default. When DH's nephew came out, FiL (his GF) kept saying (hoping ) that he wouldn't know for sure until her had tried having sex with a man. He might not like it and therefore go back to being straight. I asked him if that meant he (FiL) wasn't sure of his own sexual orientation until he first had sex with a woman. After a lot of bluster and shock, he admitted that no, he "just knew" he was straight. In that case, others must just know they are gay or bi, even before any physical acts have taken place.

But this places a contradiction. I am one of those women, like so many on this thread, who has kissed a couple of girls when I was young (J17 problem page assuring me this is normal experimentation) but my only actual relationships have been with men and I've been married to the same man for 15 years. I find lots of women very attractive (and have a massive crush on Gillian Anderson) and if there was a situation where I was no longer with DH, I wouldn't rule out a female relationship. Am I bi? I've never identified as such and it seems that to do so now would be completely irrelevant. It wouldn't change who I am, nor my relationship with DH. perhaps this is where the queer term is actually useful? Maybe the kids have it right after all. To be honest, I'd probably be far more open to it if it wasn;t for the over-earnest woke attitudes, the culture of being hellbent of catching everyone out if they put a foot out of line and the minimisation of my experiences as a 42 year old woman who actually understands the nature of feelings and urges. I'm just seen as old and therefore couldn't possibly understand.

If I was living my teenage years exactly as they happened (but with social media and ghds) but in present day, I have no doubt that I would be classed as bi/pan/queer but right now, with my various lived experience, I don't think these terms belong to me.

I originally followed her on Twitter because of the body positivity stuff.

I am now following her for the lols.

'Pack it in Jameela, fgs. It’s such a huge cringe.'

Perfect this sort of nonsense is understandable in teenagers, but just mortifying in grown adults. It's a shame, because I really admired her body positivity work, but shes become unbelievably tiresome since then

I think it is an interesting point Pulp. I know I’m straight - I’d no more stuck my face or finger in another woman’s vagina than I’d hit myself over the head with a sledgehammer and even if I never had sex with a man again I’d still be straight.

I have a friend who identifies as bi who has never had sexual relations with a woman and dated a man for 15 years. Her reasoning is that if she split with her DP she’d be open to dating a woman or a man. Ok who am I to say that’s not true?

Idk - it feels like one of those things you can’t discuss. I’d like to understand better but I feel I can’t ask

With respect, Pulp, is the assumption that everyone is default heterosexual unless they are sexually active? Because, um, I think that's a fairly erroneous assumption.

If you're not and never have been secxually active - then you're not really anything. Come on, you can't claim to be gay or bi just on feelz. Either you are actively gay, or you're just a straight person/a-sexual that's had gay thoughts. I think you have to explore the physical aspect of a sexuality to say you are it.

As said, I'm not a serial killer just because I think about killing people.

if you don't act on it, you're not really gay. Because a thought is just that, you may act on that impulse and find it was a massive mistake.

Err... What?
Do heterosexuals get the same level of distrust and skepticism about their sexual desires?

Most people have a pretty good idea of their sexual orientation - they feel a strong attraction to the opposite and/or same sex, or they feel an aversion in the context of sexual activity.
They know what turns them on or what they might seek out with a potential partner.

Not everyone might have had the opportunity to find a sexual partner. Lots of heterosexual men haven't had sexual contact with women for all sorts of reasons - being too awkward, shy or anxious, or not considered attractive enough, they might have been on dates but never get further than a kiss or get turned down etc. No one says well they can't be sure they are straight.

Homosexuals and bisexuals face similar challenges and it's harder because finding same sex attracted people (who are also attracted to you!) is like finding a needle in the heterosexual haystack. Hence why many bisexuals end up with an opposite sex partner. The sheer numbers means you're more likely to find a compatible opposite sex partner than a compatible same sex one.

This has raised an intriguing tangential thought train for me - does one have to be sexually active, therefore, to have a sexuality?

When they do scientific or sociological studies about sexuality, they have to define this for the purposes of the study, so it does come up. In that case it typically depends on what they think is most relevant for their purposes, but it can be quite fraught. If they go with self-identity, there may be people who have same sex sex, but don't identify as gay. Or there may be people who do but have never had sex at all. etc. There have been whole cultures where there was plenty of homosexual hanky-panky but no concept of sexuality as such. There has been at least one living society recorded which seemed to not only have no concept of sexuality but also no examples of non-heterosexual activity.

Even in terms of what science says now, they really don't know what a sexuality is, or why we have them, or when our sexuality is formed. Which is part of the reason it's difficult to define, it's not an objective phenomena, we can't point to a brain structure or hormonal profile or anything like that. Just what people do, or their subjective experience.

Jameela is slowly morphing into Titania McGrath. She’s too ridiculous for words these days. I used to think her body positivity messages were a good thing and that she seemed like a well meaning lass but these days she’s just a desperate, insufferable hot mess. Queer, my arse, unless by queer she means “I’m into men but I sometimes get emotional feelings about connections with women”...because that’s a new thing apparently. Us muggles would never understand. Pack it in Jameela, fgs. It’s such a huge cringe.

She calls Twitter a hell app and runs away when she knows she is going to be facing a backlash yet is quite happy to cause problems for other people. Very hypocritical.

At a slight tangent, when I first read this on my Sky News app, I noticed that they used the word cisgender, and there was no explanation of this word. Which made me wonder if Sky news, a mainstream media organisation, have editorially decided that cisgender is now a commonplace, known expression. Which implications depress me.

Complain. The Guardian had to row back on this.

A fair response Humpty

I think this just shows that being female and woke is never enough, in the end.

It's all very Orwellian.

At a slight tangent, when I first read this on my Sky News app, I noticed that they used the word cisgender, and there was no explanation of this word. Which made me wonder if Sky news, a mainstream media organisation, have editorially decided that cisgender is now a commonplace, known expression. Which implications depress me.

With respect, Pulp, is the assumption that everyone is default heterosexual unless they are sexually active? Because, um, I think that's a fairly erroneous assumption.

@Cwenthryth I'll have to disagree. I think it's your actions.

I understand what you're saying in regards to say, a Christian boy who is gay but but never acts on it due to his Christian beliefs - but let's be honest. Do they really never act on it.

And I would say that actually if you don't act on it, you're not really gay. Because a thought is just that, you may act on that impulse and find it was a massive mistake. Or maybe we need a schrodinger's gay?

You can't truly know you are gay unless you act upon it. And you're also not part of the less privileged and marginalised group unless you have acted upon it.