No, Tom Daley Did Not Come Out as ‘Gay’

MANAGING EDITOR

If you have been on Twitter recently, you are probably aware: Tom Daley has come out as gay.

There is just one little problem. Daley never said he was gay.

Daley, a 19-year-old British Olympic medal-winning diver, announced on Monday in a YouTube video that he has been in a relationship with a man since the spring.

“Of course I still fancy girls, but right now I’m dating a guy and I couldn’t be happier,” Daley said.

Unless you completely ignore the first half of Daley’s sentence, there is no way you can fairly call him gay. Daley’s statement suggests that he is, in fact, bisexual, not gay. However, this whole nonsense of (mis)labeling is the whole reason Daley said he made the video.

“I didn’t want to get my words twisted,” Daley said in the video, which quickly reached over 6 million YouTube views. “I wanted to put an end to all the rumors and speculation and just say it and tell you guys.”

Daley made this five-minute- and-25-second-long video to avoid having his words misconstrued. He does not once mention the word “gay.” He never uses the phrase “coming out.” So, why have news outlets like The Daily Mirror trumpeted “Tom Daley comes out as gay”?

We are far too quick to think of sexuality as binary. People are either straight or gay, so we are told.

Sexuality is much more complicated than straight or gay. Human sexuality is more of a spectrum than an either/or phenomenon. “Gay” and “straight” are merely convenient labels. Sexuality is simply not as tidy — or as static — as these labels suggest.

“Sexual identity is fluid; unfortunately, our small minded society has taken to putting people in neat and tiny boxes,” Rachel Dougherty, FCRH ’15, said. “Tom Daley is yet another victim among the mass of misrepresented and confined voices of marginalized queer people.”

Many media outlets’ hesitance to delve into the intricacies of sexuality is somewhat understandable. If any label should be placed upon Daley, it would be bisexual, not gay.

“Tom Daley … came out not as gay but as bisexual, a[n] equally difficult coming out process, yet people don’t understand really what bisexuality means,” James Demetriades, FCRH ’15, said. “It is really unfortunate how people assume sexuality is only a duality. Sexuality, as with every aspect of a person’s identity, is a spectrum and cannot always be defined in black and white terms.”

Many people — including some in the LGBT community — reject the notion of bisexuality. Bisexual people are (to put it mildly) thought of as promiscuous, attention seeking or gay in denial.

“Speaking as an ally to the LGBTQ community, yeah, I definitely think [bisexual] people are misrepresented and misunderstood by the media and the general public,” Sarah Lyons, FCRH ’15, said. “I think people tend to think [bisexual] people say they are [bisexual] to try to be ‘edgy’ or something and ignore that this could be a big part of this person’s life.”

The stereotyping and marginalization of individuals who identify as bisexual is garbage. Bisexuality is as real as being straight or gay, and probably much more common than we realize.

A 2002 survey by the National Center for Health Statistics found that 1.8 percent of men ages 18-44 considered themselves bisexual, 2.3 percent homosexual and 3.9 percent as “something else.” The study also found that 2.8 percent of women ages 18-44 considered themselves bisexual, 1.3 percent homosexual and 3.8 percent as “something else.”

The “something else” respondents are particularly interesting. Other studies have also found substantial numbers of respondents who fall into an “other” category regarding sexuality. A 2010 article published in Psychology Today, for example, noted that 14.4 percent of women “were sexual but not strictly heterosexual.”

While there are certainly some people who are strictly heterosexual and some who are strictly homosexual, it is likely that there are far more people who fall somewhere in between. Labels are convenient, but they are also misleading.

“All of the labels are arbitrary,” Courtney Code, FCRH ’15, said. “I’ve come to learn more and more that sexuality resists categorization. It can’t be put in a box or plotted on a line graph. It’s an experience unique to each person, and the language currently available doesn’t allow us to talk about it in a way that affirms that vast diversity.”

So no, Tom Daley did not say he is gay. He also did not say he is bisexual. We should embrace the true spirit of Daley’s statement. Daley rejected labels, and so should we.

Canton Winer, FCRH ’15, is an American studies and sociology double major from West Palm Beach, Fla.