Shawn Mendes Addresses Speculation About His Sexuality: ‘I’m Just Figuring It Out’

[stewie_e]

Shawn Mendes opens up about his sexuality:

“The real truth about my life and sexuality is that, man I’m just figuring it out like everyone. I don’t really know sometimes and I know other times. It feels really scary because we live in a society that has a lot to say about that” pic.twitter.com/5AvgPePXzp
- Pop Base (@PopBase) October 29, 2024
While

Comments

i’m

[floatinglately]

i think this is kind of unfairly dismissive (esp since i don’t see where it says he’s been with men?). it took me i would say a solid 3 years in my early 30s of “self reflection” to go from “wait, could i -?” to “i’m bisexual,” and actually this post reminded me that there was a time during that period where i was doing a DEI training and everyone else was introducing themselves with their sexuality and i almost started crying because it would have felt wrong to call myself straight but i didn’t yet feel like i could claim anything else, and i can’t imagine feeling that kind of thing blown up to celebrity scale - and i certainly didn’t want to let a room full of strangers in on the incredibly intimate process i was going through! i even relate to what he says about some days knowing and other days not being sure - i feel like i had to figure it out a million times before it felt real. and, honestly, one of the things that kept going through my mind during this time was, “well, if i really was, wouldn’t i just know? why would it be so hard to figure out? how much figuring out would i really need to do?”

Re: i’m

[ionadelfina]

Tbh it’s incredibly inappropriate for a training (was this at your job?) to have people introducing themselves by their sexuality, it’s no one’s business.

Had you had same-sex experiences at this point? Because that is the crux of what I’m saying. Shawn has had girlfriends and he has some clearly gay guys in his circle. I’ll be really surprised if he hasn’t fucked at least one of them.

Re: i’m

[floatinglately]

it was required by my job but run by an outside org, & sexuality wasn’t required but it was like “give us whatever information you feel comfortable sharing” and literally every person included sexuality which is fine i guess but at the specific moment i was in personally did make me feel completely insane lol.

i hadn’t, but idk, i think for some people having those experiences clarifies things but not for all. maybe i’m biased bc when i was younger i knew three different dudes (all in the same friend circle at a small liberal arts college…) who had fooled around with dudes and still identified as straight lol. not everyone considers “who you would consider hooking up with once for fun potentially while drunk or whatever” to be super salient in terms of how they identify or what terms they feel comfortable claiming. i’ve also known people who have been with both men & women and still took years after having the relevant experience to realize they were gay, not bi… i have a friend who identified as bisexual & had experiences with women & men & then identified as straight & now identifies as a lesbian & has been with her gf for several years. people have all kinds of journeys! and that’s without factoring doing all that in the public eye! it’s not hard for me to believe that a guy who has been really open about the fact that speculation about his sexuality has seriously fucked with his head is being truthful and genuine when he says it feels complicated, or that he’s figured it out, kind of, but some days it feels less sure & he’s not ready to say more than that yet.

Re: i’m

[ionadelfina]

Yeah, I would’ve gone straight to HR.

To your second paragraph, a lot of that sounds like compulsory heterosexuality, which is a powerful force I’m not going to lie. I don’t really think that lying to yourself is quite the same as figuring yourself out but that’s just me. I’m of the opinion that identity matters but less so than behavior. A straight person isn’t going back for a third, fourth, fifth sexual experience with the same sex.

Re: i’m

[floatinglately]

but we don’t know if shawn has done that? and the thing about lying to yourself vs. figuring it out is you can only tell the difference once you’ve figured it out! lots of people who look back and think “i was lying to myself then” nonetheless had a period where they would have told you they were figuring it out. he also didn’t say anything beyond that he’s currently not 100% set on anything, like for all we know based just on this statement he’s currently trying to figure out if he’s bi or gay (or pan or something else or there’s some gender stuff going on too…).

like i guess for me in this case the question of identity vs. behavior is irrelevant because honestly i do not have an opinion on shawn mendes’s true sexuality or whatever, my only opinion here is about how he himself feels about and defines himself, because that’s what he’s talking about in this quote, and like, it might be different to how you or i would think about it! i’m not saying any particular way of conceptualizing these things is correct… i just really think it’s not wild to believe a guy whose sexuality has been the topic of fervent and often mean-spirited public speculation for years may be telling the truth when he shares that in this moment he doesn’t feel 100% sure about how he identifies.

(also re training, yeah in retrospect it was weird. it was a training sort of for like learning about whiteness, which was interesting for me to be at bc i’m white but also puerto rican so some aspects very much applied and then some things i was like, ok i am actually different from the other people here in certain regards lol… but like it was one of those DEI trainings where a bunch of people cried at some point, possibly including me? and i look back and i’m like, this did not really do anything to make me a more culturally competent educator lol.)

Re: i’m

[ionadelfina]

but we don’t know if shawn has done that?

Girl, idek what to say. Sometimes you just have to open your eyes and look. This just sounds like naïveté about male sexuality. If he is surrounding himself with gay men, they're not just hanging out. He's rich and famous and has access to more resources than either of us could probably conceptualize. I'm sure he's had no dearth of willing sexual partners.

he’s currently trying to figure out if he’s bi or gay

This could definitely be true but my comment about straight people and identity vs behavior was in response to your anecdotes about people you knew not necessarily about Shawn.

Re: i’m

[anterrabre]

If he is surrounding himself with gay men, they're not just hanging out.

I like you, but gurl...what the hell? No offense, but you sound like this chick who was salty as hell that I dared to go to a Pride event with my LGBT friends/family members while being straight. She hit on me, I nicely told her that I wasn't the tea and was there as a ally (this issue has come up before, and the vast majority of the time the ladies were like OK, cool and we all still partied together) but this woman went nut city on me, insisted that I had to be secretly gay to go to pride and have gay friends if I wasn't I was "deliberately misleading people" and at that point one of my friends had sharp words for her and led me away. That "you have gay friends so you must me gay" thing is for the birds, and that type of reasoning is why some people are afraid to be public allies in the first place.

Re: i’m

[ionadelfina]

ok, he is admitting to questioning his sexuality here, this is a totally different context. And I specified male sexuality, I was under the impression that you were a woman?

Wrt to your story about Pride, not all LGBT people agree on whether allies should be a Pride at all and it is definitely a touchy subject. Some people think that it should be a space for LGBT people only. I don't agree but I can't tell someone else that they're wrong. It's super complicated.

Re: i’m

[anterrabre]

Yes, I'm a woman. I also admit that the goalposts are somewhat different for those of us in creative fields (both male and female) because so many LGBT people are in those professions. If you were to say "Sorry, I can only have straight friends" you wouldn't have that many friends/coworkers. The "Who can go to Pride events/gay clubs" question varies depending on who you ask but the general consensus is it's for LGBT people, their family members and their allies and most people are sane; had another woman hit on me, told her I was flattered and while she was quite pretty it wasn't my thing, she said cool and was concerned with me feeling insulted that she asked me out and I told her no, because I didn't think someone assuming I was gay was a bad thing. We continued to party and 20 odd years later she's still a friend. The reason why I included my experience is that it's not just gay men doing this; some women have the same mindset as well because look at all the women insisting Taylor Swift is gay as hell while Chappell Roan is just standing there eating a ham sandwich?

There is a subtle but significant difference in someone assuming you're gay and saying "Oh, okay" once corrected, and assholes who double down, insist that you're lying to yourself, saying "I can always tell" and other nonsense. One is an assumption, the other is someone deliberately not hearing what you're telling them because it doesn't fit their own interpretation of who you are, and it's really fucked up.

Re: i’m

[ionadelfina]

I pretty clearly don't think this applies the same to women as men. Men and women are different, it's fine.

I'm talking very specifically about Shawn Mendes who is openly questioning his sexuality and who has gay men that he is close with, who he may be fucking. You can't remove all of that context and try to apply it to your own personal life to make a point.

Re: i’m

[anterrabre]

Ok, I understand what you're getting at now! My point is, prior to this point that man has said several times that he's straight and people's response has been like "Nah, you have no idea what you're talking about, you gay as sunshine" and that type of mentality I don't have time for. If someone tells you for whatever reason that "their sexuality is X" your only response should be "OK," not insisting that nope, you're gay and just don't know it yet! If there's anything he needs to figure out it should be done on his own time, not because assholes are insisting on it so they can be "right." If he is struggling with his sexuality getting DMs telling him that his GFs are beards and that he should be with a man the way God intended is pretty fucked up.

The only reason why I threw in my story was to point out that unfortunately people do that ignorant shit across the LGBT spectrum, not just gay men.

RE: Re: i’m

[theactualworst]

You’re just assuming he’s fucking these men… He’s in an industry where he will meet a lot of LGBT people. Saying straight men won’t hang out with gay men is just toxic masculinity. While many men do suffer from TM Sean certainly doesn’t seem that type. I’ve had many straight male friends who are close friends with gay men. It doesn’t mean anything.

Re: i’m

[ionadelfina]

omg you guys are really intent on not understanding what I'm saying. Shawn himself is openly questioning his sexuality, these are things that he is saying in this post right here. Did you miss that context???

I'm not talking about straight men being friends with gay men, I'm talking about Shawn Mendes* being friends with gay men. That's how this is a different situation from your straight friends.

*If we use our context clues here, we can come to the conclusion that I don't think Shawn Mendes is straight.

Re: i’m

[anterrabre]

I think we're reacting more to your comment about him possibly not being straight because "he has gay friends" than him now saying he's been questioning things. I don't know if you've been in a Mendez post here before but personally I started scrolling his posts because people are so shitty in them. I admit I feel a lil protective of dude because of this, so I apologize if it seemed like I was snapping at you.

RE: Re: i’m

[theactualworst]

I still think you’re making a lot of assumptions. Him figuring out his sexuality doesn’t mean he’s fucking all his friends. Maybe he’s fucking some of the guys he hangs out with, maybe he’s not? Even if he were openly bi, would that automatically mean anyone he hangs out with he’s fucking?? It’s making me think of people who don’t want to date me because I’m bi because they think it gives some high likelihood of me cheating since ~I’ll fuck anyone.

It’s just a weird stance imo. Do you think gay men don’t have platonic gay friends?

It’s like straight guys who get “worried” about gay guys in locker rooms because what if he hits on me or looks at me?? Just cause you’re a dude doesn’t mean he thinks you’re hot.

I don’t think you’re trying to be offensive for the record but it’s coming off weird and pushy.

I think we all can acknowledge too if our friends are attractive. Attraction and wanting to date/fuck don’t always correlate for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes it’s just not worth ruining the friendship and you know a relationship wouldn’t work and fucking would make things messy.

Re: i’m

[ionadelfina]

I don't think I ever implied that I wasn't making an assumption? This is a gossip forum. Why is now the time when speculation is suddenly beyond the pale?

Look I honestly hate pulling this card and it sucks that I even have to say this but I'm a bi woman who has only ever dated other women. I've mentioned it on this site a few times before. Many LGBT friends and family members. Explain to me exactly what is offensive about a bi person thinking someone else is bi?