This past weekend, Keke “Sorry To This Man” Palmer got a bit personal at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. As Variety reports it:
“I’m so grateful to be here today to be embraced by a community that I’ve always felt accepted by and a part of,” the “Nope” star said. “I’ve always been my own person. Sexuality and identity for me has always been confusion. You know, it’s, ‘I never felt straight enough. I never felt gay enough. And I never felt woman enough. I never felt man enough.’ You know, I always felt like I was a little bit of everything.”
It’s tempting to read this as Palmer announcing to the world that she’s a non-binary bisexual — I mean truly, how else are we to read this whole “not straight enough, not gay enough, not woman enough, not man enough” thing, right? There are words for those in-between states, words that Palmer could use. And yet she chooses not to. She doesn’t even make mention of these terms, choosing instead to frame herself as an absence of binary states rather than affirmatively rejecting the binary.
I feel like I should note here that this seems to be a conscious choice. Palmer is, after all, aware of the word “bisexual” (and presumably the word non-binary as well, though I don’t have proof of that one). After the 2015 release of the video for “I Don’t Belong To You” — which depicts Palmer sexually entwined with both a man and a woman (not at the same time) — she was dogged by questions about her sexuality, which she addressed in an interview with People, saying:
The video was to represent the young woman today — it’s not the traditional woman anymore — and not the specifics of ‘Am I gay? Am I straight? Am I bi?'… I’m making the rules for myself, and I don’t have to be stuck down to one label.
There’s one part of me that just wants to be like “girl if you don’t feel straight or gay then by definition you are bi” — to remind everyone that bi doesn’t have to be some boundaried, well-defined identity that shapes your whole being, but can simply be a bucket that you fall into because, well, you don’t belong anywhere else. And yet the second I say that I get a little hesitant, because that’s how you get Bi.org giving a page to “mostly straight” Josh Hutcherson, simply because his comment that he’s not totally hetero apparently means he’s bi? To say anyone who has even the most fleeting moment of attraction to multiple genders — anyone who is, to quote Jean-Ralphio Saperstein, simply “open-minded as hell” — is necessarily bisexual feels off.
And yet.
The thing that bothers me about Palmer’s Los Angeles LGBT Center is the refusal to even name the options, the treatment of bisexuality, of non-binariness, as some kind of secret third thing. I cannot say for sure why it is that Palmer is reticent to claim bisexuality, to claim the non-binary label, and it may well be because she has a good reason not to see herself as these things. But I think it’s notable that to say “I’m not straight enough, not gay enough, not bi enough” immediately hits oddly, because what does it even mean to be “not bi enough,” you know? The minute you name bisexuality as an option here it immediately suggests that while none of these might be perfect for you, one is going to feel more correct than the other two, that the triangulation of sexual identity fundamentally helps locate you somewhere on the plane*. And so to not name bisexuality at all —
I’m just torn here, really, because as much as I understand the weight “bisexual” carries for people, the weight it used to carry for me, and all the reasons why people don’t want to call themselves bi, I’m also just like… girl, if you’re not straight or gay or ace then, yeah, bi is what’s left, and it doesn’t have to be that big a deal. Claiming bisexuality doesn’t require you to commit to some specific life path — to the contrary, it enables you to eschew one entirely. It’s all the freedom of rejection the silos of the binary, along with the confidence of claiming an affirmative label, of saying, not simply what you aren’t, but what you are. It’s reminding people that bisexuality — even as a bucket that collects so many freaks and weirdos and outliers who just don’t fit in — is not simply an absence of straightness and gayness, not simply a failure to “commit” but its own entire experience.
And look, only Palmer can say if she’s bi or not, if she’s non-binary or not. I cannot force those labels on her (and I never would want to!). But a part of me hopes that she one day claims them, one day realizes that the empty space between those binary poles is actually quite lively, quite lovely, quite full.
* Unless, perhaps, you are ace aro in which case you’re off in a different section of the map
I guess just to defend her not identifying with labels - I'm not that familiar with her, but based on the examples given, it sounds like she's already pretty comfortable with herself in regards to being attracted to both sexes and not fitting into a strict man or woman role. You were saying identifying as bi or non-binary would give her freedom and allow her to eschew binaries, but it seems like she's already doing that, so perhaps she doesn't have much to gain by labelling herself.
The refusal to pick a label could be viewed as a rejection of the idea that sexuality and gender identity are valuable ways of categorising people in general, as opposed to opting out of the binaries on an individual level. I have no idea if that's how Keke Palmer feels, and of course I don't 100% agree with that - I'm reading this newsletter because I identify as bi. But I do think there's some validity to that that idea. It shouldn't necessarily be viewed as a bad thing if someone refuses a label as long as they're able to live in a way that's authentic.