We are bound to learn something when we click and scroll. I learned it on the internet, but you can find it in the series.
It took me a long time to realize that I was actually bi, but here's a list of people who did.
The relationship between user and algorithm on TikTok is unique. The lowest common denominator of TikTok is that it contains as many different life experiences as there are people in the world. Straight TikTok bombards your For You Page with silly pet videos and teen dances that people who don't use TikTok like to dismiss as silly.
TikTok begins to read your soul like a digital oracle, opening up layers of your being never before seen by your own mind. The more you use it, the more tailored its content becomes to your deepest specificities, to the point where it can feel like a personal attack or even a harmfultrigger from lifelong traumas.
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Within days of first using it, Straight TikTok gave way to Latin TikTok, even though I didn't know what dark magic was. Being white-passing and mostly American-raised, I was liberal with the likes, knowing that engagement was the best way to go deeper down this identity-affirming corner of the social app.
Straight TikTok's milquetoast mainstreamness was thrown to me by the many assumptions made by TikTok.
Home to a wide spectrum of marginalized groups, I was giving out likes on my FYP like Oprah, smashing that heart button on every type of video. The faves were a way to support and help offset what I knew about TikTok's bias.
By the minute, my range of likes got more specific. The Alt Cottagecore Middle-Class Black Girl TikTok is an actual label one creator gave her page's vibes. Women Loving Women (WLW) TikTok alternating between beautiful lesbian couples and baby bisexuals was followed by Queer Latina roller skating Girl TikTok.
The transition from queer to salivating simp is almost completely invisible.
There was no one specific moment. The "put a finger down" challenges wouldn't reveal what you were doing until the end. I would be applauded for being bisexual. Along the way of getting served multipleWLW Disney cosplays in a single day and even dom lesbian KinkTok roleplay, deductive reasoning spoke for itself.
I will always remember the video that was a heat-seeking missile of a targeted attack that I was moved to text to my friends with, "Wait, am I bi?" "Magic 8 Ball says, 'Highly Likely'," was the consensus of the people.
A video posted during Pride month shows a girl shaking her head at the caption above her head, calling out confused and/or closeted queers who say "I think everyone is a little bisexual." She points at the screen with her finger and inquires as if she's looking at my bisexual soul.
The voice in my head said that I had just been seen.
I had done feminist studies at a small liberal arts college with a gender gap of about 70 percent and I would definitely do it again. I've always been quick to bring up the Kinsey scale, to promote a true spectrum of sexuality, and to even say that I was straight, but would totally fuck that girl.
The voice in my head came back and said I was bi.
I ran to my boyfriend to inform him of the news after consulting the expertise of myWLW friend group.
I know. He said that they all knew.
How? I wanted it that way.
He pointed out that every time we saw a video of a hot girl on TikTok, I'd watch the whole thing more than once. Straight girls don't usually do this. I would breathlessly point out when we'd pass by a woman I found attractive, often finding a way to compliment her. I'm just flirting. I used to think I wasn't sexually attracted to them. I was going to give him a rant about the queer relationship in Adventure Time between Princess Bubblegum and the Vampire Queen, which the Cartoon Network had to keep as subtext.
You put it all out like that.
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Heteronormativity is one helluva drug, and my TikTok- fueled bisexual awakening might actually speak less to the app's omnipotence.
I was bombarded with the thirst traps of my domineering masc lady queer, who reduced me to a puddle of drooling. When I was in college, I was reprimanded by a lesbian friend for being one of those straight girls who leads Actual Queer Women. I assumed she knew better. I concluded that I couldn't call myself bisexual if I'd never had sex with a woman because I never pursued any of my lady crush in college. I don't like lesbian porn very much, but the fact that I'd often find myself fixating on the woman during heterosexual porn should have given me a clue as to how mainstream lesbian porn is for straight men.
Even when members of the queer community are unaware of it, the cycle of Heterormativity is still effective. I didn't identify my attraction to women as genuine because it felt different to how I was attracted to men.
Heteronormativity is truly one helluva drug.
A lot of women's sexuality is defined by that kind of validation from men. I met no societal resistance to my desire for men or my desire to have sex with them. I don't know how many men I slept with because I got off on how much they wanted me.
My attraction to women is not the same as my attraction to men. The attraction with women is more shared, more mutual, and more tender than with men. Don't get me wrong, it's hot or all-Consuming. It comes from a place of equality and not just power play. I like how women seem to know me without saying a word.
I am still a sexual submissive no matter what gender my partner is. I had been limiting my idea of who could embody a dominant sexual persona tocis men. I realized my attraction was not to men but to a certain type of masculinity when I was sent down the rabbit hole by TikTok. It didn't matter which part of the body or genitalia it was presented with.
There is something about TikTok that feels particularly suited to these journeys of sexual self-discovery and, in the case of women loving women, I don't think it's just the prescient algorithms. With the POV camera angles bucking the male gaze, the short-form video format gives itself to lightning bolt-like nakedness.
I'm not the only one who missed their inner gay for a long time, only to have her pop out like a queer jack-in-the-box throughout a near year-longQuarantine that led many of us to join TikTok The baby bi mom and scores of other people who no longer had to publicly perform their heterosexuality during lock down realized that they are not heterosexual at all.
Flooded with video after video affirming my suspicions, reflecting my exact experiences as they happened to other people, the change in my sexual identity was so normalized on TikTok that I didn't even feel like I needed to come out. I had found a safe place online to foster my baby's bisexuality.
I was going to be shocked.
I received nothing but unquestioning support and validation after testing out my bisexuality on other platforms and posting pictures of myself in a rainbow skate outfit. I think I should let some of my family know before I tell them.
I chose the sibling closest to me because I was afraid my mother and father would find out. I thought it was a foregone conclusion that she would major in gender studies. I sent an off-handed, joke-y but serious text, thinking that it would be enough to get the same nonchalant acceptance I received online.
That was not the case.
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I didn't get a reply for a couple of days. I panicked and called them out after what could have been my first exposure to homophobia. They told us that we needed to have a phone call. I was told my text made this sibling worry about my mental wellbeing as I tried to express my hurt on the call. I was told I should be more aware of why it would be difficult for them to believe I was something else.
I tried to explain that I was not something else. I hadn't lied or hid this part of me. I found a better label. We were talking in different languages. Family members were more accepting. My environment is supportive as Baby Bi TikTok is. I'm in a loving relationship with a man who never once mistook any of it as a threat, instead giving me all the space in the world to understand this new aspect of my sexuality.
I don't have all the answers. Even though I've never heard of Girl in Red, I know to say "Yes" when someone asks if I listen to her on social media. That's all for now.
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