Why everyone has an opinion about King Princess’s sexuality

On this, the final day of Bisexual Visibility Month, I must say my piece about a sexuality label controversy before I once again disappear into the ether until next September.

It centers around musician King Princess, who identifies as a lesbian. This week, a Nov. 2024 appearance on the podcast Celebrity Book Club with Steven & Lily resurfaced on social media, in which the singer-songwriter said, “I’ve taken a lot of dick.”

“Sometimes you get bored, and you’re just like, ‘I’m just gonna ride a cock,'” she continued. “People get really shook when I say that… I’m not bi, but why would I exclude myself?”

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

“I would fuck a dude if I was bored enough,” she said. 

If you know anything about the online sapphic community, you’d be able to guess this would start a firestorm. And it did. King Princess’s name trended on Reddit, with threads in various subreddits like r/lesbiangang and r/lesbianactually expressing disappointment and confusion. The conversation bled into X, Instagram, and TikTok, with reactions ranging from commenters saying she’s “yet another bisexual cosplaying as a lesbian” to “lesbian deserves better than this” to “hot takes” that it’s OK for her to identify as a lesbian and express this. 

King Princess herself responded to the controversy in now-deleted TikToks, saying she’s never dated or fallen in love with men, she’s just slept with them because, “Why not?” She rejected the notion that she’s less of a lesbian because she’s not a “gold star,” a term in the lesbian community to refer to a lesbian who has never slept with men.

In another deleted response, King Princess asserted that she’s a lesbian and that it’s unfair to bi people to equate her with that. 

“The amount that I actually care about men romantically or sexually is so small…it would be inappropriate to call myself bisexual,” she said. “You can’t tell me what my sexuality is.”

As a bisexual person who has written about how bisexual people are plagued with the worry that they’re not queer enough, and how bisexual women are routinely the Pride punching bag, here is my take.

Is King Princess bisexual?

Only King Princess can answer this question. I think she’s right that strangers can’t tell her what her sexuality is. But if she came up to me and begged, “Anna — whom I have previously never met and know nothing about except your exceptional coverage of LGBTQ issues on Mashable.com — please, please tell me what you think my sexuality is!” I would, honestly, say bisexual. 

Labels exist to fit the person, not the other way around. From my observations online, some people are changing what labels mean so that they can squeeze themselves into a certain identity, instead of reflecting on their actual desires and behaviors and choosing the label that coincides with it. “Lesbian” connotes not sleeping with men, ever. Right? So, how does what King Princess describes fit into lesbianism?

It’s my bisexual opinion that if you’re 99 percent attracted to one gender and one percent attracted to another, that still makes you bisexual. I get frustrated when “straight” women like to make out with other women but poo-poo the thought that they’re bi. I don’t see much of a difference between that and what King Princess said.

I hear the lesbian community’s frustration about this, as well. This is far from the first time a celebrity who once identified as a lesbian has come out as bisexual (or pansexual) and dating a man. Jojo Siwa is a recent example. Reneé Rapp came out as a lesbian in 2024 after previously saying she was bi, but in a 2025 podcast appearance, she wondered out loud, “What if in 10 years I don’t like that identity either? What if in 10 years I’m completely different?”

I can imagine this is vexing to lesbians who are certain their identities won’t change. 

I do wonder if the reluctance to identify as bisexual is because of the public opinion about it. As I wrote earlier this year, bisexual people are a little annoying. We are a gray area of sexuality, and the human brain prefers things to be black-and-white. We don’t fit into the monosexual box. We question societal and gender norms, and we often have to be loud about it.

Societal stigma against bi people still exists. This summer, discourse about how some straight women don’t want to date bisexual men recycled around yet again. And as of this month, there’s new data about it: Two-thirds of straight women are unwilling to date a bisexual man, according to YouGov. 

It’s not just straight women, either. The same research found that a third of straight men are unwilling to date a bi woman, and one in five lesbians feel the same about bi women.

When asked why, straight people couldn’t articulate why. One in six gave non-answers, like saying it’s their preference or that they just don’t want to. Others said they’re afraid a bisexual person would cheat, a longtime stereotype against bisexual people. 

So, yeah, I understand why someone may not want to be a part of the bi community. We’re not exactly universally beloved. We’re called liars, cheaters, and sluts. We’re told we don’t exist. But given that most people in the LGBTQ community identify as bisexual (in the U.S., anyway), we’re also not alone.

It also doesn’t help that King Princess has thrown other sapphic pop stars under the bus with an (also now-deleted) comment that, “You guys also might wanna check on the pop divas who are actively lying about being gay…in fully committed relationships with men on the DL.” This has since spun into a sort of witch hunt, with social media users speculating about who, exactly, she meant.

How King Princess identifies is her business. But the controversy around her comments suggests that, in 2026, people are more interested in deciding who fits within an identity than in understanding the people who use it.

Click here to read more >> https://mashable.com/life/king-princess-lesbian-controversy