‘He kind of gets cyber bullied to come out of the closet’: It took Shawn Mendes finally addressing those gay rumors for people to gain a conscience

Shawn Mendes addressed the speculation surrounding his sexuality for the first time in a long time during a concert in Colorado on Monday. The singer, who has been the subject of speculation ever since he became an internet sensation in 2013 at just 14 years old, says he is still “figuring it out.”

Right before playing his new song “The Mountain,” where he sings about some of the discourse surrounding his fame, including whether he likes “girls or boys,” the 26-year-old opened up about his journey with his sexual orientation. “Since I was really young, there’s just been this thing about my sexuality, and people have been talking about it for so long,” he started, calling the speculation “silly” and “an intrusion” both because of how natural and personal that journey can be.

The Canadian singer continued by explaining that he’s chosen to write and speak about the topic now because he wants to “be closer to everyone” and “be in [his] truth.”

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 and I’m trying to be really brave and just allow myself to be a human and feel things.”

Mendes’ vulnerability seemed to remind the people responsible for the speculation that their online jokes and comments have real consequences, even if their target is a celebrity whose life may feel distant and detached.

“Shawn Mendes saying he actually struggles with defining his sexuality… now i feel bad for the shady tweets,” one person commented. “Now i kinda feel bad for calling him fruity,” another agreed.

Between the posts admitting blame and those gloating with variations of “I knew it” and “told ya,” most reactions were condemnatory of the people who’ve pressured Mendes into speaking out for a decade now. “He kind of gets cyber bullied to come out of the closet,” said one X user. “He shouldn’t have to open up about anything if he doesn’t want to,” argued another. “Can we demoralise speculating about a celebrity’s sexuality its high time we start acting like human beings,” a third added.

The internet has a habit of outing celebrities before they’re ready to come out

Many also recalled how, recently, two of Mendes’ peers, Heartstopper actor Kit Connor and Grammy-winning musician Billie Eilish, were put in the same situation, pushed into coming out as LGBTQ+ after being accused of queerbaiting their audience. “I’m bi. Congrats for forcing an 18-year-old to out himself. I think you missed the point of the show,” Connor stated in a tweet in 2022.

22-year-old Eilish, who had been expressing her queerness in her music, videos, and social media for a while, naturally taking her time to explore her identity before making any definitive statements, confirmed she liked women in an interview with Variety in 2023, saying “I’m attracted to [girls] as people. I’m attracted to them for real.” A year later, she told Vogue she wished “no one knew anything about [her] sexuality,” and that she was never talking about it again.

Growing up in the public eye means you don’t get the grace of self-discovery because your every movement is seen as a statement about who you are, even when you’re not quite sure who that is, yet. Accusations of “queerbaiting,” a term that gained popularity for its use concerning fictional universes, have gone from a legitimate plight to claim queer spaces to empty attacks against anyone who doesn’t fit a cis-heterosexual mold.

Mendes has maintained for years that he is straight, confessing in a 2018 Rolling Stone interview that he “hates” the side of himself that feels compelled to prove he’s not gay. These recent statements are the first time he’s opened the possibility, publicly, that he might not be, but that should not be seen as any kind of “win” for the people who have been pestering him about his sexuality. If anything, they have deprived him of the privacy and peace he deserved to figure that side of himself out, in time.

And if Mendes does ever put a label on his feelings, and it happens to not be “straight” anymore, it doesn’t mean he was lying before, because that could have been his truth then. And, even if he was lying, he had a right to protect that side of himself from a world that is often unkind to LGBTQ+ people, despite the civil and cultural progress of the last two decades. And so did Kit Connor and Billie Eilish. We all evolve at our own pace.