While Pride month is over for another year, queer music lovers are still talking about two of the community's most divisive stars.
US singers Cari Fletcher and JoJo Siwa are known for their queer pop anthems and have a passionate lesbian fanbase.
Both singers have identified as lesbian or queer, so their recent announcements that they are dating men have shocked and upset certain fans.
It has sparked a broader conversation about the erasure of bisexual and pansexual identities and the pressure placed on celebrities to live up to fan expectations.
And if you're thinking "who the heck are Fletcher and Siwa and why do people care?", let us fill you in.
Who are JoJo Siwa and Cari Fletcher?
JoJo Siwa rose to fame on the hit TV show Dance Moms in 2014 for her extroverted personality.
She began releasing music in 2016 aimed at children, before branching out to pop music for an older audience.
Siwa came out in 2021 by posting a photo of herself in a T-shirt that said "Best Gay Cousin Ever."
The 22-year-old has more than 11 million Instagram followers and more than 500,000 monthly Spotify listeners.
In 2024, she proudly (and erroneously) declared that she "invented gay pop".
She later conceded that while she didn't invent the genre, she would love to be its "chief marketing officer."
Cari Fletcher, better known by her stage name Fletcher, became a queer icon after the release of her song Becky's So Hot in 2022.
Fletcher also came out in 2021, after getting fans to ask her questions on her Instagram story.
One fan asked if she was lesbian or bisexual.
"I get this question so much. I just exist. If someone needed to put me in some sort of category, for themselves to better understand, I would say I identify as queer," Fletcher posted on her story in response to the question.
The 31-year-old has more than one million Instagram followers and more than two million monthly Spotify listeners.
Why are they causing controversy?
Things started to blow up for Siwa earlier this year while she was a contestant on UK Celebrity Big Brother, a television show in which celebrities must live in a house together, completing tasks all while being cut off from the outside world.
People started to ask questions as she became very close with her fellow co-star Chris Hughes, despite still being in a relationship with Australian content creator Kath Ebbs.
On the show she said she didn't feel she identified with being a lesbian anymore.
"I have always been afraid of feeling queer, like I have always said lesbian right, but I feel so queer," she said whilst on Celebrity Big Brother UK.
"I am switching letters: f*** the L, I am going to the Q."
Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. It encompasses a range of sexualities and gender identities and is often used by people who feel they don't fit neatly into a box.
Shortly after the show had ended, Siwa broke up with Ebbs (who very publicly called her out on it) and announced she was dating her male Big Brother co-star.
She doubled down on her comments inside the house, saying in an interview with YOU magazine that she felt "pressured" into labelling herself a lesbian.
"And I think I did that because of pressure," Siwa said, adding that a lot of it came from "inside the [LGBTQIA+] community at times."
"From people I know, from partners I've had," she added.
RMIT University's senior public relations lecturer Dr Damien O'Meara said: "We have plenty of bi and pan people who don't feel welcome in our community."
He believes Fletcher and Siwa are offering a good opportunity to start a conversation and "challenge the erasure that's taking place".
Fletcher accused of erasing her queer identity
Around the same time, Fletcher released her single Boy, signalling to fans she was in a relationship with a man.
But her decision to archive all her previous social media posts about her music on same-sex relationships led to fans accusing her of erasing her queer identity.
"When you've made your entire brand of wlw (women loving women) music and art, only to turn around and talk about how 'magical and liberating' it is to be with a man, it just feels like it was all a phase for you," one social media user said.
Dr Natalie Krikowa, a senior lecturer at the School of Communications at the University of Technology in Sydney and a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, said both artists were entitled to talk about their relationships but there should be an additional level of "care, empathy and respect" given to fans who have come to expect something different.
"I think it is important that these conversations are had without it escalating into biphobia and bi erasure, because there is a fine line that we should not be crossing."
Fletcher talked about the backlash she received in a TikTok video and has now unarchived all her posts.
"My queerness is not a phase, I have always identified as a queer woman," she said in the video.
Dr O'Meara pointed out that the 31-year-old's brand is through her music which is "very personal".
"It explores her feelings and what she's going through, and a lot of her music has always said, 'well, this is what I'm dealing with right now.' And so, if we think of that as Fletcher's brand, what we have is her using her music to explore this," Dr O'Meara said.
Biphobia and bi erasure
Bi erasure and biphobia are terms for the questioning or dismissal of bisexuality.
But Dr O'Meara said Siwa and Fletcher had actually opened up an important conversation about bisexuality.
"We commonly think of queer identities as this very lit pathway and for many, many people it's not."
Author and editor of Nonsense Newsletter Patrick Lenton, who is bisexual, agrees.
"Invalidating that relationship and being angry about it stems from believing that bisexuality or queerness as a sort of broader thing isn't as valid as something say like lesbianism," he said.
He added that Siwa, as a 22-year-old, is discovering what her sexuality is "in a very public platform, in real time."
"In that particular case, I would've hated for anyone to be viewing and commenting on my sexuality journey when I was that young, because it was a mess."
Mr Lenton said there is a lot of online gatekeeping " over who is valid in their queerness and who is allowed to be queer," pointing to bisexual actor Kit Connor (from Netflix's Heartstopper).
"He was basically bullied into coming out before he was ready, because people were saying 'oh he's not queer enough to play a queer role' and it's really weird and backwards idea of looking at things."
Parasocial relationships between celebrities and fans
Sarah Scales, a PhD candidate at Swinburne University who is researching parasocial relationships and celebrity scandal, said part of the problem here is the "parasocial interaction" many people have with celebrities, which is a one-sided relationship that is usually between a fan and a celebrity that has no mutual development.
She said people can feel upset, disappointed and betrayed if they feel their trust has been broken with someone they look up to, or someone they see within themselves.
"Celebrities are unaware of the individual expectations we place on them; therefore, it can be hard for them to know they're breaking trust."
She said JoJo Siwa's fans may have reacted more favourably if she addressed her relationship breakdown with Kath Ebbs earlier and was more open about her attraction to Hughes.
"If they heard it from her first in a more active way, it might have been different."
