How Sexual Identity Labels Fail Contemporary Queer Life

In this episode of Please Say The Dailey, sociologist and host Vanisha R. Dailey slows down a conversation that’s been circulating heavily online — particularly around studs, “straight women,” and who gets to be considered legitimately queer.

Rather than leading with hot takes, this episode looks at what these debates reveal about belonging, sexuality, and the ways queer communities sometimes reproduce conditional acceptance instead of care. Pulling from sociological research, queer theory, and lived community experience, Vanisha explores how identity develops over time, why bisexual and questioning people are often erased, and what happens when queerness becomes something you have to prove to others.

This is not an episode about labels for the sake of labels.
 It’s about legitimacy, relational care, and what our communities lose when identity turns into a test.

• The “studs and straight women” discourse and what it actually reveals
• How sexuality develops over time, not on a fixed timeline
• Why belonging in queer spaces often becomes conditional
• Bi-erasure and the emotional cost of legitimacy testing
• How digital platforms intensify identity policing
• What relational care looks like beyond labels

Referenced frameworks & thinkers (for listeners who want to go deeper):

• Judith Butler — identity as performative (Gender Trouble)
• Minority Stress Theory (Ilan Meyer)
• Research on bi-erasure and mental health disparities
• Sociological perspectives on belonging and legitimacy

🎙️ Please Say The Dailey is a podcast exploring sociology, culture, sexuality, and community.

Read the full episode script here: [link]

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Chapters

• 1:51 Opening & framing the conversation
• 3:13 Why the “studs and straight women” discourse keeps resurfacing
• 5:55 Sexuality as a process, not a credential
• 8:06 Belonging, legitimacy, and conditional acceptance
• 12:11 Gender, masculinity, and uneven scrutiny
• 13:56 Bi-erasure and its real consequences
• 15:30 Digital platforms and identity performance
• 19:37 Closing reflections & care-centered belonging

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

You are now tuned in to Vanisha R. Dailey. Please say the Dailey. Hey, hey y'all! Welcome to another episode of Please Say the Dailey. I am your host, Vanisha R. Dailey, and this is episode 16. I just finished my very first semester of grad school with A's and B's, and you better believe I will be celebrating because that was not easy. But look, before we get into this episode, I want to start with something important. If you've ever felt questioned, minimized, or erased in your sexuality, especially inside queer spaces, this episode is for you. And if you've ever found yourself judging someone else's queerness, even quietly, I want you to stay with me through this conversation. If this podcast resonates with you, the simplest way to support is to follow the show. Share this episode with someone who needs it. Or send me a message with your thoughts. I'd love to hear from you. Let's get into it. So there's been this conversation that I've been seeing pop up on social media, mostly threads, TikTok as well. But it shows up as jokes or hot takes and think pieces. But underneath it all is the same unresolved tension. Studs dating so-called straight women is suspicious, problematic, or somehow evidence of harm. Every time it pops up, the comments explode. And what people think they're debating are labels or dating preferences, standards. But what they're actually debating is legitimacy. Who belongs? Who counts? Who gets access to the queer community? And under what conditions. So today I want to slow this conversation down, not to bring even more heat to the discussion, but to understand what's really happening underneath it. For context, if you're new here, I'm a graduate student studying digital sociology, and I'm also queer, bisexual, but I'm interested in how sexual identities are shaped not just by personal desire, but by social structures, cultural narratives, and power. This topic matters to me not just personally, but academically, because these debates tell us a lot about how communities reproduce harm even while claiming liberation. Let's just go ahead and say this right up front. If a woman is dating a stud, she is not straight. That doesn't mean that she has to have everything figured out about her sexuality. Nor does it mean that she has to immediately claim a label. Because some people have argued that some of these women call themselves straight. But that's what people forget. Sexuality is very complex. People have to go at their own pace and feel out their own unique situation before it makes perfect sense to them. So it doesn't mean that her attraction has a neat narrative, or at least it doesn't have to, but it does mean that calling her straight is inaccurate. And what's interesting is how committed people are to preserving that mislabeling. Instead of asking, what does her attraction tell us? People jump straight to questioning her motives, her sincerity, her legitimacy, her worthiness of queer space. By calling her straight, we erase the complexity of her sexuality, and we do it intentionally. Because acknowledging complexity would require us to accept that sexuality is not something people arrive at all at once, fully formed with the perfect language. And that makes people uncomfortable. This conversation doesn't exist in a vacuum. Studs, which the word stud refers to strictly black masculine lesbians, and that's if they actually call themselves that term. Please understand that the word stud has cultural significance to it. Cultural and historical, actually, but my point in mentioning this is the fact that stud is not a word for all people that are masculine presenting lesbians. Studs receive disproportionate backlash in this topic. They're framed as naive, desperate, predatory, or even self-betraying for dating women who were earlier in their queer journeys. And that backlash mirrors something very familiar. Just like we see the gender wars inside black heterosexual communities, we see a lot of those same dynamics reproduced inside LGBTQ spaces. Patriarchy doesn't disappear when a person comes out. It adapts. So yes, if we're going to have this conversation about studs dating straight women, we need to have a talk about how hegemonic standards shape desire. We can discuss how masculinity, even in queer spaces, is rewarded, romanticized, and sometimes exploited. But we cannot isolate studs within this conversation as the only issue without acknowledging the larger system shaping all of us. Because the truth is, heteronormativity and patriarchy influence queer communities too. You see it when masculinity is glorified, femininity is expected to be submissive. Same sex couples replicate binary gender roles. Weddings require one tux and one gown. Two masculine women together are marked as being too gay, isn't that crazy? I've witnessed this firsthand. I remember being in queer spaces when I was in my early twenties in Atlanta. And any time there were two masculine presenting women together, people viewed it as strange or excessive. People made fun of this, as if queerness itself had rules about acceptable presentation. All of this tells us one thing. We have been taught that relationships must look a certain way, even when we don't fit those standards ourselves. Once you strip away the memes and the jokes, this conversation isn't actually about studs. And it's not really about straight women either. It's about policing who gets to belong. Who gets to be considered queer enough? Are they allowed access into the community? Or what about respect? Are they deserving of it? And it also begs the question: how much experience is required before someone's identity is taken seriously? And underneath all of that is this very quiet hierarchy. How long have you been queer? How many same gender relationships have you had? How visible is your queerness? And is it clear for other people to read? This turns queerness into something that you have to qualify for instead of an actual lived experience by way of identity. I want to pause here because this is where people get defensive, honestly. When I name policing, same folks hear accusation instead of observation. But when people police, it doesn't always require bad intentions. Often, it grows out of fear, fear that something will be taken away. And let me say this: queer people did not invent that fear. It comes from living in a world where access to safety, love, and legitimacy have always been conditional. So when someone new enters the queer space, someone still figuring things out, it can feel threatening. But fear-based protection is different from care-based protection. One builds walls, and the other builds capacity. And the reality is that communities built around walls don't actually stay safe, they just get smaller. From a sociological perspective, sexuality is not just fluid, it is shaped. Most people are raised in environments where heterosexuality is assumed, enforced, and rewarded. Queerness is shaped as deviant, temporary, or dangerous. So when someone comes out or even considers it, they're doing so against years of conditioning. And some people unfortunately learned early that queerness meant family rejection, religious punishment, violence, and even social isolation. So they tucked it away, they survived, and they complied. That doesn't mean that the desire disappeared. Masking is not erasure, and suppression is not absence. So when someone explores queerness later on in life, it's rarely something new. It's something delayed. But here's where I've noticed one of the many double standards within the queer community. When men explore same gender attraction, even once, society quickly removes the possibility of him being heterosexual. One deviation and the label sticks. He's gay. And in rare cases, he would be labeled as bisexual. But oftentimes, men aren't even granted legitimate access to that label. But when a woman dates a woman, suddenly everyone bends over backwards to keep them straight. That's not accidental. Women are socially framed as emotionally flexible, experimental, and unserious. Their desires are treated as soft, negotiable, and temporary. Men's sexuality is treated as rigid and defining. A woman's sexuality is treated as something that happens to her. So when she expresses queer desire, people dismiss it as curiosity instead of identity. Bisexual people, especially women, are consistently erased from both heterosexual and queer narratives. Bisexuality is treated as a phase, as confusion, indecision, something that disappears depending on who someone is dating. But bisexuality doesn't just disappear based on a partner choice. A bisexual woman dating a man is still bisexual. A bisexual woman dating a woman is still bisexual. So a bisexual woman dating a stud is what? Yeah, you're right, it's not straight. It's bisexual. When communities refuse to acknowledge this, they create harm because research shows that bisexual people experience higher rates of anxiety and depression, more rejection from queer spaces, less access to community support, and social support is one of the strongest protective factors for mental health. Erasure isn't abstract, it has consequences. I want to be very clear about something here. By erasure isn't just about language, it's about access. When bisexual people are treated as not queer enough, they lose access to community knowledge, to mentorship, to support systems that matter, especially during moments of vulnerability. And when queer spaces mirror the same conditional belonging people faced in heterosexual environments, it reinforces isolation rather than healing. We talk a lot about chosen family, but chosen family still requires choice. And exclusion breaks that promise. A little personal story. I remember when I was hanging out in the LGBTQ scene, once again in my early 20s in Atlanta, such a fun period of time in my life. But I definitely recall when I started to explore more in my sexuality with dating men as well. My friends at the time started to treat me differently. It's like I was being shunned, I was being shamed in a way. And it was because that sort of fluidity made them uncomfortable. But remember, if you've listened to any of my previous episodes about sexuality, I've always known that I was bisexual. It's never been something that gave me any type of discomfort. So what did I do? I stopped hanging out with those people because if you can't accept me for who I am, what are we really even doing here? And honestly, I kind of stepped away from hanging out in the LGBTQ scene because of that. Once every blue moon, I'd hang out, but I really was not into hanging out in those spaces if that was going to be the energy that I'd receive. And interestingly enough, one of the women that I was hanging out with back then said to me many years later in my inbox that she admires just how solid I've always been in my identity, regardless of if people accepted me or not. And I know that she had many challenges navigating her own sexual identity, with religious factors coming up as well. Isn't that ironic? But the sad part about all of this is where that judgment comes from. It unfortunately comes from within the queer community. If someone is being brave enough to explore a new side of themselves that they haven't been able to in the past, the least that we can do is not push them out. Allow them the space and the safety that many of us wish that we were given. People who should understand what it feels like to question, to fear, to grow, instead reproduce the same barriers they once faced. They require proof. They demand history. They expect performance. But how does someone gain experience if the community rejects them for not having it? That's not protection. It's exclusion. Sexuality is not something you earn. It's something you uncover. Not everyone has the same timeline. Some people needed distance from their hometown, some needed therapy, representation, some needed safety, or even time to outgrow the shame that they were experiencing. You cannot judge someone's journey without knowing their context. And you can't build community by punishing people for arriving late to the party. So when people say a stud dating a straight woman, what they're actually revealing is their own discomfort with ambiguity, attachment to rigid categories, internalized patriarchy, the fear of diluting identity, and anxiety about belonging. This is not about protecting queer spaces, it's really about controlling them. If we want healthier, queer communities, we have to let go of the idea that queerness must look one way, arrive one way, or prove itself on demand. People deserve room to discover who they are without being treated like visitors in their own community. Queerness is not a test. So can we please stop hindering other people's experience with their queerness? Allow them to be free, allow them to venture and develop. It's a process. Before you go, I want you to sit with this question. Where did you need grace in your own journey? And who could you offer it to now? If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. Follow the podcast, leave a review if you feel called to. And continue these conversations with care. The entire goal of the show is to continue sharing the nuances of identity slowly and thoughtfully without stepping away from the complexities of it all. I appreciate you all for listening. Until next time.