“It doesn’t matter who I’m dating or what relationship I’m in, I will always be queer”
BY NIC CROSARA, IMAGE BY CARISSA GALLO
While singer-songwriter FLETCHER has never identified as a lesbian, the queer musician has struck a chord with many lesbian listeners due to her songs depicting sapphic yearning, lust, love and breakups. And on 5 June, the Becky’s So Hot singer sparked controversy online with the release of her new single Boy and an update to her relationship status. She confirmed that she was dating a man. In case you’re wondering why this is so controversial, you’re not alone.
In a new TikTok video, the singer has set the record straight regarding her intentions with her new song, her identity, her music and her relationship.
“My queerness is not a phase. I am a queer woman. I have always identified as queer, I will always be queer ’til the day I die. I have loved women. I love women. I will always love women, whether I am with a guy, or a girl, or just a human being that I love,” she enthused firmly. “It doesn’t matter who I’m dating or what relationship I’m in, I will always be queer.”
Some listeners critiqued her for singing a song about an opposite sex relationship and releasing merch reading “Boy” during Pride month and our current political climate. Personally, I think the Boy merch looks cool – and, as a trans masc, I’d love to wear it during this year’s marches. In this political climate, we need to stand together, now more than ever. It’s time to end biphobia and bi-erasure.
“This was not a song to centre a relationship around a man, it was to centre the complexity of the queer experience – of my queer experience, and the nuance of it – and that it doesn’t need to look a certain way,” FLETCHER clarified on TikTok. “If anyone has felt seen and represented by me or my music in the past, that is not something that I take lightly. If you have felt invalidated or been invalidated, through the process of me sharing this or this song, that is not my intention.”
“I have always written about my love stories and my relationships and my heartbreaks and my losses and my loves,” she continued. “I am fully aware that it is not brave and not scary to share with the world at large about a straight passing heteronormative relationship in this political climate in this world that we are in right now. I am aware that that is not scary to share. What felt scary for me was sharing with my community and my world, where people have only experienced and known me a certain way. I felt really nervous that I would let people down and that I would disappoint them and that my queerness wouldn’t be queer enough.”
Amid the backlash, some commenters claimed she was erasing her queerness through archiving all of her old posts on Instagram (something that is very normal for musicians to do in the leadup to a new release – and is usually something that sparks excitement within their fanbases, as it hints that something new is on its way).
They also commented on how she was using her first name in a lot of the promotional material captions. Here’s what she had to say on the matter: “I usually archive my Instagram before I release new music, but it is not to erase any aspect of who I am. I’m not suddenly going by Cari, I’m still FLETCHER. If anybody’s been to a show, FLETCHER is one way onstage and Cari is – if you’ve come to a meet and greet or you’ve met me in person – I am soft and kind of awkward and I probably have a rose quarts crystal in my titties. Cari is queer, FLETCHER is queer. My name is Cari Fletcher.”
Towards the end of the video, she also affirmed that: “I have not been changed by a man, I have not been healed by a man, I am not more evolved for being with a man. I just so happened to fall in love with one and I wrote a song about it.”
@fletcher 🤍
♬ original sound – FLETCHER
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