Wow, way to prove my point so succinctly. We have no way of determining the sexuality of Dickinson. Period. It’s not like performing a queer analysis of a character in literary text (and, btw, yes the term is ‘queer’ as in ‘Queer Theory’)—this is an actual human being. Unless there is explicit information from Dickinson discussing her relationship with a woman, then we have no right to assume she had one. Again, most of the scholarship suggesting her homosexuality come from a Freudian viewpoint (e.g. she said she wanted to hold hands in a letter—clearly she’s a lesbian! No friends ever held hands EVER!). We cannot ‘read into’ someone’s biography. The reason I claimed it was sensationalist is because the author used a hot-button topic and language (Dickinson was hot!) to popularise a post that, honestly, not many people would be interested in (except English scholars like myself). Couple that with the fact that the author gave no attribution to the claim, and—yes—by DEFINITION, it is sensationalist. Frankly, I don’t care if she was a lesbian or not. I’ve studied many queer authors over the years and have discussed heteronormativity and gender performance many times (Judith Butler makes a large appearance in my PhD dissertation). It has nothing to do with any of that. It does, however, have everything to do with labelling someone who cannot accept or dismiss that label, especially because that label did not exist as we know it today.