This week, JoJo Siwa sat down with Yahoo Life, where she talked about how she doesn't like the word "lesbian."
girl fck you😭
"I don't like the word 'lesbian.' It's just, like, a lot," she said. "It's like the word 'moist.' It's just, like — ugh."
While some people took no issue with what she said:
watching jojo siwa get lit up for the exact same thing i thought when i first accepted being gay after literal years of seeing people treat the word lesbian like it was the worst thing on earth
Woooooow y’all are being incredibly cruel to jojo siwa’s very obvious internalized lesbophobia. I’ve had that same convo w tons of lesbins on here, so many of us had to process accepting “lesbian” as our descriptor after hearing it hurled as the most vicious insult imaginable.
Many swiftly called her out:
first girl in red now jojo siwa, lesbian is not a dirty word and the stigma needs to be unlearned BADLY https://t.co/yjojZYwOus
um in light of a recent jojo siwa interview, here’s a quick reminder that lesbian isn’t a bad or dirty word
(2/3) in the same breath. even when i struggled with my identity, i was aware that my discomfort was my own issue that i shouldn’t project onto others. jojo clearly understands her position as a role model for young lgbtq people, so she needs to be extremely careful (+)
lesbian is not a dirty word and when u have people like girl in red or even jojo siwa who are considered ‘gay icons’ pushing that, it makes it sm worse. how do u expect lesbians to feel hearing these ‘icons’ literally hate the word lesbian?? not very inclusive of them is it
"I've been going through my comments, and I just want to make something super clear — I never said that lesbian was a dirty word, and I never, ever would say that it was a dirty word because it is not," JoJo said in the video.
"It is not a bad word. It is not a slur, and it is especially not a word that I am ashamed of saying or ashamed of identifying as, by any means."
JoJo then said it was more about the "sound" of the word itself. "I don't hate the word 'lesbian.' Whenever someone talks to me about my sexuality, I just say that I'm 'gay.' It's not the word that flows off the tongue for me, if that makes sense."
So all in all, JoJo is saying she doesn't love the pronunciation/phonetic element of the word. Glad she clarified.
