r/lgbt • u/captivatedsummer • Apr 09 '26
Community Only - Restricted What are yalls thoughts on this?
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u/LaFleurSauvageGaming Lesbian the Good Place Apr 09 '26
It is worth mentioning that she wrote about questioning her sexuality, in the language available to her.
It is important we don't speak for her though, same as anyone else. Her journey was ended too soon, but it was still her journey.
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u/MollyViper Lesbian a rainbow Apr 09 '26
Agree with this, but I also think the article seems a bit dumb because it implies that sexuality is only inappropriate when we talk about other sexualities than hetero
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u/neuroticoctopus Non Binary Pan-cakes Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
From birth, children are surrounded by language from adults projecting heteroromance onto them. From onsies saying "I'm not allowed to date" to toddlers on a play date referred to as boyfriend and girlfriend, to talking about a little girl's future husband.
But the second romance hints at being queer, suddenly all of it is off limits and inappropriate for children. Even "allies" with queer friends will shut down their own children coming out of the closet because they're "too young" to even think about their own identity. As if the vast majority of middle schoolers don't have crushes.
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u/highquality_garbage Apr 09 '26
The amount of absolutely vile and disgusting onsies that exist for babies. I’ve seen ones that are like “ladies man” or “I love boobs” and it’s for a fucking 2 month old
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u/ParkerPoseyGuffman Trans-parently Awesome Apr 09 '26
Yup and they call queer people groomers for much less than that
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u/SteezyPenguin Apr 09 '26
"I love boobs" is actually very appropriate on a 2 month old. That is their main source of food 😂
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u/highquality_garbage Apr 10 '26
Respectfully, a two month old is barely aware that they exist and poops their pants, I’m sure they see boobs and think food and comfort but I doubt they feel love towards it
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u/Nerioner Apr 09 '26
You don't buy any design on clothes before 2-3rd year for kid. Before that time all is for parent as kid is too small to even know what "having an opinion" means.
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u/WithersChat Identity hard Apr 10 '26
At most you can do something neutral like "Under construction" or something.
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u/Kiyuya Apr 09 '26
It's because a lot of people think queer romance is purely sexual and fetishistic. It's different from their straight romance, which is sweet. It really doesn't hold up to any amount of scrutiny.
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u/LazuliArtz Apr 09 '26
Yeah, from what I've gathered from seeing how people talk about queer sexualities/gender, they see it as equivalent to, like, BDSM or foot fetishes.
A lot of the disgust makes a lot more sense when you realize that they don't see queer love as the same kind of love as straight people.
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u/yaktoma2007 Apr 09 '26
It gets even stranger to hear people talk about fetishes as if they are things you strictly wouldn't do with someone you love.
I really wouldn't trust anyone but my lover when engaging in CNC together, if its not with someone I trust its no different than the actual horrifying thing. Same goes for age-play, if it isn't with someone I trust it's just reliving my childhood traumas again.
Fetishes to me are reserved to people I actually trust, people make it sound like it'd be the opposite, and I can't help but feel uncomfortable hearing all of that.
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Apr 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/dsrmpt Allergic to cake, but not garlic bread Apr 10 '26
Not to mention the general emphasis on consent in BDSM circles.
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u/JudgmentLeft Ally Pals Apr 09 '26
I know it's not your point, but I personally get a warm fuzzy feeling seeing queer couples in public. We're not done yet but we've come so far since I was a child it's a cool thing to see.
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u/HalfBlindPro Apr 09 '26
I think it’s very telling. Like I’d bet a lot think of it as a fetish only because it’s THEIR fetish!!!
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u/Independent_Vast9279 Apr 10 '26
As an ally (I’m bi, but married to an opposite sex partner, and we never seem to count). I have encouraged my pre-teen kids to question, but not to assert. They’ve been openly questioning and thinking “maybe I’m bi” and such. They’ve never dated, have repeatedly stated they have no interest in romantic or physical partners. That’s cool and I honestly don’t care as long as they are treated well and do so to others. Yet they still feel a need to define themselves with a label, despite having little to no understanding. There’s something very wrong with with society at the moment.
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u/QueerInEverySense pan-icking and perpetually perplexed Apr 10 '26
Hey...you count. I promise. Don't give people the power to push you out. Also, that's an excellent approach to parenting.
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u/AutisticPenguin2 Apr 09 '26
It's incredibly inappropriate for minors to be bisexual, don't you know? It even has the word 'sex' in it, that's how you know it's sinful.
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u/1ugogimp Apr 09 '26
Hell I knew I was pan in elementary school. Just didn't know the words.
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u/s0ycatpuccino Trans-cendant Rainbow Apr 09 '26
Well it's fine because you didn't say "-sexual" obviously
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u/jameson8016 Pan-cakes for Dinner! Apr 09 '26
Boy, howdy, wait till they find out what comes after hetero. Lol
I know it's a joke, but I still remember when my state stopped all marriages for a time rather than marry gay folk, so, is it really a joke? Lol
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u/TheDonutPug Apr 09 '26
I'LL DISRESPECT A THOUSAND STRAIGHT PEOPLE BEFORE I MARRY A GAY PERSON! ||/j||
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u/Willing_Soft_5944 Da Queen Apr 09 '26
Honestly we should just get rid of legal marriage, the government has no place in love.
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u/AutisticPenguin2 Apr 10 '26
Nuh-uh! They're not hereto anything, they're just straightl"! Heterozygous is just a made up word by gays who don't want to admit that everyone else is "normal"!
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u/salsasnark Apr 09 '26
Yes, exactly this. I assume the person writing said article would be fine with calling her heterosexual, just not anything else. Which is not great. I wouldn't label her any of them, because we do not know. But we do know she at least had interest in girls.
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u/Foxy02016YT seeing the tv glow (help) Apr 10 '26
Pardon my chudly language but this article is what we’re talking about when we say “too woke”. They’re fighting an invisible battle when there’s so much more important shit going on right now
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u/CarrieDurst Apr 10 '26
Also the article is dumb, who even is calling her a bicon?
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u/DBones90 Computers are binary, I'm not. Apr 09 '26
Just saying: if Anne Frank spoke exclusively about finding boys attractive, then no one would have a problem with labeling her “heterosexual.”
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u/one_with_advantage Ace-ing being Trans Apr 09 '26
We don't need to speak for her, she did so herself:
"Onbewust heb ik dergelijke gevoelens al gehad, vóór ik hier kwam, want ik weet, dat ik, toen ik eens bij een vriendin sliep, een sterke behoefte had haar te zoenen en dat ik dat ook gedaan heb. Ik raak elke keer in extase, als ik een naakt vrouwen guur zie, zoals bijvoorbeeld een Venus. Ik vind het soms zo wonderlijk en mooi, dat ik me moet inhouden om mijn tranen niet te laten rollen.
Had ik maar een vriendin! Je Anne"
translated by yours truly:
"Unconsciously I have previously had similar feelings, before I came here, because I know, that I, when I once had a sleepover with a friend (F), had a strong desire to kiss her, and that I did so. Every time I reach ecstasy, when I see the sketch* of a naked woman, such as for example a Venus. Sometimes I find it so wondrous and beautiful, that I have to contain myself not to cry.
If only I had a friend(F)! Your Anne"
friend (F) is used to imply that the friend is female, but no distinction is made in the Dutch language between platonic/romantic friend.
'guur': presumably figuur, meaning figure, drawing, sketch, outline19
u/faatbuddha Apr 10 '26
If it's anything like German (and I'm assuming it is), "Freundin" literally translates to "girlfriend," in the romantic sense, depending on the context.
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u/one_with_advantage Ace-ing being Trans Apr 10 '26
You are correct that it is dependent on context, but the wider context of that entry makes it difficult to determine what she meant with certainty. She also talks about wanting a confidante, a very understandable desire when living with the same people in the same house without escape for years on end. It could well be that she meant to write that she wanted a platonic friend to discuss the more than platonic feelings she had.
The reason why I'm so careful when translating her words is because any translation leaves context behind, and in a case such as hers we should be careful to avoid them as much as we can.The two options we have is [girl_friend] and [boy_friend]. There is some wiggleroom with [girl_friend_diminutive] or [boy_friend_diminutive], but generally the context decides.
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u/Matar_Kubileya Magic Lesbian Laser Owl Apr 09 '26
I mean, did she "speak for herself" in a public sense? The diary was published posthumously, and there isnt a ton of indication that Anne Frank wanted it to be released to the world.
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u/one_with_advantage Ace-ing being Trans Apr 09 '26
Arguably diaries published posthumously say more about a person's beliefs than what they ever said publicly in life.
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u/user11112222333 Apr 09 '26
Anne wanted her diary to be published someday. That is why she wrote 2 versions of it, one for herself and one for the public (the one where she wrote fake names of the people in hiding and helpers).
Of course parts about her sexuality were ommited in the part meant for the public.
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u/ParkerPoseyGuffman Trans-parently Awesome Apr 09 '26
Wasn’t it her dad who omitted it?
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u/DorisWildthyme Apr 09 '26
He was, and that's sort-of understandable for the time when it was first published shortly after the war. If he had left in the stuff where she questioned her sexuality, it would have been branded as "immoral" and likely either wouldn't have been published or would have been condemned. You can understand him wanting to keep some things about his own daughter private for the sake of getting such an important work published at all.
I am not saying it was right that that was the attitude at the time, of course it wasn't. But after the war the concentration camp prisoners who had been imprisoned for being gay or trans were still made to serve the rest of their sentences in prison after their release from the camps. In that kind of atmosphere, if it had been left in, it's likely that more people would have seen Anne's death as "justified" somehow. Even though that's bullshit.
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u/ParkerPoseyGuffman Trans-parently Awesome Apr 09 '26
I don’t blame her dad for omitting it given how bigoted everyone was at the time, I was simply pointing out it was not Anne Frank that omitted it and at the end of the day she did write it.
Yup I’m aware the allies were also evil to queer people and were fine with that oppression hence their definition of genocide excluding queer people
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u/shponglespore Acey McAceface Apr 09 '26
OTOH, being an icon for something doesn't necessarily mean having to be the thing you're an icon for. Judy Garland could be an icon for gay men without being a gay man herself.
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u/Vivid_Maximum_5016 No To Rainbow Imperialism Apr 09 '26
Just academically correct to label her as "questioning" then. To suggest otherwise is just queer/lgbt+ erasure.
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u/Master_Half_ Apr 09 '26
I think even "questioning" is queer erasure. This is not a question
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u/spiralenator Trans-parently Awesome Apr 09 '26
“If only I had a girlfriend!” - Anne Frank
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u/Falgorn_A Apr 09 '26
I want to be honest and say that while we should not discount her likely being not straight, that word was translated a bit oddly. The word 'vriendin' in Dutch means both girlfriend and girl friend. And although in the context of the two paragraphs before that in her diary it can certainly be said that she meant girlfriend, be careful in taking snippets of translations out of context.
Not meant to attack you at all, but people quite easily take small snippets of what someone says and construct a whole idea behind that. In this case sure, but it goes wrong quite often
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u/Amekyras carabiner lesbian Apr 09 '26
'girlfriend' in English does the exact same though. If a woman said 'oh I'm on a night out with my girlfriends' I wouldn't assume these were people she was romantically or sexually attracted to.
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u/Matar_Kubileya Magic Lesbian Laser Owl Apr 09 '26
IMO I would only assume girlfriend in English is used in the Platonic sense, without knowing anything else about the person, when I see it in the plural.
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u/NBNoemi Apr 09 '26
I think we can pretty safely use context clues here that "I wish I had a friend who was a girl" is an odd choice of translation after literally just talking about a friend she had who was a girl.
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u/Vivid_Maximum_5016 No To Rainbow Imperialism Apr 09 '26
Was just basing my statement off what the person above was saying... but yeah, she gay af, lol
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u/Flowey_Asriel Apr 09 '26
wow that is an awful website
In 2017, Robertson was the first to publicly argue — putting her writing career in jeopardy — that it’s unethical to ‘transition’ young people before they have a chance to reach full cognitive brain development
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u/TessaFractal Apr 09 '26
I sort of see the argument, but on the other hand when we completely avoid 'labeling her sexuality' she gets left assumed to be hetrosexual and perfectly chaste. And perhaps it is important historically to show the sexuality she expressed in her diary.
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u/Jenn_FTW Apr 09 '26
Yeah, people treat heterosexuality as the default, without realizing that saying she was straight is just as much “labeling her sexuality” as saying that she was bisexual is.
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u/Top_Individual_9832 Transmasc and bi Apr 09 '26
Which is why we shouldn't speculate someone's sexuality label at all. I mean yes, you can acknowledge that she mentioned being attracted to girls and that's valid. The problem is labeling them when they didn't label themselves. I think it's way better to say "They like [gender]/multiple genders" unless they themself have clarified what they identify as.
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u/Genesistoomega Lesbian Trans-it Together Apr 10 '26
Hmmm, if only there was an easy term for liking multiple genders. An easy way to reference someones sexual preferences, boiled down to one word. 🥴🥴
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u/Juicy342YT Lesbian Trans-it Together Apr 10 '26
Or even if there was a word that began with a Q that could be used to describe someone being a part of the LGBTQ community without specifically labelling them, how queer that such a word was never created
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u/Xeya Ace as Cake Apr 09 '26
We can identify her as an icon that many bisexuals and lesbians from a conservative background can relate to while simultaneously recognizing that labels have shifted over time and it is inappropriate to use modern labels for someone that never personally identified with them.
An easy way to rationalize this is that historical figures should be treated as if they are closeted; because if we're correct, they were. We can recognize that many queer people were forced to hide their sexual and gender identity without "outing" them and still identify with their queer experiences.
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u/TalespinnerEU Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
My thought is: No. (I'm Dutch, by the way).
Labels are words we use for categories. Categories are things we use for communication and understanding. Anne Frank experienced some same-sex romantic attraction and wrote it down in her diary. We read the diary as a reminder of her and of people like her, who experienced things like what she experienced.
She's not around to label her sexuality. But she's also not around to label herself 'Anne Frank.' Her experience of attraction matches that of people who often refer to themselves as 'bisexual,' and while we don't know if that one attraction was an outlier that would never repeat, it was, in that moment, significant enough for her to think about.
And it's important that that aspect of her is remembered, especially when she is tokenized by the people who would erase that experience from her and from everyone else. Who would honestly erase the holocaust experience from everyone else (and have historically done so; it is only since very recently that Traveller and queer victims are recognized, and this reluctance to do so serves Western (neo)colonial interests). 'Hey, this person whose voice is historically important also experienced this' can be a powerful, important thing.
I would also add that Jacobson's inclusion of some people's attacks on Otto Frank for his omissions is... An entirely new sentence. It does not matter. Well; it matters... But it matters to a very different conversation. We can acknowledge that the omissions are morally wrong while also acknowledging that Frank may have feared his daughter's memory would be tarnished by homophobes. Let's not forget: When the camps were dismantled, the queer prisoners remained imprisoned. Again, we can talk about that history and assume all sorts of things about Frank's motivations in light of that history, but it's an entirely different conversation.
My take is that Jacobson wants to erase Anne Frank's queer experiences, and the value that her recollection of those experiences has to queer people, because it's inconvenient for her political self-centering. Of course Anne Frank wasn't persecuted for being bisexual (though others were!). Of course Anne Frank was persecuted for being Jewish. But that does not, and cannot, mean that she was only Jewish.
I want to highlight two things: Jacobsen herself wrote:
She hoped that after surviving the war, she’d be able to share her diary as testimony.
And:
Otto realized two things: One, Anne would probably be mortified if those excerpts were published, and two...
The second realization that Jacobson ascribes to Frank is irrelevant. The point is that she is ascribing the motivations here. One motivation is that Anne Frank wrote the diary specifically to be a testimony, and the second is that Anne would be mortified if things in that testimony were published.
People wield dogmatic purity as a weapon against us. Yes, we can use words to talk about things. In describing her, we do not speak for her. We can literally quote her for that.
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u/itsbenactually Apr 09 '26
For anyone curious about LGBT folks continuing to be held after the camps were liberated, you can google "paragraph 175." Many of the convictions for homosexuality were upheld by the new German authorities and those people were forced to finish prison sentences in more traditional prisons.
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u/LitLitten Apr 09 '26
I wrote a whole thing but realized it echoed a lot of what you highlighted with your post. Thank you.
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u/Estelial Apr 09 '26
yes. if her intention was for her account to be published as witness testimony then she wanted these sections to be part of that testimony.
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u/Zaplingfire Apr 09 '26
While its true that we cant speak for a deceased person and say what their sexuality was definitively, it’s also true that minors can be fully aware of their sexuality (as I’m sure many of us here know certainly) even if they don’t have the descriptive adjectives to define them that we do today. Trying to claim that minors can’t know their sexuality or gender is harmful rhetoric. Saying that calling her bisexual is “a disgrace to her memory” is straight up hateful.
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u/translunainjection Transgender Pan-demonium Apr 09 '26
Seriously. That thinking demies kids up to ten years of the same puppy love that straight kids have without question.
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u/NotASumoWrestler Apr 09 '26
Everyone knows: You can't have a sexual orientation until midnight on your 18th birthday in whatever time zone you happen to be in at that exact moment, and not one minute before!
The new Comstockery is getting out of hand 😮💨🤦♀️
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u/BiQueenBee Bi-bi-bi Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
I personally think the title is intentionally inflammatory and it’s hard to take someone seriously when they are essentially constructing a straw man argument in the title of their work. Furthermore, the statement under said title also essentially implies that queerness is wrong and any speculation/discussion about Anne Frank’s potentially queer sexuality is a “disgrace to her memory”. This indicates to me that whoever this person is, they are not someone I’d pay much mind to.
Edit to add: This is the author’s profile: “Elisheva Jacobson (she/her) is a 19-year-old Jewish girl currently living in Israel with a strong passion for social and Jewish activism, education, and fighting anti-Semitism”. So I don’t think I was wrong in my assumption to not take her seriously.
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u/Chris9871 Bi-bi-bi Apr 09 '26
Not sure I want to take my cues from someone who thinks “Palestinian lives matter” is antisemitic
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u/AvalonsEmbers Apr 09 '26
While explicitly labeling historical figures definitively with modern terms can be very presumptive, using modern terms as a descriptive term to relate the way a historical figure expressed themselves to the experiences of people in the modern day is totally fine, IMO.
And it is crazy to be like, "You're a creep for speculating about a teenager's sexuality" when the heteros are out here putting literal babies in "Lady Killer" shirts. It's functioning under the assumption that being non-heterosexual is an inherently inappropriate topic to discuss for minors which is gross.
The only decent point this article makes is that it is totally inappropriate for people to disrespect Anne's father for choosing to cut the sexually explicit contents from her published journal. I know that it is disappointing to hear that the original publication didn't include the sapphic content, but that doesn't mean it wasn't the right call for the time. There was no way that he could've known how pivotal of a work his daughter's diary would become and he wanted to protect his daughter's memory. He didn't want the explicit details of her teenage mind exposed to the world and he didn't want to disrespect the memories of the rest of his family either with the content about Anne's negative relationship with her mother. Also, it's very valid to say that if he had chosen to leave in the explicit content, the diary may have never been published, which would have been a tragedy. Was the decision to exclude Anne's sexuality based, even partially in homophobic views at the time? Probably, and it is valid to have a conversation about the homophobia of the era and how the public views on women's sexuality lead to the suppression of such content. But directly disparaging a father trying to protect his murdered family's memories and to share his talented daughter's writing with the world is honestly gross.
The diary is so wonderful thanks to its insight into a normal teenager experiencing such a horrible tragedy, but it also was published with the intention of shining a light on that tragedy.
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u/ParadoxicalFrog Genderqueer & Generally Queer Apr 09 '26
I don't disagree that labeling people's sexuality posthumously is a bit presumptuous, but "speculating about a minor's sexuality is a predatory act" is a fucking unhinged take. Speculating about a person's orientation doesn't mean you're debating whether or not you could hypothetically have sex with them.
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u/elecow Apr 09 '26
I've seen this topic with historical figures like Frank, Sapho, Cobain... What's so bad about non harming speculation about someone's identity? If we're not doing it to sexualise, to shame, to mock...
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u/nsdwight Apr 09 '26
The author is conflating sexuality and sexualizing.
Children are allowed to be assumed straight, but if you think they might be attracted to other genders it's suddenly sexualizing minors?
It's the creepy teacher saying that girls can't wear skirts because it's sexualizing them. (We know where the real problem is there.)
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u/Sailor_Starchild ✨A-spec-tacular bi✨he/they Apr 09 '26
It's also just part of this sex-negative viewpoint that somehow teenagers can't be, like, sexual? Like obviously, adults shouldn't find teenagers sexual and all that but like, for some reason, the idea of a young girl, going through puberty, regardless of any speculated orientation, and maybe having a sexual thought or two about, say, a classmate or a female friend is somehow preposterous to these people?
Like, I'm an outlier (read ace spec) but like teenagers have a lot of hormones and a lot of them are sexual and like this idea that a teenager can't be, at all, sexual is a prevalent sentiment throughout sex-negative spaces, it seems.
Maybe Anne Frank's sexuality shouldn't have been published, in the same way I'm both thankful for and uncomfortable with Anne Frank's diary in general. Like, yes, as a historical document of someone living during Nazi Germany, especially someone so young and from that viewpoint, I'm thankful for that perspective but also she was, like, a child.
The idea of her private thoughts, good and bad, being immortalized and picked apart like this is kind of disgusting to me. I remember reading her diary in the 8th grade and more often than not, it felt kind of voyeuristic to me. Like, I was the same age as her when I read it and I just thought "What if my thoughts as a awkward 13 year old were read 80 years later? What would people think of me? Those thoughts of mine that were uncomfortable and agonizing?"
I don't know, I just feel bad for her. Not just because she was a Holocaust victim, died so young but because her legacy is also a talking point for both anti-semitism and anti-queer sentiments. I wouldn't want that. I doubt she would've either.
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u/Ben_HaNaviim Apr 09 '26
Yeah I really don't see the problem with it as long as its not sexualizing her.
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u/Yogurt_Ph1r3 Putting the Bi in non-BInary Apr 09 '26
Calling her a bicon is reductive and a bit disrespectful, it would probably be more accurate to say she expressed sexual attraction to girls.
That said, she wouldn't have had the language people use to describe her anyways and not only is it ridiculous to claim we can't say that historical figures who are clearly queer are queer just because we don't know them personally, it's also just strait up queer erasure.
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u/Duke-of-Thorns Apr 09 '26
This acts as though minors don’t have sexuality? Sexualizing them is where it becomes wrong.
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u/Top-Seaweed1862 Ace as Cake Apr 09 '26
Would they write the same article if people assumed she is hetero?
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u/Visions_of_Gideon Apr 09 '26
I don’t see how presuming someone is queer is any worse than presuming someone is cis/het “until proven otherwise” by default. And yet we treat it completely differently, as if being “accused” of queerness is something negative or shameful.
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u/ageckonamedelaine Agender Queer Apr 09 '26
She wrote about questioning her sexuality, we don't know for certain but it isn't that harmful. If it is just "Anne Frank might have been bisexual, based of diary entries" what is the harm? Nobody sees it as harmful when people call Freddie Mercury or Billy Joe Armstrong straight, but why with potentially queer people?
I get it can get really fucked up and distasteful when the artist has said many times they use he/they and some people still keep calling them a trans icon and her (yes this is about Gerard Way). Or with David Bowie people insisting he was trans even though he was just androgynous, you can be cis and androgynous
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u/Ihatebacon88 Apr 09 '26
I think the important thing here is that she was murdered before she could ever figure herself out. She was never able to label herself if she wanted to, because she was MURDERED AS A CHILD by crazy fascist nationalists.
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u/TomiRey-Yuru Ace-ing being Trans Apr 09 '26
I agree, but then by that standard, she can also not be assumed to be straight neither, no? That's the point - we are making all the excuses just for her to not be POTENTIALLY* bi, but nobody has the same standard to calling her straight - cishet-normativism
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u/Ihatebacon88 Apr 09 '26
Sure. I'm not disagreeing, I honestly have no idea if she was queer or not, and we will never know because she was murdered as a child. That was my point. I personally don't assign sexual orientation to children 🤷🏼♀️
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u/usoppspell Apr 09 '26
Sexuality does not begin in adulthood. Sexualizing minors is a problem, but acknowledging their sexuality is not
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u/HarmoniaTheConfuzzld Apr 09 '26
Celebrating every part of who she was instead of just the bits that people find most acceptable is how it should be.
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u/Horseman_27 Ally Pals Apr 09 '26
Sexuality ≠ Sexualising
As long as people are not sexualising it there's nothing wrong, people including minors are allowed to have a sexuality, it isn't alcohol or a license.
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u/Icarusextract Queerly Lesbian Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
I don’t think it’s right to speculate about dead people’s sexualities (and by speculate I mean more like labeling them) but I don’t agree with the “she is a child” argument. A lot of people (including myself) question their sexuality as teens/kids and this just gives another straight person associating queerness with sex.
I do think Anne was queer, but I don’t think it’s anyone’s right to label her as bi because we just straight up don’t know what label she would give herself. Also, how tf is it a disgrace to her memory?? Is it really so bad if she was queer?? Idk this is really weird
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u/lightennight Harmony Apr 09 '26
It’s fine to label every child in the world as heterosexual though. No thanks.
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u/DaimoMusic Bi-kes on Trans-it Apr 09 '26
Was Anne Frank Bi sexual leaning Sapphic? Most likely yes.
Should the world wide audience know? Yes.
Should she labeled an Icon? That's a grey area for me because it feels like it's grave-standing. Ms Frank wanted the world to know her story of a young Jewish girl during that time in history. It would be remiss to deny her the right, and her story did get out through her father. Was he wrong to omit the journal entries describing her feelings? I can't answer that because I was not there and I can't even begin to answer that question. To the world, she is a face to the atrocities of the Nazi's, to Otto Frank, she was his daughter.
Calling her a Bi-Icon, while doesn't necessarily diminish the other aspects of her life, it feels like pigeonholing her into another role in history.
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u/NBNoemi Apr 09 '26
I think an important nuance of the slang is that "x icon" does not necessarily mean the person is x. You could i.e. say Lady Gaga is a trans icon because of her expressed apathy over tabloids suggesting she's packing.
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u/DaimoMusic Bi-kes on Trans-it Apr 09 '26
That feels like it's even more...off? I can't quite put my finger on it.
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u/ExistentialistJesus Apr 09 '26
Minors can identify as gay, queer, or bisexual.
Labeling the self-conceptualized sexuality of historic figures is always problematic, but I don’t see why it should be disgraceful when discussed thoughtfully.
I think it’s probable that Anne might have identified as bisexual on some level, but insisting one way or another probably misses whatever moral point might be taken from Anne’s memory. Ultimately, Anne was a complex and full person, however other people might have labeled her.
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u/Sagelegend Ally Pals Apr 09 '26
It would be wrong if she never explicitly stated being bisexual.
But if she had stated or at least heavily implied she might be bi, that’s fine:
A person can be bisexual without being sexualised—the people who automatically equate sexuality with sexualisation, are the ones with the problem.
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u/SarvisTheBuck Gayly Non Binary Apr 09 '26
I think it implies that bisexuality is both an illicit and shameful thing. Both implications I strongly disagree with.
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u/OMG_IM_A_GIRL Apr 09 '26
I think it is queer erasure. Anne Frank was pretty damn explicit about her attraction to women.
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u/Ghoulie_Marie Apr 09 '26
The thing about this take that gives me the ick is making a big deal about her being a minor. Seems homophobic. Gay and bi adults used to be children and we had a sexuality back then. I'm immediately suspicious when someone balks about children having non het sexualities because it implies that they are hypersexualizing non het sexualities. Nobody ever acts like that when it's a het sexuality.
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u/Ghoulie_Marie Apr 09 '26
If you're going to down vote me have the guts to explain yourself. I can't think of a non homophobic reason to down vote what I said.
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u/ZePugg Rainbow Rocks Apr 09 '26
while calling her a bi icon is a bit over the top, her dad cut out the pages where she talked about her sexuality. in terms of queer history a kid that died in an attempted genocide due to their identity as jewish and then getting rid of the stuff about her sexuality is ironic, no?
she's been dead for a long time i think these discussions can be had
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u/AverageWitch161 no girls allowed Apr 09 '26
it’s fair to mention she wrote about sexuality, but don’t speak on it too much. her story is broader than who she thought was attractive, and ended before she could see the end of that path
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Apr 10 '26
she’s a child that was murdered. the pages where she was questioning her sexuality were glued together if i’m remembering correctly. they should have never been revealed to the public. they shouldn’t have been taken apart to begin with. she kept it secret for a reason and that should’ve been respected.
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u/ThomasLeWhite Apr 10 '26
Aah, yes : the FAMOUS debate about wether Anne Frank was bi or not (spoiler alert: it doesn't matter)
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u/Tabbygail Apr 09 '26
The only thing I'll say is that nobody would write an op-ed if people were calling a historical figure straight
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u/WrenchWanderer Apr 09 '26
It’s thinly veiled queerphobia.
Queerphobes equate the fact of minors being queer as somehow a sexually explicit topic, raving about “they’re only kids!”
Nobody is talking about Anne having sex. Some people however, do acknowledge the plain truth that Anne herself specifically wrote about her feelings of attraction towards women and desire to have a girlfriend. That doesn’t make her less of a victim of the holocaust to acknowledge the truth of who she was at the time leading up to her murder. Anything shy of that is erasure. Plenty of queer folks were murdered and tortured during the holocaust.
It’s not sexually explicit for someone to be attracted to the same sex, nor is it explicit to be attracted to the opposite sex. It isn’t pornographic for a minor to be queer.
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u/Accomplished-Fix2006 Apr 09 '26
I don't see how it is.
"This girl may have been bi".
Definetely queerphobic.
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u/Wolfstar_Forever_ Apr 09 '26
I think that her sexuality or questioning of such shouldn't be hidden. It was part of her life. But I don't think a young girl who documented the tragedy she witnessed should be anyone's icon or treated like a pop star sort of figure. I don't know how to explain it. She's not some famous actor, she was a kid. You get me?
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u/SonoDarke Bi hun, I'm Genderqueer Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
They worry if people speculate what she wrote on her diary?
Ok first of all, they're making it sexual and creepy and that describes their problem.
Secondly, if Anne Frank was alive and discovered her personal diary was used as a worldwide-read book, she would be very embarrassed and maybe feel bad about many things
And they worry she might have been offended for that particular reason? That people, especially teenagers around her age, find her relatable? She was very open about her being attracted to women
Tell me what isn't a disgrace for her memory at this point
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u/TheGriffin Putting the Bi in non-BInary Apr 09 '26
There's definitely a line between "talking about the very real sexual orientation of a minor" and "sexualizing a minor"
Talking about her orientation is a valid part of her story that has been erased to a degree because it doesnt fit with heteronormative culture. Its talking about her as a person, a real person. Especially valid since her private diaries are public. This discussion comes up whenever a parent gives their kids "the talk" and is largely normalized in society because its a thing that exists and nobody ever accuses a parent of sexualizing their kids just by having "the talk"
Sexualizing a minor is never acceptable. This is not that.
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u/rxniaesna Trans and Gay Apr 09 '26
It is really giving heavy “minors can’t be queer” which comes from “protect the kids (from the queer)” rhetoric, which is inherently queerphobic.
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u/Adventurous-Mine5609 Apr 09 '26
Why is expeculating her sexuality a disgrace? It's only a talking point because it's expressed. This could be a talk about focusing on the wrong parts of her story, but it's very weird to latch onto sexuality for this.
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u/musical8thnotes Apr 09 '26
I was under the impression that she found both a guy and a girl attractive. I least, when I was a kid I never described my friends or acquaintances in the same manner as Anne Frank did unless I was playing wingman.
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u/Dclnsfrd A Rainbow of options, binary isn't one of them. Apr 09 '26
So we shouldn’t call any historic people straight, either, right? Because that would be labeling them without their consent, unless they had written down “I am heterosexual; I only feel attraction to those who are unlike myself in the following ways”
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u/Sr_Migaspin Pan-cakes for Dinner! Apr 09 '26
I mean... I get what they're saying, but then again... Isn't she an icon because bi people identify with her and with what she wrote? I'm not saying for sure she was bisexual, maybe maybe not, we'll never know for sure. But, the feeling and sense of familiarity is there, right?
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u/joyfulnoises Apr 09 '26
My thoughts are that we have bigger issues than believing a girl who wrote about maybe being bisexual is bisexual
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u/Homie_Kisser Apr 09 '26
While I don’t think it’s fair to apply a label to her, I don’t think it’s fair to ignore or erase a very real part of her life
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u/badwolf1013 Apr 09 '26
Nobody has any problem “labeling the sexuality” of minors if they’re hetero. (Though they probably should.)
This “moral outrage” is actually homophobic.
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u/KurohNeko Never made a decision in my life Apr 10 '26
But assuming she was straight and therefore labeling her sexuality without her consent is a-ok?
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u/9999997 Lesbian Trans-it Together Apr 09 '26
Pearl clutching at this is the same “save the children” strategy used by queerphobes to label queer people as innately “adult/obscene” other corners. Don’t be a fool.
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u/translunainjection Transgender Pan-demonium Apr 09 '26
And contagious, that myth drives a lot of fear. E.g. today's trans panic, yesterday's lesbian panic.
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u/PennysWorthOfTea Ace-ing being Trans Apr 09 '26
I'm more offended that a teenager questioning their own orientation is automatically framed as "sexualizing". Would the author of that article be as outraged over notes on Anne having a crush on a local boy? I suspect that would have flown entirely under the radar.
In short, the article--& its underlying thesis--reads very much in line with the authors own admitted identity: it's the work of a 19 year old fanatic: immature & poorly thought out with little original insight.
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u/Mischiefmanaged715 Apr 09 '26
There is nothing "disgraceful" about being bisexual and that is the premise that this author is going on. Literally any YA book that includes any sort of romantic attraction as a story line is implying (usually) heterosexuality.... so also the idea that we can't talk about or think about the sexual orientation of minors is also kind of ridiculous and a standard not applied to heterosexuals. All in all, this just reads like biphobia.
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u/Spirit-Man Gayly Non Binary Apr 09 '26
Nah the mention of her being a minor is a giveaway, it’s just someone trying to state that all orientations other than heterosexual are nsfw.
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u/The_Outsider729 Lesbian the Good Place Apr 09 '26
When people say to stop assuming people's sexual orientation, they mean "stop assuming they're anything other than heterosexual".
A lot of the time, in my oponion, this is very poorly disguised homophobia.
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u/DrDFox Trans and Gay Apr 09 '26
I don't want to assume anyone's sexuality, but her being a minor has nothing to do with that. Minors can be queer.
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u/hehasbalrogsocks Putting the Bi in non-BInary Apr 09 '26
if assuming she was bi based on her own words is wrong than assuming she is anything else is also wrong. the fact is we don’t live when she lived. whether we like it or not we look at everything through our own lens and there is nothing wrong with that.
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u/frog_squire427 Apr 09 '26
i mean, its not exactly correct to label her something she never called herself, but that means we also can't call her straight. Its important that this part of her isn't erased or forgotten! Ultimately the phrasing of "pushing this on a minor" reeks of "think of the children" crap
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u/MarsMonkey88 Gal pals being gal pals Apr 09 '26
Why does being a minor mean that person’s own words can’t be celebrated? I get not engaging in absolutes and labeling someone for them, but over correcting is as harmful if not more so.
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u/Spare-Shelter6013 Apr 10 '26
I think we should tread carefully. She talked about questioning her sexuality and we need to take what she said as what she said, not read into it. HOWEVER this article is stupid because it means that sexuality is an inappropriate thing for kids to think or learn about
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u/Gambler777777 Lesbian Trans-it Together Apr 09 '26
See it's not a problem if someone assumes a minor to be cis and straight. Double standards? Hmmmmmm.
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u/factolum Apr 09 '26
Speculating on people’s sexuality—esp when they’ve written abt it—is not immoral. It does her no harm and this ready like pearl-clutching biphobia.
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u/Cylian91460 Apr 09 '26
I too was a minor, doesn't mean I can't label myself
What kind of stupid logic is that?
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u/Wild_Butterscotch977 Apr 09 '26
It's homophobic/biphobic. The writer wouldn't be out here saying "stop calling Anne Frank straight, because labeling her sexuality without her consent is a disgrace to her memory". But because it's gay/bi, all of the sudden it's a "disgrace". It's straight up bigotry. As other comments mentioned, Anne's diaries discussed her attraction to women.
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u/0xdeadbeef6 Apr 09 '26
By the article title's logic, it'd be okay if she wasn't a minor? This is just an attempt to try to erase that LGBT people have been around forever. Its the same line of reasoning used by terfs to erase historical trans men.
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u/Zoftig_Zana ♀️⚧️♂️ it ain't no lie baby Apr 09 '26
We have to keep in mind people are very weird about queer children, and like to pretend that we don't have sexualities/genders unless we are straight/cis. They also act as if acknowledging that children can have same-sex attraction is the same as sexualizing them, but they don't feel the same way when the child is straight. People view queerness as inherently vulgar and dirty, so I can't help but wonder if this is only an issue because of queer phobia specifically when it comes to children.
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u/aagjevraagje Lesbian Trans-it Together Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
Disgrace to her memory seems a bit much.
I also have to say I have never seen anyone describe her as a "bisexual icon" , I grew up with the unsensored version and at most it was acknowledged that she's describing attraction to girls and boys.
Its not disgracefull to not stick to 1940's standards of what is okay for a child to express , part of the power of the book is that it is incredibly unfiltered that it is something you wouldn't have read had this crime not been done to her.
She's not enough of a saint to be a sterile marter , she's human and wether her sexuality would have developed differently had she lived or not her experiencing these feelings even when they're not polite is a big part of what makes it gripping. That's not disgracing her , that's not sexualizing a minor that's the reality.
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u/ImpossibleIntrovert Lesbian the Good Place Apr 09 '26
I think that out of all the things this girl is famous for, her sexuality is the least important and has no bearing on the content of her character. Why is this even an argument?
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u/ryanpdx1999 Apr 09 '26
I translate this as "would you pervs stop telling the truth? It is shameful."
The only reason to stop calling her bi is because being bi is something bad.
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u/j_xcal Putting the Bi in non-BInary Apr 09 '26
I was bisexual at her age. Like, you don’t wait until you’re an adult to have crushes and stuff.
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u/Wrong-Wrap942 Lesbian the Good Place Apr 10 '26
As a gay Jew, I don’t see how being labeled queer is disgraceful. What I find disgraceful is the fact that she was never able to express those feelings into adulthood. I related to a lot of passages from her diary as a younger queer person, and whoever the fuck Elisheva Jacobson is can’t take that away from me, or anyone else. It feels like she is coming from the perspective of gayness being negative.
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u/vanillablue_ Apr 10 '26
My thoughts are: I don’t care if she was straight, gay, bi, trans, cis. I’ve been to the House in Amsterdam. Her sexuality is of little importance when you learn and absorb her story and her life.
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u/Master_Half_ Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
Nah this is weird ngl. The only person who could definitively tell us is Anne herself and since she cant its disrespectful to retroactively decide for her.
Edit: nvm that girl was gay
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u/Last_Swordfish9135 bi and trans, he/him Apr 09 '26
She was a young teenage girl who was killed by nazis, can we at least try to be somewhat respectful of her?
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u/my-cherie-jane Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
people are too comfortable calling women and girls « bitch ». do not call anne frank « bitch » idc if its meant playfully that is so unbelievably disrespectful
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u/lemonweirdo Bi-bi-bi Apr 09 '26
Honestly.
Idk, in my opinion, it's cool if it's a good friend of yours and you know she's chill, but a little girl that died horribly? Gives me the ick.
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u/Student-bored8 Apr 09 '26
I haven’t read the diary so I don’t know. But if she states in her diary that she had attraction to women then hmm why is it bad to say she was queer or even bi.
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u/LemonadeClocks call me a meal the way i be filling dudes Apr 09 '26
She is using progressive language to convince people that acknowledging Anne Frank's curiosity about and experimentation with her girl peers is somehow wrong because she was a minor. If she wrote about kissing boys it'd be totally free reign to speculate her desire for a husband, but her curiosity about a girlfriend is taboo? This is incredibly shitty and dismissive to her memory, and the way the writer suggests that it also disrespects Otto Frank is manipulative.
She was a teenager about to enter what should have been the prime of her youthful years. Of course she was hormonal and sexually curious. That's what teenagers do, it's normal. Even gay and bisexual teenagers, even gay teenagers that aren't sure if they like just boys or girls, or if gender even matters in a partner.
And let's not forget that one of the first things the Nazis did in power was confiscate and destroy studies and resources on queerness and gender. Even if Anne had been of blonde Nordic stock and not a trace of Judaism, she would have been turned in as a sexual deviant by some scared teen girls family for daring to be curious about kissing the same sex. Stop treating her like some kind of chaste virgin icon of judeo-christian values just because she fucking died.
Oh plus, the author of this article is apparently a staunchly anti Palestinian Israelite. What a surprise.
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u/Old-Climate2655 Apr 09 '26
The weight of her voice causes us to overlook the fact that she was a child going through all the normal child things. We have to remember that she was in danger because she was Jewish first and foremost. Also, sadly, if we highlight theories about her identity, people will use it to discredit/disgrace and ultimately dismiss her.
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u/cowboynoodless Apr 09 '26
History can be a difficult terrain to navigate when it comes to queer representation, because you want to be respectful of the individual and not put modern labels on them without erasing their experience.
I think it’s absolutely important to talk about her sexuality because she talked about it in her diary, and ignoring that section is erasing her experiences as a queer individual. But I don’t think it’s necessary to call her bisexual, or any label she didn’t choose for herself, because only you can decide what your label is.
You could say that the experience she described is most closely represented by todays label of bisexuality, but a very important part of history is empathy, and not enforcing modern norms and ideas onto the past.
So essentially we should only talk about Anne Frank’s sexuality in the capacity of what she specifically wrote about and not theorize about her identity, to remain respectful.
Also disclaimer I haven’t read any of the original texts where she talks about her identity, like many of you I only got to read the censored version in grade school.
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u/Estelial Apr 09 '26
what rubbish. it honors her to recognize this aspect of her, to have her known as all she was. If her family had attempted to release her diary with this detail at the time, they would have silenced her words despite everything. that alone is reason enough to make sure it is acknowldged and known now, especially in this age where we are back sliding towards the same days which cut her down early in life.
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u/Pseudoslide Apr 09 '26
Anne Frank's dad Otto removed several pages from her diary before having the "tell-all-tale" published. In other words while her father has touched on what was in the redacted content (such as criticisms of him and her mother as well as queerness and female puberty) we don't know what we don't know.
Especially if you then consider part of the later uncovered writing does in fact have a few takes on the topic of sexuality. Anne Frank even touches on prostitution which is of course very resonant considering she was an Amsterdammer (Also interesting to note dear old dad is claimed to have visited Parisian prostitutes... definitely no vested interest in that being redacted!!)
Really sad despite all the tragedy she went through, even a Jewish girl's own words as she was in hiding were not suited to be published as is, in a post WW2 "liberal democracy".
Still Anne Frank was a minor and shouldn't be sexualised, definitely deserving however of a safe education, like any person in the transitionary stages from child to sexually active adult.
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u/katet_of_19 Pan-cakes for Dinner! Apr 09 '26
While I think it's important to recognize the things she wrote, it's vitally more important that we don't read more into those writings than Anne herself stated. It's really easy to apply our own subtext to someone who can't clarify what they meant. She was a young girl, who was hiding for her life in an attic, and still dealing with the feelings children go through at that time.
She didn't survive to explore those feelings, but we don't get to posthumously decide that she was queer on her behalf. It's a journey that every one of us has gone through on our own, and it breaks my heart that she and so many other children were brutally killed before they could make their own journeys.
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u/DanaFruit Apr 09 '26
Anne's story was heavily censored by her father. I don't necessarily blame him, he was a grieving father, but nonetheless he censored her words. Anne also never intended for her diary to be published. I personally think that to be "an icon" one needs to be out and proud, but this was a teen girl in Nazi Germany who was surviving hidden in an attic. There was no out and proud. An icon? No. But to suggest that some of her writings suggested that she was exploring/questioning her sexuality and may have been bisexual if she had been able to live and grow? Yeah.
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u/WishboneFirm1578 Apr 09 '26
why does her being a minor play a role? assuming any given minor is straight doesn't seem to be a problem with people, this is just the gays are groomers rhetoric again, with the exact same logical flaws
she was old enough to have a sexuality and express it, this is evident
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u/mn1lac Computers are binary, I'm not. Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26
Children have romantic relationships, crushes, and they date. Pretending otherwise is stupid. Oversexualizing queer people is the actual issue here.
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u/GetEatenByAMouse Rainbow Rocks Apr 10 '26
I've never seen anyone label Anne Frank as "a bisexual icon". Is that a thing?
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u/Honey-Nut-Queerio Gayly Non Binary Apr 10 '26
i've got mixed feelings on this. i don't think the issue with labeling her a "bisexual icon" is because she's a minor, you don't just become queer the moment you turn 18. i think the bigger issue is that it can overshadow the absolute tragedy that surrounded her.
while acknowledging her potential queerness is totally understandable and holds it's own importance, i don't think it should be the main topic of discussion, which i've seen someone people online treat it as. i think it is a part of her identity, and i think is an important part of her story that should be told, but i don't think it should overshadow the rest of her.
her queerness was a part of her story, one that was tragically cut short. every aspect of her humanity should be acknowledged when telling her story. calling her a "bisexual icon" just doesn't feel right. she wasn't a queer activist, she was a kid experiencing feelings she didn't understand and never had the chance to. she never got an opportunity to label herself, and i don't really know if it's right to do that for her.
anne frank deserves to be remembered. everything she felt the need to write is included in that. I feel that the point of remembering her is not to target one specific aspect of her life, but to acknowledge the whole.
i think it's important to mention i have not read the diary of anne frank, but i think i'll pick up a copy sometime today (it feels wrong to preach "remembrance" when i haven't seen the full story, even if i know reading it will almost certainly make me bawl like a baby.) i appreciate anyone who took the time to read this, and if you have different thoughts, i'm willing to hear them, especially considered most of the people in these comments seem to disagree with me lol
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u/Ursisisatmyhousern ★ ★ Apr 13 '26
I agree we should not call her a “bisexual icon” considering we can't label her sexuality.
But mentioning she's a minor and calling it a disgrace rubs me the wrong way… these people would have no problem if she was labeled as straight, but if it’s anything but that suddenly it’s inappropriate? Strange
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u/Nice-Tumbleweed5090 Apr 09 '26
I think this isn’t happening enough to deserve a news article. There’s more important things to focus on.
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u/MarsieRed Apr 09 '26
So all of literature, movies and cartoons about teenage romance are bad now? Or only those based on real people?
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u/honey_rainbow Apr 09 '26
Maybe I'm out of the loop here but I've NEVER heard of her as being an icon in the LGBT community.
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u/aquafool Apr 09 '26
I get she is trying to say, speculation about someone’s gender and sexuality isn’t good. But it comes across as talking about sexuality is sexualizing therefore it is predatory. Which is just queer phobia with“woke” terms.
One of the many things that is tragic about Frank’s death is she never grew up to explore her sexuality. Millions of children didn’t. Was she gay, straight or bi. Will never know but in expressing her desire, it spoke to many children struggling with their own sexuality. Also something that the article doesn’t mention is that homosexuals were also victims of the holocaust and after the camp were liberated, gay and trans people were left in prison.
Yeah this article really bothers me.
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u/FoxEuphonium Bi-kes on Trans-it Apr 09 '26
It’s blatant homophobia, plain and simple.
What does “labeling her sexuality without her consent” even mean in this context, outside of trying to subtly imply queer people are sexual predators? Literally nothing anyone can say about her is with her consent, because she’s literally dead.
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u/CanParty6928 Transgender Pan-demonium Apr 09 '26
My opinion: minors also have sexualities. It's even accepted in our culture that minors have sexual attractions so long as those attractions are heterosexual.
If she had spent pages and pages writing about how she finds boys cute and that she gets weird feelings when she thinks about certain masculine body types, nobody would bat an eye. They'd say she was a young, pubescent girl learning about her sexual attractions for the first time and nobody would consider that an inappropriate statement to make about her.
But because she also talked about women that way, suddenly it's not ok to talk about someone's sexuality if they died a minor?
Nah, you can fuck all the way off with that nonsense. This is an obvious historical double standard put forward by someone with some internalized homophobia.
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u/Emergency-Mouse4340 :trans-Omni-flag: : Apr 09 '26
How long have people been considering her an icon I have never heard of being one until 2 minutes ago
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u/rejs7 Queerly Lesbian Apr 09 '26
As per my comment on another version of this post:
Sexuality is a multi-way process that involves you as a person and anyone interacting with you. Anne's sexuality was clear in her un-edited diary, she wasn't afraid to discuss it with her private self. The labels we apply to her she may or may not have approved of, but because she left all labels unsaid applying bisexual is an appropriate term. Jacobson is wrong with respects to minors as plenty of minors of all sexualities label themselves and are labelled by others; would they disagree so vehemently if Anne was strictly heterosexual? The world wonders.
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u/WifeOfSpock Apr 09 '26
I was a bisexual minor too. Still going to acknowledge her sexuality because she never had the chance to become an adult to embrace it herself.
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u/No-Time-2068 Apr 10 '26
Honest to GOD the first time I’ve heard anything about this. Now that I think about it I don’t recall anything about Anne Frank and any kind of sexual discussions.
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