Out pop singer Troye Sivan wants straight people to stop using the term “twink.”
“If you say ‘twink’ where you meant to say ‘fa***t,’ that’s still a slur,” he said in a recent TikTok post. “That’s, like, our word. I don’t think straight people should be using that.”
Related:
As them noted, most LGBTQ+ people don’t necessarily consider the word particularly offensive—though one of the characters in the 1993 TV adaptation of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City did famously observe that to call younger gay men twinks is “just a queen’s way of being a male chauvinist pig.”
Never Miss a Beat
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
But as Sivan suggested, the term, often used to refer to a young, lean, generally hairless gay man, can hit differently when straight people use it. Notably, controversial rapper Azealia Banks, who identifies as bisexual, directed a homophobic rant at Sivan last year, calling him an “expired twink” and baselessly accusing him of “perpetuating” pedophilia.
Sivan made the observation as a general aside in a video responding to a recent blind item that originally appeared in a September 11 post on the Crazy Days & Nights blog. The item claimed that an A-list “foreign born singer… should be at her peak right now and selling lots of tickets on her tour. The sales are low though and her label is getting ticked off.” It went on to claim that “her touring partner… doesn’t really care about sales, He [sic] is just happy to be on the road and hitting Grindr at every stop.”
TikTok account @celebriteablinds_ picked up the item in a since-deleted post after another site suggested that the two artists in question were, in fact, Charli XCX and Sivan, who are currently touring together.
“Straight people are getting way too comfortable,” Sivan said in his post, which included a clip of @celebriteablinds_ reading the part of the item supposedly pertaining to him. “I released an album. I am touring the album with Charli XCX. We are playing 22 shows across the country that are 95 percent sold out, by the way.”
The singer, whose third album, Something to Give Each Other, was released last year, added that the only city in which his and Charli XCX’s “Sweat Tour” is “flopping” is Nashville, Tennessee — though Sivan noted that ticket sales for that October 2 show are “at 78 percent.”
“To say that I am touring the country to go on Grindr at every stop, like, that’s genuinely homophobic,” Sivan continued. “It’s, like, a stereotype. Don’t sex shame me.”
“I don’t need to travel the country to get laid,” the “Rush” singer added. “I can get laid wherever I want. I can get laid in L.A. I’m going on tour because I released an album, and because people are buying tickets to come to see the show. So, f**k you.”
