due to hindsight ppl will claim ‘set it off’ but back then folks lauded her performance bcuz they didn’t associate that character with her at all and actually thought she went outside of herself to play that role…the rumors/speculation didn’t really come about til maybe the mid-2000s
I'm younger than you (32) but I also don't seem to recall there being this "unquestioned" understanding of her as a lesbian until later. Years ago, this is around the time it started really becoming apparent she was gay, mid-00s like you're saying, I remember my mom (she'll be 54 next week) saying Queen dated men back in the day...
So this was 15-20 years after Queen's entrance to entertainment that my mom said this, and when the shyt started escalating my mom wasn't shocked, but she did say she'd dated men. So people in Queen and my mom's age group probably have a recollection of her dating guys...
Me, by the time I got old enough to notice stuff in the late-90s/early-00s, I remember there always being rumors she was but few people thought she was a full on lesbian until later...
So, at what point did we all realize MC Lyte was gay too?
What about Da Brat?
Same thing, there was always rumors but I don't think most people thought these two were full lesbians until later...
It may have been that same conversation circa 2004-ish that my mom told me Lyte was downlow, my mom was the first person I ever heard that from...
Da Brat is closer to my era than the other two so I remember her more, Da Brat is bisexual and always was, this is really from her own mouth. She hasn't dated a man in awhile now but we remember when she was dating men, her interest in women wasn't a secret, she just didn't publicly date them until relatively recently...
The big shock about Brat way back was how fine she was under that tomboy image...