Miley Cyrus is as heteronormative as they come – she can't tell me she's revolutionising queerness

Her assertion that she is ‘redefining’ relationships betrays a frustratingly self-centred misunderstanding of LGBTQ+ history

Miley Cyrus wants everyone to know she is still discovering herself. At least, that seems to be the overriding message of her recent wide-ranging interview with Vanity Fair.

“A big part of my pride and identity,” she explains, “is being a queer woman.” Pushed to justify her surprise marriage in December to long-term boyfriend Liam Hemsworth, she claims their partnership is “redefining” what it looks like to be a queer person in a “heterosexual” relationship.

It’s hard to imagine how confusing and complex it must feel to grow up in such an intense, global spotlight. Cyrus, now 26, debuted on the Disney Channel’s hit show Hannah Montana when she was just 13 years old. She publicly identified as pansexual and gender neutral in 2015, at the age of 22 - a revelation that was inevitably subjected to countless speculative blogs, vlogs, and news articles.

I, on the other hand, never had to have a “coming out” moment. At the age of 19, I wrote an essay about what it was like to grow up queer in a Catholic school, but I never had to justify, debate, or explain my label to anyone. Let alone millions of eager onlookers all too ready to criticise, vilify and humiliate me. The only negative message I ever received was an anonymous Facebook message from a stranger informing me that bi and pansexual people aren’t actually queer.

Cyrus explains in the interview that she does not fall in love with gender or looks. She just falls in love with “people”. “What I’m in love with exists on a spiritual level,” she adds, “Sex is actually a small part, and gender is a very small, almost irrelevant part of relationships.” After years of being told from people both inside and outside the LGBTQ+ community that these feelings don’t qualify as “queer enough”, it’s refreshing and hopeful to hear another young, much more public woman so ardently and confidently tell people that being in a relationship with a man “does not make [her] any less queer”.

Cyrus, of course, has faced the usual detractions. Online responses make clear we have many strides to make in representing the fluidity of gender and sexuality. Twitter replies from the last 24 hours, for example, include the standard chorus of “you are not queer if you are in a hetero relationship”, and an assertion by The Economist’s finance editor, Helen Joyce, that people who identify as “non-binary, gender fluid, pan-sexual etc” simply mean to say “I’m special; everyone else is boring.”

Such ill-informed comments are still the norm, which makes it more important thank ever to push the boundaries of how we define gender and sexuality, and I applaud Cyrus for her frankness.

However, her assertion that she is “redefining” relationships betrays a frustratingly self-centred misunderstanding of LGBTQ+ history. While I am glad she is keen to work towards normalising different sexual identities, regardless of what relationships look like from the outside, I can’t get behind the narrative that Cyrus is doing anything revolutionary.

How far does the message of not being attracted to gender or looks carry when you’re a rich, attractive white woman married to someone who epitomises the traditional image of male heteronormativity?

I am, of course, happy for Cyrus that she has the privilege and freedom to fully explore her identity. But having faced so much past criticism for centering herself in movements without learning their history, I hoped she might have taken more care before engaging in such an important public conversation.

I don’t doubt it must be terrifying growing up while your every move is exposed to the world, but not every LGBTQ+ person exists in such safety that they can freely discover their own selves.

Though proud that Cyrus is able to redefine her own relationship in a way that makes her happy, it is impossible to allow her to claim she is redefining queer lives and relationships until she understands the the privilege that allows her to do so, and the less privileged people that paved her way.