Kehlani has confirmed she’s a lesbian.
The 25-year-old singer has been open about her sexuality in the past, labeling herself gay in one of her tweets, but in a new TikTok on April 22, 2021, she confirmed she “finally knew” she was a lesbian and that she had told her family.
In the clip, she said: “I am gay, gay, gay … I finally know I’m a lesbian.”
While her family replied: “We know, duh.”
The star had previously spoken about how she feels both masculine and feminine.
She said: “I feel more masculine when I am in my stillness and I’m grounded in a quiet, contemplative mode. I feel most feminine when I’m being the mother of my house. I also feel my femininity when I take time for self-care — when I take really beautiful baths where I throw some flowers in and I do a hair mask and take time oiling my body in the mirror and saying how beautiful I feel. My femininity makes me feel soft and gentle and tender and careful in a different way than my masculinity makes me feel. I’m trying not to let it fall into the gender norms of feminine and masculine, but for me, it does a tiny bit. But I also am very fluid in both of those settings.”
Kehlani had also reflected on the fact she has a “lot of privilege” because of her “straight passing” persona and thinks she’s had an easier time than other Black musicians, who are gay or trans.
She added: “I think a lot of artists who we talk about and say, ‘Oh, they had to come out or they had to do this,’ a lot of them can’t hide it. I didn’t even really have to come out in my private life. I don’t walk down the street and people look at me and go, ‘Oh, I bet she’s queer’ or ‘I bet that she’s into women’ or anything like that because of the way I present.
“That’s all privilege, and I think that there are quite a few artists who were truly at the forefront but weren’t able to make the strides that I was able to make being 100 percent myself because of the way they present and the biases and the phobias of the American public and the world. I’ve been lucky, super lucky.”
Flip the page to watch Kehlani discuss her coming out and her family’s reaction.
