Guess what, you cool cats and kittens. Carol Baskins came out as bisexual.
A week after Coming Out Day and a few months after appearing on Dancing with the Stars, animal advocate Carol Baskin has come out to say she has “always considered [herself] to be bisexual.”
Baskins gained national recognition after appearing in the popular Netflix documentary series Tiger King earlier this year. Her presence in the series was prominent as her advocacy for big cats led to a lifelong feud with documentary focus Joe Exotic. Exotic eventually was imprisoned after conspiring to have Baskins killed.
But what is this about Carol Baskins being bi? Baskins, herself, said as much while talking to PinkNews. She says that she discovered this about herself while briefly engaged to a psychologist in the 1980s. During their time together, the psychologist, who worked with LGBTQ people during the AIDS crisis, broadened Baskins’ world perspective. It was then that she started to think she might be more than the “tomboy” she originally thought she was.
“I was always very male-oriented in the things I did,” she told PinkNews. “I never had any mothering instincts or anything, you know, I never played with dolls. And so I always thought that there was something off there, that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.”
“But it was during the 80s that I discovered that through dealing with the LGBT+ community that I [realized] I had just as equal feelings for women as I did for men.”
Basins then went on to say that she always considered herself to be bisexual.
“Even though I’ve never had a wife, I could just as easily have a wife as a husband,” she reasoned. “As far as the way I feel about us, I think we are all one and I just don’t see us as being different genders or different colors or anything.”
When asked for her thoughts on Joe Exotic and whether he was an embarrassment to LGBTQ people, Baskins one-upped that statement by saying he is “an embarrassment to the human community.”
“It’s not a matter of what your sexuality is, this man is just a deviant in the way that he treats human life and animal life,” she added.
In the same interview, Baskins noted how she wasn’t fond of how Tiger King portrayed her. Since then, she’s had to deal with keeping her animal sanctuary, Big Cat Rescue, afloat during the coronavirus pandemic while also contending with the public’s general distrust of her.
“That made people call me up and say they were going to burn the place to the ground, they were going to turn the cats loose, not understanding that you can’t raise a cat in a cage and then just release it into the wild,” she recalled. “That’s not legal. And you don’t want me doing it in your neighborhood, I’m sure.”
That said, she says she’ll keep fighting for the animal sanctuary and be as fierce as the big cats she loves.
“My favorite cats are bobcats. And the reason is that they’re only 20 to 30 pounds, but they will take on anything or anybody and they just will not back down,” she explained. “I love that as a goal to strive for, no matter how big and scary that bad guy is.”
Source: Pink News
