REALITY TV'Tiger King' Star Carole Baskin Comes Out As Bisexual, Slams Enemy Joe Exotic
Carole Baskin has come out of the closet and revealed that she is bisexual in an interview with Pink News. "Even though I’ve never had a wife, I could just as easily have a wife as a husband," she said.
The Tiger King star said she realized her sexuality in the '80s. At the time, the Dancing With the Stars alum, 59, said she "was engaged to a psychologist, and that was his entire field, dealing with the LGBT+ community."
"It was during the period when AIDS was just wreaking havoc around the world, and people were losing their loved ones, and so I became very close to people in that community then," she shared.
The Big Cat Rescue owner didn't always feel like herself while growing up. Baskin explained that she was a "tomboy" who felt that she was "probably born into the wrong body."
"I was always very male-oriented in the things I did … 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," she said.
"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," she added. "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."
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When asked if she thinks Joe Exotic is a good representation of the LGBTQ community, Baskin slammed her enemy, saying, "I think he’s an embarrassment to the human community."
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"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 said. "I think he’s a malignant narcissist, and that it’s all about him. It doesn’t have anything to do with any of the communities that he may associate himself with."
Despite being aware of her sexuality for so long, she only came out two weeks after her DWTS elimination.
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Baskin's DWTS costars have yet to comment on her new interview, but social media did not hold back.
"Carole Baskin coming out as bi was another thing not on my 2020 bingo card," one Twitter user joked. "Carole Baskin came out as bi, OK LGBTQ queen," another said, adding a rainbow emoji.
The cat lover has been married to Howard Baskin for 16 years and was previously married to Don Lewis, who vanished in August 1997 and was later declared dead. Lewis' family is still holding out hope that he's alive.
