In real time, Braunwyn Windham-Burke has been opening up about her sexuality. On RHOC, she’s been getting into a feud with Gina.
She says that Gina Kirschenheiter is jumping to conclusions and might be a little homophobic. Now, Gina says that it’s just not true.
“Hi Gina, just checking in all is OK,” Braunwyn’s husband texted Gina last year. “Braunwyn is asleep, but I got her to the condo first.”
“Anyway, have a good night, and it was great to spend time with you,” he wrote.
“Oh this is Sean,” the text then clarified, acknowledging that he “probably should have started with that.”
That simple text has been a source of drama so far on this season of The Real Housewives of Orange County.
Why? Well, Gina Kirschenheiter felt weirded out, as if Sean were trying to recruit her to join a threesome with him and his wife.
But Braunwyn recently shared her disdain for Gina’s massive assumption, calling her reaction hurtful and maybe a little bigoted.
“Gina’s never liked me from the beginning,” Braunwyn acknowledged recently.
According to Braunwyn, “She’s always has a perception of me that is based on an idea.”
She then laments that Gina has “never really taken the time to get to know me.”
“I was saddened that she took something like that text message,” Braunwyn said, “and made it into something else.”
“She was very intoxicated and she couldn’t get her own Uber,” she described of Gina.
“And so Sean did something nice, he got her an Uber,” Braunwyn explained, “got her home, was checking on her, making sure she was safe.”
“I felt very upset that she took a nice gesture and made it something else,” Braunwyn expressed.
“I think that because people on the show know that I’m attracted to women,” she noted, “it sort of gives them the sense that they can weaponize it, make me into a predator.”
“There’s something about that that doesn’t sit right with me,” Braunwyn added. Uh, yeah, us either. That’s homophobia and biphobia at once.
“More than the text message,” Braunwyn continued, “it’s her weaponizing my sexuality that really got to me.”
“Wow, just because I’m attracted to women doesn’t mean that i’m attracted to all women,” she noted.
On a more serious and less shady note, Braunwyn continued: “or that I would do something like that. like … that’s not okay.”
“That text message came a year and a half ago, right. I felt uncomfortable by it,” Gina has said in an interview of her own with Us Weekly.
She explains: “I thought it was a little weird.”
“I’m coming from a divorce [with] an affair,” Gina notes. “I have more boundaries with things like that and just sex and everything in general.”
“And so for me it was more about honesty,” Gina continues.
“He takes my number out of her phone and you know, it’s like, even if he was checking in on me, just text me from her phone, you know?” she suggests.
“The whole thing I think is … getting a little convoluted,” Gina says.
“She knew about those text messages. … There were other women who brought it up a couple of times last season,” Gina adds. “And I tried to just laugh it off and squash it.”
As for Braunwyn’s sexuality, Gina insists that she thinks it’s “cool” that Braunwyn is talking about her authentic self, and that it was not a factor.
Is she right, or was it a subconscious factor in why she associated Sean’s text message with something flirty? Who can say?