red herring pink herring In law, a preliminary prospectus (a document that advertises or describes in order to inform clients or other persons). In psychoanalysis, the idea that sexual orientation actually reveals very little about a person's unconscious and is only focused on as a conceptualization of a cisnormative and heteronormative world Note that this term has several distinct means in various types of literature and a close reading is required to differentiate what is actually referred to. Providing a character implied to be queer or express queerness, only to be revealed as heterosexual and cisgender (such as Jughead Jones being coded as asexual in the TV series "Riverdale" and then later expressing heterosexuality). Use of homosexuality as a device to distract, as during the "Lavender Scare" of the 1950s in the United States. pink herrings Pink Herring & The Fourth Persona: J. Edgar Hoover's Sex Crime Panic Pink Herrings: Fantasy, Object Choice, and Sexuation