𝒸ₐᵣₜₕₑᵣᵢₜₑ

Okay, I know this seems like an outrageous claim to make. Harvey's the one hooking up with women all the time! Why would he be gay? Why would he hook up with so many women if he wasn't even slightly attracted to them?

Two words:

compulsory heterosexuality

It's a pretty well-established facet of Harvey's character on the show that a lot of what people think of him is exactly what he wants them to think of him. He is a man who projects. He is a man who plays a character: Cocky arrogant bastard who will get you that win no matter what. And one very important part of that character is his affinity for women.

It endears him to the types of clients he regularly pulls in. Outside of these celebratory networking events, we don't actually see him pursue too many women. There's only three:

Zoe, Scottie, and Donna.

Zoe is a plotline that barely lasts. When she says she's moving away, Harvey makes no effort to look into keeping their relationship. In his defense they'd only been on like two dates, but still. It was nothing major.

Scottie... Harvey is blinded by the history he has with Scottie - that's why I think he thinks it'll work. If you take any time at all to look into the substance of that relationship you know immediately why it doesn't work. They clash. They fight. It's what they do. But Harvey latches onto the first woman who he can pass off a relationship with and tries to make it work, damn the consequences. Anybody notice how this suspiciously coincides with Mike and Rachel making it official?

I have so many thoughts around Donna and Harvey's relationship that they probably wouldn't fit into this post, but the general gist is this:

Lavender relationship.

The show spends so much time beating us over the head with the Harvey and Donna are just friends, they would never ever ever be romantic that it's hard for me to believe that they just one day suddenly started pining for each other. I know a lavender relationship when I see one. That's a gay man and his lesbian best friend covering for each other.

Now compare the way he acts with his three (two?) love interests with Mike. He won't move anywhere for Zoe - he moves to Seattle for Mike. Him and Scottie get into fights about the way he prioritizes Mike over her. He lets Mike actually tangibly get in the way of his relationship with Scottie working out. He refuses to be honest with Scottie, but he is honest with Mike in a way that he is with nearly no one else on the show.

Harvey is a very performative character at his core, and his attraction to women is no different. Oftentimes it's just something he talks about - how many times do we actually see Harvey picking up women vs. how many times is it just him talking about it? Writers beat you over the head with the show don't tell method of characterization which we get with every other characteristic of Harvey except this one.

Meanwhile, when you look at what the show actually shows us about Harvey, you get his unwavering loyalty to Mike. You get his flirting with Mike. You get his dependency on Mike. You get his trust in Mike. You get the idea. He treats Mike like one would expect him to treat his actual love interests on multiple occasions, and it is a real actual plot point that he holds Mike's needs at higher priority than his actual fucking girlfriend!!!

I think a lot of this comes back to the fact that he's in love with Mike, because we really don't get to see a lot of Harvey's personal relationships on the show. It's really only Mike, Donna, and Jessica. He flirts with Jessica, he flirts with Donna, but the way he acts about Mike is, in my opinion, the closest we ever see him act to having an actual relationship on the show.