Here’s a blog post that Sakura Byrne and I wrote for Palgrave’s LGBTIQ+ Equality series in June this year. Click on the image to see the full post.
Here’s a blog post that Sakura Byrne and I wrote for Palgrave’s LGBTIQ+ Equality series in June this year. Click on the image to see the full post.
Writing is hard.
Writing is hard. It just is. I know one person who finds writing easy, and they are very much the exception to the rule. Most people find it really difficult, and for most people, that never changes.
What gets easier is that, as you get more experience, you learn to trust your own processes more, and that makes everything less stressful. You think ‘oh yes, this is the bit where I feel like it’s never going to make sense’ rather than ‘it’snevergoingtomakesenseohmygodwhatamIevendoingwhodoIthinkIamI’msostupid’ . It all gets a bit less visceral and existential after a few iterations.
Meeting the inner critic.
Part of the reason that writing is hard is that it inevitably brings us into dialogue with our inner critic. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing- internal critics are useful, and I don’t think we’d get a lot done without them (I, for one, would still be in bed right now if my inner critic hadn’t shouted at me continually until I got up).
However, inner critics are also a bit like dogs, and they need a lot of boundary reinforcement. Someone once told me that, if you have a dog, you have to let it see you standing in its bed every so often, so that it knows that, while you don’t let the dog go everywhere in the house, you can go anywhere in the house, because you’re the pack leader. Otherwise it’ll get too big for its boots and start trying to be the boss of you (1). It’s kind of the same with inner critics- ok, I’d never get out of the house in the morning if mine didn’t kick my butt every step of the way, but I need to go and stand in her bed every so often, just so she doesn’t get above herself.
At the same time, though, you don’t want to over-discipline a dog and make it fearful and insecure, so that it goes and hides under a table whenever it sees you. Similarly, you don’t want to completely repress your inner critic, because they’ll just end up sneaking off into your subconscious where they can wreak even more havoc. You want your inner critic well-trained and friendly, and sitting nicely on the rug where you can see what it’s getting up to.
In case you haven’t noticed by now, I think it can be quite useful to personify your inner critic. It’s a way of externalising it, so that you can start to recognise its voice for what it is.
So, here’s an exercise to try. It’s a bit playful and silly, but surprisingly powerful. Give it a go- try and take at least ten minutes over it.
Making friends with your inner critic (2) (3)
OK, so, here’s my inner critic, in her current incarnation. She’s called Marge.
Marge is basically the middle-aged woman I don’t want to be. She’s scared of sticking out and so she wears beige and pastels. She doesn’t speak up in meetings. She’s hopelessly passive-aggressive and rather bitter. She thinks I’ve got rather above myself and should know my place and not be too ambitious. She also has strong views on how tidy my house should be, how much exercise I should do, and how I should raise my kid. She is, to be frank, A Pain In The Arse.
Marge is actually Version 2.0 of my inner critic. Version 1 looked like this:
As you can see, Darth Marge was a LOT scarier. Where Marge will stand at my elbow flapping around and pointing out housework that needs doing, interrupting me every time I get going on something, Darth Marge was more of a STANDING IN FRONT OF YOUR DESK WITH A FLAMING SWORD kind of person. Darth was much more powerful, and I’d cower under the duvet, completely unable to face her.
I got (slowly!) from Darth Marge to Marge by taking a deep breath, giving Darth an ‘I can see through your bullshit’ look, and offering her a cup of tea and a chat. Over a number of imaginary chats, I asked Darth why she was so invested in keeping me from writing, and what she was afraid would happen if I did.
Eventually, gradually, Darth took off the silly mask and robes and stopped waving the sword around, and it became apparent, underneath all that bluster, there was a just a scared, flappy middle-aged woman called Marge. She was scared I’d make a fool of myself/her, scared I’d realise I was a big fake, scared I’d forget how lucky I was, scared I wouldn’t be able to pay the bills, scared people wouldn’t like me…scared of loads of things. Ultimately she just has a lot invested in me being A Proper Woman, and she has some funny ideas about what that means.
At first I tried telling Marge to calm down and read some feminism. She started shrieking. I told her that she was being irrational, and that there was nothing to be afraid of. She shrieked even louder, and I retreated under the duvet. She stood outside the bedroom door telling me all the cautionary tales she could muster. She was easier to handle than Darth had been, but she was still pretty unpleasant.
Things got better when I stopped telling Marge what not to feel, and started listening to how she did feel. I learned that saying ‘Yes, this is scary, but I think it’s worth trying’ and ‘Ok, let’s give it half an hour and see how we feel then’, and ‘It’s ok to be nervous about this’ got me a lot further than just telling her to get a grip and leave me alone. She got less scared, and a bit less flappy.
And it helped when I finished my thesis, because now, when she has a bad day, I point at it on the shelf to remind her that we can do this.
I wouldn’t say that Marge and I are friends, but we do okay. And something I’ve noticed lately is that I see rather less of Marge these days, and rather more of a happy retired greyhound called Midge, who rests her muzzle on my knee while I’m writing- keeping an eye on me and constantly soliciting petting, but (mostly) not whining too much. Writing’s still hard, and even Midge has a bad day and gets sent to her basket with a stern word occasionally. But as long as I remember to stand in that bed of hers every so often, I think we’ll rub along together just fine.
(2) Or at least, frenemies..
(3) The concept of the ‘inner critic’ is well-established in psychology, and the internet is full of ‘guides to taming your inner critic’, which you should check out. I make no claims to originality here, but I don’t think I owe too much to any one source, either. Marge and Darth and Midge are certainly my own 🙂 But do let me know if you feel I should credit you/others for anything I’ve written here, and I’ll amend promptly.
INTERIOR: DAY. The Bisexual Questions Office, a small, untidy office that looks as if it used to be a cupboard. The Duty Bisexual, a forty-ish white woman, sits at a desk cluttered with used coffee cups, copies of Bi Community News and cuddly purple unicorns. She is leafing through a copy of Biscuit magazine and humming to herself. A purple phone on the desk rings, and the Duty Bisexual answers. DB: Hello, Bisexual Questions Office, Helen speaking, how may I be of service? CALLER: 'I've been wondering why there are so many stereotypes about bisexuals?' DB: That's an interesting question, Caller. Would you like a detailed explanation, or just the headlines for now? C: Um, just the headlines, I guess? DB: Right you are. [clears throat]
The headlines:
DB: Thank you for calling the Bisexual Questions Office, is there anything else I can help you with today? C: Yes, hang on a minute! Why is bisexuality so uncomfortable that it needs to be discredited? DB: Well... [sips coffee, realises it's gone cold, grimaces]
Cultures that have stereotypes about bisexuals have a dominant way of thinking that philosophers call dualism– they like to think in terms of pairs of ‘opposites’ like good/bad, heaven/hell, body/soul, white/black, man/woman and gay/straight (1). These opposites (‘binaries’, or ‘dichotomies’) are defined against one another- so, to be female is to be Not Male, and to be straight is to be Not Gay (2). There’s also usually a hierarchy between the two sides of a binary- one term is seen as ‘better’, one ‘worse’.
Ideas that disrupt these binary categories (suggesting that there are ‘shades of grey’ between black and white), can be quite threatening to these cultures. Bisexuality is one of those ideas.
So, stereotypes about bisexuality are a kind of cultural attempt to resolve this discomfort by discrediting or getting rid of bisexuality, and sorting everyone back into those tidy gay/straight boxes. This is what’s happening when it’s suggested that bisexuals are ‘really’ gay (but closeted) or ‘really’ straight (but attention-seeking). Bisexuals are being denied their identities, on the grounds that everyone is ‘really’ either gay or straight.
C: But I DB: Anyway, [self-deprecatingly, but also reaching for coffee cup and preparing to rise from desk] I can talk about this for hours, b- C: No, wait! Don't go yet! [pause] I mean, if that's okay? DB: [sits back down again, replaces cup, sighs] Um, sure! C: Because I was wondering, if society tries to erase bisexuality because it's so threatening, why are we always talking about it? It's always popping up in the media. DB: Ah, that's because we actually need bisexuality to exist, just as much as we need it not to exist. C: I'm sorry, what? DB: I know, right? Bear with me.
OK, so our cultural ideas about bisexuality work a bit like our cultural ideas about coins. For the sake of convenience, we think of coins as having two entirely separate ‘sides’ that have nothing to do with each other. But of course, the ‘sides’ aren’t separate- they are just two faces of the same object. And a coin actually has a third surface- its edge. We tend to keep the edge thin to make the coin compact. But it’s always there, and it’s no less a part of the coin than its two sides are.
Bisexuality is like the edge of the gay/straight coin. It’s absolutely integral to the way we think about sexuality in Western cultures. Without it, there’s no distinction between ‘straight’, and ‘gay’. So you can’t get rid of it entirely. All you can do is to give it as little space as possible, just a sliver, just enough to allow it to mark the boundary between the two ‘sides’ of the coin (5). So we keep mentioning it- a celebrity comes out as bi and it makes the news, there’s a bi character in a soap opera- but almost immediately dismissing it. The celebrity has a film to plug and is just after the publicity. The soap character soon realises they were really gay all along… That’s the work that the stereotypes do- they allow us to briefly acknowledge bisexuality, and then dismiss it as inauthentic.
DB: There's more, but that's the main takeaway, I think. Does that make sense? C: I... I think so, but to be honest my head hurts a bit now. DB: Fair enough! It's complicated. C: Like, I've got more questions, but... maybe later? DB: [grabbing coffee mug, pushing chair away from desk, smiling broadly] Sure! Thank you for calling the Bisexual Questions Office, have a nice day and don't let the binary get you down! C: Don't let the binary... right. OK, thanks again. DB: [cheerily] Byeeee!
Sources/further reading:
Chewy academic stuff, if you’re into the theoretical aspects of this discussion:
Things that are easier to digest:
Footnotes:
(1) This way of thinking goes all the way back to Plato and Aristotle, and is dominant in societies informed by Judeo-Christian thought.
(2) Not convinced? Try defining the word ‘gay’ without referring (even implicitly) to the idea of ‘straight’, or the idea of female’ without referring to ‘male’).
(3) This, of course, is a lesson that the lesbian and gay movements learned from the US civil rights movement as well as the women’s suffrage movement.
(4) This assumption that there are two (and only two) ‘opposite’ genders to ‘choose’ between is, obviously, another deeply flawed binary. I’d argue that this ‘male/female’ binary exists for the same reason that the ‘straight/gay’ one does- because in a historically-misogynistic culture, men have a lot invested in not-being-female, and women’s fight for equality rests on the assertion that they are profoundly and innately different from men. But that’s a whole other discussion…
(5) And that, of course is why being bi- trying to inhabit the line between gay and straight- is often referred to as ‘sitting on the fence’.
Last October, bisexuality was in the UK news because of an increase in the proportion of young people identifying as bi. Data from the Office of National Statistics showed that for the first time, the proportion of 16-24 year olds identifying as bi (1.8%), was greater than that identifying as gay or lesbian- 55% of LGB (lesbian, gay or bisexual)-identified young people identified as bi rather than lesbian or gay. Furthermore, the ONS’s Annual Population Survey showed that the number of people identifying as bisexual (across all age groups) had risen by 45% in three years.
So, what’s this all about? Is bisexuality becoming more common? I was invited to discuss this question on Newsnight on 6th October 2016- I can’t find an official BBC clip to link to, but you can watch the segment I’m in below:
The main points I make in the clip are below (I’ve expanded on them a bit to make them clearer):
P.S. If you’re wondering what being on Newsnight was like, here’s a clip of me being interviewed by a colleague the next morning for the OU Graduate School’s YouTube channel. (You can tell I’ve had a late night, I look very tired… ). I talk about what it was like to do TV for the first time, and share some of the advice colleagues gave me beforehand:
I’ve got really into podcasts in the last couple of years, and I keep meaning to post about some of my favourites, so here goes. This post is mostly just an evolving list, to which I might add more commentary later. I’ve starred* my all-time favourites.
I wrote this piece for the lovely folk at Biscuit magazine a couple of months ago, in the wake of the Ofcom ruling on the Christopher Biggins/ Celebrity Big Brother scandal. Fortunately, they chose a more sensible title than I did! Click on the image to read the full article.
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