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.
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 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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