I recently read this article about how Rose McGowan hid her same-sex relationships out of fear of losing acting jobs in Hollywood. Turns out that being bisexual in Hollywood is a lonely and unemployable path for a lot of celebs. It makes no rational sense to me whatever.
We need to liberate bisexuality from whatever dank closet it inhabits in people’s minds. At a time when gay, lesbian and trans people are speaking in powerful voices, bisexuals are seldom included in the conversations. We need to talk more about bisexuality, we have to quit repeating the myths about bisexuality, and it would really help if people started to accept that in the great wide world of sexual identities if anything can be called “normal” for human beings, bisexuality is it. It is more statistically “normal” than strictly straight, strictly gay or strictly lesbian sex.
Deal with it: Bisexuality is Normal
The definition I’m using for bisexual is very simple: “able to sexually function with partners of any sex.”
I’m using an admittedly sweeping clinical generalization to explain how bisexuality — from a sexological point of view — is a sweepingly common expression of human sexuality. There are heterosexuals who can’t sexually function with same-sex partners and homosexuals who can’t sexually function with opposite-sex partners. They are in the minority and their inability to function is usually psychosexual (shame, disgust, inhibition, fear, etc.), not a physical incapacity. Most adults, whether straight or gay, can function outside their orientation.
Let’s throw some numbers around. I’ll start with bisexuals who don’t have bisexual experiences. Functionally, they choose to live gay or straight, for reasons that range from true love to fitting into society to “making the choice my family expects” or other meanginful factors. Perhaps it’d be more accurate to call them “bi-possible,” but I’m sweeping them into my generalization because they have recognized an aspect of their sexuality that is not strictly straight or gay. It doesn’t mean they plan to act on it — it does mean that, under the right circumstances, with the right people, they might. Fantasies are how most bi-possible people indulge their urge to incorporate male and/or female energies to enhance their sexual pleasure. Three-some fantasies are extremely common, right?
Let’s consider the number of outwardly straight married men who operate on the low-down. They use dating sites like Grindr, spend their time on sites like PornHub watching gay and trans porn, use phone services, web services, gay ad sites, sugar daddy sites, hook up with pros, visit cruising zones and haunt clubs. For all we know, they spend more time and money obsessing over gay sex than gay people. I’ll guess that at least tens of millions of them support the estimated $884 billion dollar industry in gay sex entertainment.
To their number, we can add men who enjoy cuckolding, gang-bangs, orgies and bukkake sessions, along with all the voyeurs who enjoy watching them. People who are fully comfortable romping in a triad or group with same-sex partners are technically engaging in bisexuality, whether or not they see it that way. How about Biker gang rituals of “pulling train,” where one woman serves a whole club? Men sloshing their penii in their brothers’ semen as a male bonding ritual is bisexual-ish, isn’t it? Frat boys, party girls, bro culture, yep, add ’em all in.
It also raises an amusing question: is all heterosexual porn really bisexual porn in the eye of the beholder? If a woman watches a man and a woman have sex and she stares at the woman more than the man, is that bi? Those same guys who say they’re 100% het, do they look away when the penis comes on screen or do they enjoy watching a penis do what it does? (I know. Sex. It’s very confusing.)
OK, now let’s add the numbers of people who are “gay-for-pay,” “bi-curious” or who identify as Queer, pansexual, sapiosexual, omnisexual inter alia. Finally, ask lesbian or gay friends whether they have had an opposite-sex experience. Quite a few of them may surprise you by admitting they have, maybe even still occasionally do. Surprise, surprise: lots of gay and lesbian people enjoy the variety of an opposite-sex experience or lived straight before coming to terms with their authentic identity.
Finally, “circumstantial bisexuality” is pervasive everywhere humans are segregated by gender. Prison sex is one form of it, but it happens routinely in schools, institutions, and other group settings. As the old song says, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” That is exactly how humans roll. Circumstance can play as large a role in our sexual choices as preferences.
How prevalent is bisexuality? Your math on this is as good (or better) than mine. I await a rigorous and reliable study that does NOT assume heterosexuality is the true norm but allows the data to reveal the facts.
Excuse Me but Your Patriarchy’s Showing
Perhaps the single biggest slap to a bisexual’s face is when someone denies that bisexuality is its own, authentic identity. It’s absurd that bisexuals are still compelled to explain that to people. Why is it so hard to understand? Bisexuals like male energies in bed and they like female energies in bed. It doesn’t make them indecisive. It means you’re still operating off male-elitist assumptions.
I’m speaking of the legendary Kinsey scale. It is a dry relic of a patriarchal, penis-centered understanding of human sexuality. It sets gay cis-male sex on one end of a scale and heterosexual cis-male sex at the other. (Women and trans people don’t register on the scale.) Meanwhile, male bisexuality is treated as a gray area lost between gay or straight. For years, people have unquestioningly used the scale to assess how gay or straight they were, scoring themselves as “very gay” or “not as gay.”
I look at it the Kinsey data as best shown as a bell curve, not a graph. The reason there’s such a big area between gay and straight is that MOST people (not just cis-men) are bi-sexual or bi-possible. Nothing gray about it. Bisexuality is the curve in the bell, the norm at the top of the sexual data heap. The further down you go, the smaller the populations. In other words, men who can only have sex with other men are as rare as men who can only have sex with women.
Bisexuality is likely our primal (natural, authentic) sexual identity, transformed over time through civilization and religion into good camps and bad camps. Hetero, good! Homo, ono! We are just a bit smarter than the ancients were. But not by much. In a sane world, bisexuality would be intensively studied, with all kinds of breakthrough data as we’ve seen in studies of gay, lesbian, and transgender health, history, and psychology. Instead, scientists have been oddly reticent.
Perhaps it’s because no one wants to be the first to scientifically prove that heterosexuality is actually a choice many people make because they were raised believing it was the only choice they were allowed to make. At least, that is my theory on the lack of data to support my theory. 😉
Bisexual Liberation for All
The stresses of being treated as if we are less-than-fully-human, of being told we should be other than who we are, undermine human health, mental health, and relationship happiness. You know this. We all know this about the marginalized communities we support. We should all realize the same happens to bisexuals when they feel erased.
Internalized stress from anti-bi social pressure leads adults to choose the down-low rather than risk their reputations. The down-low is bad for human health and fraught with perils and anxieties. Many bisexual men live like homosexual men did in the 1950s. In Champions of Pleasure, my hero, Dane, is a bisexual who agonizes over coming out to women after a deep burn in his college days,
Stella found him in bed with her best friend’s gay brother. His worst fears came true. She went on a viral campaign against him. She ended her tirade by calling him a “homo.”
Apparently, Stella thought that every time he came, he made a little deposit in her marriage bank. He’d unwittingly made about five deposits with her. For Stella, that meant the next step was engagement. All of her friends agreed, including her best friend AND the same brother he’d had sex with. They all felt he’d made some kind of semen pact with Stella, or owed her something for fucking her when she showed up in his bed.
He blocked her and decided the friends who cut him off weren’t friends in the first place, and fuck them all, they were all assholes. But he learned his lesson: future queer sex was strictly on the down-low and with strangers.
Internalized stress from anti-bi social pressure makes some bisexuals wish they were different or could somehow be magically altered. This may build to self-hatred and feelings of helplessness. As much as Dane loved to hook up with men, he nurtures a false hope that by some miracle, he could one day wake up magically straight.
He was hoping that once he committed to a woman, his bisexual desires would decrease if not vanish. A dominant wife could take care of that. She could put him in chastity so he couldn’t do anything without her permission.
Dane speaks for the thousands of people who’ve privately confided to me they wished they could be different, and not need the things they so deeply, truly needed. Dane wants to believe in a silver bullet because he feels so hurt inside, so confused by all the pressure he gets from people to pick a side.
Liberation is knowing your sexual identity is as good as any other. It’s understanding that you are entitled to as much fun and happiness as anyone else. It’s feeling like you don’t have to apologize OR explain yourself to ANYONE (unless you feel like it). Not only do bisexuals have the right to live their authentic identity, but they also have the right to define it on their own terms.
Make Your 2019 Bi-Friendly
I just read that the comic hit, Grace and Frankie, will be continuing to tease us this season with hints of Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin jumping into bed for some bisexual loving. If we see those heroic actresses in bed together, I’ll know we’ve taken a decisive step in the right direction!
Ending bisexual discrimination starts with you. If you think a bisexual needs to “pick a side and stick to it,” you’re the one who needs to change.
Somebody recently asked me why I titled the book Champions of Pleasure. I told her, first, because it’s a quote from my favorite poem by my favorite poet. Second, because I see openly sex-positive people as strong. We are brave enough to live on our terms and take risks to be authentic.
