Who’s afraid of the
big bad b-word?
Bi. It’s a little word. A teensy word in fact. Why is it then that so many people seem so darn scared of it? Maybe I’m over reacting. Maybe they are not scared, maybe as it’s such a small little word that people have somehow overlooked it, mislaid it, or otherwise removed it from it’s domicile without prior consent. What ever the reason, it’s missing in action.
You may disagree with me. After all you are currently reading a publication called bi community news. It can’t be that missing if there is a whole magazine about bis surely? Unfortunately, it would seem that your ease with the word puts you into a small minority. Out in the rest of the world, distant from this cosy community, it seems that many people don’t have a clue about it.
Out there, if a person has same sex relations, they are gay or lesbian. No two ways about it. Take for example the recent film “Brokeback Mountain”, or the ‘gay cowboy film’ as it’s also been known. In it two men fall in love, but also manage to father children in their spare time. One of the characters later admits to having extra marital affairs with both men and women. Despite this, the media is talking about these ‘gay’ characters. The word bisexual is totally missing from the articles. Possibly it’s because the word ‘bisexual’ also includes the word ‘sexual’ and the term ‘gay’ is not ‘quite as in your face’, and after all gay is a nice short word for headlines, but wait a second, isn’t ‘bi’ a third shorter? Now I’m quite happy for people to define however they like, but surely when someone unrelated reports on somebody who sleeps with men and women, the word might come up just once in a while, surely? However there is a big media blind spot when it comes to bisexuality.
Take for example the recent media furore around Simon Hughes. As of the time of writing, the press is full of headlines such as “I’m Gay Too!!” and “Hughes explains gay admission” when it seems that he’s actually just confessed to same sex relations, and in fact on a previous occasion refuted the label ‘gay’. Now I have no idea how he personally identifies, and I have no wish to attempt to force him to accept a label (it’s a cliché but labels are for cans after all), I am surprised that saying ‘I have had relations with men and women’ promotes the media into proclaiming that he is gay with not a mention of bisexuality. I know that there has been an immediate reaction from bisexual activists on this matter, so we’ll have to see how the situation pans out, but it still remains that what could be described as bisexual behaviour is seen to automatically equal gay. It’s as if it’s a dominant gene, it seems the mere sniff of same sex attraction and you fall into the gay camp, although interestingly the situation is not the same if reversed. Elton John apparently confessed that he sometimes found women attractive, but I don’t remember seeing one “Elton John is straight!!” headline.
From looking at the commentary on the Hughes situation, it becomes obvious that in many people’s minds that bisexual equals gay. Or in fact you are either gay or straight, and there really is no area in between. Some people who talk about Brokeback Mountain maintain that the characters are gay, as they find ‘true love’ with a member of the same sex, and maybe it’s this kind of attitude which in part explains the hidden nature of bisexuality. As bisexuals, we are often only defined by our current relationship, or the statistics regarding our past attractions. Unless we make a big show of being attracted to both, or flitting from one gender to another we are assumed to be ‘really’ straight or gay. It’s possibly due to this that the main concept of bisexuality in the media is the pouting ‘hot bi babe’ (available to both men and women and ready for action), or the sexually insatiable ‘immoral’ bisexual male hedonist. Settle down with any one person for too long, and you’ve clearly made your mind up and got down off the fence.
Hopefully with pressure on the media, we can slowly change this perception, and bisexuality will one day been seen as an option and maybe also, as woefully optimistic as it may seem at the moment, a valid sexuality. But as a small movement in comparison to the gay and lesbian communities, it’s up to us all to play out part in making that happen. If you’d like to join the bi media network to exchange news about (mis)representation of bisexuals in the press and on the airwaves, get in touch.
Lanei
To join the bi media network, point your web browser at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bimedia/