BiMedia #90

It’s been quiet on the bi media front lately but a few things have distracted me over the last few weeks.

For Valentine’s Day, Peter Tatchell wrote under the title “Sexing the future” on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free website section about how in the future we will all get over being homosexual or heterosexual, and many more people with explore their same-sex desires.

We already know, thanks to a host of sex surveys, that even in narrow-minded, homophobic cultures, many people are born with a sexuality that is, to varying degrees, capable of both heterosexual and homosexual attraction: witness how same-sex relations flourish in single-sex institutions like schools, prisons and the armed forces.

He wound up that in his future world:

The vast majority of people will be open to the possibility of both opposite-sex and same-sex desires.

In a little over 1,000 words he managed to slip the ‘b’ word in just the once, though, when explaining the LGBT in LGBT History Month. I’d’ve thought if you want the world to move on from a gay-straight binary then having a word for this great destination might help. But then, I would. Fortunately, being on Comment Is Free means there was plenty of room for readers to use the “b” word in reply; or in one case to sum up Peter’s entire thesis in the phrase

I've seen the future and it looks like 'Torchwood'...

Now, a confession. I don’t read actually all the newspapers every day. So to help with this column, I have a google-alert set up for bisexual stories and thought it must have gone wrong when the headline arrived on my desktop, “Bobby Brown blames Whitney Houston for cocaine use”. Soon after other variations on that theme squealed from a variety of tabloids, though it first caught my eye in the Courier Mail (Australia). But this is the kind of sensational kiss-and-tell that has to include sex.

So the claims ran on from drugs to that at the time of their marriage, the media was accusing Whitney of having a relationship with her assistant, Robin Crawford. That didn’t fit her image and so something had to be done. Or in the words of the Courier Mail:

He wanted a wife, kids and a whole lot of lovin’; while Whitney wanted to show the world she was not bisexual .

That’ll be the tabloid world’s incredible power of sex with a man to overwrite any other sexual experiences yet again: the man who dabbles in a bit of cock instantly gay, the woman immediately cured of Sapphic lusts.

Let’s finish on an up though, and a bit of bolshy bi visibility. Over at digitalspy.co.uk the former Buffy star James Marsters (the guy on the right on last BCN’s cover photo - Ed) waxed lyrical about the second season of Torchwood and the way that upfront bisexuality upset conservatives across the pond:

"That show is the best. I love that show! That show's pissing all the right people off, I love it."

I'm sure in the UK it is accepted for what it is more, but in Mexico and in the United States, there's a good streak of homophobia. A lot of characters are unabashedly bisexual in Torchwood; in fact my character's way beyond bisexual, my character will do anything that has a hole! I used to do lots of plays that could piss people off for the right reason and Torchwood's found a way to do that."