ith the recent "coming out" by Megan Fox and Black Eyed Peas' Fergie as bisexuals, and the retraction by Pink I think I've gotten the perfect topic to write about in my monthly column for EurOut.org. This is what I've written (it's up for submission - thanks AJ for being my "technical" proofreader):
...
In or out
"... And I lay by the ocean making love to her
with visions clear..."
SOPHIE B. HAWKINS - Damn I wish I was your lover
I'm sure some of you remember the controversy those lyrics sparked when that song was released. Was she singing about another woman? Yes, she was.
Hawkins suddenly found herself talking about it in at least every other interview, and decided to label herself "omni-sexual". She didn't want to label herself one way or the other and hoped to avoid more questions about her sexual preference. Alas, that wasn't the case.
For those of you who are interested: Hawkins still performs occasionally (with a pair of ripped jeans being her trademark) and writes music. The last thing I heard was that she's in a longterm relationship with filmmaker Gigi Gaston.
A documentary called "Bisexual virgins: crossing the line" got a dear friend of mine and me talking. We were both indignant about the article: had the writer of the article been living under a rock? Since when is Britney Spears bisexual?! Did she realize after that godawful MTV kiss with Madonna? Same sex smooches for mere publicity don't count in my book. And David Bowie; I respect him as an artist, but I doubt young women in their late teens or early twenties relate to him. Especially small town girls who are often pretty much confined to the media they can get their hands on.
Ani DiFranco, Bif Naked, Michael Stipe (REM), Kristanna Loken, Peaches and Lady Gaga are out bisexuals who immediately come to mind. Not a lot, I admit, since I can easily name a dozen out lesbian singers and musicians.
Now, why is that?
I talked about bisexuality with some friends. One friend told me she wouldn't be comfortable being in a relationship with a bisexual woman. When I asked her why, she replied that her partner could fall in love with a man. To my retort that a lesbian lover could fall in love with another woman, she replied that that's different.
Wait. What?! The gender thing aside; how is that different?I know some bisexuals tend to lean more towards people of their own gender, while others lean more towards people of the opposite gender. That doesn't mean they're promiscuous by default: L-Word character Shane is promiscuous, but not bi.
Another friend of mine thinks the bi-phobia stems from the 80s (the Reagan era), when the AIDS virus ran rampant in the gay community. Initially, it seemed to target gay men, but it slowly became clear that AIDS doesn't discriminate and people other than gay men were at risk as well. Even heterosexuals, and lesbians. With lack of knowledge of the virus (and proper education) came fear, and lesbians started to scorn bisexuals as they "opened their community to the disease".
I can imagine that people who identify themselves as bi and have experienced this era consciously are hesitant to come out the closet. That said, not only do bisexuals often bear the stigma of being promiscuous (thank you, Tila Tequila) they also have to face harsh criticism from the queer community. There are lesbians who think bisexuality doesn't exist, and claim that bi women need to make up their minds.
The assumption that a bi woman (or man for that matter) could/would always "defect" by going back to the opposite sex is unjust in my opinion. Like anybody else they didn't choose to fall in love with both genders - as if life isn't complicated enough. I know I certainly didn't wake up one morning and decided to fall in love with women. Did you?
I think it's as insulting as a straight man telling a lesbian she probably hasn't met the right guy yet, or that she's confused or something. Do I hear a collective groan, now? Good, then I rest my case.
Despite the often one sided (and negative) portrayal of bisexuals, bisexuality by itself is not some kind of license or prescription for sleeping around, any more then homo- or heterosexuality, or lesbianism.
Back to Tila Tequila for a second, even though she gave visibility to bisexual women, from what I've seen she also did bisexuals and Asians a disservice. ONE: she reinstated the assumption bisexuals are promiscuous, and TWO: with the general dearth of visible Asians in pop culture, a skanky looking one isn't exactly how I'd like to see Asians portrayed on TV (I'm sure plenty of straight men will eat it up).
I'm sure you've heard Pink's denouncing her bisexuality recently (and at the same time stressing out there's nothing wrong with it), telling people to get their facts "str8". And actress Megan Fox told Esquire Magazine:
I have no question in my mind about being bisexual. But I'm also a hypocrite: I would never date a girl who was bisexual, because that means they also sleep with men, and men are so dirty that I'd never want to sleep with a girl who had slept with a man.
Can I get a collective WTF?!
It's certainly a good thing Megan acknowledges her own hypocrisy. Yea, that's the pot calling the kettle black... Though it makes me wonder whether it could be a form of internalized bi-phobia.
As I've very briefly mentioned before distrust of bisexuals runs deep in the lesbian community (I don't even know whether gay men make similar assumptions about bisexuals), and that sometimes prevents bisexuals from coming out. By coming out you attach all the stereotypes that comes with that label to yourself. Whether you like it or not.
According to 92-year-old Paul Gebhart, one of the original researchers from the famous Kinsey Reports, everybody is bisexual. Sixty years ago Alfred Kinsey was the first to prove homo- and heterosexuality are two ends of a gliding scale and that everybody is somewhere on there (the Kinsey scale). Gebhart did an additional research and concluded that people are born bisexual. Their environment, upbringing and experiences in life determine which way their sexuality shifts during their lives.
At the time of the Kinsey Reports homosexuality was seen as an abnormality. And eventhough the Reports showed exclusive homo- or heterosexuality as a rarity, the word bisexuality wasn't in the reports. Gebhart says it's actually not that strange as those researches were done in a homophobic era. He hopes the additional research will sway other researches that the dichotomy that is homo- and heterosexuality shouldn't be the norm, but bisexuality.
The December 2008 volume of the Journal of Bisexuality concludes that those findings were already implied in the Kinsey Reports, but none of the fellow researchers adopted them.
Scientific substantiation aside, with stigmas and stereotypes around I can imagine it's just as hard for a bisexual to come out - if not harder. Did you happen to fit the stereotypical lesbian when you came out, and did you care about how people perceived you afterwards? Were those stereotypes people generally have what kept you back initially in coming out? Did you have a hard time being accepted by the lesbian/queer community? How many assumptions and prejudices of the dominant culture did YOU internalize without realizing it?
Think about it.
...
In the meantime I am surprised at the amount of comments slowly added to my last column :D
No comments:
Post a Comment