Bi The Way

Its been a fairly emotional December and aside from Christmas (which was great) its one I’m keen to forget. I’m sure my girlfriend is too. There have been a lot of strains on our relationship, sickness, hospital appointments, moving in together. All sorts of stuff, but probably above all else my girlfriend and I have suffered a bit of mutual emotional battering as we’ve gotten to know things about each other that we previously didn’t share or suspect.

Last May, just a few of months after we’d met, she was all set to move away. To sell her house and head back home to her extended family. At my request she turned down an offer on the house so we could have a go at building a life together. One cannot expect to know all the intimate details about your partner after dating them for three months, so in acquiescing to my request she must have known she was taking a risk. However, this didn’t stop her feeling like I misled her when I later shared some admittedly shocking secrets about my past sexual persuasions.

In a way she was right, there are many things we do keep from our partners (as bisexual men this is typically our bisexuality) and if this doesn’t feel like lying it certainly feels like an omission. But equally these are not things we feel comfortable enough sharing until we are in a very safe emotional place with our partners. To reach this place takes time. When my girlfriend and I took the decision to be together, time was something we didn’t have. The offer for the house was on the table and a choice had to be made.

The outcome is that my girlfriend felt like I lied to her by omission, and I felt somewhat hard-done-by for being expected to share my darkest personal secrets a matter of weeks into a new relationship. What’s more my girlfriend’s response has made it abundantly clear to me that such revelations (particularly when misinterpreted due to a fudged drunken explanation) can profoundly alter her view of the man she fell in love with.

My conclusion really results in a warning. If you’ve been in a relationship for a while and reveal a shocking new fact about yourself, particularly if you don’t have a succinct and reassuring way of explaining it, then you run the risk ruining your partners image of you. For example, if there is anyone reading this who is thinking of coming out as bisexual, whilst in they are in relationship. Then be under no illusions, you are between a rock and a hard place.

The Daily Mail hit a new low this week with Jan Moir’s piece on the death of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately. Not only did she manage to trample all over his soon to be dug grave, she made Gately’s tragic death the centre-peice of over 900 words of unapologetic gay-bashing.

The article published on the 16 October, in which Jan Moir describes Gately’s death as striking a blow to the “happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships” has seen a record 21,000 complaints lodged with the Press Complaints Commission.

Moir described Gately’s death “strange, lonely and troubling”. Though I hasten to add if you read the coroners report, it is not particularly strange, it was hardly lonely with his husband in the next room and to anyone outside his immediate circle of family and friends, the only troubling thing about Gately’s death is the response it provoked from a Daily Mail columnist.

Inspite of having no medical training and no background in forensic medicine Moir went on to say “Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this.” - Though one would hasten to add that the coroner who, unlike Jan Moir, possesses a degree in forensic medicine and actually examined Stephen Gately’s body, declared the death to be due to a pulmony oedema (fluid on the lungs) caused by a previously undiagnosed heart condition.

Moir herself denied there were any homophobic undertones to her article. However, one can only conclude that she hasn’t bothered to read her own work before sending it print. The article is rife with slurs, smears, assumptions and mis-information, which if not consciously meant to be anti-gay, reveals a deep-rooted homophobia in Jan Moir’s subconscious.

Insensitively Moir suggests that Gately and husband Cowles had invited 25 year-old Bulgarian Georgi Dochev back to their apartment that night for the purpose of an extra-marital shagging session. Whilst the facts seem to be that Cowles and Dochev retired to the bedroom whilst Gately stayed on the sofa. Whatever the truth of the truth of the circumstances, its none of Moir’s business or anyone else’s for that matter. What’s more Gately clearly wasn’t upset by the arrangement otherwise he would have hardly nodded off on the sofa.

Aside from the disgusting manner in which she slates a talented young entertainer, the most troubling part of Moir’s article for the wider gay and non-heterosexual community is the way she equated Gately’s [gay] lifestyle with been “dangerous” and “troubling”, bizarrely linked it with the death of another gay celebrity Kevin McGee, the late former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas.

Thankfully Moir’s article hasn’t gone unchallenged.

Charlie Brooker led the calls for people to stand up to this kind of wantant gay-bashing in a witty piece for the Guardian and the Daily Mail made some effort to redeem itself with a sterling contribution by Janet Street-Porter.

Though without wanting to diminish Ms Street-Porter’s rebuttal, one cannot help but think that the Mail published this piece so they could claim to be fair and balanced. Screw that! They shouldn’t have published Moir’s piece in the first place.

Areth is a young woman living in the United States. She has always known she was bisexual, and has not come out to many people. At every stage in her life there had been love interests from both sexes. She is quite certain that she is bisexual despite never having a full-blown relationship with a woman. However, her reluctance to come out can be attributed to being in a hetero, monogamous relationship.

During the first few months of her relationship she had confessed that she is bisexual, and in return she discovered that her mate, in a strange twist of things, also is bisexual. This gives her the opportunity to offer a unique perspective, on what its like to be a bi, monogamous woman in a relationship with a bisexual man.

This is my first contributing post, and I am extremely happy and anxious to be a part of this community. My real name is not Areth, but I decided on a pen name to conceal my identity because I lead a public life as a teacher. I feel that many of the individuals I work with, on a daily basis, would not be ready to hear about my sexual preferences. I am a bit ashamed to say that I have not come out to everyone, and that is the cursed blessing about being bisexual. Several of us live our lives undetected, and several of us are never questioned.

As a female bisexual, I find it hard to relate to how society perceives us. For one reason or another, it’s a hot thing to have a bisexual girlfriend. Some women would go to lying to admit it, despite having no interest in an actual relationship with a woman. Straight and lesbian both fear us because they believe that bisexuality somehow translates to having two romantic relationships at the same time.

However, to be as honest as I can be, I am a strictly monogamous bisexual. I have known this all my life, and this facet of my life was never challenged until recently. Although this community focuses mainly on male bisexuality, I have been given this opportunity to share in my experiences not only because I, too, am bisexual, but because my male partner of 2 years is also bisexual.

I had told my BF at the beginning of our relationship that I had genuine interest in a relationship with women, and that I could see myself eventually living with another woman and being her mate for life. In that regard, he reacted very differently from what I expected. He was afraid. He was unsure. He did not want to fancy the thought of a threesome as most men would’ve jumped on the bandwagon and encouraged me to find a woman to have sex with. However, I believe that he was scared because he knew I was capable of loving another woman to the same degree that he could.

In many bisexual relationships, jealousy can run ramped and cause huge misunderstandings between two partners. I was extremely relieved that my BF did not ask for a FFM threesome, but a few months after my confession I realized that he, too, was bisexual. My following posts in this community will be a kind of therapy for me, as well as a chronicle of my experiences with bisexuality, within myself and my partner.

Some of your may be aware of a Downing Street E-petition that called on the UK government to stop deporting gays and lesbians to countries where they may be imprisoned, tortured or executed because of their sexuality.

The Prime Minister’s Office have issued a response to this e-petition which has been published today:
http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page20418

Effectively, the response states that whilst individual cases will be assessed on their merits the UK government will not stop deporting gays, lesbians or bisexuals to countries like Iran where they can still be executed because of their sexuality.

Clearly they fear a flood of LGBT asylum seekers from countries who still punish homosexuality. But, not only is this unlikely, this is not in the spirit of the UN Refugee Convention or the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) either. If we want to espouse our values of human rights and human dignity. Britain needs to be a beacon of hope for anyone facing persecution.

We would not refuse an applicant because they faced persecution because of their ethnicity. Why wouldn’t we accept someone facing persecution because of their sexuality?

For all the bigotry and discrimination LGBT people may feel they have to suffer in the western world, its nothing compared to being LGBT in Iraq. Human Rights Watch has reported that hundreds of gay and bisexual men have been hunted down by death squads or become the targets of honour killings from their own families.

Story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8204853.stm

Worse still Human Rights Watch also asserts that Iraqi security forces have actually “colluded and joined in the killing.”

The rise of anti-gay violence in Iraq is almost certainly due to the rising power of Islamic Militias following the fall of Saddam and a fragile democratic government, who in a deeply Islamic country, finds it politically inconvenient to challenge religious intolerance.

Tiresias has written recently about the importance of bi guys being visible (Goodbye, Mister Bond: Why Telling Matters). I had been wondering for a while if I should come out and be honest with the world about myself, particularly since developing intense feelings for a close friend. But I have decided that I’m not going to. A few close friends know about me, usually because they’ve worked it out for themselves, or have known me long enough to know my history, and I made a point of telling my wife at an early stage in our relationship, long before we were married. But otherwise, I don’t tell. And I think there are three reasons why that is.

Firstly, there is a real concern for my wife. Far too many would assume that I was having guys on the side if they knew that I was bi. I don’t want people thinking that my wife is a shield for closet homosexuality, or that she has to put up with unfaithful behaviour from me. Our marriage is good and strong and loving, and I would want to spare my wife being the victim of gossip and speculation.

Secondly, there is the work involved in coming out as bi. It is an on-going business, especially for those of us who are married, to explain to new people that you are bi. I have been rather more open in the past, but perhaps it was easier in the days when I was seeing another guy, though even then many people failed to understand. Some clearly assumed that my boyfriend was simply a mate, and others thought I was having a little phase. So I gave up trying to be out, and it’s amazing how quickly you can resume a straight identity. If I were now to try to be out to every group of people I know, I would need to invest so much energy on being out that being bi might come to be seen as the key thing defining me, which it isn’t, as it’s one of many factors that make up my personality.

Thirdly, the fact that most mates think I’m straight means that I can enjoy a certain amount of subtle affection with them without them realising it. This might sound a bit furtive, but every time a mate pats me on the back in a ‘blokey’ way, every time I share a bit of sexy banter with mates, every time I take a shower with other guys at the sports club, I enjoy a small degree of relaxed intimacy with other men that couldn’t happen in so spontaneous a way if they thought I fancied them. A wonderful example of this subtle and rather clandestine intimacy occurred in my last job, when a tall, handsome colleague needed to be measured for a new piece of uniform. The guy who normally dealt with that was gay, and my colleague feared that he would make too much of a meal of taking the measurements. So he asked me, as the safe alternative. He’ll never know how much I enjoyed getting that close and putting my arms round him to take various measurements (whilst all the time we were both joking about how much the gay guy would have enjoyed it!), a pleasure that would not have been possible if he had suspected that I thought him attractive.

So, I stay in the closet. But this presents a dilemma. When I was a teenager I would have welcomed some visible figures who demonstrated that it’s possible to be bi without the sky falling in, but now I don’t feel able to be out. My guess is that my reasons for not coming out will be familiar to many bi guys – do they sound familiar, and are they reasonable, or do you think I’m just being faint-hearted and dishonest?

- Marston

Photo by Robin Wong. Creative Commons Attribution 2.5

I have to confess I’m not normally a reader of The Sun newspaper, but sitting in a Chinese takeaway yesterday, flicking idly through a copy of it, I was struck by the sight of the word ‘bisexual’ in a headline. It appears that a number of American female celebrities are acknowledging that they are bisexual. The most recent to have done so being Fergie, who sings with the Black Eyed peas (helpfully distinguished by the paper from a certain football manager and the Duchess of York), and the actress Megan Fox. It may be that this report reflects nothing more than a certain titillation on the part of male editors, who find the thought of attractive women getting flirty together a bit of a turn on (but then again, who doesn’t?!). The report certainly contained one reference to ‘lesbian sex romps’ which might tell us something of the mindset of the reporter, and we cannot know how it would be reported if a male celebrity were to identify himself as bisexual.

But I was struck by the fact that the word ‘bisexual’ was actually used. The article didn’t talk of the celebrities being confused, or of having had a phase, nor was there any suggestion of a crisis in Fergie’s marriage to Josh Duhamel - it simply stated that that was the sexual identity of the women named. It’s probably too early to get too excited - I’m old enough to remember the excitement when Brett Anderson was identified as bi in the mid-nineties, which is now all but forgotten. But part of me just dares to hope that a tiny advance might have been made for bi visibility.

Or have I just been duped by some clever PR for a few American celebrities?

- Marston

Lately there have been some people who have expressed concern that I’m no longer updating this web site. First of all I’d like to reassure everyone that I am. Though truthfully, not as frequently as I once was. Comments are still been published and I’m replying to individual posts whenever I think I have something useful to say and I do read everything that is added to the site. However, I’ve been rather busy these past few months and time has been limited, so I thought I’d offer readers a quick update to explain why.

1) I have an RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) which makes typing and spending time at the computer painful. As I have to work at a computer for my day job, I am rationing my PC time and this leaves little time for writing lengthy articles.

2) Moreover, I’ve met someone and I’m in love. We’ve been together almost 4 months and we’re very happy. My new partner has a small-holding in the country, which together we are trying to restore and work towards growing our own fruit and veg. So a new relationship and back-breaking labour on the farm leaves even less time for the blog.

For those of you who are wondering, my new partner is female, and yes she knows and is completely cool with me being bisexual.

There have been things I’d like to comment on. Such as the California Supreme Court upholding Proposition 8 - which sucks. But its been impossible to find time at the right moments to be topical, by the time I’d got to my computer, it was old news and had been blogged to death.

Finally I guess another contribution to current absence of new material is that as my existence is now exclusively straight and that I now have a girlfriend who is totally accepting of who I am, finding sources of personal inspiration is tricky, especially as my written style generally stems from reacting to injustice.

My personal happiness and my girlfriend’s acceptance is an odd cause for writers block, but a welcome one.

Marston, our newest contributor, opens with an piece which I think many Bi-guys can relate to, the conflict of realising you’ve fallen for a guy yet at the same time are happily married to your wife.

This question has been much on my mind lately. I’m a 39 year old bi guy, I am very happily married to a wife who loves me far more than I deserve, and I have no desire to have an affair. However, I have recently been shocked by the sudden realisation that I had fallen in love with a male friend.

The shock wasn’t that my eye had been caught by a cute guy: I’ve known that I’m bi since my teens, though the process of accepting that was slow and difficult. And despite being very happy in my marriage, I have never stopped noticing good looking guys in the street.

The shock was the fact that I had actually fallen for this guy: feeling churned up and excited every time I saw him, and finding myself looking forward to seeing him again just a bit too eagerly. He’s quite tactile, and will often greet me with a pat on the shoulder, which sends me into a complete spin. I haven’t said or done anything to indicate how I feel about him – he’s happily married and wouldn’t welcome me propositioning him. But I have caught myself feeling jealous of his wife when he goes home early from the bar to be with her. The fact that I have felt all of this has made me feel intensely guilty – I feel as if I have been unfaithful to my wife even though I haven’t actually done anything. And I am struggling to figure out why it happened: why, when there is nothing lacking in my marriage, did I feel the need to love a guy too?

It isn’t that I’m particularly after sex with a guy. I’ve certainly had some fun with guys in the past, but actually straight sex is the thing that really thrills and satisfies me. The fact that I’ll never suck another cock doesn’t bother me. But although I don’t want to go to bed with my mate, I do feel an intense urge to throw my arms round him and hold him really, really tight. Whilst I love the smoothness and softness of women, there is something about the strength and muscularity of men that is particularly good to hold, and I have in the past loved being able to hug a guy with a roughness that would provoke protests from a woman. With my last boyfriend, it was the hugging and passionate, intense kissing that mattered to me more than the sex. Up to a point, the sort of physical affection I want from a guy is not that much different from the kind of back-slapping, buddy-buddy affection that a straight guy might get from his mates.

But there’s more to it than that. There is something about the sort of emotional affection that you get from guys that’s just different. And this is the thing I can’t quite describe or define. I think it’s got something to do with the way guys understand one another: it isn’t that my wife doesn’t understand me – she does, all too well! But there is something in the easy rapport between two guys that just feels different. Most of the time, that rapport can take place in uncomplicated friendship, but there is a part of me that longs for it in a more intense form, and having found a guy that I can really relate to in that way, I’ve fallen for him. I’m now trying to ensure that that relationship develops as an affectionate friendship: I don’t want to lose his friendship, but nor do I want the friendship to develop into something that would threaten my marriage. It will take time to see how that friendship develops. And at the same time, I need to reassure my wife that my feeling affection towards another guy is not an indication of something lacking in her. Part of me just craves something different, even if I can’t quite define what it is.

A week or so back I was contacted by a young lady who is doing some research into the representation of lesbian gay and bisexual people in soap operas for her Media Studies A-level.

Soap Operas are some of the most viewed programs on TV, therefore even if you are not a soap fan, the way characters are portrayed, informs millions of people’s perspective and opinion. This makes it an important topic for discussion and I think its worth trying to help Bonnie out with her research.

A short questionnaire follows. If you could please either post responses in the comment or email them directly to: bonniebella@hotmail.co.uk

1. Do you think the portrayal of homosexuals and bisexuals in soap operas has changed over time and how?
2. Do you think homosexual and bisexual individuals have a negative or positive portrayal in soap operas?
3. What stereotype (if any) do you think these individuals are given?

I’ll add a fourth question of my own:

4. Do you think there are enough LGBT people represented in soap operas?  And do they accurately represent real LGBT people’s lives and issues?

We look forward to your responses.