Bi The Way

I’ve spoken to a few people recently who upon learning of my bisexuality, fessed up to having had their own bisexual experiences. All of a sudden bisexuality seems rather common. Everyone’s doing it! Excellent!

However, whilst one girl was happy to admit she’d messed around with some of her girlfriends she was reluctant to describe herself as bisexual, as was guy who admitted regularly having a mutual masturbation session with a friend whilst in boarding school. Both had enjoyed their experiences, the girl, in the absence of a boyfriend was perfectly open to having further sessions with her girlfriends, the guy regarded it as something he did in the past and was no-longer interested in.

What surprised me is why, the girl in particular rejected the bisexual label, she was very insistent that she wasn’t a lesbian and told me she could only ever orgasm with a guy, but that same evening, I’d witnessed her kiss one of her girlfriends dead on the lips whilst the other girl had her arms around her neck, so clearly been intimate with women wasn’t alien to her and unlike the guys homosexual encounters wasn’t something in the past.

So why refuse to identify as bisexual?

Is there some kind of residual homophobia at work here? What’s preventing her from seeing these same-sex encounters as anything other than what they are. Anyone who has the capacity to enjoy both heterosexual and homosexual relations is by definition bisexual. Why the reluctance to admit this?

The guy on the other hand as either grown out of his bisexual phrase (which would be rather Freudian,) or more likely he is a circumstantial bisexual, that is to say he only exhibits homosexual tendencies in the absence of women. As he’s 15 years out of boarding school, he’s unlikely to find himself in a single sex environment at any future time in his life so its fair to conclude that he’ll probably not go down that path again. So whilst he seems a good fit for the “circumstantial bisexual” description, its not really meaningful to push it upon him.

Of course its for everyone to pick their own label rather than to be tagged with one by someone else. But I can’t help but feel that a lot of people shy away from the bisexual label because of the baggage that goes with it. The baggage is entirely a product of people’s misconceptions and the only way for people to challenge these prejudices and misconceptions is for bisexual people to speak out. To do that, we need to be confident enough to stand up and be counted, and that means owning the label for ourselves.

Unfortunately, I don’t think everyone is ready or able to do that. Though at least we know there are a lot more bisexual people masquerading as straight people out there.  And that warms my heart a little bit.

I’d been seeing this girl “V” for about a month, we’d had some good times but I decided to end it before we got too involved. We got on well and were a pretty good fit, but not close enough to make things permanent. So rather than let us both get in too deep only to endure a messy break-up later, I decided to pour water on things now before they got carried away.

To a certain extent this was a shame because during our last date, I’d told her I was bisexual and (after a little explaining) she was quite cool about it. Still its going to look like my bisexuality was a factor in the break-up and it wasn’t. Its just that I can’t stand to really hurt someone by sleep-walking through a relationship I know won’t go anywhere.

This might sound a little ego-centric, and I don’t get involved with people that often, but when I do, people really seem to fall for me hard. Though I’m not 100% sure why!

OK I look young for my age, I run my own business, I’m mortgage free and after years of therapy I’m pretty together emotionally, but I’m not sure why people seem to fall for me so hard. Maybe its my larger than average Willie - who knows, but I think one of the reasons I avoid getting involved is that I know I’m such a fussy bastard and I hate hurting people by rejecting them when they are very clearly (body, mind and soul) into me.

More likely, I’m not such a stud and I just wind up dating insecure people, who can’t believe anyone might see past the fact they are too fat, too thin, too [insert personal hang-up here] to find them attractive and they fall for me because I’m the first person they’ve met who has obviously looked past that. Either way it makes me feel like a jerk when I break up with someone.

Ultimately I ended this relationship, because fitting in with “V”’s lifestyle was too much for me. I couldn’t deal with the late nights and the hangovers. Basically, I was having to make time for her at the expense of my very active lifestyle and my love of the outdoors. Something I really wasn’t prepared to compromise. My next date is going to have to be a very fit, active, outdoors lover just like me, or it simply won’t work. Though don’t get me wrong I love a good meal in a nice restaurant, at least “V” and I shared that.

A comment by DaviDC on a previous article has really lead to this post. DaviDC quite rightly observed that every bisexual man he knows seems to have settled with a man having dated a women. The implication is that all bisexual men are really closet gay. In this post I’m going to try to explain how the observation is most likely correct and yet the assumption that all bisexual men are really closet gay is wrong.

DaviDC sounds like a Gay man, he didn’t explicitly state this in his comment but it was implied, and let’s face it, this assumption about bisexual men being closet gay originated in the gay community. It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of gay men make this assumption about bisexuals, but hopefully by the end of this post you’ll understand why they are mistaken.

Firstly you have to understand that bisexuals rarely have a 50:50 attraction to both men and women, there tends to be a bias towards one or the other, (see the Kinsey Scale). If you walk in gay circles then you are more likely to meet bisexuals who lean towards homosexuality, whereas if you walk in straight circles you are more likely to never know that the guy next to you is a straight-leaning bisexual because we’d be too scared you’d react badly if we told you. (Besides, we probably don’t fancy you anyway so why bother to mention it?)

Second, contrary to our media portrayal, most bisexuals are looking for a committed relationship and alternating bisexuals (gender agnostics) like myself are totally monogamous once we enter a relationship. This means eventually we tend settle down with a single partner for life.

If you are a gay-leaning alternating bisexual then you are more likely to settle down in a relationship with a man, so to an outsider looking in you look like you’ve finally accepted your homosexuality. Hence the presumption that all bisexual men are closet gay.

As straight leaning bisexuals are less likely to come out, we remain more invisible and don’t figure in people preconceptions as much as our gay-leaning bisexual brothers. In short, whilst this preconception is based on genuine observation, the observations are a natural result of statistical chance rather than an absence of true male bisexuality.

Hope that explains things.

You think people get it, then realise they really don’t understand bisexuality at all. Even my brother, who was the first person I came out to and explained things to properly still seemed to miss the point.

Recently I’ve been dating a girl “V” and I explained to him that it felt a little strange to be in a relationship again after such a long time being single. And he turns around and asks me “Doesn’t being a relationship with a girl conflict with your sexuality?”

I was a little surprised and for a brief moment I wondered if he only expected me to date hermaphrodites. So I asked him to clarify what it meant?

“Well,” he says, “seen as you are bisexual, don’t you want to date men as well?”

Ah - Once again I have to explain the concept of the Alternating Bisexual. I’m almost sick of blogging about this but its a recurring theme. So can I just explain once again that I don’t need a man AND a women to make me happy, as a bisexual I can simply be happy with a man OR a women.

Its not a difficult concept to grasp, why do people have such trouble with it?

Well we are two weeks into the Lambeth conference and the bishops in attendance finally have the opportunity to debate the burning issue of the day, namely the Church’s stance on homosexuality. The Lambeth conference, held once every 10 years, gathers the bishops of the Anglican Communion around the world. However, notable in his absence is the openly Gay bishop of New Hampshire Gene Robinson who was ordained in the Episcopal Church 5 years ago. He wasn’t invited to the conference, yet has been present in the public galleries and been running his own ‘fringe’ events.

Meanwhile the traditionalists, not satisfied with Gene Robinson’s exclusion from the conference, have this time boycotted the Lambeth conference because the Bishop’s who ordained Gene Robinson, were invited. Instead they held a rival conference in Jerusalem called GAFCON, or as I like to call it “Gaff-Con”.

The head of the Anglican Communion the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has been desperately trying to hold the Anglican Church together over this divisive issue. He known to be fairly ambivalent towards homosexuality but has been unwilling to exclude traditionalists, by coming out on the side of the liberals. In effect he’s doing the annoying job of walking a tight-rope and pleasing no-one. He’s keen to get Anglican’s to recognise that the values they share outweighs their differences of opinion on homosexuality.

However, the conservatives are angry that the bible’s very specific ban on homosexuality is been ignored, and to a point I can understand why. Christianity as a religion, survives based on the teaching of the bible and the gospels, once you choose to disregard one passage of the bible, you throw the rest of it into question. The bible holds no authority as we are allowed to “cherry pick” our beliefs.

What traditionalists fail to realise is that most Christians already do just this, as contrary to the directions of the Old Testament, we no longer put children to death for cursing their parents, stone adulterers or execute homosexuals as is mandated by the Book of Leviticus. (We leave that to hard-line Islamists in Saudi Arabia and Iran.)

The Conservatives within the Anglican Communion singularly fail to realise that they have already lost the argument. To prove this lets examine the logic of the debate:

The biblical prohibition of homosexuality is immediately followed by the penalty for homosexual acts.

“If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.”

Leviticus 20:13 (New King James Version)

Now if the Conservatives within the Anglican Church are advocating a return to more literal biblical teachings then I suggest we lock them up quick, as such a view would constitute a hate-crime! However, when mentioning the bible’s prohibition of homosexuality, they rather conveniently ignore any mention of the penalty. Hmm, well either they are trying to  disguise their ill intentions towards homosexuals or it means they have already abandoned biblical literalism themselves.

You’ve got to admit, its hypocritical of conservative Christians to say liberals are abandoning the original teachings of the bible, unless the conservatives are prepared to be literal themselves. So I’d say liberal Anglicans have already won the argument, wouldn’t you?