Bi The Way

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.

When the gay & bisexual community talks about the HIV epidemic, they talk about it in past tense. They talk about it as something which plagued the gay & bisexual community during the 80′s and early 90′s. Claiming the lives of countless friends, sons and loved ones.

At the time conservative hard-liners cackled with glee at this gay-plague which in their mind was cleansing society of the sodomites. Meanwhile we watched with sadness and despair as our friends battled with and died from a disease that society didn’t seem to care about.

25 years on and the world is a very different place. In the western world we understand very well how HIV is transmitted, that it isn’t just a risk for gays and bisexuals but for the whole world. Anti-retroviral treatments (where available) have proved effective in prolonging both the duration and quality of life of those suffering from HIV.

Yet we have become complacent.

HIV epidemics are springing up the world over and infection rates are continuing to soar. This is particularly true in Africa, (where the Pope has recently reiterated the Catholic Church’s shameful opposition to condom use) but epidemics are not limited to developing countries. Washington DC has just reported that 3% of over 12′s are infected with HIV/AIDS. This puts the US capital on a par with Uganda for HIV/AIDS infection rates.

Everyone who is sexually active has a duty to behave responsibly. To be aware and to consider the possibility that they or the person who they are sleeping with might carry the virus. This is irrespective of your sexual orientation, though we have to acknowledge that those of us who regularly engage in unprotected anal sex are most at risk.

Remember whilst HIV is no-longer the death sentence it was in the 1980′s. Living with HIV is not easy. The slightest infection, even a common cold can complicate itself into a life threatening condition.

Still, there is hope. Whilst where antiretroviral therapies are available, such as in the UK. A person diagnosed with HIV aged 20 can expect to live another 49 years. Not bad when you consider average life expectancy in the UK is 80. However, this statistic only holds true for those who have their HIV infection diagnosed early, not for those who remain oblivious to their HIV status for years.

The solution:- get tested – know your status. You stand the best chance of living a long and healthy life that way.

Meanwhile in Africa where antiretroviral drugs are not freely available, people are dying needlessly and the epidemic is getting worse.

Bi the Way has described why bi men can look gay to those who know them.  I won’t restate what Bi the Way has already written, but I want to briefly show how homophobia, media portrayals, and bi writing itself conspire to make bisexuality look like a ruse.  Understanding how the myth works can help us respond to the bi equivalent of “you just haven’t met the right girl.”

Many in the straight world think all queers look alike, and bisexuality appears as a shade of gay.  Straight-centred folk may overlook the occasional bi-curious experiment, but they seem to think sustained same-sex desire happens only for those who don’t fully enjoy the other sex – like a conflicted man using women to mask an overwhelming hunger for a forbidden fruit.  Thus a man’s same-sex attraction looks real, while his opposite-sex feelings look false.  If same-sex taboos ever disappear, it won’t matter which – if any – sex we like “best.”  Until then, monosexual people may have a hard time understanding that bi people can and do form stable relationships with either sex.

As every journalist knows, stability puts an audience to sleep.  As a result, the press portrays bisexuality as a carnival of crisis:  A politician’s career disintegrates in the wake of a gay sex scandal.  Tearful talk-show wives reveal husbands’ betrayal “on the down-low.”  A friend of a friend divorces a woman who claims she’s living a lie.  Thus bisexuality starts to look like the delusion of a closet queer trying to squeeze into a straight jacket.  If a silent majority of bisexuals lead stable, ordinary lives, neither they nor the media feels motivated to show it.  That leaves bisexuals with the responsibility of showing the world accurate portrayals of bi existence.

While pop culture sensationalises bisexuality, our own writing often makes our same-sex desire seem most important.  I see no way around this – what’s the point of discussing bisexuality if not to discuss our same-sex attraction?  Nevertheless, readers who see us write mainly on same-sex topics may assume we’re just gays playing games.  We can’t help what we must discuss, but if we recognize the rainbow effect in bisexual discourse, we can better confront doubts about our other-sex attractions.

Who cares what others think?  Unfortunately, opinions affect lives.  Finding and maintaining a relationship gets tricky when potential partners think bi means gay-lite.  Debates about whether bisexuality exists make it hard for emerging bisexuals to understand their own feelings.  So we can smile and say “possibly” when someone claims that bi men and women will “both be having sex with men five years from now,”* but when we speak up against misinformation, we’re helping ourselves and others like us.

Tiresias

* Stephanie Fairyington discusses this old joke in “Bisexuality and the Case Against Dualism.”  The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide 12.4 (2005).  Fairyington’s piece deals sympathetically with bisexual issues.

I wrote last time that I’m closeted.  It’s not that I haven’t told anyone, but not everyone I’ve told believes me.  Yesterday, a friend claimed I’m just like her: straight but not afraid to cross the gender barrier.  Meanwhile, my wife insists that I’m just curious.  Thus I remain to others curiously straight, and to insist on the B word brings more trouble than it’s worth.  But I clearly get something out of my bi identity, or I wouldn’t be writing here.

Not everyone curious about same-sex eroticism identifies as bisexual, why me?  Because I long ago broke the bi barrier.  I don’t know what turns bi-curiosity into a certainty, but calling it curiosity eventually sounds ridiculous.  Since before puberty, I’ve felt drawn to people across the gendered spectrum.  I’ve found my feelings confirmed time after time.  Acknowledging my bisexuality validates what I feel, while calling it curiosity feels like evasion.

Bisexuality doesn’t affect my driving habits, my digestion, or when my bills are due.  Aside from rare arguments on the topic, my marriage does not suffer for my sexual orientation.  I’m as faithful as a Jane Austen hero, but my straight-ish life hardly benefits from a label no Victorian could speak by name.  If external details of my life offer no incentive to come out, my inward life cries out for it.

Most of us grow up presumed straight until “proven” gay, and it may take years to realize that neither label really fits.  Some people reject all sexual-identity labels as too confining, but rejecting labels nullifies my feelings worse than biphobia itself.  I want to describe how I feel, not obscure it.  A bisexual identity can be difficult to maintain because, unless I date both sexes at once (which hasn’t happened and won’t), people will use my current relationship to define my sexuality.  Thus, we bisexuals must assert ourselves or live like double agents with one side always in the closet.

So this post has been all about explaining what I get out of calling myself bisexual.  It may not make sense to come out always and everywhere, but the slightest bi-related act – such as posting here -  brings rewards.  I don’t get a sexual smorgasbord, an open marriage, or a lavender Volkswagen convertible.  I just get peace of mind.

Tiresias

This is a late call for signatures for a “10 Downing Street” web site petition to call on the British government to stop deporting LGBT asylum seekers to countries where they may be imprisioned, tortured or executed because of their sexuality.

The petition reads:

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop deporting gays and lesbians to countries where they may be imprisoned, tortured or executed because of their sexuality.”

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Stopdeportinggay/

It would have been nice if the petition had included bisexuals, but the point is still well made.

The petition is open to British Citizen, including expatriates as well people of any Nationality who are resident in the UK. The petition closes on March 7th. There are over 4,500 signatures so far.

So please do follow this link and sign the petition on-line.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Stopdeportinggay/

Bitheway.co.uk is open to many voices and we’ve invited contributors from across the world to share their views, opinions and experiences of bisexuality with our community. Up first is a piece by Tiresias an English Literature Major from Oklahoma in the American Mid-west. In his first piece Tiresias discusses what inspires him to write about bisexual issues…

Truth Will Out
I am bisexual, married, and closeted.  Currently, bisexuality comprises 95% of my private writing because I can share with others nearly everything else.  If I can share my bi thoughts, maybe that will clear my private mind for fiction, politics, and other topics

Ungated Community
Keeping bisexuality locked in my private, encrypted journal does not promote emotional health.  Reading bi material makes me feel empowered and relieved to learn I’m not alone.  Sharing my thoughts online could help others break the illusion of isolation.

Large Disproportions
Gay & lesbian bloggers abound, and while many of them seem open to bisexuals, they understandably do not focus on what makes bisexuality different. Sex researchers like Kinsey and Klein argue that most people’s sexual radar falls somewhere between the gendered extremes; yet Internet search hits can make bisexuality look like the specialty kink of a rare breed.  Bi blogging can help readers better understand the “other” sexuality.

Woman Wide Web
Most bi blogs I’ve found focus on bisexual women.  Bi women’s blogs benefit us all, but the blogosphere needs bi men too.  Bisexuals of all genders share common concerns, but men and women also have gender-specific concerns, and we can’t expect women to tackle men’s issues for us.  The blogging world is not virgin territory for the bisexual man.  I don’t know that I’ll cover topics others don’t do already, but that’s not the point.  This is not a competition, but a show of hands.  The more bi bloggers exist, the more visible bisexuality becomes.

Approaching Normal
It’s no secret that the general public sees queer identity in sexualized terms.  If I’m bi (so general wisdom goes), that means I can never be satisfied with just one partner.  In the way I experience bisexuality, men are no different from women other than my wife: often cute, but no excuse for infidelity.  I believe most of us bi married men lead quietly monogamous lives, and even I’m wrong, we all benefit from snapshots of queer monogamy.

Keeping My Religion
Religion has been the tool of political opportunists and homophobic bigots for so long that many queer people tune out at the first mention of it.  Nevertheless, a blog by a woman who calls herself a “closeted pastor” inspired me to consider blogging bisexually.  Not all religious expression sounds like the shrill voices on TV.

The Usual Suspects
Any meaningful discussion of bisexuality will come across myths that cry out for response.  I’ve read many good “bi education” pamphlets that tackle familiar myths, but as the major media outlets demonstrate, repetition lends credibility.  That’s bad when a government alleges weapons of mass destruction, but it’s good when you’re trying to humanize a group many see only through celebrity sensationalism.

Now I’m at the end of my first post, and it feels good to get this out.  Openness can be liberating.  As Anaïs Nin wrote in her poem Risk:

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to blossom.

I look forward to sharing with you.

Tiresias