Getting gaydar

One of the googled queries that often sends people to this blog is: “How do I know if X [person that I fancy] is bi?” Chances are, they go away entirely unenlightened.

I was thinking of this myself the other day, when I was chatting to someone I know slightly. She knows about me – and we have always had a rapport – but, unless she tells me, how will I ever know if there is anything to “know” about her?

I am not planning to proposition her, indeed am quite enjoying the continued existence of Unresolved Sexual Tension, but I’d like to know that UST is what it is, and not just friendliness.

In the past, I have got this horribly, hideously wrong – to the embarassment and bafflement of both parties - and I just wonder how other people sense mutual sexual attraction.

Going clubbing
No doubt if you are operating in an entirely lesbian/gay environment, then it is easier. At least if you are in a queer club, it’s likely that the people who are there are queer. And that’s one of the reasons why LGBT online dating is so popular – you at least know that people there are looking for lovers of whatever gender you are.

But queer people operate in all sorts of mainstream and heterosexual environments too, and seem to meet partners there without necessarily verbally coming out to them. How?

Assuming everything
My lack of gaydar, though, isn’t confined to people I may sort of kind of fancy. Several times over the past year, I have been told that “of course” so and so is gay, what was I thinking?

Well, what was I thinking? In theory, I don’t assume anyone is anything. In practice, unless people have an obvious attachment, or I meet them in an unarguably queer environment, I kind of think they’re all asexual.

British newspaper publishes good bi article shock

Hallelujah! The first positive piece about bisexuality in an eon is published.

Basically, writer A, Stephanie Theobald (writer of chick lit), used to be a lesbian. Now she’s having a relationship with a man. Viz, writer B, Jake Arnott (far more famous writer of gay gangster novels). He has always been bisexual but mostly had relationships with men. Now they’re in lurve and want to tell the liberal intelligentsia about it.

Or: two novelists each have a new book to push, and they’ve found a handy two-in-one angle for a nifty little feature.

But...

Mr Writer
I have absolutely no beef with Mr A. I have never read any of his books (or hers for that matter) but what he says is interesting… In fact, it's all good: the first famousish bi man out and proud in the UK since Tom Robinson.

According to the piece, he has identified as bi since he was young, and came out as such in the 80s. But he didn’t find acceptance on the politicised gay scene at the time; nor did he find much scope for bi political activity. So, although he was always in relationships with men, he always knew that was not the whole story. Then he met Ms Theobald.

Ms Writer
Stephanie Theobald was (I think) a fashion/style journalist, and a lesbian. Back in 2002, she wrote the most virulent piece of drivel that I have ever seen on male bisexuality, since the work of 1950s sexologists or contemporary religious bigots, or rejected comments on this site. And it was published! In the Guardian! No way am I going to link to it (can’t find it anyway). But it was all the usual stereotypes with extra added venom.

She thought bi women were sell-outs too and wrote so at length. Then she became one. Oh well, it just goes to show what many people think – that those who are secure in their own sexuality don’t have to ridicule that of others.

Out and proud hypocrites, as she styles herself, are simply hypocrites. She doesn't say she's wrong, or apologise, just jokes about it. Pah!

It occurs to me that this is the first time I have ever really slammed any other "bi" people on this site, but I do believe that she deserves it.

Bi The Way
Well I saw this film mentioned in my last post, and certainly didn’t hate it as much as the Bi-Furious writers, although their criticisms - too many to list here - are generally valid. It was about a world that seemed very foreign to me – bi teenagers in the US. At least it was laugh-out-loud funny in places. And it did show that, for some young people, being bi meant they were a target for bi and homophobia, not just lots of sex!

One thing that really pissed me off though: no activists. Robyn Ochs was allowed precisely one sentence. Of course those young people (and others like them) are going to feel abandoned and isolated if they don’t know there is a whole movement of individuals who are battling for them. The bi movement/theorists seem to be made invisible in all places and times. As the bi-furious people wrote, there was no sense of bis being part of a queer community at all.

Complete absence of a sense of history or geography too. Lookie here, filmmakers Brittany Blockman and Josephine Decker, bisexuality didn’t spring out of nowhere last year or the year before, some time after Madonna kissed Britney. Bisexuality exists everywhere and at every time. And not just for teenagers, either.

Bi The Way comes to London

Bi The Way, a US documentary looking at attitudes to bisexuality in America, is finally coming to the UK. It will be at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival on March 30th and April 3rd. Online booking opens next Monday March 3rd, unless you are a BFI member when you can book by post now.

Now, no doubt this discussion will be very old news to people reading this who live in the US, where it has been blogged about ad nauseam – so what are your thoughts? Have you seen this film?

Because, although there is very little in the way of bi films out there (the first-ever bi doco at the LLGF as far as I can remember), this one doesn’t sound particularly entrancing.

Of course, any film/book/TV programme that is meant to represent an almost entirely unrepresented (in the sense of analysis, rather than 'phwoar') group can’t possibly win completely. But my hackles do rise when I read: "is bisexuality having a media fad or is the 'whatever' generation having its own sexual revolution"?

But, more than anything, it was the comprehensive shredding on it by the thoughtful blog Bi-Furious that makes me wary.

Anyway, ticket provision willing, I’ll be seeing it and reporting back.

Falling in love with love

I had the first inklings that I was bisexual when I was about 10. My parents had gone to a school meeting and I had refused to go next door to be babysat.

Anyway, I was lying on my stomach watching one of the 1930s films you could see on the TV then. It was an operetta-style musical: it might have been Rose-Marie, or perhaps Maytime. But in any event it starred Jeanette MacDonald.

Oh I thought. Oh… that lady is so beautiful.

It was something to do with the way she sang, the way she held her head back and half-closed her eyes. Her eyelids were luminescent. Shiny eyeshadow, I imagine, although I didn’t know that then.

I thought there was something magic about her, transcendent, utterly unobtainable. And that was what I was looking for. That was what I felt for a little boy I had loved (silently) before. She cast a spell on me, with her eyelids and that clear, high voice. There was, too, the way she stared mysteriously at someone or something the audience couldn't see.

I saw another film of hers on the big screen a few months ago: Love Me Tonight. Damn, I thought, I was right. Jeanette MacDonald really was that gorgeous.

Is there a ‘bisexual’ in LGBT history month?

Well no, probably not. This February's UK-based yearly event is, as in all other years, probably entirely “b” free.

A trawl through the website (10% of the 367 events anyway, before I got bored) indicates nothing specifically bi. There are lots of events where bi people could well be included among all-encompassing “gay” events. But nothing to imply that bisexuality might have a history in and of itself.

Anyone who might think it does could do worse than look at the links to this blog’s history posts. I have listed them on the right of this page. History is my thing, you see (well one of them! I am bi, I have lots!).

The ever-active Jen Yockney posted on bimedia.org that there was just one event with a bi speaker. This happened last week – but on a Tuesday morning!

Who do I blame?
Well, not the organisers. They publicise the events, it seems, they don’t arrange or commission them. This is a great “month” to put on, regardless.

A society that thinks that bi people in the past were really gay? So therefore to see bi people separately is simply wrong? Possibly.

A bi community that has shrivelled away, so that putting on any events is asking a lot of a very small number of people? Not really.

It’s true, too, that lesbian and gay history (particularly gay men) is much more documented than bi history. It can (and often does, and certainly used to) take in anyone interested in same-sex.

So I am left with no one to vent my frustration on. Ideas, anyone?

Moving on
I kind of think this shouldn’t happen next year. There ought to be at least a few more events on bisexuality throughout the ages. So who would run it? Get money for speakers’ expenses? Any ideas? It would be interesting, no?

At any rate, I promise to do a few more bi history posts on here this month. I do, I really do.


PS I went on a work-sponsored “writing for the web” course today. And I am tailoring this piece accordingly. Can you tell the difference between this and what I have written before, dearest regular readers? This piece seems very tabloidesque to me.

Bisexuals on YouTube

Of course – I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before: bisexual videos on YouTube. I mean, everything else is there: high school productions of Carousel; salsa bands from the early 70s; women showing you how to put your hair up in a retro style (although I failed to follow her instructions properly and ended up with a frizz); the new make-up correspondent for the Guardian; and lectures on this, that and the other.

So, naturally enough, there’s bi stuff. There are 36 bi “manifestos” - this, for instance.



Then there’s “the bisexual kid” who has posted a whole series of videos (maybe dozens) about being a bisexual teenager. This one’s about coming out. I am a bit nervous for The Kid – he’s clearly very young, and thousands of people have seen his YouTube vids. This one has 533 comments. Still, what he is doing is, I’m sure, really valuable for isolated kids his age. I just hope the creeps/psychos/homophobes don’t track him down.

What do you think? Is he too young to be doing this? Brave, or foolhardy? I feel kind of uncomfortable when I see the still from his video posted below.



At a rather different point in the age-range, a woman asked if she was “too old to come out at 46”. This seems to be a TV advice programme: Sound Advice with Marcia and Dr Rick.



Actually, I rather fancy doing a series of videos myself… We’ll see,

Why you and I still need this bisexual blog

As they say in France: Jamais s’exprimer, jamais s’expliquer (roughly: never complain, never explain) and the past few posts here have been little more than complaints and explanations – well, enough already!

This is my 100th post on this blog, and the one that probably gets the most traffic is Ten Reasons You Need This Bisexual Blog, which makes me think: all is not yet well…

Two things strike me very forcefully through all the Google alerts I get (on bisexual, bi, bisexuality). One is that, for a few people – Queer, college/university attached, polyamorous, trans-friendly – bisexuality is nothing much. Sometimes, it can even be seen as regressive, stuck in the “two-genders only” norm. Coming out, for them, may not even be really necessary or appropriate. Being attracted to “men” or “women” is not expected. For the moment. While they’re in that environment.

The other is that there is still such a large group of people who say to themselves: I think I’m bisexual, help! Many people – often, but not only, teenagers; often, but not only, people who are not part of progressive communities, do not identify as queer, are in established relationships, do not know where their local lesbian or gay bar is (if any) – find being bisexual, or even thinking about it, very frightening. They think their whole world is going to fall apart, and they may be right. They have had criticism or rejection from people they have told and they wonder if anyone can help them. They need support now, but where do they go to find it? (Of course, nothing like all bi people fall into either of these groups, but you get my drift.)

Bi people, like all people, need validation, to know that they are OK, that there are others like them, that they deserve and can achieve, love. That’s why you still need this bisexual blog, and why I do too.