Bisexuality and beyond

Why I'm not anonymous

2012-01-20T15:12:00.004Z

Sue George is my real name, and it never occurred to use a pseudonym on this blog. But maybe it should have.

I have a certain (small) profile as a writer on bisexuality, and wanted to continue that here. I am also a professional journalist, not (sadly) on bisexuality, but there is some overlap between the two. For instance, this blog is mentioned on my LinkedIn profile, and also on Twitter, which I use partly for work.

I thought when I started – correctly, I’m sure – that people would be more likely to read ideas and theories about bisexuality, and take them seriously, if a named individual was writing them.

But the fact that I write this as me – and people often find this blog by looking for “Sue George” – has certain ramifications. In particular, it curtails what I write about and how I write it.

You’ll search for a long time on this site before you find out much about me that shouldn’t be completely in the public domain. There’s very little information about my own relationships, and nothing about my own sexual or romantic life after about 1980. I said early on that I wasn’t going to include anything I didn’t want my family or my employer to read. Now I have no employer as such – being freelance/self-employed – that is even more important.

The downsides of being me
But recently I have been thinking about all the things I can’t write about on here, and wish I could.

I can’t write about sex. Not just my sexual life, but anyone’s. Someone who might give me work might look at it and shudder. Human rights, identity, history etc – I would have absolutely no problem arguing my right to do that, and no one has ever asked me to. It also means that I have to turn down those several people who have emailed me asking to guest post on the subject.

I can’t write much about my own life. The people involved wouldn’t like it, and have told me so on many occasions. “Don’t you dare write about me” has been several lovers’ parting shots (and not in recent years, either).

I can’t include some of my opinions which I have formed as a result of the above.

When it comes down to it, I am quite a private person and it never fails to astonish me what some people are happy to share with THE ENTIRE WORLD.

The positive side of anonymous blogging
I know that a lot of people who read this blog, and blog themselves, post under pseudonyms. They want to tell the word about their lives honestly, which they just couldn’t do otherwise for obvious reasons.

In addition, many of the blogs that I have learned from have been written under pseudonyms. The writers are free to cover all kinds of controversial subjects that they just could not have done under their own names. It frees them.

Say, for instance, you are a social worker who used to be a drug addict, or a single mother who is a sex worker, or you are in a long-term clandestine relationship, you might well have valuable insights that you wouldn’t feel happy sharing with the world under your real name. I’d certainly want to read those insights, and I’m sure others would too.

And the negatives
Of course, anonymous blogging – and particularly commenting - can and often does free a writer to be vicious, nasty and generally unpleasant. As a result, many people have called for “no more anonymity on the internet”.

Now that, of course, would make the internet a much nicer and politer place. But it would also mean that readers would be unable to learn about the otherwise hidden sides of life, something that can be really valuable for both readers and writers.

And that’s particularly so for bi people, many of whom have insights they don’t want their family and employers to know they have!

Coming out bisexual

2012-01-01T22:22:00.002Z

The first of January, the beginning of a new year, means a new start. Resolutions, if you like. And for some, the idea of new beginnings means coming out.

I spend quite a lot of time on Twitter these days, and various retweets – or repostings by others, if you don’t know about Twitter – are from or about people who’ve decided they are finally going to tell other people they are bisexual.

Coming out as bi can be complicated, mainly because you have to tell people over and over again. People you don’t know will assume that you are either gay or heterosexual, depending on whether your partner is a man or a woman. If you are single, or dating several people, or poly – that can be easier.

There’s no bisexual “look”, in many places there’s no bi scene, the fact that other bisexuals seem hard to find (other than on the internet)... all these things can be annoying if you are looking for support.

But telling the world you are bi is important, really important.

Most of the world thinks that there is no such thing as bisexuality, that bi people are straight people playing at being gay (bi women) or gay people running away from their real sexuality (bi men). You know that it’s not like that – for you and for many others. The more of us who come out, the easier it is for those people who are not out yet.

And there are many people who cannot be out yet, because it is too difficult. They are too unsure of their feelings, their religion says it is wrong, it is illegal in their country, everyone around them thinks it is wicked, their family actually would beat them up and throw them out. They need to know there are people in the world who can support them, however far away they are or whether or not they know them personally.

So coming out is a public service.

It’s also something to do for yourself. Telling people you are bi, especially potentially tricky ones like parents and partners, means you are telling the truth about yourself. You don’t have to lie about a significant part of yourself. Yes, it will be difficult sometimes, but you may also be surprised by the people who will help and support you.

A bi man I once interviewed - deep in the closet, with a conventional life that felt he couldn’t threaten - said that he longed to “live out loud, like other people”. Coming out is the first step to doing that.

Happy New Year. And good luck!

Straight out of university - a bi novel

2011-11-11T00:54:00.002Z

There aren’t too many novels with bisexual characters, so when I “met” Rosen Trevithick on Twitter, I was intrigued. Her new book, Straight Out of University, is a comic novel with a bi woman at its centre.

Rosen has been doing a blog tour this week – a blog tour is where writers “visit” different blogs each day to write a guest post, or be interviewed on them. A bit like a book tour from the comfort of your living room. She’s visiting Bisexuality and Beyond today; the other dates are at the bottom of this post.

And this is what I asked her:

Can you tell us a bit about Rosen Trevithick. Who *are* you?

I'm a British writer and woman, who now lives in Devon. I've recently become a passionate reader of indie books, having been given a Kindle as a birthday present.

So what's your book about, what sort of book is it?

Straight Out of University is a comedy about a bisexual woman whose life shifts when she leaves Oxford University and moves back to her hometown in Cornwall. It focuses mainly on her romantic life.

Why did you think Bisexuality and Beyond would be right for your book tour?

There are a lot of blogs about bisexuality, but many of them are... how shall I put it? A little tasteless. Straight Out of University is an honest book, not an erotic-orgy-romp, so I would like to visit blogs with a similar tone.

To what extent is this an autobiographical novel? I mean, both you and the heroine come from Cornwall and went to Oxford....

Obviously I've used personal experiences and the experiences of those around me, to inspire parts of the story, but it's not autobiographical. I am very much single and have never dated a man in a cardigan, or a rock star.

So you interviewed a few bi women when you were researching this novel. What did they tell you about their lives?

There were a wide selection of responses. Some women were single, some were in relationships with men, others were in relationships with women and a handful were polyamorous. There were a very wide variety of stories. However, as I expected, the predominant theme was love and respect - not detached promiscuity, as the stereotypical bisexual woman dictates.

I'm intrigued by the fact that you did a YouTube trailer for your book. What's the thinking behind that? I loved the animation by the way.

I was inspired by Miranda July's trailer for "No one belongs here more than you". It showed me that sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. I'm glad you enjoyed the animation.

Are there any other bi/queer books or authors that you like?

I've just discovered a great, young writer called Sophie Robbins. She's written an indie book called, "A hole in the World" and it's really quite lovely.

You seem to have e-published a few books, Can you tell us a bit more about them...?

I've written two novels. The first is called Footprints and it's a dark mystery set in Cornwall. However, I feel more comfortable writing contemporary comedy such as Straight Out of University. The other eBooks are plays that I'd written in the past, before the days of Kindle, and decided to share.

What are your future plans? Specifically, do you intend to carry on publishing yourself, electronically, or are you after a big publisher with a big advance?

Obviously, it would be fantastic if I could make a living from writing. I would love to be able to afford to buy my own house, with its own cutting patch and sea view - if I could achieve that doing something that I love, that would be great. However, for now, I'm just happy to have the chance to write and be read.

To download Straight Out of University, click here

Rosen’s website is at www.rosentrevithick.co.uk

The blog tour

Monday 7th November - Literature & Fiction - http://shelaghwatkins.wordpress.com/
Tuesday 8th November – Kait at Catz - http://kaitatcatz.blogspot.com/
Wednesday 9th November – Along the Write Lines - http://alongthewritelines.blogspot.com/
Thursday 10th November – Mel Comley Author - http://melcomley.blogspot.com/
Friday 11th November – Bisexuality and Beyond – http://suegeorgewrites.blogspot.com/
Saturday 12th November - Fentonton http://fentonton.blogspot.com/

Metrosexy

2011-07-28T23:45:00.007Z

Everyone who’s ever put fingers to keyboard for money is scrabbling around these days trying to find new ways to make it work. Fortunately for those of us who appreciate our sexual politics through a combination of witty writing and thought-provoking ideas, Mark Simpson has found a way with his new ebook Metrosexy.

Even those people who have never heard of Mark Simpson himself will have heard the term “metrosexual” which he coined in 1994. (Metrosexual meaning something along the lines of “man relaxed in his sexual and gender identity, who takes great interest in his own appearance and that of other men”. Or something like that. Aargh!)

He blogs at marksimpson.com, and sometimes has features published in magazines or newspapers, but it has been FAR TOO LONG since he last had an actual book published.

The book

Metrosexy (subtitled a 21st century self-love story) is a collection of Mark’s writings mostly, but not all, published before. So whether it’s Sporno (sports/porn combo a la David Beckham) or a critique of what metrosexuality has become (“metrosexuality was anything but skin deep, whilst metrosexmania pretended that’s all it was”) there’s lots to ponder over.

E-books tend to be substantially cheaper than paper ones, certainly if they are e-book originals, and not just another format for a large publisher. So at £2.86 (for 70,000 words), Metrosexy is a downright bargain. You can download it here.

The ideas

Mark’s work is all about about gender and masculinity (in men) and how men are seen and see themselves in the media and popular culture. Metrosexuality, for instance, is an indication that traditional gender differences between men and women are fading away. It has sexual ambiguity written into its very core. Where once men looked and women were looked at, now men delight in being objects of desire. They aren’t particularly bothered whether it’s men or women doing the desiring because, fundamentally, a metrosexual’s love object is, it seems, himself.

My own particular interest in Mark, and why he is of interest to this blog, is his own take, and personal experience, on bisexuality. In brief (pun sort of intended), he knows that men don’t have to be gay or even bi to have sex with each other. A lot. And specifically, in a period when mainstream and much of gay society considers bisexual men, or indeed bisexuality in men, to be bogus in some sense, here’s someone who’s not part of the bi scene, or even bi, who disagrees.

I also like Mark’s anti-respectable queerness. Most people writing on L or G issues these days are very focused on equal rights and, in particular, equal rights to marriage. He’s not.

He also writes about complex ideas accessibly, for a non-academic audience. Most books on sexuality these days that are about actual ideas are written by and for people within universities. That’s great for them (and just the way the publishing cookie crumbles these days), but not so good for the rest of us.

Him indoors

Alongside Metrosexy, I’ve also been reading The Spiv and the Architect (Unruly life in postwar London) by Richard Hornsey - a more traditionally academic book in the cultural studies field.

TS+TA isn’t really about spivs and architects per se. Instead, it’s about the post WW2 to 1950s development of the notion of the respectable homosexual and how he did and mostly didn’t fit in with the development of domestic and civic urban life. The book charts the way that male homosexuality moved from that of pre-war London, where men more often felt able to have sex with each other without being unmasculinised, or Queer in the old-fashioned sense of the word.

In the 1950s, where conformity to the nuclear family was all around, and heterosexual marriage was the most natural thing in the world, a few high profile legal cases highlighted the plight of The Homosexual and divided men who had sex with men into Respectable (wanted domestic companionship) and Queer/disruptive (cottagers, bi men, young men). While law reform (which didn’t actually happen until 1967) meant that men could settle down together, those who still wanted to take their sexuality away from the domesticated environment felt the full force of Lily Law.

So thank God to be living in a London where – despite all our many problems - metrosexuality is the new conformity, heterosexual and queer men both wear flowery shirts, kiss each other even when they’re sober and discuss the best product to stick into their carefully tousled hair.

And also

As she so rightly points out in the commments below, I was first told about Metrosexy by Quiet Riot Girl/Elly who (at that time) was promoting this book and Mark's ideas. So thank you QRG for that. And readers might like to know that she also has an e-novella out herself Scribbling on Foucault's Walls. I've only read 10 pages of it so far, but it's an extraordinary book, very unusual and engaging. And free. Free!

Bisexual blog, Bisexual Pride

2011-07-01T12:25:00.004Z

It’s five years tomorrow since I started this bisexual blog. I don’t update it regularly any more, but it has been very important to me as an outlet for my ideas on bisexuality when other outlets have seemed a bit sparse. And, as hundreds of thousands of people have visited it, it must have been of some interest and importance to a few other people too.

Below, I’m going to post a link to the entry with which I opened this blog. I wrote about EuroPride, held in London that year. Tomorrow is the Pride march in London too. I had a great time at EuroPride in 2006, but in general I find the lack of politics at Pride in London combined with vacuous celebration a bit wearing and tedious. And believe me, I LOVE celebrations in general.

I think the purpose of Pride should be political as well as celebratory – just as a quick for instance, there are homophobic attacks in the UK, and essential solidarity with people in countries where same-sex is illegal and strictly punished. There are tremendous queer activists, such as David Kato in Uganda who was murdered this year, to honour.

In the Pride press pack, their Love Without Borders campaign is one of the things they do talk about. But if you saw the Pride poster (seen on the London underground, but nowhere that I can find on the interwebs), you’d have to search hard to figure out what sort of Pride it was. Smirnoff Pride, perhaps.

There will be a bi stall and bi banner at Pride, London tomorrow and I really wish those attending all the best. It is absolutely essential that bi people are properly visible and there is even an international campaign about it.

Moving on up
Thanks (in a large part) to social media, there seems to be a lot more of a bisexual community than there was back in 2006, in the UK and elsewhere. Twitter and Facebook have put loads of people in touch with each other, and not just virtually. Ideas spin around the world soon as anything.

Also, there are many more bi bloggers than there were in 2006 when I couldn’t find any British ones at all. It’s very hard to keep blogging in the long term and many have opened and closed. But thanks to the Bi Bloggers aggregator site, organised by the ever-efficient Jen Yockney, anyone who’s interested in British bi bloggers can see that there’s quite a lot of it about. And of course there are many other bi bloggers around the world (particularly North America). If a bi celebrity comes out, or a prominent queer columnist such as Dan Savage opines on bisexuality, there are plenty of other people who can write about it. There are other aspects of bisexuality that people don’t write about, though, and when I write here in the future that’s what I’ll be covering.

Anyway, as anyone who knows a smidgeon of blogging theory can tell you, less is most definitely more. So happy bisexual birthday and Pride – whether it’s been or still to come where you are – and be happy that things really can and do get better.

Here’s what I wrote in 2006.

20th Century Bi - Books and Links

2011-02-17T01:14:00.003Z

Last Saturday (12th February) about 30 people came to Conway Hall in London for what was a really good bi history event. Sadly, Lindsay River was ill and so didn’t do her talk on creative women of the inter-war period, but Christian Klesse, Ian Watters and I were there. As well as the talk listed in the previous post, I did a personal memoir of the 70s. Nothing too personal...

Anyway, I said to people I would give a few links and notes about my talk Androgynous, Ambisextrous, or "enjoying all life's pleasures" - bisexuality before the sexual revolution - so here we are. I also have audio files of all the talks (from an Olympus voice recorder – won’t play on a Mac without some jiggery-pokery that I don't know about), plus printed versions of the talks that I did. Email me if you’d like them (my address is below my pic, on the right).

Books I mentioned
Queer London, by Matt Houlbrook: a truly excellent book about all sorts of man-man sexual behaviour from 1918-57.
The Secret World of Sex, by Steve Humphries: Oral histories of people in the UK before WW2, to accompany the 80s TV series of the same name.
Sex before the Sexual Revolution, by Simon Szreter and Kate Fisher: oral histories, plus analysis, of married couples in Britain who were sexually active before the 1960s. Recently out in paperback.
Fashioning Sapphism, by Laura Doan, looking at androgyny in the 1920s, and how the "masculine" fashions for women in the early part of that decade became connected with lesbianism after The Well of Loneliness prosecution.
Bisexual Love by Wilhelm Stekel. Originally published in 1922, this radical and almost unknown book has been digitally scanned and is available from Amazon!
Passionate Friendships, by Nerina Shute, in which she writes about her bisexuality and her relationships with women and men, was published in 1992. Nevertheless, it almost never appears on abebooks lists, or elsewhere on the second-hand market. I have only ever seen it in the British Library. Currently, there is one copy on Amazon for £29.50
There is more information about her in Shepperton Babylon, by Matthew Sweet – a great book for anyone interested in British cinema, bisexual or not.

20th Century Bi - London's bisexual history event

2011-02-03T00:42:00.010Z

February is LGBT history month in the UK and - as promised last year, and the year before - this year there WILL be a specifically bi history event (I think there may even be two. More details at the end of this post).

So... drum roll ... I am co-organising, and speaking at, an event in London called 20th century bi. (Great title, eh. Not my idea sadly, but that of my co-organiser Lisa Colledge.) Here's the details:

20th Century Bi
To mark the 30th anniversary of the bisexual community in the UK, this event will look at some of the big, bad, bold bis who made the 20th century great. A panel of speakers discusses 20th century bisexuals and bisexuality in Britain, as part of LGBT History Month.

Speakers are:

Sue George: Androgynous, ambisextrous, or “enjoying all life’s pleasures”: being bisexual before and after the sexual revolution

Christian Klesse: 'Re-writing the scripts of Love. The Critique of Monogamy, Polyamory and Bisexual Intimacies in the late 20th Century'

Lindsay River: Lesbian... or bisexual? The (mis)naming of creative women of the early 20th century

Ian Watters: Bisexuals at Pride: The somewhat partial story of bisexual involvement in the annual London Pride celebrations

Our individual talks will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A.

Everyone is welcome to this bi-positive event.

Saturday 12 February 2011
2.30 - 4.30 pm

Conway Hall (Bertrand Russell Room)
25 Red Lion Square
London WC1R 4RL
(nearest tube is Holborn)

Tickets £5 (£3 unwaged) from EventElephant here and at the door (all profits to BiCon Helping Hand Fund)

Wheelchair-accessible venue: for Conway Hall access details contact Carina on 0207 242 8032

Manchester

There's also an event in Manchester on Feb 15th. It doesn't sound as specifically historical as ours, but nevertheless good stuff. This information is taken from Biphoria's website.

As part of LGBT History Month 2011, on Tuesday, 15 February we will have a special event to launch our new publication "Getting Bi in a Gay/Straight World". It will be at the Levenshulme Inspire centre, 747 Stockport Road, Levenshulme M19 3AR, from 7pm to 9pm. Come along, and if you have them, share your memories of bisexual Manchester.

Have a great LGBT History Month everyone, and I hope you will go to one of these events - bi or not - to celebrate our history.

The bizarre world of the bisexual

2011-01-14T18:42:00.002Z

Happy Friday!

Some of you may have seen this before, but just in case you haven't....

PS: it's meant to be ironic.

Celebrate bisexuality day

2010-09-23T14:46:00.005Z

It’s 23rd September today, and more people than usual are wearing purple. They’re doing that, because it’s International Celebrate Bisexuality Day or, as it has been rebranded this year Bi Visibility Day. Whichever, it’s a sort of mini-pride, and it’s all ultra-good. There’s more here about events in the UK, events in the US here, and information about why it started here.
I’ll probably be at one of these events tonight, but not wearing purple, which always makes me look sickly.

However
It’s no doubt just a co-incidence, but the numbers of LGB (not T, don’t know about T) people in the UK seem to have gone down. Official figures from the Office of National Statistics released today indicate that the LGB population of the UK is only 1.5%. There’s info about it from the Guardian here. The ONS asked people how they defined their sexuality, and this is the answer. Simples.

But but but ... What does it mean? Apparently interviewees were given four categories, and asked which best described them: heterosexual/straight, gay/lesbian, bisexual or other. That’s surely too broad-brush. For instance, someone who is now monogamously married, but has had significant lesbian relationships in the past, might well consider that heterosexual/straight “best describes her” but it best describes her behaviour as it is now, not her feelings, her past, her desires, all the things that make up sexuality. She might be “behaviourally heterosexual” but that’s only part of the story.

According to the ONS (in the Guardian):

“ ... the [previous] higher estimate [of LGB people] was based on different sampling methods and responses to questions about sexual attraction and behaviour both in the past and present."

But isn’t that the right way to assess sexuality? Which category “best describes you”! To my mind, that over-simplifies something which is often complicated.

The stats are odd in other ways too. Sixty-six per cent of LGB people, according to this, are under 44. What does this mean? That older people have “turned straight”? That more young people are gay these days? That queer sexuality is something that happens to the young? I don’t know. Interestingly, quite a high proportion of this 1.5% says “bisexual” best describes them.

It does seem strange to me that, when Kinsey did his famous reports estimating the gay/lesbian population of the US as 10% (this may not be precisely what he said; do correct me if I’m wrong), homosexuality was both hidden and stigmatised. This figure was accepted for a long time.

Now, homosexuality is very much less hidden. There are far far more openly gay, especially gay (and lesbian, and bi) people than there were when I was young. Yet consistently, official numbers go down. In the 1950s, it was 10%; more recently, it has been accepted as being 5%.

Purple power
As someone once said: There’s lies, damned lies, and statistics. Who knows what any of these figures mean.

What concerns me most, is that queer people’s issues will be ever more marginalised if we are seen to be such a tiny minority of the population. I simply don’t believe that it is true.

As to why bi people have taken on purple: I guess it’s because pink = gay (and, because it is the colour stereotypically loved by little girls, nothing Real Men should have anything to do with). Also, pink (for girls) mixed with blue (for boys) = purple for any and everyone.

Whatever, tonight I will be having my cake and eating it. I hope you will too.

Bisexual war hero

2010-09-12T19:46:00.004Z

The really inspiring experience of BiCon a couple of weeks ago, combined with me finishing my MA, means my blog hibernation is over. At the very least, there will be a few posts again before I run out of steam...

Anyway, back to an old theme of mine - Bisexuals I never met – where I write about famousish dead bi people.

The BBC radio programme Last Word often has really interesting subjects featured on it. It’s essentially an obituary programme, about notable people who’ve died in the last week or so, with comments from those who knew them. Catch it on iPlayer (if you are in a country that allows it; I don’t think the US does).

Today’s Last Word had a feature about Michael (Micky) Burn – war hero, foreign correspondent for The (London) Times, poet, novelist - who has died aged 97. Here’s an obituary about him here. Yes, posh man + the Second World War + derring-do = Daily Telegraph obituary.

There’s also an interesting trailer for a documentary about his life here, and I have to say I warm to him:

Like many people who’ve made it to obituary programmes, he came from an upper class background, and this shows in his early politics. Specifically, as a young man he used to be a Nazi sympathiser, even introducing Unity Mitford to Hitler. But (thank the lords) a trip to Dachau in 1937 put a stop to that and he spoke later about how ashamed he had been to have been taken in by fascism. He turned to the Left shortly after, and had a very active war, being imprisoned in Colditz for several years. Later, he saved the life of the little girl who would become actress Audrey Hepburn. Burn was socialist throughout the rest of his life, apparently losing all his money in mussel-breeding workers’ co-operative in the 1960s.

He was also bisexual, having a long on-off affair with the (later) Soviet spy Guy Burgess as a young man. Apparently there were other men too, and in the 1950s he was mentioned (anonymously) in the News of the World as a victim of blackmail. He was also married to Mary, who was, he said, ”the love of his life”.

Bi-invisibility
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this man sounds bisexual and you’d have thought that the word might have featured at least once in the programme. Not a bit of it. One of his old acquaintances bugged the hell out of me by saying again and again that Burn was homosexual. No. If he was married simply because he wanted to hide his homosexuality, fine. But Burn describing his wife as the love of his life surely puts paid to that.

I do take the point of groups like Bi Index, who say that the only person who can say someone is bi is themselves.

But Mr Burn wasn’t on this programme to say he either was or wasn’t; it was other people removing the possibility for him after his death. Anyway, one of the inter-titles on the documentary trailer (done with, presumably, his involvement) was “bisexual”. So there!

Heroes
I sometimes wonder about this “Bisexuals I never met” tag - am I looking for heroes amongst them? Role models, people I can be like, look up to? I don’t really believe in that; people are flawed and adulation doomed to failure. I suppose it is partly volume: look, here’s a large number of people, bisexuals are everywhere. Still, a lot of the people I list here led fascinating lives, with all sorts of tales to tell, and I wish I had met them.

Mr Burn is a particularly apposite member of this team at the moment, what with the 70th anniversary of the Blitz (where urban parts of the UK were bombed by the Nazis) being written about so much right now. How can people in developed wealthy countries nowadays be so brave? I'm not sure that they can.

In 2008, there were reports that Burn’s autobiography, Turned Towards the sun, had been bought by Hollywood and that Jude Law was likely to be starring. Interesting. I wonder who will play Guy Burgess – or will this sub-plot be strangely absent?

Blogging bisexuality at BiCon

2010-08-17T14:19:00.005Z

I know, I know, the gaps between posts on here are getting longer.

It's quite hard to keep up the momentum when there's so very much else to do. In particular, I have my MA to hand in, in just over three weeks time. That's 20,000 words I am paying to write!

Anyway, in the meantime I am giving a talk on 26th August at BiRecon, the academic/research part of BiCon - the UK annual gathering of bi people that this year is both held in London and is an International BiCon too, with people from many countries attending. Here's a wikipedia site on the history of BiCons which made me downright nostalgic.

With that in mind, I have some questions:

Do you, or have you, used blogs as part of coming out as bi? If so, was it helpful? Do you write a blog yourself about coming out bi? If so, what sort of impact has it had? If you blogged about bisexuality, but have now stopped blogging, why did you stop?

If you could let me know - either here, or at sues_new_email at yahoo dot com - sooner, rather than later, I'd be ever so grateful.

xxx

Ten Reasons You Need This Bisexual Blog 2010

2010-04-26T18:22:00.004Z

www.bigfoto.com

This post, originally from September 2006, is by far the most read and commented on thing I have written on this blog - so I thought it was worth a reprint. And what I say about myself in point 10 - still true now. Things just aren't changing quickly enough.

So why do we still need this bisexual blog?

1. Because almost everyone thinks almost everyone is really gay or straight. Or more probably straight or gay. There is no bisexuality.
2. Except among female celebrities, where there may be bisexuality... of a kind.
3. And although there are a lot of sex sites where bisexual people get together, there's nowhere at all dedicated to the discussion of bisexuality. If you have a blog that does just this, for God's sake get in touch and I'll buy you a drink. A big one. What we have to discuss will take a while.
4. In any case, there are hardly any British blogs that discuss sexuality at all. If they do, it's about bloggers' own personal experiences. See post below.
5. The blogs that do talk about sex are from the US. Come on now, fellow Brits. Let's get talking.
6. And whenever bisexuality is mentioned in public, people still curl their lips, as if to say "oh yeah?"
7. So hardly anyone comes out.
8. Making everyone else think that bisexuality doesn't exist; and bi individuals that they are the only one ever.
9. Especially if they are men.
10. In any case, I need to write this blog. I do. Because it bugs the hell out of me that still, in the 21st century, what seems self-evident to me - that many people, men as well as women, desire, or love, or have sex with, men and women - seems so hard to grasp for so many people. I know I'm not the only one who thinks they need to wise up.

Michael Bailey and bisexuality - again

2010-04-16T17:18:00.006Z

Hello!
I am not in the UK at the moment. Not, indeed, anywhere with a reliable internet connection, but I read this and thought of you dear followers, regular readers, and people who find this site via Google, Twitter, Sex is Not the Enemy, Bipolar Bisexual,Mark Simpson and other sites that link to me.
It's about Michael Bailey, he who has been so controversial in denying that bi men are really bi.
The piece below (which was posted on the academic bi yahoo group) begs so very many questions - but I thought it interesting to throw it out there and see what you think.
Lots of love and post soon...
Sue x

The Daily Northwestern - NU Prof. Bailey researching possible 'gay
gene'
See piece here

Recent research from Northwestern Prof. J. Michael Bailey raises new questions in the science behind sexual orientation, namely bisexuality and the prototypical "gay gene."

In his studies on bisexuality, Bailey, a psychology professor, and a team of researchers look at sexual arousal patterns to objectively determine sexual orientation in men and women. Bailey tracks the subject's brain activity while they are looking at erotic pictures to essentially determine "what turns them on," he said.

One new finding is in the sexual orientation of women. Bailey said he found most of his female subjects to be scientifically bisexual, even if they subjectively thought otherwise.

"Women don't work in the way we thought, based on a lot of research we did five to 10 years ago," he said. "Women, at least in the laboratory, get aroused to both stimuli."

This changes everything, Bailey said.

"Now I don’t even know if women have something like a sexual orientation," he said.

About two-thirds of women are showing arousal patterns that differ from what they consider to be their orientation, said Adam Safron, a research consultant on the project.

"Women are not being driven in their arousal pattern in the same way as males," he said.

Male arousal patterns were less flexible than female patterns, Bailey said. Men who believed themselves to be bisexual were aroused by both female and male stimuli but exhibited a stronger arousal to males than females. Bailey published a paper in 2005 suggesting bisexual men do not have bisexual arousal patterns. If sexual arousal patterns are the key to sexual orientation and his research is accurate, male bisexuality may not actually exist, Bailey said.

"I never meant to suggest bisexual men were lying about their sexuality," he said. "But there has been some skepticism about if bisexual men are really bisexual in the same way gay men are gay or straight men straight."

Safron said the science behind sexual orientation can get complicated.

"In terms of what people tell you they like, you can't always trust what they tell you, especially with something as emotionally involved as sexuality," he said.
...

LGBT history month

2010-02-14T18:05:00.006Z

In the UK - although not anywhere else, as far as I know - February is LGBT history month. The US has its month in October.

As with most years, there are no specifically "B" events although some were nearly planned. Next year, next year. There are other good things, though, which might be worth a look.

There should be some bi history stuff at this year's International Conference on Bisexuality (the 10th! and held in London this time) at which I will be speaking. About.... something or other.

A French bisexual picture
For a long while I've been meaning to scan in this picture, which was given to me a couple of years ago. It's an illustration from a French magazine of the 1920s - possibly one called Modes Nouvelles (or new fashions) - and it's drawn by one Gerda Wegener.

It's entitled "Elle ou Lui, Lequel Choisir?" which means "Her or Him, which one to choose?"

Clearly set in a mixed gender, pansexual club or cafe of some sort, in this wonderland anyone can dance with anyone, and the men look only slightly masculine and the women only slightly feminine - or vice versa. This was a time, just after the first world war horrors, where strict Victorian-style notions of gender went right out of the window, women cut their hair and shortened their skirts. Both men and women went for an androgynous look. I think it's hard for us to realise now how revolutionary that was.

So, in this pic, we are left wondering who is doing the choosing?

Most likely it is the be-gloved lady sipping her diabolo menthe through a straw, looking at the saucy yet ever-so-slightly dangerous man and woman on the right.

But what is the woman in the green dress thinking. And, indeed, what do we think. Him or Her, which one should I choose? It doesn't really matter. Maybe one today, and the other tomorrow.

Oh, Paris in the 20s. What a fabulous place to visit for a holiday.

Bisexuals at work

2010-01-28T16:24:00.005Z

Offices of the Metropolitan Life Ins Co, New York, 1896

It’s nearly the end of January, thank the lords, which signals the end of all those media articles about how this is the most miserable day of the year. In the northern hemisphere the days are also slightly longer and lighter than they were a month ago, which makes getting up for work slightly easier.

Ah yes, work.

I had been thinking about posting on this earlier but got waylaid, and this seems like a good time to do it.

Stonewall report
According to a recent report from the British LGBT equality organisation Stonewall, bisexual people experience prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping at work which stops them/us achieving their/our full potential.

The good practice guide, downloadable here, is a practical resource geared at employers who want to enable bisexual employees to make the most of their potential at work. They garnered this information by asking bisexuals what their experiences were, what stopped them doing as well as they might have, and how they felt their workplaces could be improved.

As far as I know, this is the first report on bisexual people at work to be published anywhere, ever, and the fact that Stonewall has produced it is very very welcome.

Stonewall was often criticised for being anti-bi in the past, or for saying lesbian, gay and bisexual when they were simply incorporating B into the L and G, and this is report obviously step in the right direction.

So what does it say? That bi people have experiences and challenges which are not the same as lesbians and gay men. They/we encounter prejudices and stereotypes not met by lesbians or gay men In particular, the support networks of the latter often excluding us. That there is a lack of awareness of bi issues, and that bi people’s sexuality is often dismissed. As one woman says:

Bisexuality is something that you can still poke fun at, partly because people don’t think it’s as serious as homosexuality.

There’s more but you get the drift – it’s the usual panoply of spite, insecurity and confusion directed against us.

Out at work
The report considers the extent to which bi people feel able to be out at work and not many are.

As far as my own experience is concerned, anyone I have worked with consistently since the late 1980s has known I was bi. Personally think it important to be out anywhere. To me, being out is not about talking about your sex life; it’s not even talking about your romantic/sexual/dating experiences necessarily – it’s being able to be honest where relevant. For instance, when I discuss “girlfriends”, people know I’m not talking about female companions with whom I drink cocktails and moan about useless men.

However, despite this I have never met another out bi at work. Ever. The nearest I got was when I exchanged emails with one woman who outed herself to me - with the request that I kept this information to myself.

I have, though, worked with some lesbians and quite a few gay men. One of the latter (an arrogant-shit type editor of mine) was absolutely convinced that bisexuality didn’t exist because he “didn’t know any and he had met thousands of people”. My own experience of interviewing hundreds of people and meeting many more was, of course, irrelevant.

However things are changing in some quarters: when I left my job recently and I filled in an exit form, the first box to tick in the sexual orientation section of the monitoring box was “bisexual”. I felt a strange mixture of pride and being almost sorry that I was going.

And in
While I am a big fan of being out when possible, as for so many people it really isn’t possible, and I believe in bisexual visibility helping all of us, it’s not necessarily a good idea to be out all the time in all circumstances.

In recent years, I have been lucky enough to travel a fair bit for work – often to countries where homosexuality is at least frowned upon, and often illegal. Clearly being out there would have been wrong/insensitive/foolish/dangerous for the people I was with.

But this has often made me feel awkward as I did think that I am hiding, that a significant part of me – not just in the sense of who I choose to have relationships with, but in terms of my history, politics, and a substantial part of my “work” - was hidden and they would feel cheated in some sense if they had found out.

I feel a bit similar in not having a religion, travelling in places where faith is extremely important ... but that leads more to reactions of pity and bafflement, rather than disgust.

Anyway, when you are travelling to a developing country as a journalist, it really isn't about you.

Everyone has to weigh up the extent to which they can face the discrimination/endless explaining they may have to do if they are out as bi. But ultimately hiding significant parts of yourself, or pretending to be something you’re not, is not going to help you be happy or productive at work – or anywhere else.

Bisexuals on television

2010-01-22T17:47:00.007Z

Chances are that, at some point over the weekend, you will be watching television. Maybe you’ll be looking (in vain) for some bi characters in drama, or out bisexuals reading the news, presenting gardening programmes, pretending to be Teletubbies, and everything else we can see on the small screen.

Today there’s been a report in the Guardian that the BBC is to ask The Public what they think of the representation of LGBs on TV and radio. Interesting. But they are even asking homophobes. Yuk. I don’t care what homophobes think, and I don’t think the BBC should care either.

It’s interesting, though, that they are asking about bi representation. Is this really about bi representation, or are they just adding in a B with the L and the G, not really meaning to give the B word any attention at all? It wouldn’t be the first time “bisexual” has been added as a casual, inessential addition to Lesbian and Gay. (No T though, I wonder why not?)

The other thing I am wondering after reading the above is: who are these bisexual people on television? Maybe I am watching the wrong programmes but, reality shows aside, I can only remember the L Word – only available on Living (a hard to view on a cable/satellite TV channel) in the UK – where there has been bi characters in recent years.

Part of me thinks that there is a dire need for positive images of bi people – but one person’s positive representation is another’s weirdo/ slut / sop to straight society / bimbo. We are as individual as people of any other sexuality – probably more so – and deserve to have a range of people representing us. Another part of me thinks that anything is better than total invisibility.

Still, according to a GLAAD report discussed in the Bisexuality Examiner last July there are now more bi people in US TV dramas, and some of them are definitely viewable outside of the US. They include:

* True Blood (Evan Rachel Wood is pictured above)
* Grey’s Anatomy
* House
* Bones
* Brothers and Sisters

Plus a whole heap of others I’ve never heard of. Mind you, I’ve never seen any episodes of those listed above either (my TV preferences being mainly for CSI and similar). I’ll give them a look

S/He’s so Real
Reality television has the upper hand here.... Big Brothers across the world often have bi characters, presumably on the assumption/hope that they will do something outrageous and up the viewing figures. Then there’s A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, where her bisexuality is a part of the story (and apparently there is now a spin off involving bisexual twins Rikki and Vikki. Of course there is). The most recent The Real World (on MTV, which I don’t have access to) apparently has two bi characters, one boy, one girl.

A boy! Finally.

As I have written endlessly, I’m not at all happy with the proliferation of female celebrity so-called bis (most recently, Kylie Minogue is declaring her interest). And most of the bis/bi characters listed above are – no, really! – women.

But a good bi woman – by which I mean someone who is genuine, authentic, sincere, not trying to excite men or increase her audience – could do a heap of good for other bi women. Likewise good bi female characters in drama.

I think we’ll have to wait a long time (or until something significant changes) until bi men can do anything like that.

So which bi characters or individuals are there on television – British or otherwise, drama or factual – who you think is worth watching? And as for the radio....? I listen to the radio almost all the time, and the last time I heard an out bi presenter or character was.... probably never.

Happy new year

2009-12-31T18:26:00.002Z

Many people’s favourite bisexual, Angelina Jolie, is in the news again (well, the Daily Mail, if that counts). According to that esteemed [sic] organ, both she and the lovely Brad don’t rate fidelity as important to their relationship. They got this factlet from a new book Brangelina: The Untold Story of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, by author Ian Halperin, via a German newspaper Das Neue.

Many people don’t think that physical exclusiveness is essential to a happy relationship. Infidelity (in the sense of lying) is another matter. I think not lying is essential to a happy relationship myself. Not being "physically exclusive" (aka polyamory) is entirely up to the people concerned.

Apparently, Brangelina don't "restrict" each other. That's nice. And it seems that Jolie and her ex Jenny Shimizu kept a jungle love nest for “trysts” – one of those words that never appears in ordinary vocabulary. Perhaps only celebrities have them.

However, as a mother (only of one) I am baffled that parents of six - even with "help" - have the time and energy to pursue more than one sexual relationship but perhaps I am being lazy.

Anyway, this non story has given me the chance to add another pic of the toothsome couple - and when Ms Jolie is pictured here, my blog stats always leap up. I’m cheap like that. Sometimes.

For a more nuanced view of some bi stories in 2009, take a look at the Bisexuality Examiner here with its best and worst bisexuality stories of 2009.

In other news
I have done a bit of tidying on this site, by removing most of the blogs I had linked to on the right. It is telling that, in the three and a half years since I started writing here, almost all of the personal blogs I listed then are no more. Blogging consistently over a long period is hard and, if you start to do it for personal reasons, often outlives its point. Others come to take their place.

Anyway, the ones I have added here are (at the moment anyway) posted to regularly and hopefully will keep you amused, entertained, challenged and supported.

If you know of any other good sites or blogs, especially your own, let me know as it is easy to miss them. I know there are more to add but I can't find them right this minute.

My last blog of 2009
For those of you whose New Year’s resolution is to act on your bisexuality, which often seems to people to come here at this time of year, I would say “go for it”. To me, anyway, the fact that you are thinking about it and weighing up your options means that you have a good chance of making it work for you.

Bisexuality is not necessarily difficult – from my point of view it is cause for celebration, something that I am proud of and is an intrinsic part of myself – but for many people it certainly can be. Perhaps those who find it easy-peasy tend not to comment on this blog! But I hope that even people who have found it difficult are on the way to a happy bisexual life.

Have a great 2010.

Telling it like it is

2009-12-27T18:42:00.007Z

This is the time of year when many of us are thrown together with various loved ones and, while this can be all warm and glowy, it also has its difficulties.

I was already thinking of this when I read this post – which wasn’t specifically about the festive season, but about sharing important things – specifically, your (bi)sexuality.

The nameless male blogger who posts at Bitheway, had a tricky December as he came out to his female partner. She felt he had lied by omission by not telling her before; he had felt unable to discuss it earlier in their relationship as he hadn’t feel safe enough. They are still together, but it has been tough.

Keeping it quiet
As Mr Bitheway said: “There are many things we do keep from our partners (as bisexual men this is typically our bisexuality)”.

Oh, how I wish it wasn’t the case, but I tend to agree. So many bi men – with the exception of activist/ openly poly/ bi community men – tell almost no one they are bi. I’m not thinking about actual sexual infidelity here, but about keeping a whole part of yourself - your history, feelings, experiences – from your partner.

I am generalising in this post, I know – something I don’t do lightly – but bear with me here.

It seems to me that it is much more difficult for bi men to come out than bi women. There are two main reasons for this:

* The widespread agreement that while women can be bi, men are “Gay, Straight or Lying” – the notorious title of an equally notorious article in the New York Times.

Spurious, over-simplistic research (such as that by Michael Bailey) tends to state that, while women are often attracted to people regardless of gender, men almost never are. Therefore, men are really either gay or straight.

This can put bi men into a terrible quandary. What are they really? And, also important, what do their partners think they are really.

Lots of gay men – some of whom wondered if they were bi for a while – consider that, because they aren’t bi, neither can anyone else be. Some hold the strange view that it is easier for men to be bi than gay, which I just don’t believe. People saying it never really try to explain why they think this, they expect it to be obvious. Why is it easy to be told constantly you are deluded and oversexed than to have a community that supports you? And also, it isn’t ever easier to be something you aren’t than something you are.

* A feeling that women (rather than men, I think) will reject them as potential lovers/partners.

This is tricky. Some women can and do reject bi men – sometimes horribly. They have a whole range of reasons for this, believing bi men to be (eg) unreliable, necessarily unfaithful, uncommitted, prone to contracting HIV ... generally not what they want at all.

But there are women who want bi men as their partners. I always did – although I am spoken for now thanks! – but never met all that many. There are others who wouldn’t mind, if only men could trust them enough to tell them.

Come out, come out wherever you are
Of course, the fewer out bi men there are, the fewer bi men will come out. It’s a vicious circle. Because if bisexuality in men is seen to be impossible, more men who are attracted to men and women will believe that they can’t be, leading to fewer bi men being out.

When I was interviewing bi men for my book on bisexuality (see archive, right) many of them found it hard enough to be out to themselves, let along others. They had totally compartmentalised their lives, with that part attracted to men tucked in the depths of their consciousness/conscience.

I do hesitate to give advice on this blog (or anywhere else) – I mean what do I know, life is complicated! But it seems to me that even if you aren’t out about your sexuality to the world at large, dropping hints about it to potential or new partners is pretty much essential. Far better you discover at the outset that it is something they could never countenance, rather than have some big secret hanging over you. Big Secrets tend to have a way of being uncovered.

There was a terrific article I read once about women in happy long-term relationships with bi men. I can’t link to it as I don’t think it’s online and I don’t remember now who wrote it, but the gist of it was... those women tended to be unconventional, who didn’t rely on their partner for all their sense of self/companionship/money, and had their own goals and interests.

There is no shortage at all of such women these days – especially those who are bi themselves. So, bi men, if you want an honest, real, happy relationship with a woman, look for someone who doesn’t want to live in your shadow.

Spending more time with my blog

2009-11-19T16:57:00.002Z

It’s been a long, long time since I last wrote on here. That was down to the usual reasons – a combination of too-hard work and health issues. As a result, all things blogging ground to a halt.

But, at the same time, I have been stunned to see my blog traffic not going down, my Google followers going up, and people still leaving comments on lots of posts – not just the most recent ones.

Like quite a few bloggers, I think, I have been on Twitter a lot more than I have here. The reason for that is simple: tweets are maximum 140 characters and require next to no thought. A blog like this requires a hell of a lot of thought and in many ways is similar to what I do for money. And, as for most people, anything you do that makes money has to win.

Twitter also has lots of great stuff for bi people, particularly with the links that lots of bi tweeps put up. I particularly like @bivisibility who retweets (ie reposts) all the bi-related stuff they find on Twitter. Some of the tweets are really bloody horrible, not to mention all sorts of ignorant – but bivisibility (whoever they are) often delivers some short and snappy retorts.

Twitter is also a great way to get links to more lengthy and considered information, of whatever sort.

Of course, I know lots of people can’t bear it (and so never look at it) and it will also never take the place of said lengthy and considered stuff. Hence - now that I have plenty more time on my hands (ahem!) - a return to this blog. A welcome return for me ... and for you too, I hope.

Perhaps my next post should be on bisexuality at work – given that I have now returned to the big bad world of freelancing. The report that Stonewall has done on that subject came out recently and, unsurprisingly, I have some thoughts.

For other blog-post suggestions... I just have to look at the comments here. Thank you all for your thought-provoking responses.

Duncan from Blue comes out. Etc.

2009-07-15T17:56:00.006Z

Another week, another celebrity comes out as bi. I stopped posting on bi celebrity long ago, but there is something about male celebrities coming out as bi that does, in fact, deserve more attention.

I’ve done the women, as it were – Megan Fox, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, et al all the way back to Madonna c1990… well, they may be bi, or they may not. They may have felt a sudden desire to be, like, totally honest with their public at this particular moment in time, or they may have seen a marketing opportunity.

Celebrities, eh. You just can’t trust them/their public images/their people. And they do real bi women no favours at all.

However, female bi celebrities don’t really get flak from anyone (apart from the likes of me, who matters not diddley-squat in the big old world of music PR). Bi male celebrities (like bi men in general) are not seen as that teensy bit sexier, they are seen as pretend gay men with all the homophobia and ridicule that implies in mainstream society.

Complementary posts
Two blog posts on this subject cover pretty much everything I could or would have said on the subject. I have never heard of Gary Nunn before, but Marcus Morgan is a long-time UK bi activist, and knows of what he speaks.

However, I want to highlight the many comments these posts attracted. The negative comments, that is; the positive comments are similar and from people who actually know other bi people or are bi themselves.

Obviously, the Guardian’s Comment is Free site attracts a different set of prejudices to that of Pink News – a gay news site. Specifically, CiF commenters tend to believe that there is no problem in being gay or bi these days, that gay/bi people still “shouting from the rooftops” aka mentioning their sexuality are somehow oppressing heterosexuals. Or, connected, that we should just all love whoever and it really doesn't matter any more.

Biphobia really does exist
But it is depressing that the bile posted on PN by gay people (men) beats that on CiF by the factor of many. Specifically, that bi men cannot be trusted because X poster has met a no-good one (or two).

Perhaps most people who are out as bi have heard this already - God knows how many times I have heard this in my life! So bi people are supposed to police / apologise for the bad behaviour of every other person who has ever said they were bi. You can't be judged as yourself, but against what others may or may not have done.

I find that extraordinary, nothing but downright prejudice. It puts us in an impossible position. We “good” bis, by our attempts at openness and honesty, are as nothing beside these bogeyman “bad” bis. And there are bad bis, of course. There are bad people of all sexualities. Sexual identity does not correlate to good or bad behaviour.

'Bi now, gay later'
I don’t know where those gay people posting get the idea that being bi is so much easier than being gay. That, as a result, all the bi (men) they have ever met who then turned out to be gay negate the very existence of genuinely bi men.

One commenter says that a lot of people who say they are bi are really gay. How does he know? Some people say they are bi and are really gay. True. Some people say they are gay and are really bi. True. Presumably, both think that the sexuality they profess is easier to manage / more acceptable than the one they feel in their hearts that they are.

Well, I have met plenty of gay men who turned out to be bi. Including some bi men who have girlfriends they do not tell the gay community about. And married bi men who were completely honest with their wives. And monogamous bisexuals by the bucketload.

The supposition remains: bi men = really gay; bi women = really straight. Are men, or perhaps Men, really so irresistible?

Getting gaydar

2009-07-01T18:11:00.001Z

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

2009-04-16T18:43:00.005Z

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

2009-02-24T00:11:00.003Z

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

2009-02-19T17:54:00.004Z

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?

2009-02-10T00:09:00.002Z

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

2009-02-03T01:19:00.002Z

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

2009-01-28T18:39:00.002Z

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.

World Aids Day

2008-12-01T19:10:00.007Z

There’s slow blogging, and there’s slow blogging – and I seem to be indulging in both. Not on purpose, mind. I’m too serious for the light and frothy, and can’t post thoughts without considering them first; and too stressed and overworked to post often. I mean, two and a half months since the last one! Ridiculous.

But this is World Aids Day, and even the most desultory bisexual blogger can’t let that pass without posting something.

I have been thinking a lot about the recent (to me) past over the past few weeks, as I have been unpacking and repacking the things that came from the loft in my old house and putting them in the loft in the new one.

In the late 80s and early 90s I was quite involved in the London queer scene (although its effect on my sexual and romantic life was negligible, as I was mainly attracted to Cuban New Yorkers at that time). It was a mixed gender place, this queer scene, with lots of lesbians having sex with gay men - flamboyant, energetic, challenging, experimental. We talked about safer sex a lot, and how to make it more exciting, but there was never a thought that it wasn’t an essential part of being a politically, sexually conscious person. That was still fashionable in those days.

So I’ve been looking at stacks of old magazines – Square Peg, Shebang, Quim – that came out of the arty gay scene in London at that time. Square Peg was mixed men and women, and arts-based with beautiful paper and production values. Shebang was a fun lesbian mag; Quim was an arty-lesbian sex mag. This seemed very daring at the time, but only lasted a couple of issues.

But the daring came from desperation about the queer future: the homophobia, the prejudice, the turning back to conventional morality because of Aids which affected women as well as men - although obviously men were the ones whose lives were at risk. The early 90s, when Quim was published, was also the aftermath of the lesbian sex wars, where what it meant to be a lesbian (not, definitely not, bisexual) was discussed endlessly and viciously. It was part of the end of "sisterhood" I think, but a mixed queer political scene - Act-Up, for instance - did thrive for a few years in the UK, and may still be going in the US. Then, of course, there was also the bi community which - from my perspective anyway - was going pretty well at that time.

Remembering People with Aids
Everyone who knew any queer people at that time was affected by Aids - and it baffles and infuriates me when I meet individuals today (either heterosexuals of any age who have lived sheltered lives, or young LBT people) who claim it has nothing to do with them. The first person I knew who died of Aids was in 1987 – but after that, circles of acquaintances went down like ninepins. I was lucky not to lose anyone really close but I still remember all those young men I went clubbing with in the early 80s who were dead 10 years later. It makes me absolutely fucking sick to think about it.

Of course, it’s different now – at least in countries where AZT is readily available. There’s a really nice picture gallery on the Guardian site, looking at various people around the world dealing with HIV/Aids in some way.

But it still gives me a chill when I see people all over the world who are still dying of this disease. Or when I read about young men in the UK who are having sex with each other completely unprotected, thinking that HIV is no big deal because they can take a pill. Think about it buster, taking a pill for your whole life, risking heart disease, tumours, a whole range of things neither you or I know about yet... The latest person I know (in Britain) to be diagnosed with HIV was in 2007, so this is by no means an old story.

In 2008, the necessity for this message hasn't changed a bit.

Blogging for work

2008-09-18T17:14:00.005Z

Long time, no post. But, as I said in my last entry here, I haven't forgotten you.

I've been madly busy. I've also been blogging as part of my day job. I don't usually talk here about how I make my living, but I don't think it does any harm. I am about as out as you can be, and as I have often said, there's nothing on this blog I wouldn't want my employer or my family to read.

So, yes, I was in Tanzania and then Bangladesh... If you're interested in developing world issues, you could take a look here at what I've been writing.

Nothing bisexual about it, though - unlike my next post. Whatever that will be.

Tearing my hair out

2008-08-10T12:14:00.005Z

Life minus no time plus stress equals no blogging since July 27th. I haven't forgotten you. I'll write as soon as I can.

There’s no such thing as abroad any more

2008-07-27T23:37:00.003Z

You may have noticed that I’ve downloaded some of those cute little flags which you click on and your blog gets translated into another language. Japanese, on my screen, just comes out as little rectangles, but Arabic seems all present and correct and Portuguese I can almost understand.

Any blogger who checks their site stats knows that many of their readers don’t come from the country they live in themselves. Most, granted, probably come from the US wherever the writer comes from, but I would say – and I have before – that while 30-40% of readers come from North America, and about 15% from the UK, the rest come from absolutely anywhere. On earth, natch, although every now and then one of those no-fixed-abode satellite services makes me wonder.

So why oh why do so many US writers (bi ones included) write as if all their readers are coming from the US too. I find it tremendously off-putting. I mean, it’s not “this political season” for me; I’m very unsure as to what a 401(k) is, and I certainly don’t have one myself; and if a congressman has been misbehaving in a toilet (bathroom!) I have no idea what the specific ramifications might be. They write about a “we” that doesn’t include the rest of the world and include stats that only apply to the US without specifying that it is just one country out of c163… It is OK to write about just the US – of course it is – but in fairness to your readers who aren’t from there please make some reference to the fact that’s what you’re doing!

Anywhere and everywhere
Back to the “readers all over the world” tack… Of course, I am writing in this blog from the standpoint of a particular sort of conscious bisexuality. It’s often assumed by those well-schooled in such matters that consciously being bisexual is something that only happens in specific parts of the Western world, and only happens now. People might have felt or behaved bisexuality across time and place, but they wouldn’t have felt they were bisexual.

I think it’s more complicated than that. I have written a fair few posts on bis in Times Gone By (see history links, right)but there’s clearly some kind of self-conscious bisexuality going on around the world too. Otherwise, why would people from, say, Singapore and Saudi Arabia be reading this blog.

Now, of course there are places across the world where sex is treated spectacularly differently than the West: Oman, for instance, where you need to be married to consent to sex; or all those countries where sex between men is illegal and subject to terrible punishments – even death. Not to mention the many many places where men have a degree of freedom undreamed of by women.

Different lives
There are many places where men and women’s lives are so completely separate that I would have thought some form of bisex was probably inevitable. I organised a London bi conference in 1991 where a man from a North African country gave a talk about how prevalent sex between men was there. Someone asked him if women in his country had sex with each other, and he said no. The two Arabic women there rolled their eyes at each other. Well, I suppose that if the sexes were completely divided, then he wouldn’t know, would he?

Given that everyone with an internet connection can be exposed – at least in theory - to all sorts of ideas from absolutely everywhere, there’s no reason people from Romania shouldn’t think about the sort of bisexual a New Yorker might be, or a Tanzanian read about what Sydney bisexuals are up to. And vice versa.

Geographical differences
Of course, there are still geographical differences. For instance, when I visited the Philippines (for work, not on holiday) a few years I was totally flummoxed by the number of open and not-passing male to female transsexuals who worked in the sexual health field, talking to born women about family planning and sexually transmitted infections. They seemed to be accepted as women, but as somehow wiser.

Alongside these people who were queer in a culturally specific way, there were also queers who had been more influenced by western ideas of being gay. So we also met gay men and (one) lesbian who saw themselves in that way. The gay men didn’t like bisexuals: more exactly, their experience had been with those cheating married men who couldn’t understand why any man would not want to have sex with women too and considered gay men as Not Real Men. Well, I don’t like them either.

It did make me think, though, that the world is in a state of flux, with western and non-western ways of sexuality co-existing in interesting ways.

Anyway, now that I’ve done the flags, it’s time to update my blogroll next… Getting on for half of those lovelies gave up the ghost yonks ago but you’re still clicking on them! Time to give some new ones a chance.

Bisexual woman to be deported to Nigeria

2008-07-09T17:53:00.003Z

Gay people who have sought asylum in the UK because of their sexuality (most recently this young Iranian man whose lover was murdered by the state) often have to fight really hard to convince the authorities of their need for sanctuary. Thank God he was eventually allowed to stay; often they are sent back to – at the very least – danger.

Jane Okojie’s case in Canada – as reported below on the queer Canadian website Xtra – is the first time I have heard of a bisexual person seeking asylum. Perhaps it will make those people who think bisexuality is a doddle think again. Sadly, in the UK at least, even imminent risk of death doesn't always mean you are safe.

Time is running out for a bisexual woman who has been denied refugee status in Canada. Jane Okojie is scheduled to be deported to Nigeria on Thu, Jul 10 where she says she and her two children will face persecution because of her bisexuality.

"I don't know what to do," says Okojie. "I am more afraid for my children than for myself. There are so many things going on in my head, I cannot think properly."

"She's very scared," says Nastaran Roushan of the immigrant and refugee rights group No One Is Illegal, which is holding a rally in support of Okojie on Tue, Jul 8 at 11am in front of the offices of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (Toronto, 50 St Clair Ave E). "She fears for her life. If she goes back with her children, she has no one there. Her family has shunned her because she is bisexual. She doesn't have any money and nowhere to go. If she's arrested [her children] will be without a mother. They'll already face extreme discrimination because they were both born out of wedlock, and in fact, Samuel has already endured a lot of harassment while growing up there."

A victim of sexual violence and domestic abuse in her home country, Okojie says she fled Nigeria after being beaten by locals in her village and detained in prison after it was discovered she was bisexual.

"In Nigeria things are very bad for lesbians and gay people," says Okojie. "If you are a bisexual or lesbian or gay you can be stoned to death and you can be sentenced to prison for many many years. The government doesn't care."

There’s more here:

Good luck Jane. Nigeria sounds a tough place to be queer. Will someone let me know how she has got on?

This blog is two today

2008-07-02T17:35:00.002Z

Today this blog celebrates its second birthday. Yes, with this very post and my musings on that year’s Europride, I opened what is the longest-lasting bisexual blog in the known universe.

Whither blogs – will they wither and where are they going – is something that often bothers media pundits. Last week Roy Greenslade sparked off a discussion, commented on mostly by journalists whose opinions ran along the continuum of: a) journalism is great, blogs are white noise; b) blogs are the future, journalists have to have one, ordinary people are empowered etc; c) blogs are great, mainstream journalism is rubbish. However, as one commenter pointed out, the comments were far more interesting than the piece itself.

Good blogs, bad blogs
My own position is quite straightforward: blogs can be great, and the internet offers writers terrific opportunities to get their work to readers. Journalists who believe – as many do – that they can’t see the point of blogging, or don't recognise that it is a terrific tool for self-promotion, or say that they don’t want to write for nothing – are missing a career-building trick. What the mainstream media offers readers, and what blogging offers the mainstream media, is complementary.

It’s not true, though, that all blogs are equal. To start with, most bloggers give up pretty quickly. And writing every day – standard advice for building up a readership – means that pretty soon people are writing about nothing much. Unless they are brilliant writers – a few are – that means the quality goes down. In any event, there is too much to read on the internet, together with books, newspapers, magazines etc. I don’t suppose I’m the only one who just can’t keep up with people who blog every day.

What this blog is for
As I have written here from time to time, I am a journalist (editing more than writing) but what pays me money is nothing to do with what I write here. If anyone ever wanted serious writing on bisexuality then I’m your woman. But, as one of the reasons I started writing this blog in the first place was because my commissioned book on bisexuality couldn’t find a home after its original publisher closed down, I doubt that semi-serious writing on bisex – as distinct from erotica, or trivia, or straightforward academic books - in the UK can pay its way. Not everything can be monetised. As the profit motive in publishing is more important than ever, and booksellers sell ever fewer titles, the prospect for what is euphemistically called “mid-list” writers dims.

Still, onwards and upwards, and those of us who have things to say have a way of getting them out there. I doubt whether my musings that were produced via the dead tree route ever saw the light of day in Indonesia, or Nepal, or Western Samoa – which they have through the web.

This blog is a niche “product”, for people who are interested in the issues around bi/sexuality rather than erotic stories, coming out tales, complaints about boyfriends/girlfriends, polls about what turns you on and so forth. All of those most definitely have their place, just not written by me. They are also more popular than what I write.

Still, as over 101,000 people have read this blog since I started, there must be a demand for it. Thank you, readers!

Casanova a "brainy bisexual"

2008-06-27T14:43:00.002Z

The 18th century randy man may have loved the ladies (130 of them it seems, which is practically celibate by writer Georges Simenon’s standards) but he was also partial to the odd gentleman. And he wrote a book or two.

It’s all explained on this link, which discusses Ian Kelly’s new biography of him.

Royals in messy relationships shock

2008-06-26T17:54:00.004Z

I don’t know if any British readers saw last night’s mind-boggling TV programme on the marriage of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon. There’s more here.

Dearie me, what a mess their marriage was, principally due to his inability to keep his trousers on. To say he had an eye for the ladies was an understatement – he had two eyes for the ladies, and a couple in the back of his head as well by the sound of it. He probably still has all those eyes: he doesn’t sound as though age (78) is likely to wither him. And while a certain amount of open-marriage, swinging-sixties-ness was perfectly fine by both of them, he essentially treated PM horribly – abandoning her at parties, making her cry on the shoulders of semi-strangers, being very unhappy when she found lovers of her own.

It seems there are also “persistent rumours” that he “refuses to deny” that he is bisexual! Apparently when they first met, PM thought he was gay. Many of his social circle were gay or bi men, and viewers were lucky enough to see the photo of a young male Snowden in drag?!? His closest male friend – Jeremy Fry - was openly bisexual and had been done for importuning (ie trying to pick up men for sex). This apparently stopped Fry being best man at the wedding (which you will note is not mentioned in his obituary)! Snowdon also had an affair with (Mrs) Camilla Fry, and fathered her daughter Polly.

These are Mr and Mrs Fry…

Fascinating stuff – and this is from me, who finds the royals usually very yawnsome. Perhaps you can see it via the Channel Four look again thingy?

And weren’t there also rumours that she was bi? Lawks, those royals!

Gay brains again

2008-06-18T18:36:00.003Z

Another week, another study on how men’s and women’s, and gay and straight people’s brains are oh so different….

According to this report, gay men and straight women apparently performed better at certain language tasks. Lesbians and straight men had better spatial awareness. Etc. There’s more about it on the link above.

Now then, now then…

It seems that what you make of this study (of 90 people, so of course it can be translated to everyone in the world?!?) depends on what you already believe. So: it might mean that, as evolutionary biologist Dr Qazi Rahman says on the BBC site “As far as I’m concerned, there is no argument any more – if you are gay, you are born gay.”

Well, I’m not an evolutionary biologist, or indeed any kind of scientist, but it seems to me that there are still plenty of arguments to be had. Indeed, that there are gaping holes in this kind of research.

Now, in the aftermath of plagiarist psychiatrist Raj Persaud, I would like to announce that I have not necessarily thought up all these ideas on my ownsome: they have come as a result of reading various sites and blogs, such as this and this.

Problem one is that people doing these studies have such a dichotomous view of sexuality – categorically and forever straight or categorically and forever gay (although may take some time to realise this) – that they overlook the many subtleties that even people who don’t like out and proud bisexuality can agree exist.

For instance:

* How do these researchers define straight or gay? Is it the relationship the person is in? Is it self-identification? Or what?

* Just say that you accept the idea that the brains of gay and straight people differ. Is this a cause or an effect of their being gay/straight? Might their brains change back again if they behave in ways that aren’t gay/straight? (Only partly a joke.)

* But of course my main objection to this sort of study is that they divide everyone absolutely definitely and forever into heterosexual or homosexual. The most casual glance around the world shows that many people are at least on some kind of continuum between straight and gay. What happens to those people who are gay when they are young and straight when they are older? Are “situationally gay” – say in prison?

* And of course, that’s not to mention all of us who actually ARE bisexual.

You picks your scientists, you takes your choice
Problem two. It is interesting to look at this research in the light of the study by US psychologist Lisa Diamond – whose book haven’t read yet but which is currently mentioned a lot on the internet as she’s been in a film I also haven’t seen called Bi the Way. She says that women’s sexuality (not all women; some) is fluid – meaning geared towards individuals, rather than men or women. She’s not the only one of course, Michael Bailey – mentioned disapprovingly elsewhere on this blog – did research showing something similar. So if the way straight and lesbian women feel desire is extremely similar (more Bailey’s view than Diamond’s and something I certainly don’t believe) then there’s an interesting conflict here: how do this other group of scientists decide which women are definitively straight or lesbian?

Butch and femme brains
Problem three. They also seem to be – I say seem, because I haven’t read the original document – to be conflating sexual orientation with gender expression here. Gay men = straight women. Lesbian woman = straight man. This reminds me of the old-fashioned and simply untrue view that if you are a camp or effeminate man, then you have to be gay.

There are lots of online “is your brain male or female” quizzes. I remember I did one and came out as having an absolutely androgynous brain. Well, I hope I am empathetic towards others but I’m not keen on endless phone chatting; like dressing up (stereotypically female) and am fairly “visually stimulated” – ie I like looking at attractive people like straight men seem to. Does this really mean I am born to be bi?

Of the two heterosexual men (my son and my partner) with whom I am in close contact, one loves ironing, the other loves chatting on the phone, and both shrieked with terror at a huge bee which I had to shoo out of an open window. I hate ironing and am quite good at map-reading. Perhaps I am “hard-wired” to be bisexual then?

Born which way?
When I have written about “gay brains” before, some people have commented on this site that they knew they were bi from a young age, that it felt natural to them, that therefore they were “born that way”. Nevertheless, just because something feels innate, doesn’t mean it is. It doesn’t mean it isn’t, either. Personally I don't think it matters in the least but many people strongly disagree.

Another scientific report was published today about cancer and how one man’s illness was treated using his own immune cells. The researchers there are “cautiously optimistic”. Why aren’t researchers into the “causes” of sexuality ever similarly cautious about their results?

Celebs gone wild again. Yawn

2008-05-27T17:32:00.003Z

Word has reached me that Lindsay Lohan – she of Mean Girls, Freaky Friday, that film with the stock car Beetle, and other items of crap - has been spotted at Cannes canoodling with her “best friend” Samantha Ronson. See here, here and here for sundry nonsense, confirming and denying that they are and aren’t in a relationship.

Of course, I don’t really know whether or not their relationship is genuine (it seems that it might be; in any case, Samantha Ronson is apparently a lesbian) as distinct from the publicity-seeking, girl-on-girl-action type of bisexuality that I detest. So what might be behind all this? Has Lohan got a film out or anything? Or is her problem that she hasn’t got a film out?
Then again, it seems she fits in to another celebrity stereotype: “they said that I should go to rehab, I said No No No.” Stealing fur coats? Unwise sex videos? General out of control behaviour?

Why not try snogging some girls? That’s really naughty! That’ll get you in the tabloids. People will be talking about you, noticing you, again. Cue three types of reaction: 1) that’s hot (or, for some reason, hott). 2) that’s disgusting. 3) that’s sweet, you leave her alone.

Hmm, I haven’t blogged about bi-girl celebs for a while and it makes me feel a bit… dirty. This post isn’t very edifying, is it? Then again, because of this rather sweet pic some people who wouldn’t see this blog otherwise will hit on it and might find something to make them think about bisex a little bit differently. It has happened.

Girls [sic] on film

2008-05-15T18:26:00.004Z

I know it’s not being released for another 10 days or so, but – in the opposite of my usual procrastination - why not get in early? Yes, it’s my very own Sex and the City post. While I fully realise that not everyone has to have one, urban women all over the world (probably) will be writing about it because they related to the TV series and, now, the film. It certainly speaks to me and, yes, there’s even a bi angle!

I wasn’t an “early adopter”. When I first saw an episode of SATC, I felt completely alienated by the fact that all they did was talk about men. But soon (very soon) I began to appreciate their escapades and their relationships. There was something actually believable about the characters… and although they seem to have preposterous amounts of money (I have met the owner of a PR agency, a media lawyer, and many journalists, none of whom were anything like SATC wealthy) I could relate to them.

Yes, I did like looking at the clothes. Even when the SATC gang were wearing preposterous nonsense, it was still interesting. And yes, why I ended up liking it after all was the reason that other female commentators have said: it foregrounded female characters (still unusual); talked about sexuality in an unprecedently open and truthful way; and presented friendship between women as the most important and stable thing in their lives (although where such busy women got the time to meet so often, God knows).

Bisex in the city
In SATC – the TV series - bisexuality in some shape or form appeared quite a lot, if ambivalently. As an aide-memoire to anyone else who watched it:
In one episode Samantha is asked by a gay male couple if she will have sex with them and she agrees. However, half-way through sex they chicken out, disgusted.
Across another few episodes, Samantha - the most sexually adventurous character - actually has a relationship with a woman, but it ends after she puts her back out using an inadequately harnessed dildo. (I mean really, anyone looking at that dildo could tell it wouldn’t work properly!)
Carrie meets some younger people - including a character played by Alanis Morissette - who actually identify as bi, but backs off from dating a bi man.
Then there is the very ambivalent - in many senses - episode where camp cabaret singer Bobby Fine marries Betsy von Mufling. The SATC quartet presume he’s totally gay, so why are the two marrying each other? At the end of the episode, Bobby tells Carrie that he really does love Betsy while the melancholic song “Is that all there is” plays in the background. But in a subsequent episode, a heavily pregnant, extremely happy Betsy turns up, her husband seemingly as camp as ever as he wants to name their daughter Barbra or Judy.
Who knows whether there is any bisex in this film (I would hazard a guess as to not), or indeed whether it will be terrific or a pile of poo.

Cynthia Nixon

Then of course there’s a real-life bisexual storyline, the I’d-count-as-bisexual Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbs in SATC) who is now several years into a relationship with a woman she plans to marry.

This is the first, and I fully expect the last, time I have ever used that right-wing rag The Daily Mail on this blog, but credit where it’s due I suppose. There’s a long article about her and her gf Christine Marinoni here, and even the comments are nice!
They quote her as saying:

“In terms of my sexual orientation, I don't really feel that I changed," she says. "I don't feel any different than I did before. I don't feel like there was some hidden part of myself that I wasn't aware of.
"I had been with men all my life and I had never met a woman I had fallen in love with before. But when I did it didn't seem so strange.
"I don't define myself. I'm just a woman in love with another woman."

Aaah!

Women not-loving women

2008-05-09T17:06:00.004Z

Someone commented somewhere on this blog that one of the things they liked about it was that I wasn’t a “cheerleader” for bisexuality. True. I’m not really a cheerleadery type of person – sceptic, I think is about right, although common sense, or down to earth probably covers it. Some people, including me, are bi. Here are a few things we might find important / interesting / relevant, and here are some other ways in which people aren't giving us our due. And that's about it.

However, I wish, I wish, I wish, that so much of the writing on bisex I am sent through my Google Alerts wasn’t from young bi women getting a tough deal from lesbians. It makes me wonder what has changed since the 80s. Well, obviously, a lot has changed but it seems not enough.

These days I get no personal flack at all from lesbians, but then I am 51 and very much out. I have been bi for so long that no one is going to tell me I can’t be, or that I’m really a lesbian, or that anything I do is for the benefit of men. I'd probably burst out laughing. Any argument they throw at me, I can throw back at them. But anyway, any new lesbians I meet are usually interested, rather than hostile. Of course, that wasn't always the case, and I have had my fair share of blanking / looks of disgust / losing friends / not getting lovers / horrible comments as I hear about now.

(Just to make things clear, I know that lesbians do get a raw deal in society at large. What's more, if I were (and when I have been) after a committed relationship with a woman I would be really unhappy if she were to treat it as something trivial. But what about taking people as you find them? Not judging them before you even meet? Imagining that it might be possible for lesbians to treat bi women badly as well as the other way round?)

For myself, I would go along with a woman I interviewed once who said: "Why on earth would I be interested in them, if they aren't interested in me?" Dr Sue says best leave anti-bi lesbians to their own devices when it comes to being friends/lovers, and find some nice bi women instead.

These days if I get any bad responses they are from heterosexuals (although not a lot of them really – most I meet are nice!). And it is those respectable, polite, middle-class people whose look of disgust and response of silence gives away their real feelings.

It's heterosexual society, not individual lesbians, who have power over bi women. Individual lesbians can make your life miserable, sure, but they can't take away your kids.

Two words joined together

2008-04-28T16:47:00.005Z

I’ve been reading through some notes I wrote once about bisexuality in the media. It’s about the pernicious effects of the casual use of “bisexual” linking it with every sort of misbehaviour and perversion.

Reading below, do you recognise anything similar now, and/or where you are?

This is a random sample from the non-tabloid UK press of around the recent past, including (gulp!) the Guardian.

* Bessie Smith was a “heavy-drinking bisexual”.
* A character in the documentary film Capturing the Friedmans was “bisexual and had paedophilic desires”.
* Painter Christopher Wood was a “troubled, bisexual opium addict”.
* Suzanne Watkins, a “bisexual mother of two… pleaded guilty to two counts of sex with underage boys and child abduction”.
And
“Bisexual Maria Hnatiuk … murdered 18-year-old Rachael Lean in a knife attack.”

Given that, is it any wonder that so many people don’t want to call themselves bisexual?

Progressive papers these days would think very hard about twinning the words “gay” or “lesbian” with “murderer” or “drug addict”. I don’t say it never happens, but I don’t remember it and there would certainly be protests. And even the Daily Mail wouldn’t call singer Amy Winehouse a “troubled, heterosexual drug addict”.

Maybe it’s time that, say, peace campaigners or sports personalities loved by millions declared that they were bi. Let's have the word "bisexual" twinned with some good things instead of bad.

I haven't met... Concha Buika

2008-04-22T22:47:00.005Z

I think I’m going to start a new category on this blog: Bisexuals I haven’t met yet. Not celebrities – I mean, I have no expectation of, or interest in, meeting Angelina Jolie. Nor Bisexuals I have Met (ie famous bis I once bumped into somehow, now dead) or Never Met (famous, dead, and therefore not going to meet me this side of paradise).
However, there are some well-known bis – Alice Walker and her estranged daughter Rebecca; Saffron Burrows; Skin; David Walliams; Alan Cummings – that I could conceivably interview or something… And to start this off, someone you have probably not heard of unless you are from a Spanish-speaking country: Concha Buika.

Who is...
Concha Buika is a Spanish singer, originally from Equatorial Guinea. Aged 35, she sings a mix of latin-influenced jazz and soul and seems to be pretty well-known in Spanish-speaking countries.
I heard about her quite by accident through a music review in the Guardian about six weeks ago (mysteriously not available on the website) as an exponent of New Flamenco music.
There was also a snippet about her private life… apparently, she is married to a man and then met a woman who both she and her husband subsequently married in a three-way wedding. They all split, and she is bloodied but unbowed. According to Pop Matters

“I do what I do, and I’m not doing anything that other human beings haven’t done. All human beings are more or less the same. A lot of people don’t dare do things, but they think about them. People hide something bad. I haven’t done anything bad, so I don’t have any reason to hide it. What rule is there that two people can’t love a third person?”

Good for her. Perhaps her tremendous spirit is due to the fact that, with parents political exiles from Equatorial Guinea, she was part of the only black family on Majorca, and had to fight the racism that resulted. Then she went to Las Vegas as a Tina Turner impersonator. Well, whatever, her voice is beautiful and I’m glad I found her.

Her MySpace page describes her music as Latin / Lounge / Funk, which in my limited knowledge describes her work a bit more accurately than New Flamenco.

Anyway, here are a couple of YouTube videos of her.

This – the New AfroSpanish Collective - is a bit salsa-y and boppy:

Whereas this one - Mi Nina Lola - is slow and poignant:

Bis thriving in Australia

2008-04-17T17:41:00.002Z

Often, I worry that I come across as a bit miserabilist. Well – not this time. Because thanks to a commenter on my last post, I’ve been reading Thriving as a Bisexual or Queer Woman: Tips on how to flourish.

A great antidote to all the (sadly true) stuff about bis having bad mental health etc, this booklet does exactly what it says on the cover and tells you how a range of Australian women who identify as bi or queer are thoroughly enjoying life.
According to the 20 women interviewed by Mary Heath and Ea Mulligan, having a network of close, bi-accepting open-minded friends, involvement in bi groups and organisations, involvement in a bi community, coming out, personal strength and honesty, living passionately, and (for most) having a sense of spirituality, were important to thriving. Makes sense, really.

Elsewhere in the world?
I did propose to a publisher once that I write a book called something like How To Be a Happy Bisexual. She “wasn’t sure how it would work” (different, yet somehow similar, to “there isn’t a market for it”). Not enough money to be made, no doubt.
This, though, is original research that seems to have been funded by the Australian Lesbian Medical Association (Wow! Do similar associations exist elsewhere in the world? That can give funding?) and Flinders university in Adelaide. You can download it as a pdf and it doesn’t cost you a penny. In its layout and design, it looks bright and positive too, so you get the message that way as well.
Lucky, lucky Aussies. I think perhaps it is a society where the things enabling you to thrive are easier to get than they are elsewhere. But I’m sure those of us in the rest of the world (and those who aren’t women too) can learn a lot from this. Download it, it really is inspirational.

Divide and rule

2008-04-02T18:35:00.003Z

A landmark report by Stonewall was in the Guardian newspaper, (including online) and quite possibly other serious UK papers yesterday. It’s a depressing report, concluding that most lesbians and gay men expect to experience homophobia in all/most aspects of their daily lives.

For the majority of my readers who don’t live in the UK, Stonewall is a “professional lobbying group” which “put the case for equality on the mainstream political agenda by winning support within all the main political parties”.

Now, what I have to say in the following post is in no way to lessen the fact that this report is important, or that lesbians and gay men have a tough time. They do. The idea, for instance, that gay teenagers (and those who aren’t gay at all but are “different”, or don’t fit in to gender stereotypes) suffer more homophobia (much more, it seems) than they used to, is frankly terrible. That we are all (yes, bi people too) meant to sit back and take random homophobic comments from all and sundry. It ought to be enough to make queer people want to act. Do something like, oh I don’t know, join Stonewall…

That notwithstanding, the attitude Stonewall seems to have drives me up the wall. As a campaigning organisation, it says it promotes equality and justice for Lesbians, Gay Men and Bisexuals. Huh. If they have ever done anything for bi people, except when they couldn’t avoid it because of our same-sex behaviour, I’ll be mighty surprised.

The mystery of the vanishing bisexual
Everything this report says about lesbians and gay men is true for bisexuals too. And, as they apparently asked 1,658 lesbians, gay men AND BISEXUALS then surely some of their findings must apply to bi people too. Except that we don’t know. The word bisexual only appears three times in this report (ie “The last five years have seen a catalogue of legal changes benefiting lesbian, gay and bisexual people”; “In 2007 Stonewall commissioned YouGov to survey a sample of 1,658 lesbian, gay and bisexual people across Britain.” Plus once in the conclusion in a similar fashion.) Elsewhere, we are noticeably absent. For instance: one in five lesbian and gay people expect to be treated worse by police than a heterosexual…. Nine in ten would expect to face barriers to becoming foster parents because they are lesbian or gay. Etc.

Now, if they had separated out the bisexual responses, or put bi responses in with the lesbian and gay ones, fair enough. But they didn’t. “Bisexual” is simply a word here, put in as a sop to us, a token that means absolutely nothing. Really, they mean lesbian and gay, and people who are having same-sex at the moment who they count as really lesbian or gay.

Do they not realise that, if a doctor, MP, schoolchild, panel of foster-parent approvers, etc etc etc knows someone is bisexual they very probably think a) they are lying to us/or themselves and are really gay; b) they are oversexed and highly promiscuous, therefore dangerous to society and children in particular. Therefore, bisexuals are considered at least as bad as someone who is in a committed same-sex relationship and quite possibly very much worse.

For myself, I remember going to the doctor and being grilled about why I didn’t need any contraception, didn’t I want a boyfriend… etc. Pretty much the same as a lesbian would be grilled I suppose – but I wasn’t one. I imagine (probably correctly) that if I said I was bisexual they would have been even keener that I take a contraceptive pill!

Mind survey
I wonder if the people who wrote up this research have ever read the Mind survey that shows bi people having worse mental health than lesbians, gay men, or certainly heterosexuals? That they were extremely unlikely to tell health care providers they were bisexual, had little support from friends and family, were poorer and so on. I wrote about it on this post.

This survey took place in Britain about British attitudes, but I think much of it is likely to be true for you too, wherever in the world you live.

No bath but plenty of bubbles

2008-03-19T19:08:00.003Z

I’ve been reading No Bath but Plenty of Bubbles An oral history of the Gay Liberation Front 1970-73 by Lisa Power. Published in 1995, this book about gay liberation in the UK isn’t in print any more, but you can buy second hand copies here.

There was a hell of a lot to fight about 35 years ago – and these people fought it with humour, ridiculing mainstream society. They went to meeting upon meeting, demonstrated wherever and whenever it seemed appropriate, the men dressed in radical drag, and everyone generally had a whale of a time.

This was the time of phenomenal political activity in the UK (and much of the world too) where people thought things could and would change just like that. One of the manifestations of this was (in London at least) squatting the masses of rundown property that existed at the time; living communally and trying to get rid of privacy and private property (no toilet doors, anyone?!?); linking gay liberation with all sorts of other liberation too.

Perhaps their finest hour was the 1971 Festival of Light – an evangelical Christian festival, designed to promote traditional Christianity and family values – where they carried out a hysterically funny intervention, dressing as nuns, letting out mice, singing inappropriately and seemingly having a lot of fun.

The radical drag of those times (men with beards and some lovely 30s frocks that I wish I could wear) was meant to throw stereotyped gender roles into disarray and no doubt was part of the precursor for today’s transgender movements.

As one Michael Brown said: “I was angry, I was thrilled. We thought we could change the sexuality of everyone and not just homosexuals.”

What a lovely thought. So how did they go about it?

To start with, it seems, there was a kind of embracing of polymorphous perversity – that that was a goal in and of itself. Even people whose sexual practice was strictly het could join gay lib if they wanted to support their sisters and brothers.

But after a while things got stricter, people weren’t able to keep up the level of activism over the course of years – meetings every night were a bit much. They fell out with each other – there were personal and political differences. And of course, many – although not all - of the women felt that their issues were not being taken seriously enough. There was also a distinct feeling that women would go off with men if there was the slightest possibility of them doing so – one of the ideas that led to separatist lesbianism that affected so many women at that time.

One woman at least – Sue Winter (who are you and where have you been since 1995? There’s nothing on google) – flew the flag for bisexuality as a gay lib activist. And there were men (such as Tim Clark) who found that, when they had relationships with women, that they weren’t quite so desirable as gay libbers anymore. Polymorphous perversity as a goal for the immediate future faded away, identity politics crept in, and gay liberationists concentrated on being Gay.

Many of the demands that were in the 1971 manifesto have been met in Britain - up to a point - so hurrah for us! No, that sounds too scathing - many people's lives have been absolutely transformed by the changes since then. Young queer people can't really imagine how bad it used to be, in the UK at any rate.

However, I felt sad and nostalgic reading this book. I was too young to be involved in this, although I did come into contact of the dribs and drabs of radical drag, certainly feminism, and general political activity. I wish there was that level of excitement, hope and optimism now – instead of debt, work-hard play-hard, careerism, stress, more debt. And so on. There may be civil partnerships (in the UK, and some of the rest of the world) but what there isn’t is a sense that things in general, not just sexuality, can really profoundly change. There’s assimilation, but it’s been at a high price. You have to be a “good” gay, essentially "straight-acting", if you want to be accepted.

Friends

2008-03-14T16:20:00.003Z

There’s a saying, I don’t know if you know it, which goes roughly as follows:

What do gay men take on their second date? What second date?
What do lesbians take on their second date? All their furniture because they’re moving in.

So far, so clichéd. But what about:

What do bisexuals take on their second date? Their friends, because after all what’s the difference between friends and lovers?

I read that, or something like it, on a wall at a bi conference once and it’s stuck in my mind. For many people, particularly – but not only - in the politicised bi community, the friends/lovers blurriness is something to celebrate. You ought to be friends with your lovers, right? And people who have been your lovers, who have shared that kind of particular closeness ought to stay your friends. The relationship ought to be able to change and encompass being sexual or not.

Then again, you can be so close to your friends that you find the attraction growing into a sexual one.

Sounds lovely. Now doubt some people, some of the time, can manage this (and I’m not even going to go into jealousy, emotional trauma, and so on in this post!)

And/or lovers
But for myself, I have always found the friends/lovers thing very hard to manage. My normal pattern, for instance, is to have a group of friends rather than one particularly close one. However, when I have had a female “best friend” as I have had a couple of times in my life, the sexual tension has always been hard to navigate. To start with, they have always been heterosexual. Then again, I have sometimes felt confused about what sexual attraction means in that context. With someone I hardly know, if I feel a desire to be with them a lot of the time, I’d put that down to attraction. But if you are already close, what does that mean?

I remember a woman I interviewed once – and I think it is women, much more than men, who are confused by the borders of sex and friendship – who said that she felt her sexual feelings towards women kept her distant from other women as she was worried about how they’d react to her bisexuality and made her fearful of rejection. So much for all women being bi! I understand what she means, too, as I have felt it myself. When other (straight) women have said things in my presence like: it’s so relaxing being with women because you don’t have to worry about sex, I do feel like quietly screaming. No dear, not for me it isn’t.

Straight people, most of the time, don’t have to think about this. This is something lesbians – and to a lesser extent gay men - have to face as well. So how do we all manage it?

Touching a nerve

2008-03-06T19:25:00.002Z

Aargh! Where do other bloggers find the time? I know that I’m substantially under par on the energy front, but even so! I had fully intended to post up a good few more bi history items – some are even half written - but they will have to wait.

There is something that I can direct you to in the meantime, though. It’s nerve.com’s bisexual issue. Full of fascinating stuff – the sort of stuff I’d like to write if I could only get down to it. Oh and and I wanted the world at large to know about my sex life. Pah!

So if you want to know where to find out what intelligent writers think about gender monogamy, coming out for the second time, or what “lesbians until graduation” are doing these days, look here.

Ossie Clark

2008-02-20T21:50:00.004Z

This time’s sort-of-historical blog post is another bisexual I never met – fashion designer Ossie Clark. He’s also my second Elegantly Dressed Wednesday subject, because not only could he look pretty smart himself, he made lots of rich and lucky women look good, and had an influence on the style of plenty of poorer women too – including the teenage me.

Born in 1942 and murdered in 1996, Ossie Clark was a terrific designer who made some of his best clothes in the late 60s and early 70s.

The clothes he made tended to the flowing, like the pictures I’ve posted here.

A kind of 40s meets 70s crepe or chiffon. And very sexy, in my opinion.

I can’t find many pictures that will allow me to post them here, but the site for the London Victoria and Albert Museum’s 2003-04 exhibition has quite a few to look at.

A fashion historian said to me that she thought he really liked women, because his clothes made female bodies look good. They didn’t require you to have a particular body shape – certainly not the rake-thin type usually associated with fashion.
Of course, nowadays his clothes are characterised as “vintage” so you can buy them in auction houses and upmarket clothing emporia. Unsurprisingly, they are really expensive – this one (below) was sold in 2004 for £3592.

Still, it’s the sort of thing I’d love to wear if I had the money/ thought that spending that sort of money on clothes was morally defensible!

Many of the clothes he designed were done in collaboration with his fabric designer wife, Celia Birtwell, who nowadays has a rather pretty collection for Top Shop. There are some more of their 70s clothes on that site too.

This really famous picture of them was painted by David Hockney and now hangs in Tate Britain, in London.

So what about his bi-ness? He’s written about on this blog, entitled Gay for Today, but I think the writer is a wee bit snide by saying:

In 1969 he married Celia Birtwell. Although Ossie was openly bisexual and carried on many affairs with men, he and Birtwell had two sons together.

And your point is, Mr Gay for Today?

What can I easily find out about him? Well, he lived the Swinging Sixties life, with the sex, drugs and rock and roll that that implied – particularly the drug part, which apparently set his marriage and career, and subsequently his whole life, on the skids.

In 1996 he was murdered by his (male) ex-lover, very violently indeed. A sad and sorry end really to such a creative life.

For more on him, go here, and his posthumously published diaries are available here. I feel there’s a lot more I could write, but - boo-hoo – no time for the research.

He’s also been in the news recently, as his sons tried to stop his name being used as a new Ossie Clark brand, which they considered exploitation.

Speaking of fashion designers, I have a feeling that Calvin Klein was bi too. Can anyone advise?

Bisexual history

2008-02-13T23:54:00.003Z

So what is bisexual history then and why – apart from the fact that it is LGBT history month (see my last post) – am I blogging about it?

Well, the quick answer to that is that bi people are essentially “hidden from history” as Sheila Rowbotham wrote in the 1970s about women in the past. And I would dearly love to see it, them and us out in the open.

I am doing my microbit. As well as writing about how men who had sex with men before WW2 often seemed to act, or feel about their experiences, somewhat differently than they do now, and how some young women in the 1920s seemed to be having relationships with each other, I wrote a few blog posts about a year ago about bisexuality in the 70s, 80s and 90s – what I remember, in a nutshell. Bizarrely that is now history too. You can see them all in the history link to the right of the page.

But what about before that?

The gay liberation movements of the 1970s set about finding, recording and reclaiming the lives of gay people across the ages – we are talking pretty much exclusively north America and Europe here. They found people across all time – mainly men, mainly rich, but not all - who had same sex relationships.

It used to be, and probably still is, argued that it is simply inappropriate to label people gay, lesbian or bisexual when those terms were not used at the time, and people would not have considered themselves in that way. Sexuality before the end of the 19th century was perceived in terms of the act, not the identity, and whether or not you married was what was important. So partly as a result of that – and also for political reasons – pretty much anyone gay historians could find who had other than other-sex relationships was treated as gay for reclamation purposes.

It’s certainly true that many or most people earlier than say the 1970s (and even now almost everywhere in the world) who would like to have same-sex relationships were compelled to at least appear to be having straight ones.

Nevertheless, it is also true that many people have been claimed as gay/lesbian (three being Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde and indeed Sappho – pictured above, although how can anyone really be sure it is her?) who seemed to have authentic romantic or sexual attachments with men and women. So while it might have been a good idea to claim them as lesbian or gay in the 1970s, now I think it’s time to take a more nuanced view of their sexual complexities.

Other than that there are, of course, reports of men who put it about with all and sundry… the 17th century poet and satirist the Earl of Rochester, for instance, pictured left. A fictionalised version of his life featured in the film The Libertine. Very little of his sex with men was apparently included.

As usual in matters historical, written records are overwhelmingly about men, specifically rich and/or aristocratic men, so we know much more about what they said, did and wrote. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing at all written about women, just that it is harder to tease out. Anne Lister, for instance, a wealthy 19th century Yorkshirewoman, lived as a lesbian and had many affairs with women before marrying the wealthy heiress Ann Walker. But what about her other girlfriends? Mightn’t some of them have loved men as well as her?

One shining example of bisexual history is Eva Cantarella’s book, Bisexuality in the Ancient World - an academic look at ancient Greece and Rome, the (mainly) male bisexuality that went on there, and the constraints – of which there were many – that applied. I do have this book but as it is currently in storage, I can’t enlighten you any further.

So have there been any other history books from a specifically bi perspective? I can’t find any, but if anyone knows of one I’d be mighty glad to read it.

In the meantime, there are some bi-themed history features here.

B-free LGBT history month

2008-02-05T18:47:00.000Z

Another month, another theme, and February in the British Isles is LGBT History month. Or, to be more accurate, gay history with a few lesbian events, some trans stuff if you’re lucky, and nothing bisexual whatsoever… month.

Still, as the only bisexual blogger with a strong interest in and a reasonable knowledge of history (probably) I can add my two groats’ worth.
So, to start us off, a bisexual novel of the 1920s: Dusty Answer.

Judith is a lonely child (and later woman) whose (rich, by normal standards of our time and hers) parents don’t take much notice of her. She does, however, live next to a house where a group of cousins come to spend summers. In the years leading up to the first world war, she falls in love with this family - Charlie, Mariella, Julian, Roddy and Martin - finding them entrancing. Charlie and Mariella marry very young during the war, but Charlie is killed, leaving Mariella - a widow at the age of 19 - to bring up their son alone.

Judith – and Roddy and Martin – goes to Oxford, where she falls in love with Jennifer. Their relationship is described in very romantic and sensual terms:
“She roused herself at last as Judith bent to kiss her good night.
‘Good night my-darling-darling,’ she said.
They stared at each other with tragic faces. It was too much, this happiness, this beauty.”
And much in similar vein. Jennifer runs off with another woman, however.

Roddy, who Judith falls in love with later, has a constant companion in the shape of Tony. Tony is an artist who spends much time in Paris…

It all ends sadly, this melancholy tale, but not because they have chosen the wrong gender love objects. Everyone is fated to be unhappy in love, and in life for that matter. Absolutely everyone in this novel is miserable.

But while no one actually has sex with anyone – this was published in 1927 after all – I would certainly argue that this is a bisexual novel. The characters seem to moon after individuals and no character cares or indeed seems to notice whether they are men or women. Of course, they all intend to marry. That’s what people did then. But love existed outside that too.

When I was a student in the late 70s, I read and loved this book. It was recommended to me by Kate Millett (not personally, of course, but in her autobiography Flying where she talks about reading it.) Now that I am back at the university I came from, I got the self-same copy out – now rather more tatty than it was 20 whatever years ago – to read again.
Dusty Answer is a rites of passage novel, something that would have appealed to the young woman I was when I first read it. Now I am more struck by how old-fashioned it seems, how snobbish and privileged the characters are. And how sad – the melancholy seeps from every page. All Rosamond Lehmann’s books (that I have read anyway) have this melancholy.

I think it’s almost certain that Rosamond Lehmann knew that parts of her characters’ lives could be construed as homosexual (she was living in bohemian London, where there was rather a lot of it going on at the time!). But, as I have written quite a lot on this blog, the “dichotomous view of sexuality” – you’re either straight or gay – didn’t have a hold over society in quite the way it does now. She wrote some interesting things about the reactions to her writings here.

A fascinating period piece, but a lot harder to "relate to" than I remembered.

Nothing natural?

2008-01-30T19:24:00.001Z

In the Independent newspaper today, they had a long and involved piece entitled Scientists discover way to reverse loss of memory.
Briefly, a man whose brain was operated on to try to suppress his appetite suddenly recovered very vivid memories from 30 years ago. The more research is done on the brain, the more scientists find that manipulating it in some way alters how people act, think, feel and so on.

Another piece from the New York magazine forwarded to me by the New York Area Bisexual Network looked at various sorts of research that has been done by scientists from different fields looking at the so-called causes of homosexuality – length of fingers, chromosomes and so on and so forth. It also suggested that various stereotypical traits of lesbians and gay men might be biologically based, which to me beggars belief – it’s ahistorical and ignores cultural and geographical differences. I remember, for instance, when men having long hair was considered to be a sign of homosexuality. Who would that even occur to now?

“They’re born that way” seems to be the notion du jour – of this and pretty much every other age - and popular opinion likes to go down the common sense track, where if it seems to be true – because of repetition and stereotype, then it must be true. So male hairdressers are gay and female footballers are lesbian. Perhaps bisexuals are footballing hairdressers then?

So is that it then? We are all born gay or straight (or bisexual – although no one seems to be researching that). And we’re all man/woman, male/female, masculine/feminine and that’s that? Isn’t that just a tad simplistic? I think so.

In short, there’s a massive gulf between people who think sexuality is constructed in society - that we end up as we do because of our individual experiences in this particular space and time – and those that think our sexuality is a result what is going on in our brains / with our chromosomes bla de bla.

Science or queer theory?
I am particularly struck by this now as I’ve been reading queer theory for the first time in my life. I’ve always known it existed, but never having been schooled in it I was a bit intimidated, to be honest. But if you start from the beginning, say here it’s not as scary as all that even if it is a bit hard to pin down and define.
Anyway, while thinking that gender is formed in society, that gender is not glued to biological sex (what is that anyway?), and that sexuality is simply a role you play might be all very well to some readers of this blog, it wouldn’t really play in Peoria (do people still say that?)!

Now, I’m well aware that I don’t know enough about science on the one hand, or queer theory on the other, to have a properly informed opinion but that never stopped anyone in this debate. In any case, if you know a lot about one you are not likely to know a lot about the other.

It has always seemed to me, though, that the way people experience and express their sexuality varies so terribly much between cultures, both historically and geographically, that it has to be nonsense to say anyone is born to be gay/bi/whatever.

But hey – I’m a both/and type of bisexual. Do we have to throw out the born that way baby with the biological bathwater? Many people feel that their sexuality is such a deep and profound part of themselves that it is “natural”. They don’t feel that it is a role they can put on and take off. But are they right? What role does biology and neuroscience have to play in sexuality? Answers on a rather large postcard please.

Getting Bi

2008-01-24T19:14:00.000Z

Bi? Fancy yourself as a writer? Then you should send your contributions to the wonderful women below. The first edition of Getting Bi was and is absolutely fantastic and fascinating... If you haven't got a copy, buy one instantly here.

Otherwise, read below....

CALL FOR ESSAYS:

Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, 2nd edition

--Do you have something to say about being bisexual?

--Do you have a story about coming out as bi?

--Do you feel you could identify as bisexual but choose not to?

--Do you find connections (or conflicts) between your bisexuality and
other parts of your identity or life?

--Do you have something to say about desire? About relationships? About
religion? About community? About politics? About the position of
bisexuals in the place or community you call home?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, we want to publish you!

*We seek short personal essays or poems (200-1000 words) by bisexuals
from Central or South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, or
Africa. We seek Muslim voices from anywhere in the world. *(Essays from
people from other places and backgrounds will also be considered but our
present focus is on broadening representation. )

If you don't want your name in print, you can write under a pseudonym.
If you think you're not a "real" writer and would like to be included in
this anthology, we want you. If you're not comfortable writing, we can
interview you. If you are not comfortable writing in English, write in
your native language and we will translate your essay.

Essays will be published in the second edition of Getting Bi: Voices of
Bisexuals Around the World. The new anthology will be published in 2009,
in dual editions (English and Spanish).

The first (2005) edition includes personal narratives by people from 32
different countries, on 6 continents, ranging in age from 15-79. Please
help us make this amazing collection even broader in scope!

Send submissions to Robyn Ochs (robyn@robynochs. com) by June 30, 2008.

Thank you, and please help us spread the word! !

Robyn Ochs (http://www.robynochs.com) & Sarah E. Rowley, Editors

I'm pleased that I exist but...

2008-01-21T00:50:00.000Z

A report from the American Psychological Association that (female) bisexuality is a stable identity has been doing the blog-rounds over the past few days, as well it might.

According to planetout.com from which I lifted this (and a whole heap of other sites):
“A study of 79 bisexual, lesbian or unlabeled women ages 18-25 over a decade found that bisexuals maintained a stable pattern of attraction to men and women, according to a press release from the APA. The study also disproves the myth that bisexual women are unable to commit to long-term monogamous relationships. Results were published in the January issue of Developmental Psychology, published by the APA.
University of Utah psychologist Lisa Diamond, who conducted the study, said in the press release that the research provides the first experimental study on the topic and debunks long-standing beliefs.
"The findings demonstrate considerable fluidity in bisexual, unlabeled and lesbian women's attractions, behaviors and identities and contribute to researchers' understanding of the complexity of sexual-minority development over the life span," she said.
Bisexual women were more likely than lesbians to change their identity but tended to switch between bisexual and unlabeled rather than lesbian and heterosexual.
At the end of the 10-year study, most of the women were involved in long-term (more than one year in length), monogamous relationships -- 70 percent of the self-identified lesbians, 89 percent of the bisexuals, 85 percent of the unlabeled women and 67 percent of those who were then calling themselves heterosexual. (The Advocate)”

So great ammunition for anyone who’s been on the receiving end of the: bisexual women are just confused / waiting for a man to come along / you watch out – it’ll all end in tears stereotypes.

What do you think?
There was a bit more background to the study, and lots of really interesting comments on the great blog Feministing. Jessica, who writes it, asks her readers whether the study concentrated on women because men’s bisexuality is less acceptable and seen more as a temporary stop on the way to gayness. (Well, just because that’s true, doesn’t make it a reason not to study women’s behaviour/ identity/ whatever.)

I do have this nagging feeling, though, that all this new-found quasi acceptability bi women seem to be enjoying (I say seem, because I’ve seen little evidence of it in “real life”) actually is because men (some: not all by any means, despite the stereotype) like it. Fundamentally, I believe that women's bisexuality is actually a bit more challenging than that - or it can and should be. I want women’s relationships with each other, sexual and otherwise, to be taken seriously and not always viewed in relation to men. I want bi women who bear no resemblance to Tila Tequila to appear in the media. I want bi women of all ages, shapes and sizes – not just young and pretty ones – to be able to live without harassment. And really, I know that this won’t happen until bi men are taken a bit more seriously too.

The first of the year

2008-01-15T19:13:00.000Z

Promptly (I promised mid-Jan in my last post and I am as good as my word this time), here I am, unrelated deadlines met, back on my blog.

I didn’t want to be thinking about blogging while I had other things to concentrate on, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t keeping an eye on The World of Bisexuality.
One of the ways I’ve been doing this is through setting up a Google Alert for bisexual stuff. It’s a great idea, actually – it means that whenever a website of any sort anywhere puts the words bisexual, bisexuality or bi online, I get to hear about it. Just search for Google Alerts and it'll tell you how to do it.

Because of this, I know that Tila Tequila has dumped Bobby (her hot boy date from the last Tila Tequila series), the better to have another bisexual dating show; that it would have been Simone de Beauvoir’s 100th birthday – and scandals about her sex life are potentially clouding new autobiographies; I know that, in several blogs, women are discussing what people think about bisexuality and how they can find a community to call home; I know that bi people had a “coffee klatch” – whatever that is - in San Francisco last night; and I know that there’s a lot of people floating around in the ether who don’t like bisexuality. Don’t think I’ll link to them.

Like lots of bloggers, I have comment moderation on here. That’s not simply due to spam commenters: who knew that there were important connections between feminine lesbians, UFOs and ancient Egyptian gods? Not me, although 2,000 word comments on tried to tell me otherwise. Then there’s the biphobia. Now I don’t think I’m a “sick fuck”, but others obviously disagree.

I tell you what, there’s an awful lot of weird and freaky biphobia out there. Reason to keep writing what I consider to be no more than common sense, I suppose.

Happy new year

2007-12-31T19:08:00.000Z

It's a fortnight (plus two days) since I posted my last blog. Yes, despite my last new year's resolution to post more often on this blog, time and life took over and I just haven't. Ah well...
Anyone who read my posts earlier in the year knows that it's been a tough one for me, and I'll be glad to see the back of 2007. 2008 should be much, much better. I hope you have a good one too.

The next episode of my thoughts and theories on all things bisexual will arrive around the middle of January. Hope to see you then.

Queer London

2007-12-14T19:18:00.000Z

No, not a description of life as we know it now but an absolutely fantastic book that I have been reading. Queer London, by Matt Houlbrook, is about gay life from 1918 – when the first world war ended – to 1957, and the publication of the Wolfenden Report, which recommended that sex between men in England and Wales should no longer be a crime. Life in London, obviously, and between men – slightly less obviously. Things were rather different for women, so that’s another book – in fact, one that I am reading now – and blog post.
It was a very mixed picture for gay men in London at that time. For instance, in the 20s and 30s, there was quite an active gay pub, club and café scene, with lots of cottages (at that time, old-fashioned metal pissoirs that were in the middle of the street) where men could pick each other up. For most of that time, too, there were four or more Turkish baths where you could be steamy in several senses.

But of course, having sex with another man was illegal and from time to time there were clamp-downs. Clubs would get raided and cottaging individuals would be targeted by agent-provocateur style “pretty policemen”. (Pretty policemen were still operating until at least the 1980s, as I remember.) Men who were caught faced prison and subsequent ruin.
Homophobia was rampant – as Quentin Crisp, above (probably in the 1930s) testified. But not everyone experienced homophobia in the same way, and many gay men were in great demand as entertainers. Fine if you were amusing, I suppose, not so great if your bent was in the sphere of road digging or accountancy.

Bi men
One of the most fascinating things for me about this book was to look at how sexual identity, and the categorical division between straight and gay men, has developed. Boy, oh boy, were things different then – probably until the 1950s, when being “masculine” started to preclude having sex with men.
So while there were men who were only interested in having romance or sex with men, there were many other men who were quite happy to do so some of the time.

For instance, there were young men (especially but not only working class) coming to London and mixing in same-sex environments where women were not available. They often had homosex and sometimes romantic relationships with each other too. Then, when they decided it was time to marry, they got a girlfriend, married her, and generally speaking said to themselves: on to the next part of my life now. Sometimes/often, they remained close friends with their male ex-partners who were doing the same.

Sometimes there was a financial involvement in this. For instance, people like gay writer Christopher Isherwood (in his case in Berlin in the late 1920s-early 1930s) had boyfriends who were romantically and sexually involved with them, and kept by them, Then, in their mid or late 20s the boyfriends got married. In neither of these cases did they seem to be “turning their backs” on their “gay pasts” and saying it was a mistake and they were really straight after all. It was much more of a moving between gay and straight behaviours.

There were other young men who were primarily into girls but unabashed about the fact that they would have sex with another boy if girls were not available. As one said: “I had sex with a brown-hatter last night for a laugh”. There was no sense of losing face or masculinity by doing so. Straight men, on the other hand, were often seen by men who were committedly gay as “trade” or TBH (to be had). Or indeed Naff (not available for fucking).

Then there were soldiers - the Guardsmen (why Guards specifically, as it seems to have been?) who would have sex and fun with older wealthier men – who usually gave them presents, meals and drinks etc. This was semi-prostitution but there seems to be no real sense that the Guardsmen were doing it solely for money – they were “made a fuss of” and got, rather than spent, money. Working class masculinity was part of their attraction for their admirers.

Middle class men seem to have found it a bit more difficult. According to his autobiography (Emlyn: An Early Autography, 1927-1935, long out of print) playwright and actor Emlyn Williams found it difficult to reconcile his feelings for men and women. According to Matt Houlbrook, middle class men were more likely to feel guilty about breaking their marriage vow. Being masculine, for middle class men, was more to intimacy and fidelity, rather than physical strength. EW came to London and had deep relationships with men but remained attracted to women. When his male lover died, he got a girlfriend but was still attracted to men. When another man let him down, he married his girlfriend.

Anyway, I loved this book and Matt Houlbrook – an academic at Liverpool university – has also written an interesting paper for anyone who wants to look at the role make-up played in gay men’s lives in the 1920s-30s.

Between the Acts
Some of this is fleshed out a bit more in the book Between the Acts. It’s the life stories of 12 gay men from the earliest years of the 20th century, who were interviewed during the late 1970s when many of them had become involved in the Campaign for Homosexual Equality. Several of them mention getting married themselves between the wars – with various degrees of success – but one, Sam (with the chapter heading The Dancer’s Life) also talks about being the boyfriend of (several) married men,
In one instance, Sam’s boyfriend’s wife is tolerant of, even happy about, their relationship. When she is about to give birth to her third child, Sam actually moves in to look after the family.
I love that anecdote. In history, in life stories, we get to know some of the complex real lives behind the simplistic stereotypes.

Bisexuals lost in France

2007-12-05T22:14:00.000Z

I’m doing a spot of travel writing at the moment (yes I told you I didn’t just write on bisexuality) and I’m in Avignon, France.

Gay behaviour, or people who look as though the might be gay, are not terribly thick on the ground in France as a whole – so I was rather surprised to find myself in what seemed to be a gay restaurant. Le Brigadier du theatre serves traditional provencal food, and is decorated in high camp style with gold and silver cherubs, red walls, and chandeliery dripping from all vertical and horizontal surfaces. And men (well, one other woman who seemed to be with a gay couple). Tables full of men.

I don’t pretend to understand French culture. Not really. They have a big thing about the naturalness and inevitability of male/female relationships – or rather L’Homme et La Femme. Masculinity and femininity (for men and women respectively!) rule. Then there’s the influence of the Catholic church, the family… In southern or Catholic-influenced Europe, as distinct from Anglo-Saxon Europe, sexuality is considered to be a private matter and not something to shout about. As a result, the gay scene and identity has never taken off in quite the same way.

Can we see you?
The Parisian group Bi Cause (because love is a right) seems to be up and running, though. They meet every week and there’s a lot on their website if you can read French (and I think you can translate sites through some kind of online magic too, no?) Apparently, there’s an article by Catherine Deschamps (who wrote the book Bisexualite Le Dernier Tabou – not translated into English as far as I know) in the newest Journal of Bisexuality - which I can't find an online link for! - talks about Bi Invisibility, something that was discussed a great deal in the English-speaking bi world 10 or 20 years ago. We now have rather a lot of spurious bi visibility – as I said before – so this kind of discussion has died away. Perhaps French pop stars don’t paw each other a la Madonna and Britney.

When in France
I have plenty of previous in France. As I wrote before, I spent part of my yearning youth in Paris. I expected to encounter bisexuality there (why?) but certainly didn’t. Instead, I found men, men and more men – pests that they were. I didn’t know till later that I was living on the edge of an upmarket red-light area.

But in the 1980s, when I worked at an organisation called the Women’s Film, TV and Video network, my colleagues and I went to the women’s film festival that was and is held annually in the Parisian suburb of Creteil. Many of the women at the festival embraced a kind of high femininity which we from the UK found both regressive and baffling. One of the festival programmes showed a woman directing a film while also wearing a ballet tutu. I mean to say?!

When we were there we (my non-sexual friends and I) went to the Turkish baths at the Mosque – and what an eye-opener that was. I’m not saying that there was any actual sex going on there between the women – oh no no no – but what there was was the highest level of sexual tension, rubbing of body lotion into one’s friends bodies, and basic staring that I have ever seen anywhere. Maybe it’s not like that now – the last time I went, I was on my own and it was entirely different – but in the 80s, it was awesome. Literally.

We also went to a then-famous lesbian club Le Monocle (14 blvd Edgar Quinet, in the 14th arrondissement). It was odd. Although there were women there who were obvious couples, there were also men who’d clearly gone there to gawp. Remember, this was at the time when, in the English-speaking world, lesbian-feminism ruled. I just googled the club, and it still exists – the new Monocle – as a swingers club.

That tells you a lot you need to know really. There is a massive swingers scene in Paris (just look at the loisirs section in Pariscop magazine). Man and Woman united –naturellement – but with the saucy naughtiness that stereotypical Frenchness implies.

Underground at the House of Homosexual Culture

2007-11-22T19:09:00.000Z

This coming Saturday, I’m going to be spending the day at the above, running the tea stall. There’ll be beverages, and fairy cakes – of course – and Santa’s little helpers of every gender. The wonderful writer Sarah Waters will be opening it. So if you’re in London, come on down.
I won’t be the only bi curiosity on show: those socially-minded folks The Bisexual Underground will have a stall. They meet monthly in a London pub for darts, board games, chatting and so forth.
And I think the Bi Underground is about it for the organised London bi scene at the moment – I can’t even tell if the London Bi women’s group is still going, or the London main group that was active for 20 years. Of course, there are places like fetish superclub Torture Garden – a “not safe for work site” - of course, where there is no shortage of behavioural bisexuality on display. Male/male couples, female/female couples, female/male couples, groups of friends or lovers, people who are clearly transsexual or whose gender is hard to determine… Everyone can be gorgeous if they have made an effort; everyone has a chance of being desired by someone there.

Is there a bi culture?
I’ve been asking myself this question quite often lately and I think the answer is probably, sadly, no. The reason for the question is that I’m hanging out a lot with, and seeing lots of events advertising: lesbian and gay culture, lesbian and gay communities, bla bla bla. This event is, after all, organised by the House of Homosexual Culture. They are great blokes and I love them. Bisexuals have a place on the gay scene, and always have had, even if we haven’t been recognised. But is that enough? Could there ever be a house of bisexual culture?
It's hard to imagine. Bi people are too diverse. That’s why I have a link called 57 Varieties. Some bi people veer towards gay culture, others straight. There’s no one thing we all want.
There’s a queer culture – encompassing all sorts of people who happen to be not mainstream heterosexual, but which leaves out many “straight-acting” bis. And there are subcultures with lots of bisexual people – swingers to anarchists and hippies (well, I think the anarchist bit is true, anyway).
But can you call the few bi groups, conferences, newsletters and so on a culture? Not really. I’ve tried to define (for myself) what “a bisexual culture” might encompass but I can’t. Clothes, creativity, music, secret signals to indicate to someone that you might be bi? No. There isn't any of that.
There is, though, a history of bisexuality – in particular how it was seen by the general public - ranging from bohemians and the Bloomsbury Group in the 1920s and 30s, David Bowie in the 70s, the influence of feminism and the sexual liberation movements around the same time, plus the organised bi community. That’s something you can trace, and I’ve stressed that quite a bit in this blog. It’s something to hold on to.

Bisexuals a bit less jolly... revisited

2007-11-19T19:18:00.000Z

I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently about unforeseen consequences – the “unknown unknowns”, if you like. You have no idea that something could happen because A had never crossed your mind as having anything to do with B. It certainly resonates with what’s happened to my blog viewing figures.

Ever since I posted up a picture of Angelina Jolie on this blog a little more than a month ago, my reader figures have gone through the roof. Well, as far as “the roof” for a non-publicised, non-monetised, non-famous blog like this is concerned. Today, more than 1,000 people will read this blog. Well, I say read, but in actual fact it’s more like: click on for a nanosecond, see what’s here, then click off immediately. This blog is currently listed as number two on Google Images’ places to see Angelina Jolie. And then last week, aol.com put a link to this blog right in the middle of a story. Mini jackpot.

So, if all I wanted was “clicks”, then all I’d have to do is post endless pictures of Angelina Jolie – with perhaps the occasional picture of a buff-looking man to attract a few people who were into them.

What's it all for?
But that’s not all I want. I want people to actually read this blog, to think about what it says. Some of them have, I suppose. Some people who would never access sites that are purely and simply about bisexuality. When someone does stay on this site for half an hour, and they have found it through her picture, then I feel really encouraged.

And that, I suppose, is why I think I was wrong with some of the things I said about Angelina Jolie. I stand by the idea that, if we “ordinary people” rely on slebs to be our role models and to show us how to live our lives, then we are sunk. The issues we face are simply too different, and we will never be able to change things if we rely on help from “above”. But. It seems that Angelina can reach parts that I certainly can’t – and nor can the bi community, or health educators, or politicians, or books, or less glamorous spokespeople. Obvious really.

She is a larger than life person, yes, someone with a special life, which is one of the things I have a problem with. But as that is what many people really want her for, and, although this may sound harsh, to live through her, then she certainly is valuable as a spokeswoman, a beacon for, bisexuality – or indeed anything else.

Because she – or her image – is certainly doing something I can’t.

The next post will have absolutely nothing to do with celebrity. Promise.

Tila Tequila and the MySpace bisexual

2007-11-05T19:05:00.000Z

You couldn’t make it up – although someone obviously has. A bisexual dating show where a woman who is quite literally famous for being famous is getting “16 gorgeous straight guys!" and "16 hot lesbians!" to compete for her affections on the MTV show A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. It sounds positively demure besides her previous series: Pants-Off Dance-Off. And that’s “pants off” in the underwear sense of the word, rather than simply an overly constricting pair of trousers.
Now Tila Tequila is most famous for having completely invented herself as a sleb through self-promotion, and clearly she’s very good at it, with currently 2,170,161 MySpace friends – more than when I looked a couple of hours ago. Now she’s a singer/actress/presenter/model/stripper/all-purpose brand, and good luck to her I suppose.
She has also been credited for giving rise to the term MySpace Bisexual, which Urban Dictionary defines as:

“A girl who makes out with other slutty chicks at parties and then claims to be bisexual because it's trendy to say so and gets people's attention on Myspace.
Pretty much any girl on Myspace who lists her sexual orientation as "bisexual". Hence, Myspace Bisexual.”

Well, being a “girl” who lists my sexual orientation as “bisexual” on MySpace I obviously have a quarrel with that. Actually lots of quarrels with that. You could equally well call them “Girls Gone Wild”. But moving on…

Now this show has attracted a lot of commentators – both bi (who hated it), anti-celeb (who hated it) and homophobes (who hated it). But also, unfortunately, people who didn’t necessarily hate it but considered that it gave a marginalised group (bisexuals) some much-needed publicity.

Yet, given that millions of people are watching this programme, what can we make of it? In fact, it reminds me in some ways of the Jerry Springer programmes of the 1990s, where bisexuals took their place among all the other freaks who wanted to show off in public.

It seems to me that the problems with A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila are a) that she had to lie to the contestants, making out that she was straight/lesbian – and Any Fule Kno that bisexuals lie; and b) that because there is nothing else about bisexuality on TV, this is seen as What Bisexuals Are Like.

The world at large has a strange and unusual view of “bisexual relationships”. Even Ms Tequila herself says: “The show will be about me finding love as a BISEXUAL!!!!! THAT IS CRAZY, RIGHT?”. Er no… how sad it would be if that were true. But it isn’t and I can’t believe she thinks so either. The world is actually full of bisexuals having good, bad and indifferent relationships, if people only knew. And they certainly aren’t going to be finding out through this show.

Of course, there are stereotypes a gogo in this programme, but that’s reality TV. Anyone who seriously thinks that, say, The Bachelor, is a realistic view of heterosexual relationships needs to be thrown into a vat of Mills & Boon novels and left to claw their way out.

The problem isn’t that there are wacky views about bisexuality in the media – there are wacky views about everything - it’s that all of them are wacky. Isn’t it about time that there were some genuine ones too?

An hour later…
Tila Tequila has added another 46 friends.

Black History Month

2007-10-31T18:29:00.000Z

Right on the very last day, here’s my teensy contribution to Britain’s Black history month. (Do people have it elsewhere? No idea.) Anyway, here are two Black bisexual people that you probably haven’t heard of unless, like me, you particularly like the music of the 1920s and 30s.

So, in chronological order, here’s… Ma Rainey.

Ma – so called as her husband was Pa, and they had a double act, but whose real name was Gertrude - was born in 1886 and was one of the earliest Blues singers. Rainey, in fact, claimed that she had invented the term “Blues” – but that seems unlikely. Anyway, she appeared on stage from the age of 14, and sang the Blues right through the 20s, when she recorded 50 songs in five years.

Among my albums of the 70s, currently in storage, is one called Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues. (If only that were true. But anyway….) And one of the tracks on that amazing collection of feministy, ass-kicking (not a term I normally use, but spot-on here) music is by Ma Rainey. The most famous section goes:

Went out last night with a crowd of my friends,
They must have been women, 'cause I don't like no men.
Wear my clothes just like a fan, Talk to gals just like any old man
'Cause they say I do it, ain't nobody caught me, Sure got to prove it on me.
Ma Rainey, Prove It On Me

Certainly into the girls then – though what she thought of old “Pa” is not known. By me, anyway.

She retired in 1933 – six years before her premature death in 1939 – having done pretty well for herself.

You can buy an album of hers here and if you search around, there are plenty of others too.

Hutch

A few of the blogs I read have signed up to Elegantly Dressed Wednesday – where bloggers post pictures of gorgeously attired individuals (not usually themselves). I certainly think Hutch qualifies.

Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson, born in Grenada in 1900, spent much of his working life as a cabaret singer in the UK. After a short stay in Harlem, and a brief period in Paris, where he was Cole Porter’s lover, he came to London in 1926. Allegedly the lover of a whole loaf’s worth of the upper crust – from Edwina Mountbatten to Noel Coward – he was enormously popular with “Society” as well as “ordinary people”, singing on the radio a great deal. His voice was soft, sweet and gentle, and he tended to sing romantic ballads…. But he was “tormented” and spent his last years in poverty. What a waste.

There’s not a great deal about him on the internet - wikipedia has a “stub” – but there’s an interesting-sounding biography of him, on sale here.

His music is a bit harder to track down – he has the odd track in plenty of period dance band compilations – but here’s an album which they are practically giving away….

To find out more
Information about bi people is often hard to track down; good stuff – as distinct from racist nonsense - about Black bisexual women or men is even harder. But if you are interested in finding out more about Black British LGBT stuff, rukus promotes events and is organising an archive.
The main Black History Month site is here.

Boys keep swinging

2007-10-24T17:21:00.000Z

A long, long time ago (when the world was new, and the internet not even a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye) I had an experimenting- bi-curious- questioning boyfriend. He hadn’t done anything with any men at that point, but oh his books… Perhaps they could best be defined as literary gay S/M – Jean Genet, Mishima, and other writers I can’t remember. They had been read, and re-read, and read again. I read them myself, and my mind boggled. Still, I was but a young thing. Innocent, in that eager for life kind of way.
Anyway, he spent a lot of time flirting with my gay male friends. A lot. And we used to go to gay clubs with them, which was quite unusual in those days. There was one guy in particular where you could hardly breathe for the sexual tension in the air between them. After a few months, they snogged at a party – quite publically so that everyone gawped. Soon after they slept together – but after that they hardly spoke, let alone did it again. But why? Had all their sexual tension simply vanished? Or did they just feel awkward? We never really discussed it, so I just don’t know.
Times being as they were, our relationship was very ‘open’ – no one called themselves polyamorous in those days – and he spent a year or so pursuing various people.
Then, suddenly, it all stopped. As far as I know he got married, went to live in the country, and never touched a man again. He seemed to confine his same-sex feelings to the past. It wasn’t as if he was a monogamous bisexual. No, he had “turned straight”. He “didn’t know what I was talking about” when I asked him if he was still into men.
I often think about him and wonder… so was his curiosity satiated? Can you have a “been there, done that” feeling about sexuality? Perhaps you can.

An update
I’ve been wondering a lot about what I posted above, and whether I was right to do it. Was I being ethical? Had I taken someone’s life and just used it for my own purposes? Of course, there is nothing in it that would specifically identify him. The people who were at that party might remember the event as it caused a bit of a stir – after all, he was going out with a girl (me) – but other than that perhaps not even he would recognise this pen-portrait. And while everything I wrote above is true, there are lies by omission: when this was, for instance.
Lifestyle journalists are always slotting their “friends” into their stories: my friend Frances, and her difficult kids; my other friend Maureen and her career failures – but I never believe in them. They are probably the easiest but least rewarding sort of friends: fictional.
But the man above is real. Do I have the right to talk about him behind his back, as it were? Am I exploiting him? Or am I just over-reacting by thinking this is something to worry about?
I have written about him because I think his story raises interesting questions. But I wouldn’t want to hurt him in any way, Above all, he was (and probably still is) a lovely man, and I wish him well.

I’m bi and I fancy a straight girl

2007-10-19T17:33:00.000Z

One of the women who found my blog recently has found herself in just such a pickle.

So should she do something about it?

No - don’t, please don’t. Although it’s fashionable to think that “all women are bi” I really don’t believe it. In any case, when they (whoever they are) say “all women are bi” they actually mean “will have some kind of same-sex under some circumstances, probably when they are paralytically drunk”. Like Jen Sincero, from A Straight Girl’s Guide to Sleeping with Chicks, who thinks that all women have sleeping with women on their “to do list”.

But if you are sexually and emotionally bisexual, not just “curious”, what you don’t want is to have your feelings trashed by someone who is not sure whether to freak out or not.

I believe that people should experiment (if they want, and as long as they take the feelings of pre-existing significant others into account) but they should always, only, experiment with someone of a similar sort of sexuality to them. So people who are basically straight, or bi-curious, should go for other basically straight or bi-curious or experimenting people. If you are positive that you are really bisexual, then go for someone who’s serious about it too.

The six pint rule
There’s this cute little axiom – all wo/men are gay after six pints, which for a woman would be practically unconscious anyway, surely – and I have met women who have said that they have had plenty of fun seducing “straight” women. Well, that depends what you mean by “straight” (see definitions of bi, above). But, if you are really attracted to someone, do you want them to freak out the next day, acting all disgusted, or start laughing at what you have done together? Mortifying.

Or – worst of all, you are a bit more sober, when you “confess” your feelings and have them say: “I can’t really deal with this right now” and run away, never to come near you again. Or treat you like an object lesson in assertiveness training (very popular in the 80s. but do they exist now?) As in: “I need to make myself clear. I am not interested in you in that way. I really need to be sure you’ve understood that.” Not good. And these are just two of the ways I have been let down ungently. Of course, this can happen whatever your sexuality but there’s nothing like going for someone who really doesn’t fancy women to make you feel crushingly in the wrong.

You might be able to persuade a straight woman to sleep with you, but you can’t make her want to do it again, or fall in love with you. If that’s all you want, then fine. But I think my respondent is more than a bit interested in her “straight girl” and isn’t just up for making a conquest.

So my personal rule of thumb is as follows. Never, ever make a move on someone who hasn’t either got a proven interest in someone the same sex as you, or has loudly and publically declared that they are seriously interested in having that experience. If you are serious about being bisexual, don’t go anywhere near someone who isn’t.

Bisexuals a bit less jolly today

2007-10-11T18:18:00.000Z

I don’t think it’s just my age that makes me feel decidedly underwhelmed that Angelina Jolie is perhaps, maybe, just possibly, not actively bisexual any more.
According to Nicole Kristal, on the website After Ellen, the undoubtedly pulchritudinous Ms Jolie has consigned her bisexuality to the past. And Ms Kristal is bereft.
I’m not. I’m sure I’ve written before about my ambivalent feelings towards bisexual (female) celebrities, or rather, as Kristal’s piece rightly has it The Pop-Tart Publicity Whore Bisexual. You can’t trust celebrities, “bi” or otherwise. And I’m not sure they are doing real bisexual people any favours.
Celebrities aren’t real. They have publicists who decide which bits of the person we can see, where they can go, what they can do, the public words that come out of their mouths. Including the B one. And whether or not they should be pawing other celebrities.
Of course, when you’re young, and alone, you need role models. You need people who are successfully doing what you’d like to. Obviously, in a way, celebrities are the best people to do this – after all, they are in the public eye. You can see what they’re doing. But we can’t rely on them to act consistently, or do something if their PR people tell them it might involve the loss of money/status/fill in gap here.
Angelina Jolie is a celebrity, the daughter of celebrities, the wife of another. That is her job, not being an actress, mother, goodwill ambassador for the UN or anything like that. She doesn’t operate under the same rules as the rest of the world. She lives in celebrityland, an other-worldly place built on money, whose inhabitants can do whatever they like as long as they realise that they cannot be themselves. (This, of course, exacts its price – Britney Spears, another possible bi gal, is currently paying it.)
So who knows what Jolie’s real motives are in anything at all? At the moment, she seems to exist to be a larger than life character whose current role is as the 21st century’s answer to Mia Farrow: earth mother extraordinaire. There’s not much space for bisexuality – or any sexuality – in that.

And another one
I feel a bit the same (yawnsome) about Ani DiFranco – who was interviewed in the Guardian yesterday without “bisexual” being mentioned once. Strange, when according to Jennifer Baumgardner, whose book I mentioned in a post not so long ago, Ani DiFranco was almost single-handedly responsible for the increase in young American women’s bisexuality in the mid 90s. But that can’t be true, surely? Were there no other social factors involved? Even David Bowie – who really did encourage a whole lot of young men to “try it out” – was part of a glamrock movement and a culture that was challenging how men and women dressed and behaved.
Angelina Jolie may or may not still be bisexual. The same goes for any other bi celebrity – past or present. But if we rely on them – rather than less celestial beings - to show us the way, then we really are sunk.

Shock news: men and women not from different planets

2007-10-03T19:05:00.000Z

For the past three days, the Guardian has been running some very interesting excerpts here here and here from the new book by Oxford language professor Deborah Cameron.

In this book, The Myth of Mars and Venus, she is looking at how women and men do and don't communicate, and has discovered that really we are not so very different. But "men and women pretty much the same really" doesn't, as she rightly points out, sell books and get their authors on lucrative book tours and chat shows. She particularly has it in for the grand-daddy of the genre: Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, by John Gray, which I won't link to because far too many people have copies already.

There are plenty more though: for instance, the fragrant Allan and Barbara Pease "internationally renowned experts in human relations and body language" have a whole slew of books with nonsense titles like Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps. Mr Pease gained this expertise as the youngest person in Australia to sell $1m of life assurance and Mrs Pease by modelling and selling advertising. Real experts, then.

How I hate these books. With their glib little catch-phrases, their wacky cartoons, and their ability to over-simplify the most complex arguments, they are an insult to the intelligence, and it always surprises me that people who seem to have triple-figure IQs believe them. “Men want power, achievement and sex. Women want relationships, stability and love,” they say. What all of them? Always?

Not, sadly, that all of those people talking about men and women being "hard-wired" are dimwits. In the first excerpt from her book, she discusses some who aren't. But they are still mistaken - perhaps in a similar way to Simon LeVay who, when looking for the "gay brain", was mistaken not least because he knowingly and deliberately ignored the fact that some men are bisexual. His initial hypothesis - men are gay or straight - was wrong.

Cameron has a political explanation as to why so many people are keen on these differences being "natural". As she says, people have never been less at the mercy of biology, or men and women less different from each other. However, much of this simplistic writing implies that - because differences are "natural" - we'd all be happier and less frustrated if we reverted to the way things used to be.
But things in the western world have changed so much in the past 100 years: even in the past 20, which they couldn't have done if the previous way of being was wholly natural. Men and women relate differently from when I was a young woman; expectations of how we should live our lives are radically different. Anyone with any sense of history or geography knows that gender expectations vary from from place and time. But those changes that do still exist seem more stubborn.

I think people like these pat explanations because they are easy. Because they don't have to struggle with their partners, because they don't have to make any changes; they don't have to think or challenge anything. Society, in the abstract, doesn't have to transform itself to take these changes into account. We can all go round complaining and tutting about the "opposite sex" as per usual.

Personally, I have also never bought into these man = A, woman = B divisions myself - I can read maps pretty well and have lived with men who iron far more than I do. I hate spending long periods of time chatting on the phone, and I am extremely self-sufficient. No doubt, to some people, I have a male brain. How would that tie in with my interest in the domestic arts, I wonder?

But if you like women, how can you like men?
So what has this to do with bisexuality? Several things in particular. If men and women are so very very different, then other people will perhaps find it impossible that one could be sexually or romantically attracted to both. (Although of course, the difference is precisely what some people like about being bisexual!)

Of course, there is also the all women are bi, no men are bi nonsense which I have written about before. That has a societal explanation too, but again, the "we are hard-wired to X" pops up again and again.

In sexual behaviour, the idea that men and women are very different dies hard. But in my 18 years' experience of interviewing many women about sexuality, and now interviewing men too, I would say that there are far greater differences within any group of women than between men and women. Some people need lots of sex with lots of different people lots of the time. Others are more or less celibate for ever. You can say that men or women tend to do something, but that's it.

These people who simplify sexual differences are likely to have similar views on homosexuality: the Peases, for instance. Headings in their books such as “Why gays and lesbians seem obsessed with sex” give a hint of their agenda. The answer to that question, in case you needed to know, is because men are men and lesbians have higher testosterone levels, making lesbians’ sex drive higher. But is it? Is it really? How do they know - have they done tests themselves? Has anyone ever done any research? I think not. And clearly they have never heard of lesbian bed death either.
So where does bisexuality fit into their world view? Apparently, the “mating centre” in the hypothalamus decides which sex we will be attracted to. In males it needs dosing in male hormones so they will be attracted to women; if insufficient, there will be a greater or lesser (bisexuals, I presume?) attraction to other men.

Hm. Twaddle. Who do you believe - an Oxford professor of language or a salesman and model? Complicated things made not too simple. Differences not so very different after all.

Something for the weekend

2007-09-20T17:49:00.000Z

It's Celebrate Bisexuality Day on Sunday (23rd) - a bit shocking really in the "where has time gone" kind of a way. So what to do, ladies and gentlemen, what to do?

Well, most people will probably be carrying on as normal, possibly having a drink, or dipping into a box of chocolates, doing usual Sunday stuff. There doesn't seem to be a lot of organised activity this year, compared with last.

The main celebration I can find in the US is in Boston this evening (Thursday 20th) where they are launching a new Bisexual Health book.

In London, there's Poly Day on Saturday - there's a fair old overlap between the organised poly and bi communities, so expect to see some people there.

In Holland, also on Saturday, they are having a Bisexual Symposium.
If, like me, you don't read Dutch it's easy enough to automatically translate it. It seems as if they are getting the results of a big survey of 50,000 people entitled "How Bi Are You", which used Fritz Klein's sexual orientation grid. When I find out some more about it, I'll let you know.

So on to Sunday, and in Glasgow: at the MED cafe at the LGBT centre on Bell Street, they'll be serving bi-pride coloured cocktails during the afternoon and evening.
Is that a sky-blue pink cocktail then, and if so what's it made of?

Apparently, though, Second Life is where it's all at. At a blog called Second Life Insider, I found this.

September 23 is Celebrate Bisexuality Day the world over, and now it's finally come to SL. Erasmus Hartunian of the BiCafe Beach Place will be holding an event from 5 AM to 7 PM SL Time that will include Live concerts, DJs, Fashion Shows, Art Exhibits, Games, and Contests, with over $100,000 in prizes and give-aways scheduled for every hour of the day.

Interestingly, SL boasts the largest association of bisexuals in the world -- its Bisexuals in Second Life is over 1200 members strong. BiCafe.com, the longest running social web site for bisexuals founded in 1997, has its virtual home in BiCafe Beach Place, and will be celebrating its 10th year anniversary at this event. Come join the party and show your support!

Hmm.... does anyone who reads this blog go on Second Life? Maybe Second Lifers spend all their time there instead of the wider internet world.... When I get a home computer with a broadband connection that actually works properly, I'll check it out.

Bi-curious? Part one

2007-09-16T14:12:00.000Z

Look around online, through dating and sex sites, and you’ll see it mentioned all over the place: bi-curious. There are sites for bi-curious men, women, guys, gals/girls/chicks, couples. But what does bi-curious mean exactly? Go back 10 years or so, and the term probably wasn’t even invented. My first memories of seeing it date from around the late 90s but it seems to have leaped and bounded into the 21st century.

In recent years, this term is seen more and more – particularly online. It implies bisexuality extra-lite, focusing on the sex. But is that all it is?

What, precisely, bi-curious means is very much up for grabs and indeed seems not to have been publicly discussed - as far as I can discover - except here.Two sorts of (not mutually exclusive) people describe themselves as bi-curious: either mainly straight people who are playing down their interest in the “wrong” sex while wanting to have sex with them (or perhaps playing up a scarcely existent interest for the benefit of, say, gaining a gay audience for their product); and people who are genuinely unsure about their sexuality.

I'll talk about the first group in a future post; this is about the second - people who are literally curious in some way about their sexuality.

These days, it seems there are quite a few people who actually don’t know if they are interested in the “wrong” – usually the same – sex. They might be literally curious as to what this experience might be like. Perhaps – having had a fair bit of sexual experience with one gender, they wonder what it would be like to do it with the other. That’s what the women in the book A Straight Girl’s Guide to Sleeping with Chicks were doing – putting sex with women on their “to do” list. It’s a sentiment that doesn’t speak of any great desire, but rather of experimentation and seeing if you are missing out. (I've written about experimentation on this blog before, but I'm badgered if I can find the link.)

Then again, some predominantly straight people consider themselves bi-curious because they want to experience what they think their girlfriends/boyfriends feel. They don’t have any desire for same-sex partners per se.

Some people who say “I think I’m bi-curious” might, in the past, have said, “I think I’m bisexual” instead. Lindy, who I interviewed for my book, describes herself as bi-curious, rather than bisexual. I asked what that meant to her, and how it differed from calling herself bisexual.

For me, it means that you have been straight in practice, but have had same sex leanings that you have not explored. I think it is different to being bi-sexual. I once said to a bi-woman that I dont feel that i can yet call myself bi-sexual because I have not had a same sex sexual experience. She countered with the argument that the world is filled with virgins who know they are straight. She had a point, which made me think. I guess in the end, I'd rather "try it out" before I make up my mind.

Bi-curious in this context is about questioning your sexuality – something that is generally considered acceptable by lesbian/gay and straight society as long as you come out with a decisive answer at the end of the process.

This is the most popular stereotype of bisexuality per se, indeed what many non-bi people consider it to be. Some lesbians and gay men feel such people are taking advantage of them – trying to get their pleasure without any of their pain and some politicised bisexuals feel similarly - yet I think this is a little harsh. Not everyone actually is sure of their sexuality. They may indeed feel tentative about their desires. Bi-curious is, true, an apolitical definition; there is nothing “out and proud” about it. But so what? Groups to promote safer sex that want to attract the biggest number of men who “behave bisexually” have found that putting the word “bi-curious” in their title has helped reach their target audience.

Bi-curiosity may mean, literally, people being curious about their desires and once their curiosity is satisfied they can go back to their usual sexuality. Or, alternatively, they may change it completely. It is ridiculous to expect everyone to spring out, all guns blazing, to shout out their one true sexuality.

So when, if ever, might you stop thinking of yourself as bi-curious and move on to actually being bi? According to Lindy:

I think if I had some positive experiences, I would class myself as being bi. If I had negative ones though, I would not be quick to discount the possibility of me being bi though...You probably click with some women and not with others - just like with men!

Sites specifically geared towards bi-curious people are:
For women, a fairly extensive site which I am surprised is not better known (by me, certainly.
For men, although I think this is mainly porn.

Divine decadence darling

2007-09-10T23:00:00.000Z

Like a fair swathe of London last weekend, I had a brief “Sebastian Horsley experience” on Saturday.

I went to The Last Tuesday Society dinner and ball where the dandy/artist/writer addressed us as part of the launch of his book Dandy in the Underworld. Mr Horsley, His Royal Lowness, looked spectacular, wearing a sequinned suit that had to be one of the most gorgeous outfits I have ever seen - like black mirrored water. His famously stunning girlfriend and muse, Rachel 2, was indeed jaw-droppingly, hypnotically beautiful. (I wonder what it’s like to be a muse… do you have to actually do anything, or is doing something exactly what you mustn’t do?)

Anyway, SH has built up a bit of a reputation for himself as being the embodiment of decadence in a Baudelaire, Byron, Earl of Rochester, overdosing 60s pop star, “I have had sex with X-thousand prostitutes” and “my clothes are my art” kind of way. His main claim to fame, in so far as he has one, is being sacked as sex columnist of the Observer newspaper for answering questions about oral and anal sex a bit (lot) too graphically. (But they were the ones who published his answers. They could always have asked for a rewrite.) And the other was through crucifying himself (literally) in the Philippines in the name of art. He fell off.

The reason he’s appearing in this blog is because of his sexual behaviour. His notorious mention in his Observer column of: “I’ve buggered and been buggered by men and I’ve buggered and been buggered by women”. While being simultaneously homophobic and misogynistic, it seems. Still, for someone who writes as if he is appalled by practically everyone, he seems to have quite a few friends, many of them women or gay men.

Not many people can boast (the right word) of being having anal sex with a mass-murderer - the by-then reformed gangster Jimmy Boyle, apparently , like SH does. While Boyle was also having an affair with his wide. Lawks! And unrepentantly taking shedloads of drugs too.

This, then, is the polar opposite of the wholesome bisexual activist approach to bisexuality. It’s the “all life’s pleasures” approach – why wouldn’t you have sex with that gorgeous person? Why wouldn’t you try this that or the other sexual activity – it might be fun?

Certainly, dandyism - which is a growing scene in London at the moment, and one I certainly enjoy very much - has a homoerotic element to it, whatever the overt sexuality of the men who are involved. Personally, I love men who take an unusually close interest in their appearance and could look at them all day. It is possible to make yourself into a work of art: dandyism reminds me of one of my all-time heroes, Quentin Crisp, who certainly knew how to give good front and quip elegantly.

Earthy crunchy me
But I’m useless at decadence myself. If I do something even mildly naughty – such as not going to bed till 4am or getting drunk – it takes me several days to recover. When I had hospital-administered morphine I couldn't believe anyone would take it for fun. I live on salad, for heaven’s sake. I don’t mind observing it, though, from a pretty safe distance.

Not that I know what it is really - I read The Decadent Handbook without really being any the wiser about what decadence is. But I suppose sex and drugs and rock'n'roll, with a bit of added death-wish, probably covers it.
Obviously, a life solely consisting of self-destructive self-indulgence is actually pretty boring and empty. Not to mention short. Women never really get to be decadent, either. To be decadent, you need money, leisure, no children or other people to look after; people, preferably servants, to do the cleaning up for you. And perhaps that’s why decadence seems to be having a bit of a moment: because everyone in Britain now is expected to work so bloody, unrelentingly hard. To be career focussed and desperate to pay off the credit cards and the mortgage. To not smoke and only eat healthily and never take any risks we haven't paid good money for (white-water rafting, anyone?) Faced with the hamster-wheel of the modern world, it’s not surprising that people dream of drug-fuelled orgies – of which there were surprisingly few in The Decadent Handbook.

Of course, much of SH’s decadence is really a fantasy – in the Story of O sort of way. I had expected to feel at least queasy at his readings but SH, for all his claims of being the devil incarnate, or at any rate one of his henchmen, was very funny and seemingly self-deprecating. His book sounded very entertaining; his relationships quite sad and difficult.

I had intended to buy it and get him to sign it with some kind of lurid message. But by 2.30am, when I left the ball, he, his books, and Rachel 2, were long gone. Oh, I thought, they've gone off to put their feet up with a cup of cocoa. But no, nothing so cliched. They had changed into matching red sequinned outfits and gone to the second launch of the night - for his Soho exhibition Hookers, Dealers, Tailors.

Alas, like so many disappointed fans, I left with my innocence intact.

I believe

2007-08-29T17:58:00.000Z

There's a group on Facebook called "Everytime you say you don't believe in bisexuals, one dies".

Just like the fairies in Peter Pan. And how true that is.

If you are told you don't exist, something about you dies. If your life, your feelings, your experiences are supposedly a mirage, where does that leave you? Nowhere.

But some of us are clapping, shouting, doing whatever it takes to say: I believe in bisexuals. And part of the reason we do that is because we are bisexual ourselves.

Cool kids

2007-07-19T17:56:00.000Z

I’ve been a bit absent from this blog, as you might have spotted, due to a serious onset of brain fog. You know – no concentration, no thoughts worth thinking, a general d’uh-ness.

Still, today a gentle breeze of positivity and cheer has whisked the clouds away. I’m going to Brighton (the English Brighton, not the New York beach) tonight to see my son graduate from university. A sense of pride is in order!

But anyway, back to bisexuality and I started thinking about telling your kids you are bisexual.

It was easy for me. In 1993, when Women and Bisexuality was published, A was eight. He was very proud of my writing and was inclined to tell people when I had a book coming out. I knew that he had to be protected from other people’s negativity, so I told him very clearly that I could love men, or love women, and that many people didn’t like that. (I mentioned a few who might object). I told him that I had written a book about it, and he should be careful about telling people. He said, very matter-of-factly, “Well Mum, you know what they say: each one to their own”.
Of course, he spent a lot of his childhood, from the age of 0 upwards, hanging out with a big old bunch of queers, but I thought his reaction was terrific. And I still do.

Ms Melancholy, in a recent (and lovely) post, talked about how her own son, of a similar age, asked if two men could get married. When told that, in many places, they couldn’t, his reaction was “that’s not fair”. And it isn’t.

What wasn’t easy for me were other people’s reactions – that I was a promiscuous, bad mother, who was obviously too dazed by my wanton lusts to be able to concentrate on parenting. “He’s going to be so confused,” some said. I mean, it wasn’t as if these people really knew me at all – they just heard the word “bisexual” and their brains lit up. Or switched off, perhaps. I know that these same people are baffled by the charming and generally together man that he has become.

Ironically, of course, while my son knew, in theory, that I could “love men, or love women”, in practice, I hardly dated anyone when he was little and on the rare occasions when I did it was when he was staying overnight with other family members. When I started seeing the man who is now my partner, A was 12 and they didn’t meet until I knew our relationship was a serious one. (Although we had been friends for a long while… but that’s another story.)

So much for the revolving door theory – that I would have so many lovers coming in and out of my life that A wouldn’t know if he was coming or going. In reality, after I split up with A’s father, it was The Wilderness Years for me.

What about you?
In general, other bi people with kids have three ways of handling it. A) “They don’t need to know”. This is usually from people who have a long-term partner/spouse, and see their bisexuality as something purely sexual. B) “I’d like to tell them but I’m afraid of the consequences” or C)“Of course they have to know, how could they not”.
Because so many people think that bisexuality is necessarily temporary, a phase, something that will go away when you “settle down”, nothing of any importance, how precisely to manage coming out to your children is not something that is discussed.
I have been lucky; some people have found their children’s reactions have not been what they hoped. But if they have always known bi / progressive / queer / unconventional people, it’s probably a lot easier.

25 years too many

2007-07-04T18:22:00.000Z

I was in lying on the grass in Central Park, New York, this day 25 years ago, recently graduated and weeping with excitement at being in what seemed to me the most incredible, amazing place in the world while the fireworks accompanying the 1812 Overture banged and flashed overhead to celebrate Independence Day.

Back across the Atlantic, a man died in London. At the time, no one knew what was wrong with Terrence Higgins, nor its future significance. That didn't last long.

There's an article from the head of the Terrence Higgins Trust in the Guardian today, together with some audio from Terrence Higgins' partner, Rupert Whitaker.

So - 25 years of appalling pain, horror, sadness, and death, yet many people still behave like it has nothing to do with them.

Still not putting it on
According to a study reported on Aidsmap, about men on the gay scene in three British cities - London, Manchester and Brighton - 22% of HIV-negative men reported unprotected anal sex with a man who was either HIV-positive or of unknown HIV status in the last year.

Oh dear. No, worse than that. Why are you risking your health/life in this way?
No doubt many of these men have sex with women too - whatever they call themselves. Now, I know that - according to other studies - bi men seem actually less likely to have very risky sex. Of course, no one knows for certain - as the whole thing's shrouded in secrecy - but anecdotal and, to a certain extent, other evidence indicates that bi men are less likely to have anal intercourse with other men than are men who are entirely gay. Still, I don't want anyone to die of this horrible disease; I don't rate bi men more highly than gay men, for instance, or even men operating under the delusion that they are entirely heterosexual and just having sex with another man because... well, why not? I don't want any of them to get it.

And according to another study, men in the US who have sex with men - gay, bi, whatever, make up over two-thirds of US syphilis cases. Incidences of heterosexually-transmitted syphilis have reduced but this is more than made up for by the increase in it between men. Not only does contracting syphilis show that you are having unsafe sex (although it is very much easier to get syphilis than HIV through oral sex) but it also makes contracting HIV more likely.

You know what to do
This makes my blood run cold. I know I've said it before, but really, some things can't be repeated too often.
Please - do I have to hang on to your ankle like a heavy weight and stop you going off for unprotected sex. Use a fucking condom.
You might have not seen people around you dying of Aids, but I have and it's HORRIBLE. Worse than horrible. Please, no roulette games. Unlike a lottery win, it really can happen to you. And even though treatment is so very much better these days, the health implications are still enormous.
A bi male friend of mine, who spent the 70s and 80s in San Francisco, and who - due to a mixture of luck, monogamy and unrelated ill-health - managed not to contract HIV, told me how he met one of his peer group on the street there recently. They were both very shocked as each had assumed that the other had died. And how sad and sick-making that this was a reasonable assumption.

Sticking on some more labels

2007-06-22T18:16:00.000Z

To carry on from where I left off last week...

“Why," asks my correspondent "is the fact that the gender one is attracted to of such importance in our conceptions of sex and not, say, the fact that we have such a conception in the first place?”

Indeed. And in a different kind of world it wouldn’t have anything like such importance. At the moment, though, for society at large, the biological sex of your sexual partners is by far the most important thing. Not whether you only like people who are older or younger (unless this is by many years); a difference race to you or the same; always blondes or never blondes; short or tall; kind or cruel. All these are seen as behaviour choices, rather than as saying something profound. They are things that can be changed not innate. Sexual orientation, on the other hand, is meant to be innate – although I personally believe it is far more complicated than that.

And as you say, there is certainly no concern over whether I have a partner I never have sex with, always dump them after six months, want sex three times a day, don’t ever really want sex with anyone, like it swinging from the chandeliers or standing on my head. Etc.

To my mind, that’s because the whole way society is organised is predicated on straight good/gay bad. Bisexuality, or in anyway refusing to accept that dichotomous view of sexuality, blurs the boundaries too much. Straight men in particular need to know that the man they are dealing with is definitely straight or definitely gay in order that they know how to deal with him. In addition, the appearance of monogamy is important to the maintenance of the nuclear family. But it’s only an appearance. For probably most people of every sexuality, at least in 2007, long-term monogamy is a goal that they can never quite attain. Bisexuality throws that into question, even if the individuals concerned are 150% faithful.

To those involved though, as distinct from the concerns of mainstream society, other sorts of sexual identities can be at least as compelling. I’m thinking here of people I’ve interviewed and who I have found through predominantly bisexual forums. It seems to become an identity if they feel it is something they are oppressed over and which is fundamental to their sense of self. For instance, to my surprise actually, many of them identified as poly at least as much as they identified as bi. Polyamory – loving more than one person – is increasingly something its adherents are public and vocal about. To me personally, relationships are “poly” rather than people are “poly”. It is me, on the other hand, rather than my relationships, that is bisexual.

Sticking a label on it

2007-06-15T18:45:00.000Z

I was inspired to write this particular post by an email from another reader, and it's all about identity.

Is it, he asks, that "sexual identity is at the forefront of what it means to have an identity at all". Yes and no. For me personally, regarding my own identity, that's true. Identifying as bisexual is very important to me because it is so very invisible/misunderstood/stereotyped and so I have a vested interest in putting the record straight. But having a sexual identity is absolutely irrelevant to many/most people – as long as they are either completely het or are so casually bi that their same-sex behaviour can be written off as a bit of drunken fumbling that says nothing about them.

Then of course there is the philosophical issue of what actually "identity" means. In the way we use it today, it’s generally speaking about oppression. Another identity that used to be very important to me – "mother" – is not, now that my son is an adult and not in need of my day-to-day care. I am not oppressed as the mother of a 23-year-old! Being the mother of a 3 or 13 year old is an entirely different matter. "Mother" as an identity has changed into “mother” purely as describing a relationship.

In many ways, of course, the whole issue of identity as we see it at all is very historically, geographically and culturally specific. As far as I can tell, most people, most of the time, see and saw themselves as identifying with a tribe, a family, a group, a class – differentiating themselves from people who weren’t part of that group.

Identity is about differentiating yourself from those around you and this applies to all sorts of identity. Therefore I don't need to identify as bisexual when I am in, say, a bi conference. But when everyone assumes I am straight (or at times in the past when they I assumed I was a lesbian) I need to speak the truth about myself. Similarly, if I am abroad I will say I am British whereas here no one would think I was anything else. But I might say I was a Londoner if I was in Scotland, or indeed that I am half-Welsh if the subject comes up.

In the USA, compared to all other countries, identity in general is spectacularly important. As anyone observing that culture knows, people are always hyphenated (Italian-American, Irish-American, African-American and so forth) in a way I don’t think happens anywhere else. Perhaps this is partly why sexual identity is so important there too (apart from the fact that great swaths of the country express levels of homophobia and fundamentalist moral fervour that would only be laughed at in the UK, of course!)

I have rather belatedly been reading Ariel Levy’s book Female Chauvinist Pigs. Among many other very interesting things she talks about the way sexual identity has changed there. “Lesbian” for instance used to be a political label, a rallying cry, whereas now, she says, identity has become a “behaviour-descriptor”. It describes what you do, not what you think or feel. Many women now say things like: “I’m a butch top” etc. While that might help them get the sort of sex they want, it doesn’t really do much for anybody’s liberation.

More on this in the next post...

I'll get back to you on that

2007-06-06T17:57:00.000Z

People sometimes send me private emails (as distinct from public comments) about things that I have written - and this particularly applied to my post back in January on Michael Bailey's work about the supposed non-existence of bisexuality in men.
One man in particular questioned how many bi men there are - I would say from a perspective of disappointment, not hostility - as he met very few that he considered to be "really bi". Part of the trouble, he suggested, was that there was no agreed definition of the term "bisexual" - it could mean people who are only marginally interested in both sexes, or those who truly don't differentiate on the basis of gender.
I wrote him a long reply. It's too long to post all in one go, so here's a section...

You said that one of the problems is that there are no
precise definitions of bisexuality - it's not
necessarily a 50-50 attraction. To my mind, that's one
of the beauties as well as one of the problems of
bisexuality - it covers so many different types of
feelings / behaviours / attractions etc. Fritz Klein
came up with the definitions gay-bi, straight-bi, and
bi-bi. Personally, although I think this is useful, I
think of sexuality more on the spectrum model - that
some are towards the gay end, some the straight end,
and most of us are floating around in the middle. We
may be more at one end or the other, or slide up and
down!

But is bisex about "doing it", or feeling it, or
having experienced it, or self-identity, or what?
Probably a mixture. I'm sure you know, too, that all
bisexuals seem to be quite different from each other.
I have come across a lot of men whose feelings towards
other men seem tremendously confused. They like the
sex with men, but don't "fancy" them. They only fancy
them once they are naked. They only want to have sex
with them when women are in the room. They only want
very masculine men. Or men when they are dressed as
women (ie transvestites who are only dressing up for
sex, not transsexuals). Some bi men do want to go on
the gay scene and get men, but perhaps not in huge
numbers. Some of them seem to hate the gay scene,
though, not because they don't really want sex with
men but because they find it alienating in one way or
another.

Yes, it is true that men with high libidos do have sex
with people they're not attracted to. But, quite
honestly, so do women. Not to the same extent as men,
but they do. Women who are swingers, for instance. Or
perhaps they are turned on by the situation, what they
are doing, a feeling of "naughtiness" perhaps, rather
than experiencing desire for that person per se.
Someone I interviewed, for instance, described having
sex with men, especially transvestites, as "extra
pervy". Now, of course this is nothing like 50-50
bisexuality, but neither is it *not* bisexuality. This
is where I do think it is all really complicated.

Where I think men (even many gay ones) do seem to be
definitely women-oriented is emotionally. That, I
think, might be where I do agree that men are more
likely to be straight: many bi men only see themselves
as bisexual in a sexual sense. (A lot of men who do
have sex with men have said that they don't want any
emotional intimacy with men. Indeed, that they find it
horrifying, almost. I wrote about this before in a
post about men not wanting to kiss each other.

How far this is because if men have a love
relationship with another man then they really have to
out themselves - to themselves and to other people - I
don't know. Perhaps that is simply too dangerous on an
emotional level. But I personally know some gay men
who don't seem to have allowed themselves to fall in
love with other men, either. They are happy to shag
around, or at least try to, and to have women as their
constant companions. One of my friends calls that
"heterosocial". This, too, is connected to the fact
that straight men tend to rely on the women in their
life for emotional support, as indeed do most women
regardless of sexuality.

Thoughts, anyone?

Big Brother is not watching me

2007-05-31T18:12:00.001Z

First of all, my apologies to the three-quarters of this blog’s readers who don’t live in the UK. You won't be directly involved in this conversation, and that's just plain rude of me. Except that, dollars to doughnuts, South Korea to South Dakota, you’ll have your own version of this farrago to contend with.
So, another end of May, another season of the manipulative television drivel that is Big Brother. And, comme toujours, we have a “comedy bisexual”. This “comedy bisexual” is a bit different from the usual Chicks (Channel 4’s official description of the women in the house) in that Carole is a 53-year-old member of the Socialist Workers’ Party rather than a WAG wannabe. And a vague acquaintance of my partner’s, given that London’s middle-aged lefties are not exactly thick on the ground these days.
Oh dear. Did she learn nothing from the George Galloway fiasco? Has she never SEEN Big Brother? You can’t expect that ANY of your political views will get over to the viewers untrampled. Perhaps she thought she was increasing bi invisibility/Trotskyist invisibility, to which I would respond – more fool you. The producers will edit out anything sensible and you too will end up in a cat costume.
Of course, there have always been a sprinkling of LGBT BB contestants. Indeed, about three years ago MTF transsexual Nadia won – which said a lot about something, although I can't for the life of me decide what. But if you are interested in having your every move monitored by the general public before being a two-month sleb, whatever else you are in your life, then Dr Sue would diagnose some kind of personality disorder. There are plenty to choose from.
Still, the media commentary will give pause for thought, I expect. Mark Lawson in the Guardian described Carole as a “divorced bisexual” using inverted commas. Not sure why – if she is divorced and says she is bisexual, then she’s a divorced bisexual. The Sun, in its usual caring, sharing way, divided housemates into “beauties” – the women under 30 who all look like models and “beasts” - everyone else. That's probably how the producers see them too.
Anyway, don’t watch – you’re only encouraging them. If you want to do your bit for bisexual visibility, you could always go for a walk with a badge on or something. Or, if you’re in the right place at the right time, you could go to the Big Bi Book Weekend in New York.

This is not a sex blog

2007-05-25T16:42:00.000Z

No really, it isn’t. And from time to time that’s something I regret.
People who write about sex get, ooh, ever so many hits on their blog. They get book deals and proposals of marriage, and proposals for other things too – probably some of them implausible/unsavoury/frightening.
Loads of people who find this blog from Google – and then click off after one second – come here expecting some bi-girl, bi-guy fantasy action. They must be hideously disappointed to find me waffling on about politics, HIV, dead people who liked pushing the sexual envelope and what's on the telly.
To many people who aren’t bisexual (really rather a lot of them) the sex part is what it’s all about; to many people who are bisexual (but not all, not nearly all) the sex part is what it’s all about. They aren’t interested in the emotions, the lifestyle, the history, the challenges. Just the shagging.
The main reason I sometimes regret writing this under my own name is that it limits what I can say about my life, and that includes the sexual-romantic part. As I’ve said before, I’m not going to put anything here that I wouldn’t want my employer or my family to read. I don’t want the most intimate parts of my psyche known by all and sundry – and I don’t expect my ex-partners/lovers/crushes/friends would like it either. I know that what I actually write here is far beyond what many people would feel happy about shoving out into the public domain without being anonymous but, hey, I am a “professional bisexual” after all. Just not a “sexpert” in the Susie Bright / Carol Queen / Audacia Ray mould.
I had an email chat with Bitchy Jones (a female domme, as you might recall) and she said something very interesting.

“Bisexual women probably get a lot of the same problems I get. When your sexuality matches pretty closely to a hugely popular male fantasy it is no bloody fun at all!”

That summed up why I can relate to her blog, even though I don’t share her sexual interests. It is no bloody fun when people think they know what your sex life, indeed all your life, is like simply because they’re familiar with the stereotypes - and wish that the stereotypes were true. Because while these stereotypes might be pretty damn close to a common male fantasy, they aren’t the same. A real person never fits precisely into someone else’s fantasy, even if they might seem to at a distance. I know, from my own experience, how true that is.
Sorry for being a tease…

International day against homophobia

2007-05-17T13:25:00.000Z

Apparently it's international day against homophobia today (17th May). God knows, the world needs it - and you can find out more from the link in the title of this post.

From Amnesty International, for instance, whose LGBT mailing list I am on, I give you this information about Poland:

Pride Marches
"On Saturday 16 November 2006 the Equality March took place in Poznañ, where about 450 people went out on the street to celebrate the International Day of Tolerance. The March was guarded by around 500 policemen with shields, helmets and dogs. There were about 150 counter-demonstrators who chanted anti-LGBT slogans and the police detained one of them. There were no serious incidents due to the police presence. The next marches will be the March of Tolerance which will take place in Krakow on 21 April 2007 and the Warsaw Equality Parade on 19 May 2007.
Homophobic language
Political figures, including government officials, responsible for public statements such as 'If deviants begin to demonstrate, they should be hit with batons.' and 'LGBT organizations are sending transsexuals to kindergartens and asking children to change their sex' have continued to use openly homophobic language. On 20 February 2007, while on a three-day state visit to Ireland, President Lech Kaczyñski attacked what he called “the homosexual culture” and suggested that widespread homosexuality would lead to the disappearance of the human race. Speaking at a Forum of Europe meeting in Dublin Castle, Mr Kaczyñski said: 'If that kind of approach to sexual life were to be promoted on a grand scale, the human race would disappear”. He also stood by his decision to ban a gay rights march in Warsaw while mayor of the city in 2004.
Roman Giertych, Poland's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education, openly expressed his wish to implement a pan-European ban on 'homosexual propaganda' during a meeting of European Ministers of Education in Heidelberg, Germany, on 2 March 2007. 'The propaganda of homosexuality is reaching ever younger children' Giertych said in the speech released to the Polish media on 3 March. He also continued to promote his controversial proposal to include a ban on rights for homosexuals in any possible future European constitution while the Polish goverment continues to press for references to 'god'."

Shall I put in some witty comments here? No - I shall let this antedilevian twaddle speak for itself.

And that's just Poland. There's some 191 other countries in the world and in at least half a dozen of them, sex really can = death.

As one blog closes, another one opens

2007-05-14T21:43:00.000Z

As I've been spending quite a lot of time plonked on the sofa this week, I've been taking a look at some of the bisexual blogs I've been linking to. And I'm sorry to report that a few of them have withdrawn from the bloggy fray. Al at Bi Journey, and Fluid at Fluid Sexuality have both "officially" given up blogging. Trouser Browser simply hasn't posted anything since last November.

I have no idea why Trouser Browser - great name, eh? - has stopped, but the other two simply say that, while they enjoyed doing it and it helped them, it's time to finish. I'm going to keep all these links up, though, for Al and Fluid because their thoughts about exploring their sexuality are thought-provoking and useful, and TB because his raunchy adventures are a hoot.

Lots and lots of people stop blogging - in fact, most stop pretty quickly. Even newspaper columnists, who get paid for it, and have editors hassling them for their copy, often find it difficult to come up with things worth writing about. Then there's the lack of momentum, the boredom, the other things that you would rather be doing. There has to be a pretty strong motivation to continue; I've written about mine quite a bit.

Read this one...
But I have just found a blog that I really enjoy. It's Bitchy Jones. She's not bisexual, she's a straight dominatrix. But not, as she points out in her profile, someone who does it for money.

One of the things fortunate readers can find in a blog - which you don't get anywhere else, certainly not newspapers or magazines - is people talking about sex, and in particular their own sex lives, in a thoughtful, reflective, interesting and honest way. Of course, part of this reason is because they are anonymous. So Bitchy can talk about why a lot of standard BDSM stuff doesn't do it for her and, in particular, how dominant women are perceived to be simply a figment of sub men's imagination. She, on the other hand, likes to be in charge because she likes to be in charge. Not because some man likes it. Bitchy's pursuing her own desires in a way that women (still) aren't supposed or expected to do, instead of wingeing about neediness, will he call, will I ever get a boyfriend/husband/married stuff you get so horribly much of the time.
Her blog is full of stuff to make you think. Go there now.

The many secrets of Daphne du Maurier

2007-05-11T19:56:00.000Z

Another bisexual I never met... (and whose pictures stubbornly refuse to upload).
I'm doing something old-fashioned at the moment: convalescing. I've had a minor operation - a TVT if you're bored/nosy enough to google it; there's no point in being coy – that only required an overnight stay in hospital but means that I am having two weeks off work to "recover". This means sleeping/dozing a lot and walking small distances gingerly because my thighs feel like I’ve been riding a horse for 12 hours. I assume.
I can't really concentrate a great deal, but one thing I am doing is listening to the radio. BBC radios 4 and 7 are excerpting My Cousin Rachel and Frenchman's Creek respectively, the reason being that their writer Daphne du Maurier would have celebrated her 100th birthday on Sunday. Interesting links are here and here. Apparently there will be a BBC TV drama about her tomorrow night (12th) which should be interesting. There's also the cententary version of the annual Daphne du Maurier festival in Fowey,Cornwall, where she lived.
I'm not really a lit crit person, so can't give a run down or analysis of her work – although I read her most famous books as a teenager – but in a nutshell she wrote romantic/historical/psychological/gothic novels. As well as the two mentioned above, she wrote Jamaica Inn, the House on the Strand, very many short stories – including two on which were based the films The Birds and Don't Look Now – and, most famously, Rebecca.
Its opening line "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" is one of the most famous openings to any English novel. Alfred Hitchcock also made it into a fantastic film. I do know that many argue she wasn’t taken as seriously as a writer as she deserved, being, instead, pigeon-holed as a "women's writer". Bah!
But anyway, I'm in deep water here as this isn’t an Eng lit blog, but a bisexual one – and this is about D du M’s bisexuality.

Divided loyalties
Or rather, her sexuality. Apparently, she kept things pretty close to her chest - many of her letters are sealed until 50 years after her death - and according to her official biographer, Margaret Forster, lots of things about her are shrouded in mystery.
Her relationship with her father, actor-manager Gerald du Maurier, was at the very least... troubled. Daddy wanted a boy, or alternatively wanted to be her brother, or perhaps her lover. And was vociferously homophobic to boot. She married "Boy" Browning, producing three children, and they stayed married till he died, but she had a strong "lesbian side" too.
Apparently Gertrude Lawrence - a musical comedy star who may also have been her father's lover - was her main female love. She also had a powerful crush on Ellen Doubleday, wife of the publisher. Du Maurier saw herself as having two distinct sides: wife/mother (female) and lover/writer (male), a side of herself that she showed few other people and a division that she found tormenting. So she was constricted by the mores of the time and the expectations of both herself and other people.
A complicated psychology, then, but the right sort of creative compost from which to grow her dark psychological fiction.

Two more fascinating women I never met…
… and who (evidence suggests!) weren't bisexual, died this week. Isabella Blow, fashion journalist, icon and muse, discoverer of many a designer, wearer of fabulous and eccentric hats and woman who ploughed her own furrow, drank weedkiller. At 48, her third suicide attempt worked.
Lesley Blanch, traveller, "great and glamourous beauty well into extreme old age", writer of The Wilder Shores of Love - about Victorian women who chose exile and love with Arab men rather than settle for stifling English conventionality, has died aged 102. Ladies, I salute you!
If anyone is interested as to what "my type" is – so far as women are concerned – they, to a large extent, are it. Not the posh part probably (they were both pretty upper crust), but eccentric, flamboyant, unconventional, larger than life women… well, hello!

Why do I do it?

2007-05-04T18:27:00.000Z

I was asked recently, by a woman researching an article to be published in Bi Tribune magazine in the States, why I was still involved in the bi community when - for so many other people, even activists - it was a short-term thing, something to help them "come to terms with their sexuality" which they moved on from sooner rather than later.
Well, I'm not sure what my involvement actually consists of these days. I don't go to meetings any more - not that there are any in London to go to, really, apart from this. I'm not sure how I would be a bi-community activist in the sense that people in the US can be.
This blog - and my book writing, when I do it - is, I suppose, my activism. What I do to contribute to the bi community and bisexual individuals at large.
Even after all these years, I am still intellectually fascinated by sexuality and bisexuality in particular. It seems to me that much of the underpinning of society - that we are only attracted to either men, or women, never both, - is based on a downright lie. A lie that has done huge amounts of harm to lots of people, certainly me. What people do and feel, and why they do and feel it, is of endless fascination to me. I like uncovering secrets in general, and a lot of bisexuality is shrouded in secrecy.
Also, I have been in a relationship with a man for 12 years and this is a way of staying connected to a very important part of myself. My being bisexual, remaining attracted to people regardless of gender, and of having had serious relationships with women as well as men, means - to me - that I see the world very differently from someone who is straight; or someone who has come out to become gay. I see that time and again when I am talking to gay/straight people. What I don't understand is my friends who, say, used to be lesbian and are now straight. They feel decisively not part of the queer community any more.
This, I suppose, is my niche. No one else is blogging like this. Not many people are writing on bisexuality - certainly not in the UK - and there is a need for it. Lots of people ask me for advice etc and seem to value my thoughts. I have thoughts on other subjects, but so do many other people and there seems to be no reason why my views on them should be valued, rather than anyone else's. I write fiction, which some people seem to think is quite good, but then so do many others.
And having thought about bisexuality for so many years (let's say, oh, 35) and read everything on it that I am aware of, I guess I am an "expert" and that, in itself, keeps me going.

Do we need any more bi celebrities?

2007-05-02T18:12:00.000Z

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who can relate to this cartoon. I always have lots of serious stuff to do, but concentrating, alas, is often beyond me. Still, I found this list on the internet when I was gathering some ethereal wool and my interest was piqued.
It's a list of bisexual celebrities. Well, not necessarily bi. Certainly not necessarily celebrities (actually it says "people" but Janet and John down the road would hardly attract their attention now, would they?) Various countries' Big Brother contestants, for instance... A selection of MAWs*. Then there are a few bi activists - interesting, important, essential people, but not celebrities in the sense that paparazzi follow them out of night clubs or the world's press attend their press conferences. And there are, of course, the usual sleb suspects: Angelina Jolie, Drew Barrymore and so on.
But there are also some people I'd never considered, and who will offer interesting subjects for "bisexuals I never met" at some point in the future. French poet Louis Aragon, for instance, dancer Isadora Duncan, painter Tamara de Lempicka.

Who counts as bi?
There is, of course, a big big problem with these lists - and it's not just "why are people so interested in celebrities"?
Now, it is probably all right to describe someone as bisexual if they are well known as having had sexual and emotional relationships with men and women, even if they lived in, say, Syria in 800BC when things were just a tad different from the modern western world. I know that people - up till arguably the early 20th century, and much later in many parts of the world - never looked at their sexuality like that. But, to me, that's OK although, yes, I know many people disagree.
Still, lots of people on this hugely long list have done no more than hint at an interest in the same sex. God, how I hate that. I have mentioned this before on this blog. Having reluctantly had sex with someone of the "wrong" sex doesn't make you bisexual, OK? You have to want to do it. Nor does it mean anything to say "everyone is bisexual really" in the hope that your gay audience might spend more money on your products and you'll look a bit more exciting.
I'd like some real bi celebrities please, if (sigh) we have to have celebrities at all.

*model, actress, whatever

The perfect bisexual interview

2007-04-18T17:11:00.001Z

To a Women in Journalism [professional networking, rather than feminist-activist]meeting last night, to hear some of Britain's best interviewers - including Lynn Barber and Mary Riddell - talk about what makes a good interview. I always enjoy WiJ meetings, and this was wildly funny. As well as giving us their master-class expertise (always record the interview, and it's a good idea if your interviewee does too) they regaled us with some hilarious anecdotes about nightmare interviewees: the drunk, the missing, the weird, the hysterical, the scary, the monosyllabic and, in one case, the dead. Japes!

In my working life, I do very little interviewing. I spend most of my time chained to my desk hacking at other people's copy, or begging reluctant writers to please go to somewhere in another time zone tomorrow, flying out at 6am, staying there for 12 hours before flying back, and delivering their features the instant they get return or preferably sooner. (Not much of an exaggeration, actually.)

Whaddya wanna know?
But sometimes, when I've been especially good, I am allowed out and in the course of these jaunts do interview people to at least get some quotes. This is either pure fluff (how did you become a chef/ is that lion really heading for us/ what is that you're doing with your fingers) or about sexual health (how many clients do you have a day/ so, Monsignor, if condoms are forbidden, how exactly should people avoid HIV?). What I don't do at work, and have never done, is the intrusive kind of interview (how angry do you get when people ask you about your estranged sister? I'm not going away until you tell me.)

Many (non-journo) people are hugely critical about the press, particularly the tabloids (who weren't included on the panel). And a lot of the discussion at the meeting was about how to winkle information out of somewhat reluctant interviewees.

But, although it might be in the public interest to conduct a probing interview with politicians or other people with power over us, quite why a writer / actor / footballer's wife should be reduced to tears by someone's questions is beyond me.
I agree with the critics - I too am very distrustful of many journalists. Not only do they have an agenda that may not be your or my own (get "the story" at all costs), they are often either wilfully ignorant, or so short of time that they know nothing about you or the subject.

Ethics
I was once pretty stitched up myself: I was interviewed about bisexuality for a major publication, and asked the writer specifically not to mention my son's name as he was only six. But it was. She also misquoted and warped the information from everyone else she interviewed: I know, because we all discussed it afterwards. This is kind of different from the other kind of interviewing I have experienced as a subject: on TV or radio, where you state your case and a rabid religious representative expresses the contrary. We would both go out of our way to avoid each other in ordinary life, of course.

On the other hand, many journalists do try to be ethical; I know that they have gone out of their way to be helpful and caring to the people they come into contact with. Personally, I always make sure people know what they are letting themselves in for. But then I don't generally meet the sort of people about whom Jeremy Paxman said "Why are those lying liars lying to me?"

Let's talk about (bi)sex
So while Vladmimir Putin or Liz Hurley might be safe from my caring/sharing questions, I have interviewed - in droves, shedloads, or whatever large-sized collective noun you can think of - bisexuals. All sorts of bisexuals - old/young; black/white; good /bad/indifferent; from the UK to Australia, via Germany, India, Mexico and, of course, North America; male/female/trans; of every combination of sexual/emotional attraction and behaviour; in person, on the phone, via the internet and instant messaging. And I have always enjoyed it. Their interviews/information has appeared in articles in newspapers and magazines, on my blog, in journal articles and, in books.

I hope - I think - that I have always been respectful, never uncomfortably probing, careful of the interviewee as well as the eventual reader. Lots of people are just bursting to talk about themselves. Often they have never done so before. And of course, I do think it is very important for bi people - indeed all people - to know about how bisexual people actually think, do and feel.

I have also been an interview subject for many MA and PhD students researching sexual identity development or somesuch - which has always been an interesting experience. This is in stark contrast to journalistic interviews. Academic interviewers have to abide by an incredibly strict code of ethics and their interviewees have to sign a paper saying they agree to be interviewed; that the tapes of their interview will be destroyed; and that they will be strictly anonymous. I think that they also have to submit their questions to an ethics committee first.

Two-way learning
Like one of these top-line interviewers at the meeting said, "I only want to interview people I can learn from". And if you are talking about your sexuality, usually something that is very precious to you and often something that people still don't talk about in public, and I am interviewing you, I will be learning from you. Whoever reads about your life will be learning as well.

Hopefully, you'll get something out of it too, even if it isn't a perfect bisexual interview.

All about my mother

2007-04-13T16:37:00.000Z

You don't have to be particularly eagle-eyed to notice that it is a month since I posted last. This blog is by way of explanation, a completely off-topic diversion that I need to write. After all, blogs - even subject-specific blogs like this one - are filtered through their author's experience, are influenced by what is going on in the world.

So here we go then...

On 20th March my mother died... she was 82, had had a stroke, plus various "conditions", but in the final analysis, she died from "being in hospital". The first two causes of death on the certificate were "pneumonia" and "clostridium difficile". She caught the C.diff bug in hospital and, after two months' worth of antibiotics to (unsuccessfully) treat it, the drugs had no impact on the pneumonia. According to Radio 4, C.diff is mentioned in 1 in 250 death certificates in the UK. I also found out from the same radio programme - not the hospital - that you fight C.diff by washing with disinfectant, not by using the alcohol gel which stops MRSA. I never smelled disinfectant in her ward, just a sad, sickly mix of diarrhoea and vomit, with a side-order of nutrient-free hospital food. And a sticky floor. Those horror stories about elderly people with no relatives being treated badly: true. She probably would have died earlier if it hadn't been for the unstinting efforts of my sister Julia who was there every day, making sure that she hadn't pulled out her drips or was dying of dehydration.

Right, so I'm angry, which I didn't properly realise. Yes, she would have died anyway - but perhaps not for another year; yes, she was old; but - although some of the medical staff were great - many weren't. Some were caring, despite being harried and busy; others were arrogant shits for whom their patients seemed like so many lumps of meat. This partly to do with NHS lack of funds, but not all. Proper hospital cleaning would have helped and that does cost, but treating patients' relatives like they are incompetent morons has nothing to do with lack of money.

What about you?
I know that most people reading this, those whose mother is still alive, will be thinking of what is bound to happen eventually. As one of my friends said: "Your mother dying made me think of my own mother's death. And I simply couldn't bear it." Yes, and that thing you simply couldn't bear has to be borne anyway. And it seems unbearable whether or not your relationship was close and idyllic, or if you fought like cat and dog, or maintained a polite distance.
I know what the death of someone close is meant to make you think: about relationships being precious, about the necessity to carpe diem, and live life to the full. But what does that actually mean? I have always, constantly felt those things: how could it be otherwise, for someone whose father spent much of their childhood dying? I never felt that sense of immortality, that I and everyone I knew was going to live forever because we were young. But we all have to do things that are tiresome, not live to our fullest potential for a whole number of reasons, especially the time-consuming need to make ends meet. So how exactly do we "live life to the full"? I have to say, I'm buggered if I know.
There might be wisdom coming in the aftermath of death, but I certainly can't offer you any yet. Indeed, my main feeling is still that of disbelief. Is she really dead?
Below I've posted what the vicar read out at her funeral. She wasn't a churchgoer - she always said her Methodist upbringing was enough religion for anyone - and nor am I, but he was a very comforting vicar. A Welsh vicar, which - in suburban Essex - was simply serendipity. And we had "Land of our fathers" and "All through the night" sung by a Male Voice Choir, and Climb Every Mountain, from the Sound of Music which she loved.

Next time, back to bisexuality. Promise.

Patricia George, nee Lewis
23 May 1924 – 20 March 2007

There was never a time when we didn't know our mother was Welsh. Although she left South Wales to live in London in 1947 and her mother's family was originally from Devon, whenever asked our mother always said she was Welsh.

She grew up in Swansea and Haverfordwest with her sister Sylvia and went to university in Aberystwth to study Botany at 17, something that was unusual for a girl of her time and background. She had to take a break from her University studies for work of national importance during which she spent five months with the seed production office driving around the Pembrokeshire countryside in a land rover advising farmers - advice they sometimes didn't take to kindly to, particularly since she was only 21.

Her ambition was always to work at Kew Gardens and although it took her a year from her first application letter, and she had to take the Scientific Officer exam twice, she finally started work there in April 1947. She worked with the flora of many areas in the world, contributed to several papers and had a book published on British wild flowers. She always said how much she had enjoyed working there and how much it had lived up to her expectations.

She married our father Arthur George when she was 31 – at a time when many thought it was too late for her to have a family. Nevertheless, Susan was born in 1956 and Julia in 1961. It was during this time with help from family that they built their own home where they both lived almost to the end of their lives. She wrote weekly to her parents during this time letters full of the tales of normal family life and she often said that she enjoyed being a wife and mother.

In 1969, following a lengthy period of illness, both her father and then her husband died within three weeks of each other. Understandably, she found it difficult to deal alone with the responsibilities of home and children. In part because of this, our relationship with her as teenagers - in common with many families - was not always easy. But with the birth of Susan's son Alexis in 1984 she came into her own as a Grandma and the family became closer and happier again.

It was also during this time that her health improved and she found a renewed interest in the things that she had always enjoyed - the garden and birds, nature books, family history. She also travelled extensively.

In recent years as her health declined, she became more solitary, although she was always a person who had enjoyed her own company. She was also sometimes frustrated with her growing inability to do things. Despite this she still enjoyed time with her family and was always interested in Alexis' life.

Following a stroke at Christmas, combined with her existing health problems and several months in hospital, she became progressively weaker and developed pneumonia.

Perhaps as her children we underestimated the achievements of her life and didn't at the time appreciate the difficulties that faced her. Only with our own life experience have we developed more understanding and will miss her as a mother, grandmother, and for the person that she was.

Second Life

2007-03-14T19:43:00.000Z

I'll quote you this, shall I? It's from the bicafe site.

"Bisexuals in SecondLife has become the largest bi group in ANY world
With over 850 members, Bisexuals in SecondLife is also the most active bi group anywhere with more parties and meetings than all the real world bi groups put together!
Three Sunday meetings at the BiCoastal Center at Carnforth to cover time zones from Europe to Australia.
Thursday parties with DJ dancing and prizes up for grab at Euro friendly time.
Friday night parties at the Diamond Dog Club with DJ dancing and sexy themes (on California time).

BiCafe is tracking all these events and has added a new option to let you select SecondLife as your favorite away region which will show in your profile with the iconic SL hand.
And now you can even search for BiCafe members in SecondLife."

Gosh.

Well, out of over 4.6 million "inhabitants". 7,808 people are online as I type this. There's a guidebook - $22.04 on amazon - that tells you what to do, and I know that a few people have made a lot of money there. Indeed, nearly US$1.5 has been spent there over the past 24 hours.

So "Second Life" is actually seen as a real place now, rather than a set of movable drawings floating around in the ether. After all, Reuters reports news from there, Radio 1 has held concerts, literary agents scout for writers, and we can all look like prettier, more plastic, versions of ourselves.
But bisexuals on second life, now that is interesting. Because this is a parallel world, where you can truly be anything you want to be, something that eludes most of us in one way or another. No one needs to know who you really are, if you don't want them to. You can be part of this group wherever you like - you don't need to be near a large metropolis in a queer-friendly part of the world. You don't need to be remotely out in your daily life or local community. No one need know what you are doing. None of the barriers that stop people meeting in real life are there.
It's well-known that there's been a downturn in all sorts of support groups - bi and otherwise - since the rise of the net. Bisexual.com, for instance, has far more people visiting, chatting, meeting, asking each other for advice, than ever went to a group.
So that's great, and I'm pleased. But if existing in this parallel world is sufficiently comfortable that bi people don't need to be out in real life, then bisexuality will remain something largely invisible - to be disparaged, giggled about, and not taken seriously.

Can any mother help me?
I am absolutely dying to read this. It's a book about a mothers' correspondence club that operated from 1935 onwards; the Guardian gave it an absolutely rave review.
These women - unhappy, trapped, lonely - were lucky enough to find each other by a mixture of good contacts and good fortune. The letter-writing/compiling letters into a book process must have been lengthy, and of course they were only a tiny number among those women who probably felt that way. Reading about this book makes me think about the women in my own family of the time, who had a lot to cope with, and particularly my own mother - who's more on my mind than she's ever been since she had a stroke just after Christmas.
Nowadays, however, like those Second Life bisexuals, it couldn't be simpler to meet another person in a similar situation to yours. You might be able to find them in five minutes. Maybe even five seconds.
Could the contrast between then and now be any more stark?

Blogger's block

2007-02-09T17:56:00.000Z

Hmm. Been a bit quiet on this blog recently, hasn't it? Well, this is a themed blog and recently I haven't had a bisexual thought in my head. In fact, I haven't had many thoughts in my head at all, except on the subjects of 1) moving house after 21 years, and the practical, emotional and financial difficulties therein. And 2) the health of my poor mother.

While 1) is working itself out — well, we have moved anyway, and the world hasn’t come to an end like I thought it might — the worries over 2) continue. This isn't the place to discuss them, though.

However, I did read some "bisexual" celebrity gossip in The Sun yesterday. Britney Spears, apparently, is into group sex with women. The links on The Sun’s site are broken, so I can’t add them, but this site has more details.

BS has had an interesting transmogrification from celebrity born-again virgin to celebrity knickerless party girl via a few marriages, a couple of babies and some wild "best friends". Oh, and that two-second snog with Madonna.

But does she like sex with women? Has she been living a "secret life of wild sex"?

Maybe. And maybe not.

I no longer believe anything I read, certainly not in the likes of The Sun. And that includes "and" and "the", as someone once said about the writer Lillian Hellman. There is nothing anyone could write about BS (an interesting acronym, non?) that I would automatically believe. Some people have humungous amounts of sex, drugs and rock and roll with each other, paid companions, and the odd passing sheep. Others don’t. Members of either group may or may not be famous. Likewise, those who retire early to bed with a mug of cocoa.

Can I go now? I'm nodding off and smelling that cocoa.

On writing...

2007-01-18T19:11:00.000Z

My partner asked me yesterday what I would write about if I didn't write about bisexuality. [I do write about other things, especially when I am paid to do so, but bear with me here...] He was partly being wistful, because no one ever got rich - or even enough money for a good holiday - by writing seriously about bisexuality. Although I did hear rumours about mega spondulicks going Marjorie Garber's way for the book Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life. Still, she is a famous academic I suppose.

My main subject, what preoccupies me in both fiction and non-fiction, is "otherness". I don't mean in the academic sense of The Other, or indeed The Others that Nicole Kidman starred in, but otherness as in being an outsider.

Bisexuals are outsiders to both gay and straight worlds, never entirely accepted in either. I think it's true to say that we - and certainly me - feel that being bisexual gives you a view of the world that is unlike those of people who are only interested in one gender.

I am also interested in all sorts of other "outsiderness" but as bisexuality is the one that affects me most profoundly, it makes sense that I write about it.

But also, this blog is specifically about bisexuality because it is covered so rarely elsewhere. (Indeed, until Mercy (link) started her Bisexuality Revisited site recently, I don't think there was another non-personal bi blog out there at all.) At least, this gives me a way to disperse my ideas to the world at large.

Because of that, though, many readers will not know that I also write fiction - which was what obsessed me through my youth. Indeed I had a novel published by no less than Hutchinson. And may (you never know, fingers crossed) have another published by them. Even in this lifetime.

I write psychological thrillers - maybe slightly literary or experimental, perhaps a bit like Barbara Vine when she started. In my fiction, all my main characters bear the weight of their otherness - by not fitting in, by feeling they are on the borders of sanity, by experiencing the wrong sort of sexual desire or lack of desire at all, or simply by being outsiders. That all sounds very heavy, but I'm not sure it really is, except in the sense that psychological thrillers have to be. These characters are also often bisexual - although none of them ever uses the word - and not usually in a Good Role Model way. Often they are tormented by their desires. My interest is in making them three-dimensional, unique, plausible characters rather than having them as representatives of The Good Bisexual.

Still, bisexuality per se is not the focus of my fiction; distorted perceptions of reality, the harm (and good) people do to each other, a rattling tale - those are what I try to write.

I might post up some fiction here at some point. Otherwise, you can still buy my novel Death of the Family here.

David Bowie made me bi

2007-01-09T13:22:00.000Z

Oh dear, late again, with this blog as with life. It was David Bowie's 60th birthday yesterday. I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can post things that are, y'know, timely and here I go and miss one.

So, David Bowie made me bi. Well, no, obviously not. No one can form your sexuality just like that. And there were other significant people (Kate Millett etc) later on. But he was My First and let's just say he helped. A lot.
I don't remember how I first knew about DB - he was sort of there throughout my early adolescence. But I do remember the first time I really thought about him. In 1973, when I was 16, my then-boyfriend Martin gave me a copy of Aladdin Sane. It was like having a bucket of water thrown all over me, like nothing I had ever heard before. Then I discovered shortly after that Bowie had said he was bisexual (or gay, or something, exactly what was immaterial; he denies it now anyway) and you could see him cosying up to male musicians... Wow - my eyes were opened.

Time... it's waiting in the wings
Last night I was lying in bed listening to various Bowie tracks on my iPod and it wasn't bisexuality I was thinking about first and foremost, it was my youth. In particular, all the people I used to know and don't see any more. Martin - who came to hate me for being better educated than he was; Robin, a wonderful, funny man who died in 2005 and I don't know why; Jane, his dancer girlfriend who's now a signer for deaf people and has, apparently, "a lovely life"; Trevor, my Diamond Dogs-loving ex-boyfriend who became a born again Christian. Back when Bowie was king, we were all a seething mass of potential, waiting for our lives to start.
But I also thought about how downright impossible it was to be a suburban bi-girl in the 70s. Some of my male friends experimented sexually with each other - they told me so, it wasn't a secret, just something that would-be bohemian boys did - but when I told Trevor that I was attracted to girls he simply laughed and told me I was trying to make him jealous. I filed my own bisexuality away for the future, for the life I was going to have when I could get the hell out of there. When, at about 17, two of my female friends did kiss each other in public (at a girls-only event, interestingly), I thought they were simply trying to attract attention. They were both a bit outrageous anyway, but I was furious. I knew that I wouldn't be able to get away with that myself: I had a "bad reputation" - it didn't take much in those days - and I wanted people to carry on speaking to me. I had no inkling that those girls might have actually fancied each other, and I don't suppose they did, but as one of them later had a 12-year relationship with a woman no doubt I was being harsh.

The prettiest star
Going back to David Bowie again, it was mainly because of him that I started to connect bisexuality with creativity, with androgyny and glamour and excitement, with rejecting what I perceived to be the suburban values of everyone around me. I didn't see him in concert till 1983, so missed by more than 10 years the über-bisexuality of Ziggy Stardust and those amazing clothes. Bowie looked great though. Still does.
And the music sounds as fantastic as ever.

Why Michael Bailey is still so very wrong

2007-01-05T18:56:00.000Z

Yep, it had to come sooner or later – my angry launch into some of the work done by Professor Michael J Bailey, professor of psychology at Northwestern university, USA. You know, that research heralded in the New York Times with the headline "Gay, Straight or Lying". The research that allegedly showed that true male bisexuality doesn't exist. That men either fancied men, or women, but not both, even if they said they were bisexual. I know that this research came out in 2005, but I wasn't blogging then. I know, too, that the best response to a lot of this twaddle is simply to ignore it and hope it fades away, but unfortunately this research hasn't. Indeed, a commenter on my blog has cited it within the past month.

Where the blood flows
Michael Bailey and his researchers measured "genital arousal patterns in response to images of men and women". Apparently, even those men who identified as bi (although it's more complicated than that, see below) were only – or near as dammit – attracted to one sex or the other, usually men. They assessed this genital arousal using a plethysmograph – which measures blood flow to the penis and is apparently not admissable as evidence in US courts (although the mind boggles as to what it would be needed for).

So, why does this research have more holes in it than a leaky sieve:
* He used a tiny number of men – 104, of whom only 33 identified as bi. Only 22 of the 33 whom had "sufficient genital arousal for analyses"
* Although it's hard to figure out exactly what happened – without reading the extensive report - it seems that their self-identity wasn't used after the recruitment process. Instead, the researchers rated men as gay, straight or bi according to answers they gave to questions about their sexual desires
* Not everyone, even male everyones, is turned on by porn, particularly not in lab conditions. A third of all his research subjects (however they identified) were not aroused at all. So does that mean they are really asexual? Excuse me while I roll my eyes. What about the fact that (many? some?) lesbians like gay men's porn? What would that make them in his eyes? Or bi porn for that matter. And some people don't like some sorts of porn/some scenarios / some physical types, all of which might turn them off. Apparently, the bi men's subjective response – whether they thought they were turned on – did tally with their stated orientation. There is far more to sexuality, sexual identity, orientation and desire than simply physiological response. Surely this is common sense. Not in this study, however.
* An important element of sexuality is emotion, which isn't even alluded to here. What about all those men who are strongly sexually interested in men, but only fall in love with women?
* "I'm not denying that bisexual behavior exists," quoth The Man "but I am saying that in men there's no hint that true bisexual arousal exists, and that for men arousal is orientation." Erm, why? Seems like a leap over a huge great gulf to me. I would have thought that the differences in number between men saying they were bi and their penises saying something else precisely showed that arousal did not equal orientation. If you even buy that measuring blood flow to the penis really tells you anything useful.

Proof of what, exactly?
However, this flawed research is still currently cited and re-cited as "proof" that bi men don't exist. It's so popular because it says what people want it to say. Huge swaths of society seem to have a vested interest in implying that no men are really bisexual and all women are. Society (specifically, but not exclusively, straight men) is frightened of bi men – who are a bit too much like them - but they can push gay men over to one side and think of them as "other". They can even allow them a few rights now and then.
On the other hand, the daft idea that women are much more likely to be bisexual - to be specific, have "bisexual arousal patterns" - was allegedly demonstrated by the same team of researchers. Not in my experience, they don't, unless of course I have come across the world's largest collection of biphobic prudes.
Of course, Bailey doesn't even attempt to address the social factors making bi men differ from bi women. It is very much harder (in the West, in 2007, although not in other times or places) to be a bi man than to be a bi woman. It's also self-fulfilling: if you are a young man told you can't be bi because all bi men are really gay, chances are you will go along with that. If you are a young woman told all women are bi, you might well think your affectionate responses to your female friends should be more sexual than they are. Simple result: more women than men say they are bi.

What the papers say
While the mainstream press gave the original research a lot of favourable press coverage when it was published, the queer press was more – and sometimes highly – sceptical. It was comprehensively trounced on this blog post. In fact, this blogger has plenty of other information about why Bailey and his research shouldn't be trusted (his appalling work on transsexuals, to start with), along with some great comments. He also links to this fact sheet from the Gay and Lesbian Task Force Foundation which says a lot of what I have covered in this post, but better and with footnotes.
Ron Jackson Suresha, who co-edited Bi Men: Coming Out Every Which Way, writes here about some of the political reasons why the media likes anti-bi research, and ignores pro-bi information. And Mark Simpson wrote a brilliant – and funny - dissection of this research on his blog back in April. It's a long post, but it shows that – in his experience as a gay man sleeping with bi men – that there are a lot of men who will enthusiastically sleep with other men without having the remotest interest in making it a full-time job.

Happy bisexual new year

2007-01-03T19:09:00.000Z

In the past couple of days, I’ve had a lot more traffic to my blog. In fact, it’s getting on for double what it usually is and most of the readers seem to have found it through putting “bisexual” in search machines rather than using links and so forth.
Is this the New Year effect? I think it might be. You know, resolution time - you’re not going to do X for another year, you’re going to make important changes and so forth. For some people, that means doing something, however small, about their bisexuality.
“Oh no,” cries a lonely voice in Sweden, or South Korea, or South Dakota. “Not another year when I’m going to hide my sexuality. In 2007 it will be different.” I hope it will.

And my resolution? Must Try Harder (to post more often on this blog).

So what about predictions… Here’s three:
* More people will decide to “explore their sexuality” as I wrote in a previous post. Indeed, in 2006 two always-gay men that I know personally told me that they had recently “experimented” with women.
* More individuals will write their bi stories on blogs and meet lovers there too. Some relationships will break up as a result, but others will last happily ever after.
* Two female celebrities will tell the world that women are beautiful and everyone is bisexual really. And one male celebrity will threaten legal action because he wants the world to know he is totally, utterly and forever straight.

No brainers, eh? For something more random, there’s always Nostradamus. Or indeed any mainstream media outlet.

Not upset at all

2006-12-28T18:11:00.000Z

I've been reworking my new book The Truth About Bisexuality; I'm determined it will appear in 2007, come hell or high water, or indeed online publishing. I just read parts of it again and remembered Margaret, who is quoted below. She is the non-bi partner of one of my male interviewees - a refreshing counterpart to the betrayed wife stereotype.

Margaret, 61, librarian, Victoria

I was aware of Neville's bisexuality before we got together. I was informed by a jealous friend but I think he would have told me anyway. I already liked him a lot and being bi made him positively exotic. The fact that being attracted to either gender probably precluded absolute fidelity was also a positive. I was quite paranoid about emotional comitment. Freedom was what it was all about.
Neville and I moved in together (in a communal house) quite soon after we got together but with a specific agreement that we didn't "own each other" that we were both free to dally where we would. I actually did more of that than Neville and was very open about my activities.
He often does talk about his adventures later, so I don't really know if/when he's looking for sexual partners. These days I think it's more a case of if an attractive opportunity arises. I've met and really liked most of the people from BiVic but if he's off with any of them I don't know. I think if I did I'd handle it with equanimity but I can't say for sure. Emotional reactions are horribly unpredictable. I think I might feel rather insecure about a long-term sexual relationship (although he says that won't happen) because he might find he'd prefer to move in with him/her and I might lose my best friend, not to mention a great lover. Short of that, I'm very happy with the way things are. There's a feeling of closeness without being hemmed in.

Effects
HIV doesn't worry me. I trust Neville to be careful and trust him absolutely to let me know if there are any slip-ups. When you're over 60 a life-threatening illness that probably wouldn't kick in for 10 years isn't too much of a worry.
It's difficult to answer what effect Neville's bisexuality has had on our relationship. If anything, I've enjoued talking about his experiences. Maybe this is me vicariously living a more daring life? As to how his bi-ness affects his personality, that's rather a chicken and egg question. I certainly don't wish he was totally straight. I think being bi makes him less likely to be trapped in the male stereotype. I also have a theory that bis make better lovers - more aware that there are all sorts of ways of going about things, maybe more imaginative and responsive.
My sexuality is ideologically bi but in practice hetero.

You can't have one without the other...?

2006-12-21T19:38:00.000Z

Love and
It's a special anniversary in the UK today - exactly a year since the Civil Partnership Act came into force, and lesbian and gay couples could get hitched. Lots of them have, too - 15,672 up till the end of September. Many congratulations to those - like Elton John and David Furnish - whose first anniversary it is today.
I think it's fair to say that the move has been wholly popular. No mainstream political party has uttered so much as a squeak of disapproval in recent years. When Elton John and David Furnish got married, even the notoriously homophobic Sun newspaper was celebratory in its reports and the streets of Windsor were thronged with people wanting to wish them well.
Even the gay couple in the Archers (an extremely popular BBC radio soap set in a middle-England farming community) - Ian and Adam - got married without a huge amount of disapproval. Their cross and annoying fathers came round, sort of, and the only person who expressed overt homophobia was given short shrift.
The idea seems to be that to not allow stable gay couples equal rights in terms of inheritance tax, pension rights, next-of-kin arrangements and so forth is against human rights. Which it is.
Nevertheless, the media is looking for the downside, in particular gay couples who are now getting divorced. Darryl Bullock and Mark Godfrey, one of the first couples to get hitched last year, have split up but are delaying their divorce, not wanting to go down in history for being the first to do so.

Marriage
But civil partnership isn't exactly the same as marriage, something that's both good (the history of women being owned by men, for instance) and bad (not the same symbolism or gravitas). One of the main reasons for not calling them "weddings" or "marriage" is to appease people or institutions whose religion tells them that marriage is between a man and a woman only - and mainly for the purpose of having children.
There is also a whole rubbish-heap full of nefarious doings in the notion of "marriage". The historic idea of a woman being owned by one man (her father) and passed to another (her husband) - which is still overt in many parts of the world and persists everywhere in the way that most women change their names. The idea of penetrative sex defining marriage: you have to have sex or the marriage can be annulled. I don't know if that's true everywhere, but certainly in the UK it is. You must not have sex with anyone else and you can divorce on the grounds of adultery. Presumably all that's to do with procreation and the need to know who is the father of a particular child. Then there's also the symbolism of two complementary (male and female) beings becoming one - the unit, the couple, headed by him. And Him - God. In civil partnerships, whether or not you are actually having sex is irrelevant.

Love and marriage
The UK is by no means alone in legally recognising some kind of gay marriage or partnership: the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa (the first being celebrated on 1st December this year) all have same-sex marriage. In many places around the world - mainly Europe, but also parts of Australia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and others - at least some form of civil union is permitted.
In the US - from where I am frequently sent petitions to sign and organisations to join on this subject - the situation is totally different. There, 26 states have constitutional amendments barring the recognition of same-sex marriages; by contrast, four have legal unions that sound similar to civil partnerships; three recognise unions offering some rights. Only Massachusetts currently recognises gay marriage.
The majority of readers of this blog are Stateside themselves, and I extend my good wishes to them. I don't need to tell them that they have a huge fight on their hands. As an American ex-pat friend said to me recently, "Anyone who lives in the US and doesn't see the profound level of homophobia there is in a state of deep denial". And he used to live in California!
It also seems pertinent to me that the US has higher rates of heterosexual marriage than do most countries in Europe - so not being allowed it marginalises gay people even further.

Go together like a horse and carriage
Personally, I am not married and never have been, although my current relationship - with a man - is now 11.5 years and counting. The idea of changing my name to Mrs Husband and being a subservient appendage used to make me feel faint; there was also the idea that you were selling out, giving in to convention. Not to mention building a great big dividing line between you on one side and the queers on the other. I don't feel either of these so much now, but I'm still not rushing to any register office. I don't think I would if my partner was female, either.
My gay friends in general seem to agree with me; none has tied the knot yet. Like me, they are likely to think that the legal changes in the UK are more to do with the government's agenda: everyone has to be part of Labour's "hard-working families" - gay people as much as anyone. There is plenty of money being made out of "pink weddings" too. Just beware if you are poor (cuts in benefits for same-sex couples to bring them in line with straight ones) or you don't want to couple up with someone. People who don't want stable monogamous relationships, or want to partner with more than one person, or don't have a sexual partner at all, are simply left out. Of course, this has a big impact on those very many bisexuals who believe in polyamory: what are they do to? Then, there is the - to me - very compelling idea that this type of legal partnership should not be confined to people who are in romantic couples. What about two friends, or two siblings? Why shouldn't they gain those legal and financial rights?
Still, whichever way you look at it, having the possibility of civil partnership is a huge, step-change type improvement to not having it.
I will be going to my first civil partnership celebration in January, for a couple who have been together for 25 years. Their stated reasons for doing it are practical, rather than romantic, although I think that there is something very romantic about loving someone for such a long time. It seems so unlikely, so against the odds. But maybe I am just an old cynic.
Many gay people don't agree though: they want to have a ceremony just like their straight counterparts. And that is truly progressive, I think: to see that lesbians and gay men, just like heterosexuals, can be radical, or conventional; or good, bad, indifferent; rich or poor; interesting or ordinary. That actually, sexuality should have nothing to do with whether anyone is accepted into society or not. We have taken a few steps here. But there are very many still to go.

Bisexuality and beyond

Why I'm not anonymous

Coming out bisexual

Straight out of university - a bi novel

Metrosexy

Bisexual blog, Bisexual Pride

20th Century Bi - Books and Links

20th Century Bi - London's bisexual history event

The bizarre world of the bisexual

Celebrate bisexuality day

Bisexual war hero

Blogging bisexuality at BiCon

Ten Reasons You Need This Bisexual Blog 2010

Michael Bailey and bisexuality - again

LGBT history month

Bisexuals at work

Bisexuals on television

Happy new year

Telling it like it is

Spending more time with my blog

Duncan from Blue comes out. Etc.

Getting gaydar

British newspaper publishes good bi article shock

Bi The Way comes to London

Falling in love with love

Is there a ‘bisexual’ in LGBT history month?

Bisexuals on YouTube

Why you and I still need this bisexual blog

World Aids Day

Blogging for work

Tearing my hair out

There’s no such thing as abroad any more

Bisexual woman to be deported to Nigeria

This blog is two today

Casanova a "brainy bisexual"

Royals in messy relationships shock

Gay brains again

Celebs gone wild again. Yawn

Girls [sic] on film

Women not-loving women

Two words joined together

I haven't met... Concha Buika

Bis thriving in Australia

Divide and rule

No bath but plenty of bubbles

Friends

Touching a nerve

Ossie Clark

Bisexual history

B-free LGBT history month

Nothing natural?

Getting Bi

I'm pleased that I exist but...

The first of the year

Happy new year

Queer London

Bisexuals lost in France

Underground at the House of Homosexual Culture

Bisexuals a bit less jolly... revisited

Tila Tequila and the MySpace bisexual

Black History Month

Boys keep swinging

I’m bi and I fancy a straight girl

Bisexuals a bit less jolly today

Shock news: men and women not from different planets

Something for the weekend

Bi-curious? Part one

Divine decadence darling

Further reading

I believe

Cool kids

25 years too many

Sticking on some more labels

Sticking a label on it

I'll get back to you on that

Big Brother is not watching me

This is not a sex blog

International day against homophobia

As one blog closes, another one opens

The many secrets of Daphne du Maurier