Bisexual Erasure

I should like to deal with two topics that are usually neglected in any discussion of homosexuality, that of Bi-Sexual Erasure and Situational Sexuality.


The simple fact is, bisexuals are rejected equally by straights and queers.


Tell a straight that you are bisexual and the usual reaction is: “What are you really?” Straights either see bisexuals as ravenous wolves who will simply fuck anything, or as being “confused” and “unable to make up their minds.” Many straights who accept homosexuality remain highly intolerant of bisexuality, possibly because while they can imagine gays in monogamous relationships, they cannot imagine someone who likes both sexes being happy with just one. [There is also the phenomenon of straight women who have a healthy fear of contracting a disease from men who sleep with men. This is actually very reasonable and explains the recent uproar about men “on the down-low.”]


To gays, bisexuals are just “in denial” about their true nature. Or perhaps, because bisexuals are able to “sleep with the enemy,” they are simply trying to acquire all the benefits of the dominant culture, even though at heart they are gay. In either case, bisexuals are seen as traitors to homosexuality.


This leads to Bisexual Erasure, wherein bisexuals and bisexuality is marginalized and made to disappear as a separate and distinct category.

Try this simple experiment. Go to Wikipedia and look up someone who is bisexual (but not someone who is famous for being bisexual), like Caesar Romero, Tyrone Power, or Nancy Kulp, and see if they are listed as bisexual. Sometimes they are listed as gay, sometimes there is nothing about their sexuality, and if there is anything about their being bisexual be assured that it will be purged in the next round of edits. While there are plenty of obscure categories in Wikipedia (e.g. “Corporations Based in Illinois,” “Evangelical Women Authors”), there is no category of bisexuals. They are always lumped into LGBT subcategories (i.e. “LGBT African Americans”), yet have no category of their own.


Why is this?

Because gays have an agenda, homophobes have an agenda, and bourgeois liberals have an agenda of acceptance, but there really is no bisexual agenda! That’s because sooner or later most bisexuals end up living one kind of life or another. Eventually, you meet the one that you think you are going to spend the rest of your life with, and that person is usually either male or female, which means you end up as a de facto straight or queer. Think about it. There’s no such thing as a monogamous bisexual marriage, it’s axiomatically nonsensical (or ontologically impossible, take your pick). I really can’t think of a single issue before the public that presents us with a “bisexual position” separate and distinct from that of some other group.


This leads to my second point: most bisexuals end up living lives of “situational sexuality,” where their circumstances, rather than any innate predilections, defines their sexuality.


Let me offer you a few case studies:


Some time ago I had a fuck-buddy, Lorraine, who was bisexual. I first met her when my girl-friend and I did a three way with her, and she was very eager for the attentions of both of us. Later I saw her alone and our couplings were quite hot and exciting. She had, however, a peculiar problem. When she became excited she had an overwhelming woman smell. I liked this but, evidently, most men did not. Many of her previous male lovers would insist that she showered before their couplings and most simply refused to perform cunnilingus because of her truly pungent smell. This caused great embarrassment for her and she was hugely relieved when she found out that I really liked this. I only knew and enjoyed her briefly however, as she soon left to complete her education at U.C. Berkeley where she settled after graduating. Years after this I re-connected with her again on Facebook. She was now a lesbian, telling me in no uncertain terms in an e-mail that this was her true nature, and that she was very happily married to Eileen. At the time I profound doubts about this, since she had simply been way too hot a lover for me to ever believe that she didn’t harbor a profound desire for men. Just a few weeks ago I noticed that not only had Lorraine broken up with Eileen, but she was listing herself yet again as bisexual. So I dropped her a line and it seems that her strident claims of being a lesbian was done at the prompting of Eileen who became jealous at the thought that Lorraine might ever have been attracted to men. She is now divorced, seeing a man, and once again identifying as bisexual.


I think this case illustrates my first point nicely, that bisexuality is unacceptable and has a tendency to disappear, just as it leads to my second point that much of sexuality is transient and situational. I can think of case after case where someones sexual expression changed with the circumstances of their life and I would assert that this does not represent a change from one sexuality to another, but rather yet another manifestation of bisexuality.


Another example might be my business associate, Todd. Despite being bisexual, Todd has lived the gay life since his early twenties. Now in his late forties, he laments that he hasn’t found a girl to marry: “All of my bisexual friends were married by thirty-five: why not me?” As you can see, while Todd regards his sexuality as situational, he simply has failed to change the situations of his life to affect the change he wishes.


A rather stark case would be Patty, a friend of my wife. Patty is about ten years older than us, from a small town, very feminine, retiring, and significantly over-weight. When I first met her she was living a rather free and easy life, dating quite a bit, and not merely straight, but rather old fashioned in what she thought acceptable. Well, she got older, and heavier, and fewer and fewer men asked her out, until finally she hit a dry patch of about five years. Next thing we knew, she had moved in with another woman. Her new friend was a woman much like herself: early fifties, small town background, overweight, thought of herself as straight. And yet they were living together in a lesbian relationship. Plainly, however she thinks of herself, the fact is that she is functionally bisexual.


Of course the opposite story happens again and again. There’s even a word for it, LUG: “Lesbian Until Graduation.” My friend Vida went through high school fending off the sexual demands of her various boyfriends by giving them oral sex so that they wouldn’t push for actual coition. She found this to be degrading and humiliating and, when she went off to college and had her first lesbian affair, she felt absolutely liberated. She plunged in feet first, thought of herself as a lesbian, and planned her life on that basis. The problem was that she kept getting into dysfunctional relationships, had no direction in her life, and (aside from the sex) really wasn’t happy. After graduating she came back to Chicago and took a job she hated. Then she met a bisexual guy that she started to hang out with. Probably because he seemed less threatening, she began to “fool around” with him and discovered that she liked it. But then she paniced, broke up with him and resumed her lesbian affairs, which proved just as disastrous as before. The thought began to haunt her that in order to live a really full and complete life, she would have to be with the father of her children. Later she met a nice Catholic fellow, dated him for a very long time, and then married him. Though she is happily married, with a lovely blond baby boy, she is frank about being bisexual. Although she intends to remain monogamously devoted to her husband for the rest of her life, she acknowledges that she would fully capable of having sex with a woman and liking it.


[As an aside, let me point out that while I have known many people who have straightened up and found religion, they all became straight because they liked the straight sex. People who have a religious conversion and then try to straighten up usually end up as basket-cases. The lesson: straight sex might lead you to religion, but religion can’t straighten you up. My own experience would confirm this. At about the age of twenty one I decided that what I really wanted was a family and that I should begin looking for the mother of my children. At about twenty-three I realized I had to cut-out men altogether if I was serious about that, a year later I became Catholic, the next year I was married.]


The very idea of “bisexual” is actually of rather recent currency. My buddy Bob, who was a young man in the early 1960’s, claims that before Stonewall things were much more fluid. Ostensibly straight young men knew where the gay bars were, knew they could be serviced orally there, and would often go there for sexual release. As Bob explained it, “Plenty of guys just like sucking cock, and every guy likes to have their cock sucked, and no one cares if you pretend it’s a girl doing it.” After Stonewall however, “activists ruined it,” according to Bob, who claims that political elements in the Gay community insisted that people take sides, be straight or gay, and no longer tolerated straight guys availing themselves of gay services. After that, only guys with balls enough to claim to be bisexual were tolerated cruising for easy sex at gay bars.


In the ancient world too, we find that dominant bisexuality was considered the norm, with Near Eastern men availing themselves with temple prostitutes of both sexes (as well as eunuchs) and Mediterranean ephebes (young men) expected to seek sexual release from each other before entering into marriage. Early Christians too, made no distinction between heteroerotic and homoerotic licentiousness, but condemned both equally. It was not merely extra-marital sex that was condemned by the Church, but any form of contragenic sexuality. It is a post-war development that a distinction has been made between married couples indulging in oral and anal sexuality and homoeroticism; previously these activities were thought of as degenerate no matter who indulged in them. [My son likes to joke about this. Q: What is the opposite of bisexual? A: Stunted.]


The bisexual impulse then is a return to a pre-modern view that sees sexuality as something you do, not something you are. Just as I have chosen to live in heterosexual monogamy in order to have a stable family life, so have my friends Bob and Todd chosen homoeroticism as it offers them a fuller and more varied sex life. Vida lives heterosexually so as to integrate her sexuality with her fertility, while Patty lives as a lesbian because that is the only sex life available to her.


To summarize:

• Bisexuals are marginalized by both the straight and gay communities.
• This leads to “Bisexual Erasure,” the effective purging of bisexuality from public view or discussion.
• There is no “bisexual agenda” because eventually most bisexuals develop primary relationships that are either straight or gay.
• The fact that sexuality has become politicized has reduced bisexual behavior.
• Significant numbers of people are “situationally” gay or straight.