[Greta Christina] “An Actual Lesbian Girlfriend,” Or, Why You Should Never Listen to Dan Savage About Bisexuality
Usually, when I write about a Dan Savage sex advice column, it’s with respect and admiration. It’s usually with a strong desire to share his ideas more widely, and to expand on those ideas with my own.
Not this time.
This time, I am smacking Mr. Savage across the head, and telling to stop acting like a twit.
In a recent column, Savage compiled a sampler of questions from students on his recent tour of universities. And among them was this question:
“I’m a lesbian, and my girlfriend is bisexual and wants to have a three-way with a man. This makes me nervous. What should I do?”
Savage’s advice?
“Get yourself a refillable Xanax prescription, or get yourself an actual lesbian girlfriend.”
WTF?!?
This advice is so irresponsible it made my jaw drop. But •because the advice is so terse — and because the snark- to- content ratio is so disproportionately high — it’s a little hard to tease out its actual content, and the actual intent behind it. Near as I can tell, though, it seems to be one of the following three things. All of which suck.
Lesbians should beware of relationships with bisexual women, since bi women will leave lesbians for men. In a relationship between a lesbian and a bi woman, this will always be an irreparable source of anxiety. Lesbians are better off with other lesbians — they’re more reliable.
Right. And no lesbian in the history of Lesbonia has ever left her lover for another woman.
I have never been able to figure this one out. Why is it so intolerable for a lesbian to be left for a man, or for a gay man to be left for a woman? Why is this so radically different from being left for another woman, or another man? Dumpage is dumpage. Why should the genitals of the person you’re being dumped for make any difference?
Maybe Savage has fallen prey to the myth that bisexuals can’t be monogamous or satisfied in a relationship, because they’ll always be yearning for the gender they don’t have. If so . . . does he have any evidence for that? Is there any reason to think that being hot for both women and men makes you restless and cheaty, any more than being hot for both blonds and brunettes does?
And is there any evidence for the idea — one that Savage has asserted before, with no apparent basis in actual research — that bisexuals are more likely to wind up in opposite- sex relationships than same- sex ones?
The snark here is especially puzzling because, in this very column, Savage answers a more general question about three-ways with a thoughtful and fair reply. Question:
“We are a couple in a long-term committed relationship and have casually considered the possibility of a three-way. It would have to be with someone neither of us knew (or saw) to reduce any chance of an emotional attachment. Good idea?”
Savage’s advice:
“Three-ways with complete strangers are kind of difficult to arrange — unless you’re willing to go the rent-a-third route. But if you want to have a three-way with someone trustworthy and safe, you’re better off doing it with an acquaintance or an ex.”
A reasonable answer. A bit broad, could have used some clarification; but fine for a column of quickies. And his quickie response shows a basic respect for both the questioner and their partner, and for both of their sexual desires. Why doesn’t the bisexual girlfriend get the same respect?
So. That’s Option 1. Option 2:
Lesbians should beware of relationships with bisexual women, since the bi women will try to get them to do sexual things — like FFM three-ways — that the lesbians don’t want to do.
Right. And no lesbian in the history of lesbianicity has ever pressured her lover to do sexual things she doesn’t want.
If your bisexual girlfriend wants to have a three- way with a man, and it’s not your thing, then say, “No.” Or, if you’re non-monogamous, say, “No, I don’t want to, but you go knock yourself out with some other partner.” Or, if the idea doesn’t completely gross you out and you like to be good, giving, and game, say, “Yeah, sure, I’ll give that a try.”
Just like you would if your lesbian girlfriend wanted to fuck you in the ass, or wanted you to dress her up like a pony, or wanted to role-play at being Ann Coulter and Martha Stewart — or wanted to do a three-way with another woman — and it’s not your thing.
What does that have to do with bisexual versus lesbian?
If Mr. Savage wouldn’t advise anyone else to break up with their partner solely because of their unshared interest in ass play or pony play or Coulter play . . . why is he advising this woman to break up with her bisexual girlfriend, solely because of her unshared interest in MFF three-way play?
Finally, Option 3:
None of the above — at least, not clearly or explicitly. Dan Savage just has a bug up his butt about bisexuals, and he enjoys yanking our chain and watching us jump.
If that’s it, then good job. Well done. Here I am, Mr. Savage, along with probably lots of other bisexuals, jumping at the yank of your chain. If you wanted to make Serak the Bisexual cry, mission accomplished.
But is that really a mission you want to accomplish?
Do you really want to convey misinformation about bisexuals — especially to college students, many of whom are only beginning to figure out sex and their own sexual identity — just so you can have fun watching us get ticked off?
Let me ask you this, Mr. Savage. If you read a sex advice columnist who deliberately spread harmful sexual myths about gay men, just because he had a grudge against them and took pleasure in provoking them . . . how would you react? Would you think, “Oh, that cut-up, he has such a wacky sense of humor”? Or would you think he was acting like a bigoted, irresponsible, manipulative twit?
See, the other bug that Savage seems to have up his butt about bisexuals is that we take ourselves too seriously, and don’t have a sense of humor about being goaded. Unlike everybody else on the planet — and definitely unlike every other marginalized group — we get annoyed when people deliberately poke at our sore spots with a stick. How unreasonable of us.
The bisexuals I know have a great sense of humor — about bisexuality among other things. But yes, freakishly enough, when you prick us, we bleed. When you poison our reputation, we suffer. And when you wrong us, we may not revenge, but we fucking well are going to squawk about it.
It’s the phrase “actual lesbian girlfriend” that really frosts my cookies. I have been an actual girlfriend to my sweetheart — also female, also bisexual — for over eleven years. Technically, I suppose I’m not her “actual girlfriend” anymore, since we’ve gotten married — three times, in fact — and I’m now her “actual wife.” But the fact that I am an actual bisexual wife instead of an actual lesbian wife has exactly zero impact on my love, my loyalty, my passionate devotion to her, and my commitment to our relationship.
And I have more than paid my dues for the LGBT community. I’ve worked for shitty pay for LGBT community businesses; I’ve donated money to LGBT organizations; I’ve written at length, over the entire course of my career, about LGBT issues. I am not Them. I am Us. And I am tired of gays and lesbians treating me like a Them simply because I have crushes on both Rachel Maddow and Alan Rickman.
I don’t know what your issues are with bisexuals, Mr. Savage. I don’t know whether you got dumped for a woman by a bi guy and got your heart stomped, or what. And I don’t care. You’re acting like a twit. You’ve acted like a twit about this issue for as long as I’ve been reading you. Get over it.
You’re a sex advisor. As such, you have a responsibility to base your advice on reality — not on your personal biases or vendettas. Try this for a quickie answer to the question: “Relax. If you don’t want a MFF three-way, say ‘No.’ Just like you would with any other sexual request you’re not interested in.” Or, if you want to be more nuanced, try this: “What exactly are you nervous about? Are you afraid she’ll leave you if you say ‘No’? Or if you say ‘Yes’? Figure out what you’re nervous about. Tell your girlfriend. Find out where she’s coming from with this and how important it is to her. And work it out.”
See? Was that so hard?
You’re a sex advisor. You’re usually a good one. Act like one. Don’t give advice that misinforms people — especially young people — about bisexuals, just because you have some weird bug up your ass about us. Get over it already.
This entry was posted on Friday, 27 February 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on Friday, 27 February 2009 at 1:36 pm jove wrote:
I think his message was “If dating a bisexual makes you nervous, then don’t date a bisexual.”
His bread and butter is being snarky. And as he’s famous for saying, if you don’t like his advice, then don’t take it. He has no legal (maybe a moral one though) responsibility whatsoever to give good advice. He’s not licensed or anything, people just listen to him because he’s honest and usually right.
on Friday, 27 February 2009 at 2:24 pm Dave Hasbrouck wrote:
Did you actually send this to Savage, or is it just posted here? I’d be curious to see if he responds… To be honest, I think I’d be disappointed in him if he didn’t respond.
on Friday, 27 February 2009 at 2:51 pm Alex wrote:
Well- there’s another option. He could be implying that the bisexual girlfriend is actually straight, but as another bi college student, I really hope not.
Regarding your first point, I’ve always gotten the impression that it was more a fear of their partner leaving them for straight privilege- the idea that since a bisexual person *can* pick up and move to white picket fence land, they eventually will. Personally, I think that’s really fucking insulting, but… a lot of gay people I know really struggled with their sexuality, and spent a lot of time wishing that they were attracted to members of the opposite sex. And they mostly had very liberal parents. I can’t deny that when I was 14 and panicking about it, I *did* decide that I would just date boys, that my parents didn’t have to know, that I didn’t have to risk my friends hating me, and unlike all the “real lesbians” who’ve thought the exact same thing, I could have done it without denying myself the chance to fuck someone I actually wanted. So I can see where this point comes from, even if I think it’s something that people should get over by the time they get to college- or at least by the time they leave it. :P
on Friday, 27 February 2009 at 2:57 pm Vic wrote:
“role-play at being Ann Coulter and Martha Stewart”
I thought I was unshockable, but that’s just gross ;-)
I wish I could figure out what Savage’s problem is with bisexuality. I love him to pieces on just about any other subject, but it’s like he has a complete blind spot with this. As though he thinks we’re making it up, and if we just *tried*, we’d “know what we really were”. Sad.
on Friday, 27 February 2009 at 3:01 pm Paul Crowley wrote:
If anyone can put it in such a way that he’ll actually take it to heart, it’s you. Sadly, I’m not sure there is.
on Friday, 27 February 2009 at 7:02 pm MAK wrote:
Rachael Maddow and Severus Snape? Now there’s fodder for fantasy.
on Friday, 27 February 2009 at 8:50 pm Sandi wrote:
G.C., how do you continue to respect and admire Dan Savage? The biphobia is hardly where it ends with him.
There was that time he gleefully joined in shaming women for their body fat (this continued the following week).
And there was his incredibly divisive, minimizing, and privileged take on Prop 8 and Black folk.
The one in which he blames a woman for choosing an abusive husband, all but calls her damaged goods, and then goes on to dismiss the abuse as a lie because the descriptions of the abuse are “too perfectly monstrous” really pisses me off.
I would imagine that there are more examples of Savage being an asshole, but I try not to read him, so this is all I’ve got on hand (other than the biphobia of which you seem amply aware). And it isn’t that I don’t like your rebuttal above—I do! And it isn’t that I don’t recognize that Savage has said useful, sensible things—I do! Yet, I feel that a lot of excuses and exceptions are made for him because he can be a such a great sex columnist. But his utility can only excuse so much terrible bullshit, no? Surely there is someone out there (cough, cough YOU) who can be a great sex columnist without also being a deplorable asshole?
on Friday, 27 February 2009 at 9:18 pm underscore wrote:
I’ve been having an ongoing conversation -ok, debate- with my friends about bisexuality and bisexual behaviors, and we keep butting heads about the issue. And I think you, greta, often make a really good point in a lot of your articles about the importance of nuance in a conversation. I think bisexuality is sometimes a difficult concept for people to grasp because it really does require nuance to talk about it well. Bisexuality also sheds some serious light on some of the more tried and true (read: old and tired) arguments about gay and lesbian issues. For instance, when I first came out, I did the whole, “Do you really think I would choose this? If it’s so horrible for you, don’t you think it’s just as horrible for me?” …which. just. baffles me now. I don’t think it’s a particularly well thought out argument, and yet I’ve heard it so many times! I’ve read it in books, I’ve heard it from counselors. And I think part of the problem with it is that it’s too black and white. Part of the problem with that particular argument (as I think you’ve said before) is that it sort of disregards bisexual people, at least in the sense that bisexuals have the opportunity to sort of exclusively date women, or exclusively date men, and that is sort of, with nuance here people, a choice. But there are also bisexual people who also don’t want to exclusively date, or sleep with, or have relationships with, either gender. And there are bisexuals who want to date, sleep with, have relationships with both genders for the rest of their lives. And the point I’m trying to make here is that, yes Dan Savage’s comment is flippant, but also, the discourse about bisexuality, the discussions and debates we are all having need more nuance. Sorry this is so long.
on Friday, 27 February 2009 at 10:55 pm lisag wrote:
uhm, so I’m also a bi-girl, married to another bi-girl, both of us strictly monogamous. i read his advice and kinda nodded to myself.
on the bi-scale, i’m a LOT more straight then my wife. it’s no real secret to either of us. and if I wanted a dude in our relationship, she’d be nervous (and rightly so, i’d think) that she wasn’t “enough” for me. and she’d be really hurt–whether or not i wanted her there as well. It’d be one thing if i wanted another woman–my wife could conceivably feel that this new chick didn’t have anything she didn’t have, and/or couldn’t give to me. A dude, though–knowing that I actually am (generally) more attracted to men…she’d have a right to be pissed off, I think.
and that, I think is at the heart of the bi-phobia in the queer community. it’s not the privilage of “passing” (though that’s part of it), it’s the idea that the person you are dating might not actually be able to satisfied by what you’ve got to offer. ever. and there isn’t anything you can do about it.
this isn’t saying that savage doesn’t have some (lots and many in varied forms) issues with us bi folk–but I think this time he’s right on. if you worry a lot about your partners leaving you for the opposite sex, because you see it as something you CANNOT help, fix, or compete with–it is better to date folks who aren’t as likely to date outside their own gender.
some of bi-girls, even those of us in long term, monogamous relationships with other girls–well, we’re bi and we identify as such. I’m not a lesbian, real or otherwise. I was more likely to marry a dude–I just fell in love with the awesomest woman on the planet, and that’s been that.
so, here–Dan Savage is right on. if you are dating somebody who cannot be satisfied by what you have, and you are not willing to try to compete…
go on, date the kind of person you wanna date. Don’t run the risk of playing second fiddle to somebody with a completely different set of fun-bits that you can only approximate.
on Saturday, 28 February 2009 at 1:07 am cthellis wrote:
Screw Dan Savage… I want sex advice from ADAM Savage! I’m wondering how long it takes him to recommend using “a dildo made of thermite.”
on Saturday, 28 February 2009 at 3:29 am Joanna wrote:
Please tell that to my girlfriend. When I let on that I was kind of bi, sort of, not exactly but maybe a little– oh. my. gosh. She would not let up about that until I swore off men on all 4 grandparents’ graves, crossed my heart and hoped to die. Something about the teeny little word “bi” triggered off major insecurities. Tonight when she took me out to dinner, I told her I used to look at heterosexual porn, but hadn’t gone near it in months, just for her. I washed men right out of my pubic hair and sent them down the drain. She was pleased. It wasn’t a sacrifice for me or anything, I am so totally into her and could care less about men. But jeez, dial back the drama just a bit, babygirl, for me, please?
on Saturday, 28 February 2009 at 11:17 am funny_bunny wrote:
Love, love, loved this article!!!
on Saturday, 28 February 2009 at 5:39 pm John the Drunkard wrote:
To mitigate Dan’s crassness: Just the previous week, Dan had lowered the boom on a het woman who had married a polyamorous man and promptly panicked the first time he suggested any polywhatever activity.
‘Real’ lesbianism isn’t invovled in the original question. Polywhateverism was. ‘My girlfriend has suggested a three-way and I don’t wanna’ is the root issue. Even if the poly.. has been in the open, the issue is: ‘My girlfriend has suggested a three-way with X and I don’t wanna.’
So, a ‘really monogamous’ girlfriend, or a girlfriend with polywhatever tendencies predefined to ‘really match’ yours is the issue.
(writing as a het boy with monogomous/bi girlfriend)
on Sunday, 1 March 2009 at 12:52 am Indigo wrote:
John the Drunkard -
Actually, the wife tried swinging - quite a number of times, according to her claim - and found it weird and unpleasant. She then permitted her husband to go out and have his fun times without her, and again felt badly. She never “panicked” at all.
on Sunday, 1 March 2009 at 4:46 am qjersey wrote:
Savage can make astute and witty comments at times on political issues, but he HAS NO TRAINING OR EDUCATION in counseling. Some of the things he says wouldn’t fly in your typical college level human sexuality class or public health class (when he gets to talking about HIV/STDs)
on Sunday, 1 March 2009 at 2:20 pm Adam wrote:
I’m here to defend Dan Savage.
The hard part of an advice columnist’s job is making educated assumptions about the people who write in. As a rule, people seeking advice are embarrassed, so they omit and elide important information. Ostensibly, Dan’s job is to answer his readers’ questions; actually, his job is to rephrase their questions in ways that make the answers self-evident. I’ll concede he sounds a little presumptuous in the advice you quote here, but honestly, unless you’re 80 years old, wisdom and glibness are twins.
If you can agree to forgive his tone, you’ll see that the advice he gives is excellent. Here is a college-age girl who identifies as a lesbian. How long has she been calling herself that? Since high school, maybe? So, here is an inexperienced lesbian who is spooked by her bisexual girlfriend’s desire to invite a man home, to the extent that she solicits advice from a sex columnist (her friends were that unhelpful?). We can be sure that this is a girl who is insecure in her relationship, and we can assume that she is insecure in her sexuality, too.
Dan Savage imagines her coming out not too long ago and remembers his own experience of coming out. There are a million tiny feelings he can reliably project onto this girl: a sense of doom and of no return, her self-hatred for letting her parents down, that singular mix of shame and relief she felt when she told her best friend. It was traumatic and exhausting for her to get to the point where she could call herself a lesbian. It was an enormous, defiant act of will. And it was so recent!
I promise you, this girl’s identity is still fragile. She isn’t totally sure yet that being true to herself was worth the trauma. Bisexual people face their own problems, to be sure, but they have the privilege of casting the anchor of heteronormativity at will. I don’t mean that bisexual people are opportunists (neither does Dan, I don’t think); I just mean that they can give their parents grandkids without betraying themselves.
When a college-aged lesbian has a bisexual girlfriend, part of the attraction is rooted in jealousy. Please consider how much of her identity the lesbian has had to jettison in the past few years. She idolizes and envies her girlfriend for her ability to pass as straight. What’s worse, a lot of her self-worth is based in her ability to hold her girlfriend’s attention. She thinks, “It would be so much easier for my girlfriend to date a guy. It says great things about me that she is willing to give up convenience in order to date me.” This isn’t a wholesome train of thought, but it is a natural part of learning how to be comfortably gay. What a kick in the teeth, then, to think that having a guy there would be an improvement.
Judging by the edge to his tone, Dan Savage knows from personal experience that this poor, gay girl is about to be sad and/or single. The Xanax part was a little snotty of him, but he is right on about finding another lesbian to date. As long as she’s with her bisexual girlfriend, she’ll continue to define herself in terms of someone else’s straightness. Maybe she can try a bi girl again in grad school.
Am I off-base here?
Adam
P.S. After I wrote this, I was worried my reasoning was a little too hypothetical, so I ran it by a black, straight, female friend of mine. She said, “Yeah, it’s kind of like dating a light-skinned guy who leaves you for a white girl.” I’m not gonna touch that one.
on Sunday, 1 March 2009 at 5:18 pm Mathgal wrote:
“And is there any evidence for the idea — one that Savage has asserted before, with no apparent basis in actual research — that bisexuals are more likely to wind up in opposite- sex relationships than same- sex ones?”
I have a theory about that, actually!
Suppose I’m a bisexual woman. Suppose I’m equally attracted to both men and women. Suppose, further, that the “1-in-10 people are gay” statistic is roughly correct (though I’m not sure exactly where bisexuality fits in there). Anyway. This would mean that 9 out of 10 men I encounter are potentially attracted to me, while only 1 in 10 women are potentially attracted to me. That means a male crush is 9 times more likely to return my feelings than a female crush! So it wouldn’t surprise me if, say, 90% bisexual people end up in het relationships — it’s all about the probabilities!
(My theory also has no basis in actual research, of course!)
on Monday, 2 March 2009 at 8:10 am John Clark wrote:
& just when I thought Dan was starting to have respect for bi-women … At least he believes in your existence now — a few months back he wrote about it, then went off the deep end using Bailey’s “research” to “justify” his belief that men cannot be bi.
I just love the “hetro-privilege” comments. Is this the privilege of being suspect by both the gay & straight communities, or the privilege of living in the closet?
Don’t we deserve the same respect we give the our monosexual friends? What really gets me is that LGBT organizations can’t even say “same-sex marriage”. If they can’t understand that not everyone in a same-sex relationship is LG, what does the B in LGBT even mean?
on Monday, 2 March 2009 at 9:06 am Adam wrote:
John,
I’m happy you love my comment! However, I worry I didn’t explain myself clearly, as I don’t believe either of the things you mention to be ‘privileges;’ I meant only that bisexuals have the privilege of expanded choice, and the privilege of passing as straight, if they want to. Obviously, they shouldn’t have to, but generally speaking, the process of coming out for a bisexual person isn’t as urgent or as central as it is for an exclusively gay person.
I don’t believe this idea is disrespectful, even if it is sometimes named in lists of anti-bi ideas that are disrespectful. Of course bi people deserve respect! It would be pig-headed, though, not to acknowledge that some people express respect as jealousy. I get the sense that this is what you’re so sensitive to.
The difference between “same-sex marriage” and “gay marriage” is tiny and entirely semantic. I can’t think of a gay person who cares which term is used. Maybe gay organizations have some sort of agenda in preferring one over the other, but if these are the same gay organizations that can’t assure same-sex marriage in California, I wouldn’t worry too much about their overarching cultural influence. You can sleep safe.
I don’t know about Bailey’s research, and I’m only familiar in passing with Dan Savage’s history of dissing bi people. Apart from that context, though, the advice he gives here is what this girl needs to hear.
on Monday, 2 March 2009 at 10:43 am Alex wrote:
And, on the hetero-privilege note… my post was about where I saw some G&L fears as coming from; I also described those fears as insulting, and something people should grow out of. That said, having dated both men and women, I’d say that my relationships with my boyfriend was privileged in many tiny ways my relationships with my girlfriends were not. A very small sample include: not having to worry about whether it was safe to greet him with kisses, talk about him to my coworkers, or bring him home to my parents (who are pretty conservative). I rarely had to do the “yes, we are together, *that way* dance”, and when I did it wasn’t charged in the same way. And I didn’t have to be in the closet to have those advantages. I obviously can’t speak for you or any other bi person, but in my (very limited) experience, while being bi comes with its own problems, we do have some advantages G&Ls don’t. That doesn’t make our desires less valid or lessen our right to the same respect everybody else gets.
on Monday, 2 March 2009 at 12:01 pm Aviva wrote:
Dave — I don’t know if Greta sent this to him, but I recently emailed him with a response to a different comment about bisexuality — also posted in my blog here http://bifurious.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/ill-tell-you-what-you-can-do-with-your-freakin-superpoweran-open-letter-to-dan-savage/ He never responded to that one, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he never responds to this either. I don’t think he’s at all interested in not discriminating against bisexuals.
on Monday, 2 March 2009 at 3:55 pm Becky wrote:
Mmmm Rachel Maddow and Alan Rickman; excellent taste! Thank you for speaking up for all of us Bisexuals. I find we often get the short end of the stick in the eyes of the LGBT and heterosexual community. The ‘B’ and the ‘T’ of LGBT are often frowned upon. :(
on Monday, 2 March 2009 at 7:07 pm Ein wrote:
Honestly, I assumed he meant the same thing he does in very similar situations:
“Either learn to accept the differences in your partner’s sexuality comparative to your own, or find someone with more similar sexual preferences.” The Xanax comment corresponds to the first, the lesbian comment to the second.
That’s it, really. This is advice he repeats over and over again in every applicable situation. I think he was so short about it because he’s so used to giving this kind of answer.
I think you’re starting at shadows. “Actual lesbian” in this case means a female attracted exclusively to females - a female bisexual isn’t a lesbian. That would be the point of the separate category. I don’t think there’s a slur there, and I’ve been looking.
on Wednesday, 4 March 2009 at 9:37 pm Round-up « Bi-Furious! wrote:
[…] Girlfriend, Esq. pointed me to Greta Christina’s response to Dan Savage’s latest insensitive comment about bisexuals. I’d missed it somehow, but as always, Greta Christina does a thorough and brilliant job of responding. I don’t think I have anything to add. Other than that Dan Savage may make his reputation on his snark, but the occasional columns where a dozen questions get brief answers really help no one. They just let him showcase his wit without giving actual advice. Even he could probably have done a better job of answering that one if he’d fleshed it out more; at least we’d know which fucked up thing exactly he was getting at. […]
on Thursday, 5 March 2009 at 1:58 am K wrote:
“generally speaking, the process of coming out for a bisexual person isn’t as urgent or as central as it is for an exclusively gay person.”
Maybe the bi people you know were incredibly lucky in being able to come to grips with their identities with little urgency, stress, anxiety, fear, or impact on the very core of their being? Or maybe I and most of the bi people I know were peculiarly unlucky?
My understanding is that women who identify as bi are actually more likely to have long-term female partners than male partners, which sinks the statistical likelihood based on potential partner pools. Further, Lisa Diamond’s research (amongst others) shows that women who identify as lesbian are likely to show some pattern of bisexual patterns of attraction (come on, how many lesbians and gay men do you know who NEVER hook up with someone of another sex/gender identity?) - and I tend to believe that it’s this, on top of the desperation to police the community boundaries to make it a safe place for lesbians and gay men because the straight world is so scary that can make some lesbians and gay men so very angry and hostile towards bi and trans people.
We live in a world where things are often presented as either/or: You’re with us or against us, it’s us or them, it’s one thing or the other. They had to fight for their identities, they had to fight for community and safe space… and they may have had to deal with a body that sometimes betrays their ideas of being “gold star” lesbians and gay men by being attracted to the “wrong” sex. And, as someone who struggled mightily with her orientation, the more you try to suppress important things about your self-image and identity, the less tolerant you are of important things about others’ - because if it’s OK for them, it might be OK for you, and it causes too much scary cognitive dissonance to deal with. That’s a simplistic take on how fear about yourself gets projected out, but when you add it to cultural pressure to be one thing or the other, the fact that the world is set up to privilege some kinds of relationships and not others, the pain and baggage that people almost always bring to relationships of any type, and the tendency for marginalised groups to shoot ourselves in the feet by insisting that people have to be Purer Than Thou to be part of our party, it’s maybe not such a bad working model.
on Thursday, 5 March 2009 at 7:43 am Eddie wrote:
Being Bi isn’t just about practice, it is about orientation. An some mono’s struggle with that.
I used to play the ‘monosexuals are kidding themselves’ card until I met some very mono folks. People who just don’t get that you can be attracted to both genders physically & emotionally. Yes I dated a few folks like this who felt threatened - not because I wanted to have sex with someone of another gender, I didn’t - but because I felt the attraction in the first place.
I think folks like Dan need to realise that being Bi is a sexuality attractor like being straight or lesbian/gay. If you are Bi you can try as pass as straight (or gay/lesbian) but at some point you will give the game away.
A lot of Bi folks I know play with gender identities and roles in a way you don’t see so often in the lesbian/gay world. The ‘alternative’ and ‘indie’ music & club scene are a haven.
But in a way Dan is right. My advice to bisexuals is to seek relationships with other bisexuals of either gender. Then when you suggest the bi-threeway even if they don’t say yes at least they will understand the attraction.
on Thursday, 5 March 2009 at 2:34 pm Christina wrote:
And I am tired of gays and lesbians treating me like a Them simply because I have crushes on both Rachel Maddow and Alan Rickman.
I agree with Becky; this is just damn good taste. (Ah, “hot is hot,” the bisexual warcry.) Cheers.
on Thursday, 5 March 2009 at 10:32 pm Michael Price wrote:
>I think his message was “If dating a bisexual makes you nervous, then don’t date a bisexual.”
There are 3 alternatives for this woman, 1) Xanax prescription, 2) an “actual lesbian girlfriend.” and 3) actually communicating with the woman she’s sleeping with. I can see how he could miss the third one, I mean I always resort to either drugs or dumping my lover when I get anxious, so maybe he does too. She’s not nervous about dating a bisexual (at least she wasn’t before this asinine advice) she’s nervous about being asked to do a threesome with someone she isn’t attracted to. There may be many reasons for this, so reasonable, some not so much but the key is communication, thought, more communication, more thought then action.