It has been fashionable at some times to say things like "Everyone's a little bit bisexual." I'm not going to make any claims about that. I do think that, if you are in the presence of a spectacularly attractive person of any gender, it is possible to be attracted to them regardless of your own gender and orientation. If you've been trained to repress it, or to think "I'm just admiring his/her physique in a purely aesthetic way," you can go your entire life without admitting it, and probably without being any the worse.
But that's not - well, who am I to say what bisexuality is, but I don't think it necessarily counts if you have one fling or a grope session behind the gymnasium. When I say I'm bisexual, I don't mean I'm a lesbian who doesn't mind having sex with men or a straight girl who's amenable to making out with a woman. I mean that, if Antonio Banderas were standing on one side of the room and k.d. lang were on the other, and they both wanted to have sex with me, but I could only go to one of them, I would literally not be able to choose. I would probably blow some kind of fuse and keel over in a dead faint. Or I'd just stand there for so long that they'd both get bored and go do something else.
One problem with being bisexual is that it has SEX right in the middle of it - you can tell your mother you're gay or lesbian without actually uttering the syllable "sex," but if you're biSEXual, you're stuck with it.
And of course just about everyone, straight and queer, thinks there's something wrong with you - that you can't make up your mind. "Well, if you do like [fill in opposite sex here], why don't you just date them?" Right, and if I like apples, why don't I stop eating oranges? "You can't commit to being queer. You can get out of it. You're still trying to be straight. You want straight people to accept you." Oh, yeah, if only it worked that way.
The fact is, my parents really would be happier if I were a lesbian; at least then they'd believe I had no choice. I think queers would like it better too. Monosexuals, hetero and homo, look at me as if to say, "How can you like men and women?" And I look at them and think, "How can you not?"
First of all, to get the SEX part out of the way...a beautiful body, a beautiful face, is beautiful whether there's a Y chromosome behind it or not. Can you really tell, when your eyes are closed and you're kissing someone? As far as I've noticed, everyone's tongue tastes the same.
And, apart from that (and a vast percentage of everyone's life is apart from that; even porn stars don't spend more than 30% of their time having sex), if someone loves you, if you like being with them, if you have the same taste in music and wine and you really do want to spend all your time together, maybe even your whole lives - well, yes, it's still more socially acceptable if that person is of the opposite gender, but if I fall head over heels in love with a woman I'm not going to dump her just because I'm afraid of prejudice or I want a big white wedding dress. And if I fall head over heels in love with a man and he asks me to marry him I'm not going to say no just because queers might think I'm a sellout and my parents will say "Whew, it really was just a phase."
I like people - I love people - for who they are, not what they are. And isn't that what minority movements are all about? "Judge me because of who I am and what I do, not because I happened to be born a certain race or gender, because my ancestors came from a certain country, because I believe in a certain religion, because I love who I love."
"Bisexual" does not mean "I can't make up my mind." (Since when did sexual attraction have anything to do with the conscious mind, anyway?) It doesn't mean "I will cheerfully agree to a menage a trois with you and your wife." Where did the fun-loving bisexual stereotype come from, anyway? You can also be an uptight, straitlaced bisexual, or a depressed bisexual, or a completely celibate bisexual. (I'm a depressed bisexual, actually, at least when I'm not on my medication.)
It really only means this: I like apples. And I like oranges. I don't know why; I don't know why some people only like one or the other. All I know is that I'm glad I've tasted both.
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Back to homepage |
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Go to my coming out story and all my wrestling with "If I like men I can't be gay!" |
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Go to my Queer Quotes page, which has a section on bisexuality. |
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Go to my queer links page, with queer as well as bi-specific resources. |
© 1999 zeugmagirl@geocities.com
Updated March 11, 1999
URL: http://geocities.datacellar.net/~zeugmagirl/bi.html
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