Bad News, Bisexuals: We’ve Got An Image Problem
Specifically, what is our image?
My fellow bisexuals, I know we’re masters of camouflage. But I don’t know how to make that change.
Pop culture is getting there, slowly, moving the needle from outright psychopathic villain (Glenn Close in Basic Instinct) to flirty striving heroine (Kristen Bell in The Good Place). We feel pretty safe that when someone’s bisexuality is declared on screen in Act 1, we’re unlikely to see a family pet murdered by their hand in Act 3. This feels like progress, especially for the pets. And certainly there’s depictions of the sexy side of bisexuals, sliding between the sheets with pretty people across the gender spectrum. Effortlessly casting their spells across potential partners, snaring them, entrapping them in their bi+ web of mystery. If not progress, this is at least something of an ego boost. Who doesn’t want to be the brightest flame that draws all the moths?
The problem with these representations, of course, is that they don’t seem to actually represent the bisexual experience that many of us feel: the weird, lurking, uneasy-in-our-skin sensations that prevent us from burning bright at all, but instead drive us to blend in to the situation, like a beige chameleon. “I’m too straight for the gays, and too gay for the straights,” laments the beige bisexual. “So I just smile and nod and try to fit in.” Hardly exotic and mysterious.
We try to find one another, subtly. There’s plenty of secret codes and wink-nudge symbols to go around, but the problem with secret codes and symbols is that they’re secret. Nobody but the in-crowd knows about them, not really, and like bisexuality in general, they’re kind of normal looking. Poor sitting posture? A love of iced coffee? Frogs? Cute and cliquish, sure, but hardly a defining symbol to rally around or something that states, clearly and unequivocally: I AM BISEXUAL and also YOUR PETS ARE SAFE.
For a population that has made it our life study to smile and nod and fit in, what can we do when we want to stand out? A same- or mixed-gender couple holding hands is almost certainly seen as two partnered monosexuals. There is no shortage of pride flags, but plenty of lack of awareness about their meanings. Is anyone handing out field guides? Can I get copies to give to my friends? Sometimes I feel no more desperate than when I realize I’ve “fit in” all my life, to the point where the world thinks it knows the shape of me. It assumes my limits and my boundaries because I look and act like everyone else. “Straight-passing” or “gay-passing” can be a comfort to the closeted, and a burden to the Out.
We should be able to do better. There must be some option beyond slogans on T-shirts and purple-shaded bicycle tattoos. How do we present ourselves to the world? How do we break down presumed monosexual until proven otherwise? Because we need to reach those who are just fitting in and getting by, who aren’t able to acknowledge this part within themselves. We owe them the insight that they are living a whole, complete identity, and are not just assembled from pieces of others. That we’re not all lunatics or heroines or flirty bright flames, but are also ordinary people with hangups and crushes and worries and families and workplaces and life.
We fit in too well, sometimes. Most times, I’d say. So what can we do to stand out?
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