June 22, 2015 • 47 mins
Why does the B in LGBT often get overlooked? Cristen and Caroline examine America's history of bisexual erasure and how bisexual people face prejudice from straight and gay communities alike.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how stup
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and this week we're talking about
a highly requested topic on bisexuality and more specifically bisexual erasure. Yeah,
(00:27):
we've talked about plenty of sexual orientation and sexuality issues
on the podcast, but we have gotten a lot of
letters just kindly reminding us, Hey, guys, you know you
talk a lot about gay men or lesbians or trans
people and trans issues, but where is the discussion of bisexuality.
Kristen and I did do an episode on bisexual men,
(00:50):
mainly the fact that they exist, a couple of years ago,
and it was definitely time after hearing from you guys,
to revisit this topic. And we've also heard from stuff
Mom Ever Told You listeners about this when we have
talked about same sex marriage in the past, and specifically
requesting that we refer to it as same sex marriage
rather than gay marriage, because the firsthand from some listeners saying,
(01:16):
you know what, gay marriage doesn't exactly encompass my experience
as a bisexual woman who is married to another woman
or who wants to be married to another woman. So
there are there are different ways that this kind of
bisexual erasure can exist, simply in the way that we
(01:37):
talk about even issues of equality. Yeah, and a big
part of this conversation, whether it's about bisexuality in general
or the issue of bisexual erasure, is sort of the
discussion of stereotypes and the things that we assume about
bisexual people and how we contend to dismiss them. For instance,
when christ and I did that episode on the fact
(02:00):
that yes, bisexual men exist, I remember distinctly getting a
letter from a self described gay man who said, Oh,
this is actually a really interesting and enlightening episode for me,
because I literally assumed that any man who called himself
by was just lying that he was on the way
to being gay. Yeah, the whole gay straight are lying
(02:23):
is a pretty common stereotype, and especially when it comes
to men in particular, because this whole conversation about bisexuality
and bisexual erasure definitely has a gendered element to it,
where it seems easier for us to accept that women
(02:46):
are capable of bisexuality, but men, for some reason are
harder for us to wrap around. And we've talked about
this before as well in the podcast in terms of
women's sexuality being considered more fluid whereas men tend to
be more rigid. And we'll talk more about the scientific
studies that foster those kinds of assumptions. But I mean, really,
(03:10):
at the end of the day, Uh, it becomes clearer
and clearer the more research that comes out and the
more finely tuned that research is of just how much
sexuality is a spectrum, yeah, exactly, and issues of how
that spectrum is that good because it includes bisexual people,
(03:32):
or is that negative for bisexuals because it erases them
and replaces them with the idea of sexual fluidity. This
is all stuff we're going to talk about in these
next two episodes. And we're also of course going to
talk a lot about media representation. This isn't just like
where the bisexuals in Kristen and Carolines conversations. This is
(03:53):
a bigger conversation, including the issue of representation on screen,
in media, in articles and studies and all of this stuff,
and how a lot of people out there, a lot
of critics and media watchers out there are saying, yeah,
we are getting more and better bisexual characters. Uh, LGBT
(04:13):
characters in general, but also bisexual characters. But it definitely
hasn't always been that way now. That stands in market
contrast to our conversation not long ago about the rise
of transgender characters on television and how two thousand fourteen
was hailed as this watershed year for trans characters really
(04:37):
coming to life in a more well rounded and holistic
kind of way with with limited still examples. But for
bisexuals in the media, and I'm talking about bisexuals I
r L and also on screen, two thousand fourteen, at
least according to The Advocate, was not such a great year.
(04:59):
In in fact, they called it the Year of bisexual erasure. Yeah,
And to kick off their article, the Advocate points to
specifically ben Ja deniz A Lewis's article in New York
Times magazine called the Scientific Quest to Prove Bisexuality Exists,
in which he talks about not only the scientific and
(05:19):
academic research that's going on into bisexuality, but also the stereotypes,
uh and assumptions that still exist. For instance, he lays
out the assumption that quote in the eyes of many Americans,
bisexuality despite occasional and exaggerated media reports of its chekness
remains a bewildering and potentially invented orientation favored by men
(05:42):
and denial about their homosexuality and by women who will
inevitably settle down with men. Now, when I read that
New York Times magazine article, I didn't think on its
on its face that it was negative. I didn't think
it was negative about bisexual people or the bisexual community.
But many critics uh pointed to the article and said
(06:05):
this only focuses on bisexual men, not enough about bisexual women,
but also points to the fact that Dennis A. Lewis
focused a lot on the scientific aspect, which by the way,
was in the headline, but the scientific aspect of studying
whether bisexuality exists at all, And so many people are saying, hey,
(06:25):
we are so past this point. We are so past
this point of proving whether bisexuality or pan sexuality or
sexual fluidity exists. We know it does because we're living it.
And so there was a lot of criticism there that
the writer, the New York Times magazine writer focused too
much on that and not enough about maybe the cultural issues.
(06:47):
But I will say this, sitting in my chair in
the Journalism School Auditorium that the headline says it all,
it's a scientific quest to prove bisexuality exists. And Denniz A.
Lewis spends a out of the time in the piece
hanging out with the founders of the American Instituted Bisexuality
and really focusing on their more political and cultural um
(07:11):
quest to mainstream bisexuality and to dismantled by phobia and
bisexual erasial well at the same time doing exactly what
he was probably assigned in terms of actually looking at
the scientific studies, because I don't think that we can
talk about one without the other. Now that might be
a very heteronormative thing for me to say, but I,
(07:35):
like you, I didn't read it as a biophobic or
by ignorant peace. And the fact of the matter is, like,
I don't think that Dennis A. Lewis, by focusing on
male sexuality is a bad reporter, but rather it says
a lot about our science and about like how those
studies are being conducted in our assumptions about female sexuality.
(07:58):
And it also, you like the conclusion of those most
recent studies that he reports on is that, oh yeah,
look at this fluidity of male sexuality that we didn't
realize before. But absolutely there is this um problematic conflating
of sexual physiological sexual arousal with sexual orientation, which, as
(08:25):
you know, people like Anna Paquin have had to point out,
those aren't necessarily the same things. Your sexual orientation isn't
necessarily the last person you've slept with, right, Yeah. And
and Mark Joseph Stern, writing for Slate uh in his
article is Bisexual Identity a Useful Fiction? Kind of points
(08:46):
this out and he says that several of Denniz A.
Lewis's interview subjects paint bisexuality is something you do. In
other words, they focused on the sexual or arousal aspect
of it, not something you are, so instead of focusing
on it as a cultural identity as a way to
(09:06):
organize and form a community. Almost. Yeah, The quote from
that piece that jumped out to me was that the
by movement failed to articulate a coherent platform beyond its
initial goals of recognition. And there was a commentary who
you know, raised an important point that at least got
me thinking about whether sexual orientation must breed culture and
(09:31):
like what that relationship is as well, because I mean,
the more it seems so simple, you know, when when
you're when you just say, oh, bisexuality, like okay, we know,
like cut and dry, like what it is. But the
more we were reading about this Caroline, the less black
and white really it became. But that also goes to
the point that, you know, human sexuality is can be
(09:54):
a little complicated at times. Yeah, we I think we
a lot of us want it to be black and white.
I think a lot of us wanted to be either or.
I think the the and part or the also part
confuses and and maybe mystifies some of us a little
bit um. Of course. The advocate also points to the
now infamous Dear Prudence column over at Slate again called
(10:18):
private By, in which a woman writes into Prudy she's
in a monogamous marriage with a man. She realizes she's bisexual.
She comes out to her husband, and she's basically like,
what should I do? Should I come out to my family?
My husband is telling me, no, what do you think
I should do? And pretty caught a lot of flak
for telling the woman not to tell the rest of
(10:39):
the family, but not only that, for equating bisexuality or
the realization that you are bisexual with realizing you like
being a dominatrix or realizing you're into plush ophelia, and
people were like, uh, excuse me. Well, she was advocating
for her to remain closeted, stay in the closet, and
(11:02):
surely if like a gay guy wrote in saying like,
I'm in this marriage, but I realized I'm to a woman,
but I realized that I'm gay, what should I do?
Surely she wouldn't say stay in that closet, lock the door,
throw away the gay, because you know, you don't really
want to make Christmas dinners off word with grandmother already
so bad. Um. Well, yeah, because the whole thing she
(11:25):
was saying was that it would be one thing, dear reader,
if you were going to leave your husband for a woman,
but you're not, and so just stay in the closet,
because there is again no reason to upset everyone around you.
But in the process, of course, dear dear Prudence upset
everyone around her. But she did circle back and issue
(11:49):
a retraction of sorts in the face of so much controversy. Yeah. Well,
on the celebrity end of the media spectrum, there have
been a lot of celebrities lately and specifically who either
said or appeared to indicate that bisexuality was just a phase,
(12:11):
which of course is another huge stereotype myth thing to
be debunked about bisexuality. But jesse j and Melby both
said that it was just a phase. And British diver
Tom Dailey came out as By and then said a
few months later that he was actually gay. Not that
(12:32):
there is anything wrong with that, not that there's anything
wrong with saying one thing and being like, well, I'm
still in this process of self discovery. Okay, actually I'm
gay or whatever. Um, But a lot of people pointed
to that and just said, see, see, well that was
the thing too. I forget which article we were reading, Caroline,
it was before he came out and said that he
(12:55):
is gay. And uh, commentator Andrew Sullivan, who is gay,
when Daily first came out as By claiming to be By,
he was like he called it and was like, no, no, no,
this guy is clearly gay. He's going to come out
in a few months. And this is what this is
the whole gay stareline thing where bisexually like saying that
(13:15):
you're by is the way to sort of ease the public,
homophobic public into coming to grips with your sexuality. And
people were really upset that he said that. But then
Daily comes back around and comes fully out, well out
of out of a different closet, I should say, because
coming out of By is also coming out of the closet.
(13:36):
Was like the hall closet versus the guest bedroom closet.
I don't know different closet. I think they're all equal
closets because considering the kind of biphobia and bisexual discrimination
we've been reading about, I'm sure bisexuals listening would say, oh,
don't you say that I've got an easier closet to
come out of, you straight ladies. I do not think
(13:57):
that the hall closet is an easier closet. You should
see why haull of closet. It is full of stuff. Um.
But yeah, No. Part of what upset people about what
Andrew Sullivan said, uh, was that not only did he say, oh, no,
he's he's gay. Daily is gay, but he also said
because that's my experience, because I did that too, because
(14:18):
I came out as by first and then came out
as gay. Um, And so people were like, Hello, not
everybody has shocker, Not everybody has the same experience. Well,
that's been a big issue with uh Dan Savage as
well of Savage Love and Savage Love cast, whom I
know some of our listeners do not enjoy at all. Um,
(14:39):
but he similarly first came out as by and then um,
you know, came out as gay, and he has gotten
in hot water with the bisexual community as well because
because of that. Who hasn't a harder closet to come
out of Because there is this I mean, there really
(15:01):
is a lot of controversy is in the right word,
but a lot of fighting, sort of a lot of
tension within the LGB community in terms of um, bisexuals
and the discrimination that they feel and that they experience
(15:22):
being accepted as valid by gay and lesbian people who say, no, no, no,
that's it's it's a different kind of discrimination because you
at least have the sort of straight guys of being
with an opposite sex partner. If that's what floats your
(15:42):
boat at the time, Yeah, yeah, And then I mean
I think a lot of bisexual people would come around
and argue, but I don't, you know, we don't want
to live that way. We don't want to treat if
we are in an opposite sex or cross sex relationship,
we don't want to treat that as a as a disguise. Um.
And also under the not helping category is millionaire matchmaker
(16:03):
Patty Stinger. Has she ever helped? Has she ever been
in the help category? Um? I decided from getting me
through boring Saturday afternoon. Yeah, giving me a reason to
live when I'm stuck on the elliptical or the treadmill. Yeah,
watching it's for some reason, it's always set to Bravo
and she's always on. I only watched Bravo with the gym.
That's like half the reason I go to the gym. Caroline,
(16:24):
I feel like I've confessed this on the podcast before. Well,
you know, we do what we have to do, Kristen. Um.
But so, yeah, not only did Patty Stinger say she
would never marry a by sexual man, uh, but she
also said that bisexual men are really just gay. But
also she said, you don't want a by woman as
(16:44):
the mother of your children. Okay, alright, so hello, here
is a glaring example of biophobia. Yeah, because okay, so
I read that and then I stopped and I read
it again, and then I read it again, and and
what the F does she mean? So? Okay, probably because
she assumed that bisexual women are hyper sexualized, because the
(17:05):
whole there's that other, whole, entire stereotype and myth about
bisexual people that everybody, whether you're whether you're gay or
whether you're straight, you'll look at bisexual people and you're like,
you're just kind of slooty and greedy, are you? You
just want to have as much sex with as many
people as often as possible. Well, yeah, and and that
that to me is sort of mystifying because just because
(17:26):
you are open to loving or being attracted to a
man or a woman, does that necessarily mean that you're
going to have sex with them at the same time
all the time. Yeah, we assume that bisexual like equal
sex drive, which is uh, which is definitely faulty logic. Yeah,
(17:46):
I mean, so obviously we have a lot of myths
to bust throughout this episode. Um. But also into the
not helpful category was the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,
which last year wrote a blog post saying that bisexuality
was binary. And this is a huge argument. You here
a lot and thus erasing of trans and gender queer people,
(18:10):
so basically saying, bisexual people, your your whole stick is limiting,
to which a bisexual trans person wrote into the task
Force and basically said, hey, jerks, you own the un
apology because I am both trans and bisexual. And so
the task Force not only deleted the blog post and
(18:31):
offered sort of a backhanded apology basically the whole thing
of like, if you got offended, we're sorry, um, but
they also changed their name to the National lgbt Q
Task Force. They tossed the b in there, just sweep
sweep all that out the door. Yeah. Yet again an
example of mixing up what we're talking about, because transgender
(18:52):
is not a sexual orientation, it's a gender identity. These
are different things people. And of course this isn't just
going on among the Patti Stangers of the world. This
is happening on you know, scripted television as well, although
of course I'm a millionaire matchmaker clearly scripted, as I
can tell you firsthand. Um, there's the so called straightwashing
(19:16):
of characters such as Piper Chapman on Orange as a
New Black and Caroline. I had not even thought about
this before I mean an example of my own bi blindness.
I hadn't thought about this before we were reading up
for this podcast. Yeah, because she's referred to I think
it's by her fiance, right, And then one of the
first episodes, she's referred to as a former lesbian. Yeah,
(19:37):
she's always yeah, it's always a former lesbian. I think
bisexual has been mentioned maybe one time, but then Alex
refers to Piper as a straight girl, just flat out
just straight girl, playing into the stereotype of bisexual women
just playing gay for a day who were actually straight, um,
(19:59):
and going a bit farther back in television history to
sex in the City. I do clearly remember the episode
where Carrie dates a young bisexual guy and at one
point in her you know her monologue, she she describes
him as on a layover on the way to gay town,
and the whole thing, like she ends up at this
(20:21):
playing to spin the bottle game with him, and she's like, oh,
maybe I'm going to kiss a girl because this guy
is bisexual, and like all of his friends are are
are bisexual and really loving and I don't know if
I can handle this, because I think everybody wants to
make out with everybody else. It was a very like
hyper sexualized portrayal of them and p s. They don't
(20:45):
they don't end up living happily ever after? Yeah, what
does he end up being gay? Or just being by?
She leaves the party, She spin the Mottle party spoiler alert,
because she's just like, you know what, this isn't for me.
You're sexuality isn't for me, because well it was the
whole thing. They would like, go out and she would
(21:07):
see an attractive guy and then look over and he's
looking at the attractive guy too. What do you do
with that? I mean, come on, it was the nineties,
it was the ninthes. No, it wasn't the nineties, it
was the early two thousand's how old am I? Kristen
Will speaking of the nineties, Let's go back to the nineties,
the eighteen nineties, the eighteen nineties. Yeah, you didn't think
(21:28):
we'd let you off the hook with a little bit
of bisexual history, did you know, Evans? No, it would
be impossible. Um So. In a late nineteenth century, scientists
first start using the term bisexual, but it was used
to describe the hypothetical capacity of an organism to develop
(21:49):
into either a male or female of its species, so
not so much having to do with your sexuality or
sexual orientation, but more so having to do with biology. Um.
And so this idea began applying to humans human people
for the first time when it was discovered that human
embryos didn't show sexual characteristics until twelve weeks. And Freud
(22:13):
of course clung on to this idea of bisexuality in
a more biological sense, and it informed his thinking about
bisexual people. Basically that to have the physical characteristics of
both sexes naturally meant you'd have the psychic characteristics of both.
(22:33):
So bisexuality implies by genderism, and Freud's definition of bisexuality
tied together the concepts of disharmonious or shifting gender identity,
as well as dual attraction and the universal sexual ambiguity
of the human anatomy, which that's that's a lot to consider.
(22:54):
The universal sexual ambiguity of the human anatomy just makes
me think that we're all just lumps of plato random
we sometimes they get pushed together and sometimes we get
squeezed out of that like Plato pasta maker, pasta maker.
That was my favorite. I know mine too. Um. Basically,
(23:15):
as with a lot of Freud's theories, like everything was
cool when you're an immature human. When you're a child, Uh,
it's okay to be ambiguous as a kid. It's okay
to still be anal retentive, for instance, as a child.
But once you became an adult, you better have grown
out of that stuff. You better get rid of that
anal retention you. Yeah, you better get rid of that.
(23:36):
By genderism, bi sexuality in the way that he thought
of it. And what's so fascinating too, And I had
never heard this, or I don't remember hearing this, but Freud,
in addition to many of his contemporaries, tied bi sexuality
to hysteria, and in his paper Hysterical Fantasies and their
Relation to Bisexuality, he wrote that hysterical symptoms express the
(24:01):
combination of masculine and feminine sexual fantasies, so that whole
like floating uterus women are hysterical thing. Apparently it all
has to do with our innate bisexuality. Yeah, because of
the struggle between those I guess masculine and feminine forces.
And if they're imbalanced, then that's also gonna tip your
(24:25):
uterus off of its balancing point into the floating abyss.
That's your woo. Yeah, I don't think I'm ever gonna
use the phrase tip tip the scale again. I think
it's only going to be to tip the uterus, really
tip the ute today. But while Freud was starting to
(24:46):
play around with this idea of bisexuality in a more
uh psychic sense and link it to hysteria, if we
look at bisexuality in the way that we think of
it today in terms of orientation, we do have some
literary examples from the turn of the century with the
Bloomsberry Group and lit nerds out there I'm sure are
(25:11):
very familiar with the Bloomsbury's, with authors like Ian Forrester,
John Maynard Keynes, and Virginia Woolf, who I believe was lesbian,
not necessarily bisexual, or had lots of lesbian overtones and
her books well, but her sister was also in this group,
and her sister's husband, and I think there was a
(25:32):
lot of like, I don't want to say swinging, but
there was a lot of like sharing of partners, love
is love and love trump's gender. Yeah, and weren't they
painting lots of portraits of each other. You're telling me
about this, Caroline, Yeah, I loved it. So I was reading.
I was trying to find more information about the Bloomsberry Group. Uh,
and I did find one source that had a lot
(25:55):
of paintings like that was basically the introduction to the
book was just like portrait after poor it after portrait
because all of these literary and artistic people who made
up this loose collection of humans referred to as the
Bloomsbury Group, they all painted each other. It's fascinating, Caroline.
I gotta tell you, whatever I hear Bloomsbury, I think
Doonesbury like Dunsberry Group is just people sitting around reading
(26:18):
that old, that old political cartoon, and that is how
my brain works. Yeah, and I really I do wish
that I could have found out more about this group.
I feel like the resources that I stumbled across weren't
super flushed out. But it's not necessarily that these folks
(26:39):
in this group were, you know, waving a flag for bisexuality,
or that they were advocating for LGBT rights or anything
like that. But they were sort of on that early
forefront of love is love, of gender doesn't matter, you know,
we love who we love, We're going to support each other.
It's it's sort of like a kind of like a
(27:00):
hippie artist commune in London. Yeah, I mean it seems
like any time you have more bohemian artist types, they're
usually a bit more open to following your feelings and
loving whom you want to love. Um So, not surprisingly,
in nineteen fourteen, speaking of artists, a film called a
Florida Enchantment featured America's first bisexual character. But things aren't
(27:27):
all rosy all the time. We are talking about bisexual
erasure and dismissal today. Uh So, in just ten years
after that movie comes out, the Society for Human Rights,
which is the first officially recognized gay organization in the US,
excluded bisexuals. They're basically just you know, like a lot
of people today still feel that it's your your gay
(27:48):
straighter lying, and so they were not included in that group.
But in the nineteen forties and fifties we have Alfred
Kinsey come along, who offers some empirical data about how
the world is not divided into sheep and goats, and
in his examinations of adult sexual behavior, he estimated that
(28:11):
nearly forty six percent of guys had experienced both the
same and opposite sex sexual activities during their adult lives.
And using his Kinsey Heterosexual Homosexual Rating scale, he said
eleven point six percent of white men between twenty and
thirty five had a rating of three, which is about
(28:35):
equal straight and gay experience response. So you hear a
three rating a lot when with conversations of bisexuality, because
that is plotted right in the middle of the Kinsey scale. Yeah,
and among women, he found few with exclusively lesbian histories.
And when it comes to the Kinsey scale, Kinsey said
(28:57):
that just seven percent of never married women and four
scent of previously married women ages thirty five got a
rating of three. Yeah. I mean keep in mind too,
we're going through an historical timeline. This is taking place
in the nineteen forties and fifties. We will get to
more current statistics on bisexuality later on. But the thing
(29:19):
to understand is the importance of this scale, because this
this really solidifies the idea of sexual orientation being a
spectrum rather again than you know, just groups of sheep
and goats, right, which is which is a Kinsey quote,
uh that he was talking about how men are not
just too discreete heterosexual and homosexual populations. Yeah, and just
(29:42):
bleeding our little brains out. It's the loud field of
people yelling for sex um. But a lot of this research, though,
going on during this time and really through today, is
really focused on men. I mean and and this is
something that is common medical research of the mid twentieth
century across the board, whether we're talking about sexuality or
(30:05):
talking about drug trials, whatever might have been going on.
Because thanks to uh, this wonky thing that women have
called menstruation and periods and fertility, men were considered the
ideal research subjects because we have they have fewer variables
in their bodies. So it's it's no big surprise that
(30:26):
a bulk of this research is looking more at men
and also to probably a little driven by the self
interest of the mostly male doctors who were doing the
doing the science at the time. And we'll move more
through the mid to late twentieth century in in our
bisexuality timeline. We come right back from a quick break,
(30:54):
so we left off in It's a World War two
with our bisexual slash bisexual ratier timeline, and now it's
time to get into the swing in seventies, although I
think it's actually the swing in sixties usually, But for bisexuality,
the seventies was a pretty swing in time because this
is when the contemporary bisexual movement begins, with many organizations
(31:17):
led by men. And this is also of course, and
we see the whole bisexual chic theme emerging media. Hello
David Bowie. Uh. Plenty of rock stars and artists were
hooking up with men and women, and the media was
reporting all about it, all about these glamorous rock stars
and artists. Um. But on the political side. In nineteen
(31:37):
seventy two, the National Bisexual Liberation Group forms, which published
the first bisexual focused newsletter, and in the mid nineteen
seventies we see groups like New York's bi Forum and
Chicago's Byways forming. In San Francisco starts the Bisexual Center,
and then in nineteen seventy eight, sort of as a
(31:57):
follow up to the in Z Scale, we have psychiatrists
Fritz Klein right the Bisexual Option, which was one of
the first in depth explorations of bisexuality, and along with
that he releases the Klein Grid, which analyzes seven aspects
of sexual orientation in people's past, present, and ideal lives
(32:20):
for twenty one possible combinations, and Klein wrote, it is
the quality of loving, not the gender of love's objects
that should come under fire. I'm still stuck on that
whole twenty one possible combinations thing. It's it sounds a
little bit like a game of Mash, you know, where
you can have so many different possible combinations for your
(32:42):
ideal life. I love that so much sexual orientation Mash.
I was thinking almost in terms of, like, it's less
of spectrum and more the matrix. Um, but yeah, I
love I love, I love Mash. My sexuality is a
convertible with an apartment on the beach. I feel like
(33:03):
my sexuality also involves the beach somehow. Um but you
know so. Kristen mentioned that a lot of the studies
that are happening are focused on men. A lot of
the organizations focused on bisexuality have been led by men.
But in the nineteen eighties we start to see women
leading more bisexual advocacy and support groups. After experiencing alienation
(33:27):
from lesbian communities, we get the Boston in Seattle bisexual
women's networks forming UH and we see more and more
groups popping up in Europe and the groups that exist
in the US getting more and more organized. Yeah, and
when bisexual women at the time were experiencing alienation from
(33:48):
lesbian activist groups at the time because of similar reasons
why they they aren't always embraced today, where it's like, no,
if you might still want to have relationships with men,
you have attractions to men, you're not really part of
our agenda. So it was important for them to create
their own spaces as well. And in nighties seven sort
(34:11):
of showing just how much organization is happening at the time,
a bisexual contingent was present for the March on Washington
for Gay and lesbian rights. Yeah. And then moving into
the nine nineties, we see the first US and international
bisexual conferences by groups start lobbying exclusively gay and lesbian
(34:32):
groups to include bisexuals, and in we see a familiar
name surface. Fritz Klein found the American Institute of Bisexuality,
which Kristen mentioned earlier, and today it has a nearly
seven million dollar endowment and writing over at the New
York Times magazine, Deniz A. Lewis writes, in the last
few years, the American Institute of Bisexuality has supported the
(34:54):
work of about forty researchers, including those looking at bisexual
behavior and mental health, sexual arousal patterns of bisexual men,
bisexual youth, and quote unquote mostly straight men. And this
is important. I mean this is important to note because,
as a lot of researchers have said, including Lisa Diamond,
who's a big name in studies of women's sexuality and
(35:17):
sexual fluidity, it's historically been kind of on the difficult
side to secure funding for sexual orientation or sexuality research
unless you're somehow tying it in specifically to mental health
or things like AIDS in HIV research. Yeah, studying sexual
orientation just for its own sake is usually, I guess,
(35:39):
kind of pooh pooed in the research community. And I
wonder too if it if that is another example of
some bi stigma going on, because it's like, oh, well,
why why do we really need to pay focus to this?
Because I wonder if there is that assumption tied in
there of like this is just a term for people
who who might be swingers or might just want to
(35:59):
have a lot of sex, Like who who cares? Really?
But the thing is, even though there have now been
decades on decades of organizing going on the A I B.
And you know, bisexual people in general are still fighting
for recognition. And if we look to today, the Advocate
(36:25):
reports that several studies indicate that quote, bisexuals make up
the largest portion of the LGBT population, but they have
some of the worst representation. Yeah, and so what is
that proportion? Uh? There's a frequently cited meta analysis from
(36:46):
April eleven by the Williams Institute out of the University
of California that points out that there are approximately nine
millions self identified LGBT Americans, a figure which everybody loves
to quote is roughly a wevalent to the population of
New Jersey. Yeah. Um, And that met analysis looked at
(37:07):
a whole bunch of different surveys and studies looking at
the proportions of not only gay Americans but bisexual Americans, um,
and found that on average, about one point eight percent
of American adults identify as bisexual, compared to one point
seven percent who identify as lesbian or gay. So a
lot of people are looking at this and saying, where
(37:30):
is the representation if if one point seven percent of
Americans identify as lesbian or gay, and we see a
lot of lesbian gay characters on TV or written about
in the media, and the number is about the same
for bisexual Americans. Where are they in the closet? A
lot of them are in the closet. According to a
(37:51):
PE research survey, only twenty eight percent of people who
identify as bisexual, so that they're open about it. And
for you know, all the reasons that we have touched
on earlier, of if you are a mother, of people
shunning you as being an irresponsible parent for that reason,
um of not wanting people to constantly ask you about
(38:16):
what you did over the weekend, kind of crazy things
that you get into, wondering about the validity of your
same or opposite sex relationships, essentially probably wanting to keep
your private life private. Yeah, and I'm sure all of
the stereotypes and biphobia that we've already discussed is part
of that. That bisexual people are lying and confused, that
(38:37):
they're greedy, selfish and slutty, or that they're simply afraid
to come out as gay, or that it's just a phase.
And so it's for these reasons that the San Francisco
Human Rights Commission recently called bisexuals an invisible majority in
need of resources and support, and the need for that
support is very real because, as Glad and Brian do
(39:00):
choose a researcher on bisexuality and health at Indiana University Bloomington,
have noted, compared to straight and gay bulk bisexual people
face higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders,
as well as substance abuse, victimization by violence, suicidal ideation,
and sexual health concerns. Yeah, I mean I would. I
(39:22):
would imagine that if you feel invisible, or if you
feel like you have to be invisible because you just
don't want to face all of these awful negative assumptions
and stereotypes about you and your sexuality, it might be
hard to ask for help, whether you need actual like
mental health counseling of some kind, or or whether you
just are concerned like this list pointed out about your
(39:45):
sexual health. So I imagine that while bisexual erasure on
TV or whatever, you could send people poo poo that
as not being that important, it is important in terms
of representation and seeing yourself on screen, having that lifestyle,
that life normalized, and at this point Caroline. On a
(40:08):
side note, I would like to point out that we
have used the phrase poop poo twice in this episode.
It might it might be a record. That's well, that's
actually the subtitle in my brain of this episode, poo
pooing bisexuality. Yeah no, no, no boo poopooing bisexual erasureized
should say we are poo pooing that. Yeah. Yeah, the
(40:29):
end of people poo pooing bisexuality. Um. But this is
part one of a two part conversation we're going to
have about this because we've been talking about the history
and more of the real world stats and facts, and
next episode we're going to dive more into pop cultural
representations of bisexuality and get into more research on this
(40:54):
on why it seems so hard for our society to
wrap its brain or round bisexuality and what bisexuality means
in the kind of language that has evolved around it
as well. So tune in for that. But in the meantime,
we want to hear from you and your experiences with this,
(41:14):
So Mom seven House stu works dot com is our
email address. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
Podcast or messages on Facebook and We've got a couple
of messages to share with you when we come right
back from a quick break, and now back to the show. Well,
Kristen and I have a couple of letters here about
our single Ladies series that we did. Uh and I
(41:38):
have a letter here from Yell. She says, as an
American living in Israel, I can certainly verify what Professor
Kennett Lahad said is true. I've been to thirty one
weddings in my four and a half years in this country.
Single by choice is not a welcome option in Jerusalem,
especially not in religious circles. Even lenient religious circles are
(42:01):
entrenched in the idea of marriage. Tel Aviv may be
slightly different as there are fewer religious people there, but
I believe the ideal of marriage is strong in Israel
no matter what, as even secular Jews are often quite traditional.
I remember being eighteen and thinking that I would be
married at twenty two, and as I passed that age,
I just always assumed it was another year or so.
(42:22):
I'm almost twenty eight now, and in the secular American
world I would be viewed as young with plenty of
time and no need to worry. But Jerusalem is a
little more homogeneous than say New York City. As a
moderately religious Jew in Jerusalem, I see all my friends,
my age and older panicking a little as they all assumed,
like I did, that we'd be married. Now. None of
(42:43):
us are single by choice, and it definitely has to
do with what Dr Lahad said about our upbringing ingraining
us with the expectation of marriage and the belief that
being married is a sign of status and stability. We
have a great social circle that combines young marrieds and singles.
But I see what happens when people stay single well
into their thirties or forties. They come around two singles events,
(43:05):
and a lot of people look at them like they're
creepy or sad or weird. It's so messed up, and
I feel like that's what is scaring my friends and myself.
We don't want to end up being pitied and invited
to things as an act of charity, or being set
up with much older men or people that we would
have to be settling for. It's frustrating that single by
choice isn't really an option here because the stigma is
(43:27):
so strong and the communal life is such that if
you choose that life, you are actively choosing to be
ostracized in a way. The older you get here. If
you stay single, no matter what, people have it in
the back of their minds that you are desperate, there's
no escaping it. I agree with Dr Laha that the
conversation needs to be continued to make life better for singles,
(43:48):
so that it can be seen as another way to live,
not a different way to live. Well, thank you so
much for your letter. Well, I've got a letter here
from Danny, who writes, I recently discovered your podcast an
absolutely fell in love with it. I even got my
fourteen year old brother to listen to it when he
wants to learn stuff and encourage him to go there
for information on women and sexuality instead of scouring tumbler.
(44:11):
But I love that, although, by the way, just also
sent him to stuff I've never told you dot tumbler
dot com. He can stay on tumbler um. So, Danny writes,
I wanted to write you about your recent episode on
the concept of single by choice. I'm a nineteen year
old first generation immigrant Hispanic woman who noticed some similarities
among my peers of the same bracket. I always joke
(44:33):
with other young Hispanic immigrant women that after the king
sen Era comes the wedding, and sadly I discovered that
to be true. At sixteen, my very Catholic Hispanic mother
sat me down and talked to me about the importance
of finding me a man soon and settling down, giving
her lots of grand babies. When I told her I
wanted to go to college and law school, then I
(44:54):
would think about maybe perhaps, and also I kind of
like women, she was livid. Now I'm nineteen, have my
paralegal certificate, made the lead career wise from McDonald's to
a legal assistant at a law firm, and planned to
be a judge. Hey, good for you. Of course, none
of this is a valid because I don't have a
man by my side, and my parents have made that
(45:14):
very clear. Both tried desperately to play matchmaker and pair
me with men, sometimes way older than me, with the
hopes that I will come to my senses and stop
looking at girls all dreamy and have a kid. Poor
Lemore de dios talking to other college as Hispanic and
immigrant women, we are all very similar boat. Most of
us have fallen to the dreamer category and legal limbo
(45:37):
girls just wanting an education are pushed to get married asap.
Some of us are even told Mary first, he can
pay for your expensive degree. Some of us just kind
of shake it off and try to tell them that
we're not living at the ranch with Grandma who got
married and got right to having kids at fifteen, and
some given Mary young and actually lead really successful lives.
For some of us, single by choice is not an option.
(46:00):
Some Hispanic women who are first generation immigrants and still
single at are ostracized by their own family and praised
by their feminist friends. It puts us between the wall
of praise and society at the cost of family rejection
and even banishment of being labeled as gringa in the
sense that we're leaving behind all trace of our culture
and told every accomplishment we do is invalid without a man.
(46:21):
I have cousins who are already considered old maids at
twenty three or younger. I would love to hear from
other first generation immigrants in other cultures on the subject.
I know for some arranged marriage, even if one's parents
are in totally different parts of the world, is a
very real thing. Shout out to all immigrant women struggling
to tell their parents that's just not how it works,
(46:43):
your mom. Once again, I adore your podcast and encourage
everyone to listen to it whenever they can. Sex education
saves lives, and you two ladies are saving lives every day,
So thanks so much, Danny and listen. Keep on going
for that judge ship. You can do it. And if
you have a letter to send to us, mom stuff
(47:04):
a house. Stuff works dot Com is our address and
for links to all of our social media as well
as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this
one with our sources so you can learn more about
bisexuality and bi phobia. Head on over to stuff Mom
Never Told You dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
(47:25):
com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how stup
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and this week we're talking about
a highly requested topic on bisexuality and more specifically bisexual erasure. Yeah,
(00:27):
we've talked about plenty of sexual orientation and sexuality issues
on the podcast, but we have gotten a lot of
letters just kindly reminding us, Hey, guys, you know you
talk a lot about gay men or lesbians or trans
people and trans issues, but where is the discussion of bisexuality.
Kristen and I did do an episode on bisexual men,
(00:50):
mainly the fact that they exist, a couple of years ago,
and it was definitely time after hearing from you guys,
to revisit this topic. And we've also heard from stuff
Mom Ever Told You listeners about this when we have
talked about same sex marriage in the past, and specifically
requesting that we refer to it as same sex marriage
rather than gay marriage, because the firsthand from some listeners saying,
(01:16):
you know what, gay marriage doesn't exactly encompass my experience
as a bisexual woman who is married to another woman
or who wants to be married to another woman. So
there are there are different ways that this kind of
bisexual erasure can exist, simply in the way that we
(01:37):
talk about even issues of equality. Yeah, and a big
part of this conversation, whether it's about bisexuality in general
or the issue of bisexual erasure, is sort of the
discussion of stereotypes and the things that we assume about
bisexual people and how we contend to dismiss them. For instance,
when christ and I did that episode on the fact
(02:00):
that yes, bisexual men exist, I remember distinctly getting a
letter from a self described gay man who said, Oh,
this is actually a really interesting and enlightening episode for me,
because I literally assumed that any man who called himself
by was just lying that he was on the way
to being gay. Yeah, the whole gay straight are lying
(02:23):
is a pretty common stereotype, and especially when it comes
to men in particular, because this whole conversation about bisexuality
and bisexual erasure definitely has a gendered element to it,
where it seems easier for us to accept that women
(02:46):
are capable of bisexuality, but men, for some reason are
harder for us to wrap around. And we've talked about
this before as well in the podcast in terms of
women's sexuality being considered more fluid whereas men tend to
be more rigid. And we'll talk more about the scientific
studies that foster those kinds of assumptions. But I mean, really,
(03:10):
at the end of the day, Uh, it becomes clearer
and clearer the more research that comes out and the
more finely tuned that research is of just how much
sexuality is a spectrum, yeah, exactly, and issues of how
that spectrum is that good because it includes bisexual people,
(03:32):
or is that negative for bisexuals because it erases them
and replaces them with the idea of sexual fluidity. This
is all stuff we're going to talk about in these
next two episodes. And we're also of course going to
talk a lot about media representation. This isn't just like
where the bisexuals in Kristen and Carolines conversations. This is
(03:53):
a bigger conversation, including the issue of representation on screen,
in media, in articles and studies and all of this stuff,
and how a lot of people out there, a lot
of critics and media watchers out there are saying, yeah,
we are getting more and better bisexual characters. Uh, LGBT
(04:13):
characters in general, but also bisexual characters. But it definitely
hasn't always been that way now. That stands in market
contrast to our conversation not long ago about the rise
of transgender characters on television and how two thousand fourteen
was hailed as this watershed year for trans characters really
(04:37):
coming to life in a more well rounded and holistic
kind of way with with limited still examples. But for
bisexuals in the media, and I'm talking about bisexuals I
r L and also on screen, two thousand fourteen, at
least according to The Advocate, was not such a great year.
(04:59):
In in fact, they called it the Year of bisexual erasure. Yeah,
And to kick off their article, the Advocate points to
specifically ben Ja deniz A Lewis's article in New York
Times magazine called the Scientific Quest to Prove Bisexuality Exists,
in which he talks about not only the scientific and
(05:19):
academic research that's going on into bisexuality, but also the stereotypes,
uh and assumptions that still exist. For instance, he lays
out the assumption that quote in the eyes of many Americans,
bisexuality despite occasional and exaggerated media reports of its chekness
remains a bewildering and potentially invented orientation favored by men
(05:42):
and denial about their homosexuality and by women who will
inevitably settle down with men. Now, when I read that
New York Times magazine article, I didn't think on its
on its face that it was negative. I didn't think
it was negative about bisexual people or the bisexual community.
But many critics uh pointed to the article and said
(06:05):
this only focuses on bisexual men, not enough about bisexual women,
but also points to the fact that Dennis A. Lewis
focused a lot on the scientific aspect, which by the way,
was in the headline, but the scientific aspect of studying
whether bisexuality exists at all, And so many people are saying, hey,
(06:25):
we are so past this point. We are so past
this point of proving whether bisexuality or pan sexuality or
sexual fluidity exists. We know it does because we're living it.
And so there was a lot of criticism there that
the writer, the New York Times magazine writer focused too
much on that and not enough about maybe the cultural issues.
(06:47):
But I will say this, sitting in my chair in
the Journalism School Auditorium that the headline says it all,
it's a scientific quest to prove bisexuality exists. And Denniz A.
Lewis spends a out of the time in the piece
hanging out with the founders of the American Instituted Bisexuality
and really focusing on their more political and cultural um
(07:11):
quest to mainstream bisexuality and to dismantled by phobia and
bisexual erasial well at the same time doing exactly what
he was probably assigned in terms of actually looking at
the scientific studies, because I don't think that we can
talk about one without the other. Now that might be
a very heteronormative thing for me to say, but I,
(07:35):
like you, I didn't read it as a biophobic or
by ignorant peace. And the fact of the matter is, like,
I don't think that Dennis A. Lewis, by focusing on
male sexuality is a bad reporter, but rather it says
a lot about our science and about like how those
studies are being conducted in our assumptions about female sexuality.
(07:58):
And it also, you like the conclusion of those most
recent studies that he reports on is that, oh yeah,
look at this fluidity of male sexuality that we didn't
realize before. But absolutely there is this um problematic conflating
of sexual physiological sexual arousal with sexual orientation, which, as
(08:25):
you know, people like Anna Paquin have had to point out,
those aren't necessarily the same things. Your sexual orientation isn't
necessarily the last person you've slept with, right, Yeah. And
and Mark Joseph Stern, writing for Slate uh in his
article is Bisexual Identity a Useful Fiction? Kind of points
(08:46):
this out and he says that several of Denniz A.
Lewis's interview subjects paint bisexuality is something you do. In
other words, they focused on the sexual or arousal aspect
of it, not something you are, so instead of focusing
on it as a cultural identity as a way to
(09:06):
organize and form a community. Almost. Yeah, The quote from
that piece that jumped out to me was that the
by movement failed to articulate a coherent platform beyond its
initial goals of recognition. And there was a commentary who
you know, raised an important point that at least got
me thinking about whether sexual orientation must breed culture and
(09:31):
like what that relationship is as well, because I mean,
the more it seems so simple, you know, when when
you're when you just say, oh, bisexuality, like okay, we know,
like cut and dry, like what it is. But the
more we were reading about this Caroline, the less black
and white really it became. But that also goes to
the point that, you know, human sexuality is can be
(09:54):
a little complicated at times. Yeah, we I think we
a lot of us want it to be black and white.
I think a lot of us wanted to be either or.
I think the the and part or the also part
confuses and and maybe mystifies some of us a little
bit um. Of course. The advocate also points to the
now infamous Dear Prudence column over at Slate again called
(10:18):
private By, in which a woman writes into Prudy she's
in a monogamous marriage with a man. She realizes she's bisexual.
She comes out to her husband, and she's basically like,
what should I do? Should I come out to my family?
My husband is telling me, no, what do you think
I should do? And pretty caught a lot of flak
for telling the woman not to tell the rest of
(10:39):
the family, but not only that, for equating bisexuality or
the realization that you are bisexual with realizing you like
being a dominatrix or realizing you're into plush ophelia, and
people were like, uh, excuse me. Well, she was advocating
for her to remain closeted, stay in the closet, and
(11:02):
surely if like a gay guy wrote in saying like,
I'm in this marriage, but I realized I'm to a woman,
but I realized that I'm gay, what should I do?
Surely she wouldn't say stay in that closet, lock the door,
throw away the gay, because you know, you don't really
want to make Christmas dinners off word with grandmother already
so bad. Um. Well, yeah, because the whole thing she
(11:25):
was saying was that it would be one thing, dear reader,
if you were going to leave your husband for a woman,
but you're not, and so just stay in the closet,
because there is again no reason to upset everyone around you.
But in the process, of course, dear dear Prudence upset
everyone around her. But she did circle back and issue
(11:49):
a retraction of sorts in the face of so much controversy. Yeah. Well,
on the celebrity end of the media spectrum, there have
been a lot of celebrities lately and specifically who either
said or appeared to indicate that bisexuality was just a phase,
(12:11):
which of course is another huge stereotype myth thing to
be debunked about bisexuality. But jesse j and Melby both
said that it was just a phase. And British diver
Tom Dailey came out as By and then said a
few months later that he was actually gay. Not that
(12:32):
there is anything wrong with that, not that there's anything
wrong with saying one thing and being like, well, I'm
still in this process of self discovery. Okay, actually I'm
gay or whatever. Um, But a lot of people pointed
to that and just said, see, see, well that was
the thing too. I forget which article we were reading, Caroline,
it was before he came out and said that he
(12:55):
is gay. And uh, commentator Andrew Sullivan, who is gay,
when Daily first came out as By claiming to be By,
he was like he called it and was like, no, no, no,
this guy is clearly gay. He's going to come out
in a few months. And this is what this is
the whole gay stareline thing where bisexually like saying that
(13:15):
you're by is the way to sort of ease the public,
homophobic public into coming to grips with your sexuality. And
people were really upset that he said that. But then
Daily comes back around and comes fully out, well out
of out of a different closet, I should say, because
coming out of By is also coming out of the closet.
(13:36):
Was like the hall closet versus the guest bedroom closet.
I don't know different closet. I think they're all equal
closets because considering the kind of biphobia and bisexual discrimination
we've been reading about, I'm sure bisexuals listening would say, oh,
don't you say that I've got an easier closet to
come out of, you straight ladies. I do not think
(13:57):
that the hall closet is an easier closet. You should
see why haull of closet. It is full of stuff. Um.
But yeah, No. Part of what upset people about what
Andrew Sullivan said, uh, was that not only did he say, oh, no,
he's he's gay. Daily is gay, but he also said
because that's my experience, because I did that too, because
(14:18):
I came out as by first and then came out
as gay. Um, And so people were like, Hello, not
everybody has shocker, Not everybody has the same experience. Well,
that's been a big issue with uh Dan Savage as
well of Savage Love and Savage Love cast, whom I
know some of our listeners do not enjoy at all. Um,
(14:39):
but he similarly first came out as by and then um,
you know, came out as gay, and he has gotten
in hot water with the bisexual community as well because
because of that. Who hasn't a harder closet to come
out of Because there is this I mean, there really
(15:01):
is a lot of controversy is in the right word,
but a lot of fighting, sort of a lot of
tension within the LGB community in terms of um, bisexuals
and the discrimination that they feel and that they experience
(15:22):
being accepted as valid by gay and lesbian people who say, no, no, no,
that's it's it's a different kind of discrimination because you
at least have the sort of straight guys of being
with an opposite sex partner. If that's what floats your
(15:42):
boat at the time, Yeah, yeah, And then I mean
I think a lot of bisexual people would come around
and argue, but I don't, you know, we don't want
to live that way. We don't want to treat if
we are in an opposite sex or cross sex relationship,
we don't want to treat that as a as a disguise. Um.
And also under the not helping category is millionaire matchmaker
(16:03):
Patty Stinger. Has she ever helped? Has she ever been
in the help category? Um? I decided from getting me
through boring Saturday afternoon. Yeah, giving me a reason to
live when I'm stuck on the elliptical or the treadmill. Yeah,
watching it's for some reason, it's always set to Bravo
and she's always on. I only watched Bravo with the gym.
That's like half the reason I go to the gym. Caroline,
(16:24):
I feel like I've confessed this on the podcast before. Well,
you know, we do what we have to do, Kristen. Um.
But so, yeah, not only did Patty Stinger say she
would never marry a by sexual man, uh, but she
also said that bisexual men are really just gay. But
also she said, you don't want a by woman as
(16:44):
the mother of your children. Okay, alright, so hello, here
is a glaring example of biophobia. Yeah, because okay, so
I read that and then I stopped and I read
it again, and then I read it again, and and
what the F does she mean? So? Okay, probably because
she assumed that bisexual women are hyper sexualized, because the
(17:05):
whole there's that other, whole, entire stereotype and myth about
bisexual people that everybody, whether you're whether you're gay or
whether you're straight, you'll look at bisexual people and you're like,
you're just kind of slooty and greedy, are you? You
just want to have as much sex with as many
people as often as possible. Well, yeah, and and that
that to me is sort of mystifying because just because
(17:26):
you are open to loving or being attracted to a
man or a woman, does that necessarily mean that you're
going to have sex with them at the same time
all the time. Yeah, we assume that bisexual like equal
sex drive, which is uh, which is definitely faulty logic. Yeah,
(17:46):
I mean, so obviously we have a lot of myths
to bust throughout this episode. Um. But also into the
not helpful category was the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,
which last year wrote a blog post saying that bisexuality
was binary. And this is a huge argument. You here
a lot and thus erasing of trans and gender queer people,
(18:10):
so basically saying, bisexual people, your your whole stick is limiting,
to which a bisexual trans person wrote into the task
Force and basically said, hey, jerks, you own the un
apology because I am both trans and bisexual. And so
the task Force not only deleted the blog post and
(18:31):
offered sort of a backhanded apology basically the whole thing
of like, if you got offended, we're sorry, um, but
they also changed their name to the National lgbt Q
Task Force. They tossed the b in there, just sweep
sweep all that out the door. Yeah. Yet again an
example of mixing up what we're talking about, because transgender
(18:52):
is not a sexual orientation, it's a gender identity. These
are different things people. And of course this isn't just
going on among the Patti Stangers of the world. This
is happening on you know, scripted television as well, although
of course I'm a millionaire matchmaker clearly scripted, as I
can tell you firsthand. Um, there's the so called straightwashing
(19:16):
of characters such as Piper Chapman on Orange as a
New Black and Caroline. I had not even thought about
this before I mean an example of my own bi blindness.
I hadn't thought about this before we were reading up
for this podcast. Yeah, because she's referred to I think
it's by her fiance, right, And then one of the
first episodes, she's referred to as a former lesbian. Yeah,
(19:37):
she's always yeah, it's always a former lesbian. I think
bisexual has been mentioned maybe one time, but then Alex
refers to Piper as a straight girl, just flat out
just straight girl, playing into the stereotype of bisexual women
just playing gay for a day who were actually straight, um,
(19:59):
and going a bit farther back in television history to
sex in the City. I do clearly remember the episode
where Carrie dates a young bisexual guy and at one
point in her you know her monologue, she she describes
him as on a layover on the way to gay town,
and the whole thing, like she ends up at this
(20:21):
playing to spin the bottle game with him, and she's like, oh,
maybe I'm going to kiss a girl because this guy
is bisexual, and like all of his friends are are
are bisexual and really loving and I don't know if
I can handle this, because I think everybody wants to
make out with everybody else. It was a very like
hyper sexualized portrayal of them and p s. They don't
(20:45):
they don't end up living happily ever after? Yeah, what
does he end up being gay? Or just being by?
She leaves the party, She spin the Mottle party spoiler alert,
because she's just like, you know what, this isn't for me.
You're sexuality isn't for me, because well it was the
whole thing. They would like, go out and she would
(21:07):
see an attractive guy and then look over and he's
looking at the attractive guy too. What do you do
with that? I mean, come on, it was the nineties,
it was the ninthes. No, it wasn't the nineties, it
was the early two thousand's how old am I? Kristen
Will speaking of the nineties, Let's go back to the nineties,
the eighteen nineties, the eighteen nineties. Yeah, you didn't think
(21:28):
we'd let you off the hook with a little bit
of bisexual history, did you know, Evans? No, it would
be impossible. Um So. In a late nineteenth century, scientists
first start using the term bisexual, but it was used
to describe the hypothetical capacity of an organism to develop
(21:49):
into either a male or female of its species, so
not so much having to do with your sexuality or
sexual orientation, but more so having to do with biology. Um.
And so this idea began applying to humans human people
for the first time when it was discovered that human
embryos didn't show sexual characteristics until twelve weeks. And Freud
(22:13):
of course clung on to this idea of bisexuality in
a more biological sense, and it informed his thinking about
bisexual people. Basically that to have the physical characteristics of
both sexes naturally meant you'd have the psychic characteristics of both.
(22:33):
So bisexuality implies by genderism, and Freud's definition of bisexuality
tied together the concepts of disharmonious or shifting gender identity,
as well as dual attraction and the universal sexual ambiguity
of the human anatomy, which that's that's a lot to consider.
(22:54):
The universal sexual ambiguity of the human anatomy just makes
me think that we're all just lumps of plato random
we sometimes they get pushed together and sometimes we get
squeezed out of that like Plato pasta maker, pasta maker.
That was my favorite. I know mine too. Um. Basically,
(23:15):
as with a lot of Freud's theories, like everything was
cool when you're an immature human. When you're a child, Uh,
it's okay to be ambiguous as a kid. It's okay
to still be anal retentive, for instance, as a child.
But once you became an adult, you better have grown
out of that stuff. You better get rid of that
anal retention you. Yeah, you better get rid of that.
(23:36):
By genderism, bi sexuality in the way that he thought
of it. And what's so fascinating too, And I had
never heard this, or I don't remember hearing this, but Freud,
in addition to many of his contemporaries, tied bi sexuality
to hysteria, and in his paper Hysterical Fantasies and their
Relation to Bisexuality, he wrote that hysterical symptoms express the
(24:01):
combination of masculine and feminine sexual fantasies, so that whole
like floating uterus women are hysterical thing. Apparently it all
has to do with our innate bisexuality. Yeah, because of
the struggle between those I guess masculine and feminine forces.
And if they're imbalanced, then that's also gonna tip your
(24:25):
uterus off of its balancing point into the floating abyss.
That's your woo. Yeah, I don't think I'm ever gonna
use the phrase tip tip the scale again. I think
it's only going to be to tip the uterus, really
tip the ute today. But while Freud was starting to
(24:46):
play around with this idea of bisexuality in a more
uh psychic sense and link it to hysteria, if we
look at bisexuality in the way that we think of
it today in terms of orientation, we do have some
literary examples from the turn of the century with the
Bloomsberry Group and lit nerds out there I'm sure are
(25:11):
very familiar with the Bloomsbury's, with authors like Ian Forrester,
John Maynard Keynes, and Virginia Woolf, who I believe was lesbian,
not necessarily bisexual, or had lots of lesbian overtones and
her books well, but her sister was also in this group,
and her sister's husband, and I think there was a
(25:32):
lot of like, I don't want to say swinging, but
there was a lot of like sharing of partners, love
is love and love trump's gender. Yeah, and weren't they
painting lots of portraits of each other. You're telling me
about this, Caroline, Yeah, I loved it. So I was reading.
I was trying to find more information about the Bloomsberry Group. Uh,
and I did find one source that had a lot
(25:55):
of paintings like that was basically the introduction to the
book was just like portrait after poor it after portrait
because all of these literary and artistic people who made
up this loose collection of humans referred to as the
Bloomsbury Group, they all painted each other. It's fascinating, Caroline.
I gotta tell you, whatever I hear Bloomsbury, I think
Doonesbury like Dunsberry Group is just people sitting around reading
(26:18):
that old, that old political cartoon, and that is how
my brain works. Yeah, and I really I do wish
that I could have found out more about this group.
I feel like the resources that I stumbled across weren't
super flushed out. But it's not necessarily that these folks
(26:39):
in this group were, you know, waving a flag for bisexuality,
or that they were advocating for LGBT rights or anything
like that. But they were sort of on that early
forefront of love is love, of gender doesn't matter, you know,
we love who we love, We're going to support each other.
It's it's sort of like a kind of like a
(27:00):
hippie artist commune in London. Yeah, I mean it seems
like any time you have more bohemian artist types, they're
usually a bit more open to following your feelings and
loving whom you want to love. Um So, not surprisingly,
in nineteen fourteen, speaking of artists, a film called a
Florida Enchantment featured America's first bisexual character. But things aren't
(27:27):
all rosy all the time. We are talking about bisexual
erasure and dismissal today. Uh So, in just ten years
after that movie comes out, the Society for Human Rights,
which is the first officially recognized gay organization in the US,
excluded bisexuals. They're basically just you know, like a lot
of people today still feel that it's your your gay
(27:48):
straighter lying, and so they were not included in that group.
But in the nineteen forties and fifties we have Alfred
Kinsey come along, who offers some empirical data about how
the world is not divided into sheep and goats, and
in his examinations of adult sexual behavior, he estimated that
(28:11):
nearly forty six percent of guys had experienced both the
same and opposite sex sexual activities during their adult lives.
And using his Kinsey Heterosexual Homosexual Rating scale, he said
eleven point six percent of white men between twenty and
thirty five had a rating of three, which is about
(28:35):
equal straight and gay experience response. So you hear a
three rating a lot when with conversations of bisexuality, because
that is plotted right in the middle of the Kinsey scale. Yeah,
and among women, he found few with exclusively lesbian histories.
And when it comes to the Kinsey scale, Kinsey said
(28:57):
that just seven percent of never married women and four
scent of previously married women ages thirty five got a
rating of three. Yeah. I mean keep in mind too,
we're going through an historical timeline. This is taking place
in the nineteen forties and fifties. We will get to
more current statistics on bisexuality later on. But the thing
(29:19):
to understand is the importance of this scale, because this
this really solidifies the idea of sexual orientation being a
spectrum rather again than you know, just groups of sheep
and goats, right, which is which is a Kinsey quote,
uh that he was talking about how men are not
just too discreete heterosexual and homosexual populations. Yeah, and just
(29:42):
bleeding our little brains out. It's the loud field of
people yelling for sex um. But a lot of this research, though,
going on during this time and really through today, is
really focused on men. I mean and and this is
something that is common medical research of the mid twentieth
century across the board, whether we're talking about sexuality or
(30:05):
talking about drug trials, whatever might have been going on.
Because thanks to uh, this wonky thing that women have
called menstruation and periods and fertility, men were considered the
ideal research subjects because we have they have fewer variables
in their bodies. So it's it's no big surprise that
(30:26):
a bulk of this research is looking more at men
and also to probably a little driven by the self
interest of the mostly male doctors who were doing the
doing the science at the time. And we'll move more
through the mid to late twentieth century in in our
bisexuality timeline. We come right back from a quick break,
(30:54):
so we left off in It's a World War two
with our bisexual slash bisexual ratier timeline, and now it's
time to get into the swing in seventies, although I
think it's actually the swing in sixties usually, But for bisexuality,
the seventies was a pretty swing in time because this
is when the contemporary bisexual movement begins, with many organizations
(31:17):
led by men. And this is also of course, and
we see the whole bisexual chic theme emerging media. Hello
David Bowie. Uh. Plenty of rock stars and artists were
hooking up with men and women, and the media was
reporting all about it, all about these glamorous rock stars
and artists. Um. But on the political side. In nineteen
(31:37):
seventy two, the National Bisexual Liberation Group forms, which published
the first bisexual focused newsletter, and in the mid nineteen
seventies we see groups like New York's bi Forum and
Chicago's Byways forming. In San Francisco starts the Bisexual Center,
and then in nineteen seventy eight, sort of as a
(31:57):
follow up to the in Z Scale, we have psychiatrists
Fritz Klein right the Bisexual Option, which was one of
the first in depth explorations of bisexuality, and along with
that he releases the Klein Grid, which analyzes seven aspects
of sexual orientation in people's past, present, and ideal lives
(32:20):
for twenty one possible combinations, and Klein wrote, it is
the quality of loving, not the gender of love's objects
that should come under fire. I'm still stuck on that
whole twenty one possible combinations thing. It's it sounds a
little bit like a game of Mash, you know, where
you can have so many different possible combinations for your
(32:42):
ideal life. I love that so much sexual orientation Mash.
I was thinking almost in terms of, like, it's less
of spectrum and more the matrix. Um, but yeah, I
love I love, I love Mash. My sexuality is a
convertible with an apartment on the beach. I feel like
(33:03):
my sexuality also involves the beach somehow. Um but you
know so. Kristen mentioned that a lot of the studies
that are happening are focused on men. A lot of
the organizations focused on bisexuality have been led by men.
But in the nineteen eighties we start to see women
leading more bisexual advocacy and support groups. After experiencing alienation
(33:27):
from lesbian communities, we get the Boston in Seattle bisexual
women's networks forming UH and we see more and more
groups popping up in Europe and the groups that exist
in the US getting more and more organized. Yeah, and
when bisexual women at the time were experiencing alienation from
(33:48):
lesbian activist groups at the time because of similar reasons
why they they aren't always embraced today, where it's like, no,
if you might still want to have relationships with men,
you have attractions to men, you're not really part of
our agenda. So it was important for them to create
their own spaces as well. And in nighties seven sort
(34:11):
of showing just how much organization is happening at the time,
a bisexual contingent was present for the March on Washington
for Gay and lesbian rights. Yeah. And then moving into
the nine nineties, we see the first US and international
bisexual conferences by groups start lobbying exclusively gay and lesbian
(34:32):
groups to include bisexuals, and in we see a familiar
name surface. Fritz Klein found the American Institute of Bisexuality,
which Kristen mentioned earlier, and today it has a nearly
seven million dollar endowment and writing over at the New
York Times magazine, Deniz A. Lewis writes, in the last
few years, the American Institute of Bisexuality has supported the
(34:54):
work of about forty researchers, including those looking at bisexual
behavior and mental health, sexual arousal patterns of bisexual men,
bisexual youth, and quote unquote mostly straight men. And this
is important. I mean this is important to note because,
as a lot of researchers have said, including Lisa Diamond,
who's a big name in studies of women's sexuality and
(35:17):
sexual fluidity, it's historically been kind of on the difficult
side to secure funding for sexual orientation or sexuality research
unless you're somehow tying it in specifically to mental health
or things like AIDS in HIV research. Yeah, studying sexual
orientation just for its own sake is usually, I guess,
(35:39):
kind of pooh pooed in the research community. And I
wonder too if it if that is another example of
some bi stigma going on, because it's like, oh, well,
why why do we really need to pay focus to this?
Because I wonder if there is that assumption tied in
there of like this is just a term for people
who who might be swingers or might just want to
(35:59):
have a lot of sex, Like who who cares? Really?
But the thing is, even though there have now been
decades on decades of organizing going on the A I B.
And you know, bisexual people in general are still fighting
for recognition. And if we look to today, the Advocate
(36:25):
reports that several studies indicate that quote, bisexuals make up
the largest portion of the LGBT population, but they have
some of the worst representation. Yeah, and so what is
that proportion? Uh? There's a frequently cited meta analysis from
(36:46):
April eleven by the Williams Institute out of the University
of California that points out that there are approximately nine
millions self identified LGBT Americans, a figure which everybody loves
to quote is roughly a wevalent to the population of
New Jersey. Yeah. Um, And that met analysis looked at
(37:07):
a whole bunch of different surveys and studies looking at
the proportions of not only gay Americans but bisexual Americans, um,
and found that on average, about one point eight percent
of American adults identify as bisexual, compared to one point
seven percent who identify as lesbian or gay. So a
lot of people are looking at this and saying, where
(37:30):
is the representation if if one point seven percent of
Americans identify as lesbian or gay, and we see a
lot of lesbian gay characters on TV or written about
in the media, and the number is about the same
for bisexual Americans. Where are they in the closet? A
lot of them are in the closet. According to a
(37:51):
PE research survey, only twenty eight percent of people who
identify as bisexual, so that they're open about it. And
for you know, all the reasons that we have touched
on earlier, of if you are a mother, of people
shunning you as being an irresponsible parent for that reason,
um of not wanting people to constantly ask you about
(38:16):
what you did over the weekend, kind of crazy things
that you get into, wondering about the validity of your
same or opposite sex relationships, essentially probably wanting to keep
your private life private. Yeah, and I'm sure all of
the stereotypes and biphobia that we've already discussed is part
of that. That bisexual people are lying and confused, that
(38:37):
they're greedy, selfish and slutty, or that they're simply afraid
to come out as gay, or that it's just a phase.
And so it's for these reasons that the San Francisco
Human Rights Commission recently called bisexuals an invisible majority in
need of resources and support, and the need for that
support is very real because, as Glad and Brian do
(39:00):
choose a researcher on bisexuality and health at Indiana University Bloomington,
have noted, compared to straight and gay bulk bisexual people
face higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders,
as well as substance abuse, victimization by violence, suicidal ideation,
and sexual health concerns. Yeah, I mean I would. I
(39:22):
would imagine that if you feel invisible, or if you
feel like you have to be invisible because you just
don't want to face all of these awful negative assumptions
and stereotypes about you and your sexuality, it might be
hard to ask for help, whether you need actual like
mental health counseling of some kind, or or whether you
just are concerned like this list pointed out about your
(39:45):
sexual health. So I imagine that while bisexual erasure on
TV or whatever, you could send people poo poo that
as not being that important, it is important in terms
of representation and seeing yourself on screen, having that lifestyle,
that life normalized, and at this point Caroline. On a
(40:08):
side note, I would like to point out that we
have used the phrase poop poo twice in this episode.
It might it might be a record. That's well, that's
actually the subtitle in my brain of this episode, poo
pooing bisexuality. Yeah no, no, no boo poopooing bisexual erasureized
should say we are poo pooing that. Yeah. Yeah, the
(40:29):
end of people poo pooing bisexuality. Um. But this is
part one of a two part conversation we're going to
have about this because we've been talking about the history
and more of the real world stats and facts, and
next episode we're going to dive more into pop cultural
representations of bisexuality and get into more research on this
(40:54):
on why it seems so hard for our society to
wrap its brain or round bisexuality and what bisexuality means
in the kind of language that has evolved around it
as well. So tune in for that. But in the meantime,
we want to hear from you and your experiences with this,
(41:14):
So Mom seven House stu works dot com is our
email address. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
Podcast or messages on Facebook and We've got a couple
of messages to share with you when we come right
back from a quick break, and now back to the show. Well,
Kristen and I have a couple of letters here about
our single Ladies series that we did. Uh and I
(41:38):
have a letter here from Yell. She says, as an
American living in Israel, I can certainly verify what Professor
Kennett Lahad said is true. I've been to thirty one
weddings in my four and a half years in this country.
Single by choice is not a welcome option in Jerusalem,
especially not in religious circles. Even lenient religious circles are
(42:01):
entrenched in the idea of marriage. Tel Aviv may be
slightly different as there are fewer religious people there, but
I believe the ideal of marriage is strong in Israel
no matter what, as even secular Jews are often quite traditional.
I remember being eighteen and thinking that I would be
married at twenty two, and as I passed that age,
I just always assumed it was another year or so.
(42:22):
I'm almost twenty eight now, and in the secular American
world I would be viewed as young with plenty of
time and no need to worry. But Jerusalem is a
little more homogeneous than say New York City. As a
moderately religious Jew in Jerusalem, I see all my friends,
my age and older panicking a little as they all assumed,
like I did, that we'd be married. Now. None of
(42:43):
us are single by choice, and it definitely has to
do with what Dr Lahad said about our upbringing ingraining
us with the expectation of marriage and the belief that
being married is a sign of status and stability. We
have a great social circle that combines young marrieds and singles.
But I see what happens when people stay single well
into their thirties or forties. They come around two singles events,
(43:05):
and a lot of people look at them like they're
creepy or sad or weird. It's so messed up, and
I feel like that's what is scaring my friends and myself.
We don't want to end up being pitied and invited
to things as an act of charity, or being set
up with much older men or people that we would
have to be settling for. It's frustrating that single by
choice isn't really an option here because the stigma is
(43:27):
so strong and the communal life is such that if
you choose that life, you are actively choosing to be
ostracized in a way. The older you get here. If
you stay single, no matter what, people have it in
the back of their minds that you are desperate, there's
no escaping it. I agree with Dr Laha that the
conversation needs to be continued to make life better for singles,
(43:48):
so that it can be seen as another way to live,
not a different way to live. Well, thank you so
much for your letter. Well, I've got a letter here
from Danny, who writes, I recently discovered your podcast an
absolutely fell in love with it. I even got my
fourteen year old brother to listen to it when he
wants to learn stuff and encourage him to go there
for information on women and sexuality instead of scouring tumbler.
(44:11):
But I love that, although, by the way, just also
sent him to stuff I've never told you dot tumbler
dot com. He can stay on tumbler um. So, Danny writes,
I wanted to write you about your recent episode on
the concept of single by choice. I'm a nineteen year
old first generation immigrant Hispanic woman who noticed some similarities
among my peers of the same bracket. I always joke
(44:33):
with other young Hispanic immigrant women that after the king
sen Era comes the wedding, and sadly I discovered that
to be true. At sixteen, my very Catholic Hispanic mother
sat me down and talked to me about the importance
of finding me a man soon and settling down, giving
her lots of grand babies. When I told her I
wanted to go to college and law school, then I
(44:54):
would think about maybe perhaps, and also I kind of
like women, she was livid. Now I'm nineteen, have my
paralegal certificate, made the lead career wise from McDonald's to
a legal assistant at a law firm, and planned to
be a judge. Hey, good for you. Of course, none
of this is a valid because I don't have a
man by my side, and my parents have made that
(45:14):
very clear. Both tried desperately to play matchmaker and pair
me with men, sometimes way older than me, with the
hopes that I will come to my senses and stop
looking at girls all dreamy and have a kid. Poor
Lemore de dios talking to other college as Hispanic and
immigrant women, we are all very similar boat. Most of
us have fallen to the dreamer category and legal limbo
(45:37):
girls just wanting an education are pushed to get married asap.
Some of us are even told Mary first, he can
pay for your expensive degree. Some of us just kind
of shake it off and try to tell them that
we're not living at the ranch with Grandma who got
married and got right to having kids at fifteen, and
some given Mary young and actually lead really successful lives.
For some of us, single by choice is not an option.
(46:00):
Some Hispanic women who are first generation immigrants and still
single at are ostracized by their own family and praised
by their feminist friends. It puts us between the wall
of praise and society at the cost of family rejection
and even banishment of being labeled as gringa in the
sense that we're leaving behind all trace of our culture
and told every accomplishment we do is invalid without a man.
(46:21):
I have cousins who are already considered old maids at
twenty three or younger. I would love to hear from
other first generation immigrants in other cultures on the subject.
I know for some arranged marriage, even if one's parents
are in totally different parts of the world, is a
very real thing. Shout out to all immigrant women struggling
to tell their parents that's just not how it works,
(46:43):
your mom. Once again, I adore your podcast and encourage
everyone to listen to it whenever they can. Sex education
saves lives, and you two ladies are saving lives every day,
So thanks so much, Danny and listen. Keep on going
for that judge ship. You can do it. And if
you have a letter to send to us, mom stuff
(47:04):
a house. Stuff works dot Com is our address and
for links to all of our social media as well
as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this
one with our sources so you can learn more about
bisexuality and bi phobia. Head on over to stuff Mom
Never Told You dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
(47:25):
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