This weekend, while humoring my partner and seeing, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” I was reminded of a “trend (?)” which incenses me. And that is, “The Bi-Phase”. For those of you who haven’t seen (or suffered) through the movie, the main female character tries to escape her past “ex’s”, which her none too bright, sorta boyfriend keeps referring to as her ex-boyfriends. Although she constantly corrects him by calling them her seven evil ex’s (we never learn why they are evil, despite how long the movie drags on, but that is besides the point), he never notices the corrections she makes. Nor does he make any connection to the female who accosts him, ninja style, in an alleyway.
Now, before you go all nerdy video-gangbusters on me here, I understand Scott Pilgrim was hardly a glowing example of anything other than “the nerdy guy beats every guy who ever beat up on him and still gets two hot chicks in the end” kind of movie, and that isn’t where my beef is (well, not in this blog anyway). What’s got ants in my pants, bees in my bonnet and whatever other trite expressions you can think of for being pissed off, is the whole concept of a “Bi-Phase.”
In this particular movie, you would have to be beyond a nerd or live in a darker cave than I do, to not realize that Ramona (female character with 7 evil ex’s) has had a relationship with a woman. That’s certainly cool with me and I speculate that it is probably cool with the nerdy 95% male dominate population in the movie theatre. What’s not cool with me; you know, me who identifies as bisexual, is that when it comes time for Ramona to ‘fess up about her relationship with her evil fem ex, she merely shrugs it off as, “I thought I was Bi. It was just a phase.” And, to kill the ending of the movie, much like “Chasing Amy,” Ramona decides that she’d rather be with a man. How convenient.
How sad.
How fucking much it pisses me off that in the few movies I’ve seen, bisexuality is still being presented as a phase, a joke, a temporary, desperate period of exploration until a man is found.
How oddly, eerily biblical-as if finding a man is the true answer to what every woman is really looking for, and yet, if she can’t find one, she might be able to get away with being edgy enough to be “bi,” but only if it is a passing phase. And of course, that discounts all the bisexual men in the world!
Clearly for me, this is a deeply personal issue. For most of my life I was torn, often to the brink of suicidal ideation, over my sexuality. My very first crush, as I’ve already blogged about, was on a boy my age that lived across the street. However, in hindsight as an adult, I often wonder if he would have been my first crush if I hadn’t had heterosexuality rammed down my throat and bashed into my head at least since the time my first, and only, male cousin was born- a mere six months after I was. We were constantly referred to as “kissing cousins” (whatever that means…By the way, it turns out he’s gay and I’m bi, so that whole forcing heterosexuality thing upon us didn’t turn out so well!) And ever since I can remember I was asked if I had a boyfriend-I mean from the time I was THREE or so on!
Come ON! Talk about inappropriate questions for kids! We don’t even give children a chance to develop their own sexuality in our American society. We form their sexuality for them: based on religion, based on fear, based on tradition and our own expectations of weddings and what have-you and we start bombarding them, at the earliest ages possible, that they are to be heterosexual and that is that. It is almost a carefully re-written version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”, except here children aren’t being taught to hate, they are being taught whom it is permissible to love and when and how.
Once my first crush moved away, my attention turned to a girl who lived on the next block from me. I was smitten with her in a way I’d never felt before, in a way part of me already knew I shouldn’t be, thanks to my Catholic upbringing. Yet on the rare times when we would walk to Sunday School together, the longing inside me to reach out and hold her hand was so intense I was certain it was worth any price that awaited me in hell. In our younger years I could get away with doing so under the guise of skipping to school to make it there faster, but all I really cared about was being closer to her. My crush on her lasted ages, or at least from second or third grade through fifth or sixth grade, when she turned to the ‘80’s Brat Pack and whatever boys Teen magazine told her where hot and I lost her forever. Two decades later though, I can still squirm in my seat as I think about my early childhood orgasms I’d have with her as we became too old for holding hands and skipping to school but not to self-conscious to avoid wrestling each other alone in my basement; our legs brushing, crushing each other’s clitoris’s, our barely developed breasts rubbing against each other’s breasts, hot, sweaty faces gasping for air, lips poised inches apart from lips, in a kiss we never dared.
Monday, September 20, 2010
The Bi Phase Part 2
Unlike Amy and Ramona and whatever her name(s) were in all those other movies that depict bisexuality as a phase, I believe it is something just as real as heterosexuality and homosexuality and probably about as understood as bestiality, although maybe slightly more accepted. Perhaps it is a phase that some people go through and that is ok, I’m just sick and fucking tired of it being marginalized, shoved off to the side, dismissed, laughed at, denied, denigrated and in some ways, treated as the new homosexuality-the new thing you can’t talk about.
In my life, I am only aware of three other bisexual people. One person is openly bi. One person’s sexuality was revealed to me under penalty of losing my friendship if I revealed that information to anyone else and the last person (who was also the first person I ever knew) was a co-worker at the time and I discovered her bisexuality when she began hitting on me after her relationship with her ex-boyfriend ended. At the time, I was not out to anyone, including myself, about being bisexual. At that particular period of time I probably thought I was a lesbian. I have no idea what kind of relationship my former co-worker is in, but the other two bisexual individuals are in passably heterosexual relationships, as am I, which tends to make people assume that we are straight (a term I loath-I’ll save it for another blog!). Perhaps this is part of what helps to weaken the view of bisexuality as it’s own, verifiable place within the realm of human sexuality.
Other reasons I think people label bisexuality as a “phase” are a) because we are conditioned to think (generally) in terms of two categories (on/off, right/wrong, black/white, gay/straight, female/male etc.) and b) because it is (or appears to be) so much easier just to chose one category to belong to. There were times when I thought I was going to go friggin’ nuts over trying to decide if I was heterosexual or a lesbian. So many times I just want a clear cut answer that neatly fit into one fucking category goddamn it and quite frankly, I didn’t care which one! But when I decided I was hetero, it negated the feelings I’ve always had for women and when I decided I was a lesbian it was always from a place of intense anger or hatred towards men and negated the few positive experiences I had with men. I’ve come out as gay. I’ve come out as not gay. I’ve tried being asexual. I’ve tried just being loyal to my sex toys. None of it worked because none of it acknowledged the core of who I was.
Once I grappled with that beast-that all along I had been denying the core of who I was, and who I am is a sexual person who is attracted to sexual people-I don’t care if they are gay, or bi, or hetero, or intersexed or gender-curious, things began to make more sense to me and I began to be more at peace with myself. Still, it was a long time before I told anyone that I was “bi” for lack of a better word that seemed to fit how I identify.
Still, talking about being bisexual, at least for me, and I am someone who is incredibly vocal about what I believe in, has not been easy. My honesty on this issue has played a role in ending relationships, as at least one boyfriend all the sudden felt the need to worry about every friend I went out with, in case they became competition. My current partner spent years grappling with my jokes, for example, when it was pointed out that something in our house wasn’t straight (to which I’d quip, “Neither am I!”) as well as the more difficult issue of how could I be “bi” and still be with him. My family doesn’t understand how I can claim to be “bi” if I haven’t ever had sex or made out with a woman (past child abuse doesn’t count). Even thought I’d explain, “Gee, maybe she wasn’t interested in me, or I wasn’t interested in her, or the timing was wrong, or she had a boyfriend, or someone walked in on us….” None of it seems to matter. Until I’ve had sex with a woman, my family appears steadfastly unwilling to see me as anything other than heterosexual, and I’m pretty sure even if I did have sex with a woman, they’d ask me how I “knew” it was sex. And when I explain, again and again, why I fight for the right of all Americans to get married, it doesn’t sink in that I am also fighting for my right to marry a woman, if that is what I chose to do some day.
Perhaps the ultimate reason bisexuality is dismissed as a phase, as opposed to part of the continuum of sexuality, is because it is too much for many people to deal with. Instead of see-sawing through attractions for women some of the time and men at other times or possibly both all of the time, it is just easier to grab a box, preferably the one labeled “heterosexual” and shove yourself inside it. After all, it’s only life, love, sexuality, emotional fulfillment, orgasms, closeness, ones’ self, one’s partner, society’s edicts, pleasure, pain and reality you have to deal with or avoid, and aren’t those pesky tasks anyway?
In my life, I am only aware of three other bisexual people. One person is openly bi. One person’s sexuality was revealed to me under penalty of losing my friendship if I revealed that information to anyone else and the last person (who was also the first person I ever knew) was a co-worker at the time and I discovered her bisexuality when she began hitting on me after her relationship with her ex-boyfriend ended. At the time, I was not out to anyone, including myself, about being bisexual. At that particular period of time I probably thought I was a lesbian. I have no idea what kind of relationship my former co-worker is in, but the other two bisexual individuals are in passably heterosexual relationships, as am I, which tends to make people assume that we are straight (a term I loath-I’ll save it for another blog!). Perhaps this is part of what helps to weaken the view of bisexuality as it’s own, verifiable place within the realm of human sexuality.
Other reasons I think people label bisexuality as a “phase” are a) because we are conditioned to think (generally) in terms of two categories (on/off, right/wrong, black/white, gay/straight, female/male etc.) and b) because it is (or appears to be) so much easier just to chose one category to belong to. There were times when I thought I was going to go friggin’ nuts over trying to decide if I was heterosexual or a lesbian. So many times I just want a clear cut answer that neatly fit into one fucking category goddamn it and quite frankly, I didn’t care which one! But when I decided I was hetero, it negated the feelings I’ve always had for women and when I decided I was a lesbian it was always from a place of intense anger or hatred towards men and negated the few positive experiences I had with men. I’ve come out as gay. I’ve come out as not gay. I’ve tried being asexual. I’ve tried just being loyal to my sex toys. None of it worked because none of it acknowledged the core of who I was.
Once I grappled with that beast-that all along I had been denying the core of who I was, and who I am is a sexual person who is attracted to sexual people-I don’t care if they are gay, or bi, or hetero, or intersexed or gender-curious, things began to make more sense to me and I began to be more at peace with myself. Still, it was a long time before I told anyone that I was “bi” for lack of a better word that seemed to fit how I identify.
Still, talking about being bisexual, at least for me, and I am someone who is incredibly vocal about what I believe in, has not been easy. My honesty on this issue has played a role in ending relationships, as at least one boyfriend all the sudden felt the need to worry about every friend I went out with, in case they became competition. My current partner spent years grappling with my jokes, for example, when it was pointed out that something in our house wasn’t straight (to which I’d quip, “Neither am I!”) as well as the more difficult issue of how could I be “bi” and still be with him. My family doesn’t understand how I can claim to be “bi” if I haven’t ever had sex or made out with a woman (past child abuse doesn’t count). Even thought I’d explain, “Gee, maybe she wasn’t interested in me, or I wasn’t interested in her, or the timing was wrong, or she had a boyfriend, or someone walked in on us….” None of it seems to matter. Until I’ve had sex with a woman, my family appears steadfastly unwilling to see me as anything other than heterosexual, and I’m pretty sure even if I did have sex with a woman, they’d ask me how I “knew” it was sex. And when I explain, again and again, why I fight for the right of all Americans to get married, it doesn’t sink in that I am also fighting for my right to marry a woman, if that is what I chose to do some day.
Perhaps the ultimate reason bisexuality is dismissed as a phase, as opposed to part of the continuum of sexuality, is because it is too much for many people to deal with. Instead of see-sawing through attractions for women some of the time and men at other times or possibly both all of the time, it is just easier to grab a box, preferably the one labeled “heterosexual” and shove yourself inside it. After all, it’s only life, love, sexuality, emotional fulfillment, orgasms, closeness, ones’ self, one’s partner, society’s edicts, pleasure, pain and reality you have to deal with or avoid, and aren’t those pesky tasks anyway?
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