On Friday, we published Part One of the AfterEllen roundtable on bisexuality, and it definitely ignited conversation both in the comments section and on social media. We return this week with Part Two, where AE writers Anna Pulley, Eboni Rafus, Ali Davis, Chelsea Steiner and Miranda Meyer discuss dating, relationships and their favorite bisexual pop culture characters.
Dana: Have you ever had a lesbian not want to date you because you’re bisexual, and have you had the same sort of circumstance with a man?
Anna: Yes, absolutely to the first one. No, to the second one. It’s a weird like double blind-like men never care if you’re a bisexual woman. They encourage it. It’s like, “Yeah. Great for me.” But women almost never-I had to change my status on a OkCupid to gay because I couldn’t date. Like no one would date me so I had to change it back.
Dana: This conversation makes me wish I was drinking. But you bring up an interesting point. So guys don’t have a problem with it. Does that piss you off in any way? Does that frustrate you because that makes it seem like you’re going into a whole other stereotype?
Anna: Yeah. It’s very frustrating. It’s very frustrating to have straight men be your ally. It’s just like, “No. You’re not the people I want to sleep with most of time.” Like why can’t this be the other way around? Also I think it speaks to sort of women’s general insecurities like-I don’t know. It’s just it’s very hard for a woman to be like left for a man or cheated on like by a man. Like there’s something almost like irrevocably harmful about that to a lot of lesbians. Not all of them but I feel like once lesbians get to know you and then you sort of drop the bisexual bomb they’re a lot better about it because they know who you are and like you’re not just some like flirty internet profile with pictures of you and your selfies, or whatever. So that helps but like in general if it’s like super frustrating and terrible. So, you know, what are you going to do?
Eboni: Yeah. I had a similar experience that Anna did with OkCupid. I felt like when I put bisexual, women wouldn’t date me and men just wanted to offer to have a threesome with me.
Dana: It’s like the movies.
Eboni: Yeah. I’m like, ‘This is a stereotype. And maybe it is a stereotype but I mean even when I switched over to say that I was gay I lot more attention from women but I still got some attention from men too, from couples. That’s a big thing. If you write that you’re bisexual you get a lot of messages from couples wanting you to be their-so, but you know, I’m not just saying you go for it, do it, but I’m looking for a long-term and honest relationship. It’s really frustrating when I can’t find someone to date me because of their perception of what bisexuality is. I’ve also dated lesbians who were super paranoid that I was going to cheat and did date me but the relationship wasn’t good because they were very insecure whenever I was talking to guys or friends with guys, and actually more worried about me being with guys than other queer women. So, it’s a struggle from the dating.
Ali: Oh, definitely. I’ve had people just tell me flat out that, “I won’t date you because you’re bi or I would never date you.” And my favorite OkCupid response was I had a woman who wrote me back and she was not a good reader, and I won’t change my status on OkCupid because I don’t want to start something on a lie, like it just feels dishonest. So I went to look at her profile and at the top it said no bisexuals.
Dana: Oh, Jeez.
Ali: It was like something I might have missed. And I got this sheepish reply back and it got weirder where like we exchanged emails where I’m like, “Well here’s where I am and I’ve never cheated on anyone. Why do I get stuck with that weird paranoia rush?” And so she sent me this weird email and goes, “Well, I still wouldn’t date you but maybe we could be friends.” And so she like wants to go on a friendship date. I’m like, “All right. I’m taking one for the team. I’m going to make end rows.” And I was going to go meet her and I get stuck in traffic. I live in Los Angeles. There is traffic.
Dana: You see, you did exactly what she was worried about. [laughs]
Ali: Yeah. I pulled over to call her and to say, “Hey, I’m running late.” And she goes, “I have a bad feeling about this. Something is wrong.” And she sent me this long letter about why and like it was all about this ball of paranoia. There’s no way I could have cheated on her along the way.
Dana Piccoli: It’s not like as if you stopped on the way to like meet a guy. Like you saw him on the side of the road and like pulled over.
Ali: [laughs] But I’ve also had a straight male friend call me once and I thought he was totally with it and he’d never had a problem with anything, but he called me up and he’s like, “I have been listening to the radio.There was someone on the radio and they were saying that a lesbian and a bisexual are different things.” I said, “Yeah.” And apparently a lot of straight guys don’t-I think because of porn. That’s an uneducated guess, don’t make that distinction and they don’t know, so they’re all for it because they think, “It’s this woman who would be with me and another woman.” Um, no.
Chelsea: I’ve never had a lesbian refuse to date me, because obviously I’m irresistible to anyone with a pulse. KIDDING. I’ve just had people not take me seriously, which is frustrating. In terms of straight men, when I was on OK Cupid back in the day I’d get plenty of skeezy messages from skeezy guys and the occasional threesome request. PASS. Before I met my guy, I assumed I would end up with a woman because I had yet to encounter a man who wasn’t A) threatened by my sexuality or B) into it for all the wrong/pervy reasons.
Miranda: Yeah. So like the original question has to do with like the way that men are super gung-ho about dating bi women-
Dana: But have you had any women reject you or say like, “No. I don’t want to date you because you identify as bisexual”?
Miranda: No. Just again because of the circumstances of what I think sort of identifying has been. And so I haven’t really been dating much in the last couple of years, for a long list of reasons. So it just hasn’t come up yet. It might though.
Ali: It’ll come up in the comments.
Miranda: Oh right. But I also wanted to add, not to reinforce stereotype here, but in college the first time that I ever really went beyond kissing a woman I was in a relationship with a man at the time. And it was one of those really like dirt baggy college, super drunken incidents, of which I am not particularly proud, but so after the fact, I had been cheated on myself in the past and so I didn’t want to keep any secrets about it so I went and immediately and told him what had happened, and he told me had to like get back to me about how he felt about it because he had to decide whether it’s counted or not, which I feel like just says so much.
Dana: It’s like a circle-it all goes right back to itself. Now I’ve heard this a few times: People talking about how lesbians are engaging in like a self-fulfilling prophecy by assuming that bisexual women are more interested in men and that by pushing potential bisexual mates away, bisexual women are more likely to find a man to date. What do you think about that theory?
Anna: I think that’s partially true. I mean I think specifically and realistically the majority of women are straight, so we do have to bear that in mind. It’s not just that the bisexual is leaving us for men. It’s that most people are straight in the world and like that’s something they have to deal with unfortunately. I wish it weren’t true. But also yeah, it’s a lot easier for bisexual women to date men than it is for bisexual women to date women, and so what are you going to be attracted to? Like the person that you have to justify your existence for or the person who is like, “Great. I’ll meet you for coffee at six.” Like you’re going to choose that. And it’s hard. It’s hard to like fucking trying to validate your own self and your worth to someone that you don’t even know what’s the point.
Dana: You’re breaking my heart, you guys. It’s breaking my heart.
Eboni: I think that I’m a true believer like the whole like Kinsey scale, you know, everybody’s on a continuum, and so I think it just really depends on the person and where they are. Like I think very few people on the Kinsey scale from zero to six. Very few people at a three where they’re just as much attracted to women as they are to men and it’s 50/50. I think some people are bisexual. Like myself, I identify as bisexual. I date women more often. I have a lot more long-term relationships with women, but I’ve had more hook ups with men. So, I do think that, personally, I would just keep-I would probably more likely try harder. I would not so easily now give up I guess or decide to take the easy way to be with a guy because they’re more accepting of me, because I am usually more attracted to women in terms of-I’d say probably was like, I don’t know, a five or something on the scale. So, I think it depends on the person. I think that I know that after my divorce I had a long period of reflection where I was thinking about-I was writing for AfterEllen and I had this huge queer community. Most of my friends are queer women in relationships with other women, and I had this idea of like what would happen now if I start dating a man? And if anything I think that might have deterred me, I think in a way deterred me from dating a man because I don’t want to lose my community. I don’t want to lose what I had built over the past seven years. And so I think at this point, I’m more likely to date a woman than a man for those reasons.
Ali: There is a little bit, like I catch myself when I see a bisexual celebrity starts dating a man long-term or even like a friend who’s bi and starts dating a man. There’s a little bit of like, ugh, because you know that that’s going to get pointed to as a-
Dana: Like Amber Heard and Johnny Depp?
Ali: Yeah. Where you’re like, “Oh God. “
Eboni: Not that you, Ali, feel upset about that women dating a man but you know that’s going to be another…another person is going to say, “Well Amber Heard dated…”
Dana: Right. It’s just more fuel to the fire.
Ali: Yeah. And you can point it at the term game. I know bisexuals who are in long-term lesbian marriages and they’ll be like, “Well, then she’s a lesbian.” Like, that’s not how it works.
Dana: Once again you go back to the invisibility, the invalidation of identity.
Ali: Right. There are a lot of lesbians in my life who are great about it. It’s not an everyday grinding down thing. Because I’ve taken trips up and down the Kinsey scale. I’m probably about 85% interested in women, and like when I think long term about if I’m every going to get I think in terms of marrying a woman. Yeah. It’s that weird, you do get those pushes every now and then of like it’s not real or you’re going to end up with a man or stuff like, or just the flat out-it’s a very small pool of women who date because there’s a group of women who are otherwise, not going to date me.
Chelsea: I mean, it’s a numbers game. There are WAY more straight men than queer women interested in dating us. But I feel like it misses the larger point of bisexuality, and relationships in general. It’s not about gender, it’s about finding a compatible partner that takes care of you when you’re sick, makes you laugh, and gives you tons of orgasms. We want love just like everyone else, we’re just less picky about said partner’s junk!
Dana: Well, let’s get our millennial opinion here.
Miranda: I’m like the generational correspondent. [laughs] I’m a big believer especially in relationships in self fulfilling prophesy in general like regardless of sexual orientation, if you’re convinced that your partner is going to cheat on you or your partner is going to leave you, it’s probably going to happen just because like you’re pushing-you know what I mean? So that’s sort of one part that I think is independent of the entire issue of sexuality. I think it’s also especially most-I don’t know. Like I’m speaking from a position where I haven’t been in a long term relationship for a while now and so when you’re talking about like a more casual sort of thing. It’s also a lot harder to sort of approach women or like kind of strike up connections because there’s that very real possibility of the negative reaction that you can get, and because you may not present in a way that’s like stereotypically queer. So like a few years ago I read a lot more queer and so on and so forth, and like come up to me a lot, and I was actually thinking the other day like it’s sort of too bad I didn’t identify as bisexual at that point.
Dana: You wasted your awesome Tegan and Sara hair for nothing.
Miranda: Right?! Got an invite to the official lesbian poker night and everything.
Dana: So, here you all are-brilliant, wonderful, amusing writers who contribute a tremendous amount to AfterEllen, and people love you and they love your writing. And so you’ve written this amazing piece and you’re talking about a bisexual character or someone’s who’s considers their sexuality fluid, and you read the comment section where a couple of people are just like nose diving into this bisexual character. What is that like for you to be creating this media and then having people be so frustrated or angry about this character and that also represents something that you are?
Anna: I’m not going to lie: I don’t read the comments just for that reason. I did really early on, but like every time a bisexual would write in, in my advice column I just couldn’t-like they were so mean and I was like, “You guys are really missing the point.” Like her problem isn’t her bisexuality. It’s like whatever, her girlfriend who won’t take out the trash or something. Like it’s completely not important to the question. They just fixate on that. So, I try not to read them but like yes, it’s very frustrating and I just like wish like can’t we just tolerate and respect each other. Like we’re supposed to be this community and like fighting the real fight against the bigotry and oppression and homophobia in the world, and yet here we are in the comment section like fighting over Glee characters.
Dana: So being a bisexual woman writing about bisexual characters and then reading comments where people are attacking the bisexual character-it’s kind of like transference or whatever.
Chelsea: I mean it sucks but it’s like I know that trolls are part of internet life. I mean I used to write a marijuana column on a different website and I got so much shit for that because people thought I was offending sobriety and making fun of sober people, which I wasn’t. I was just talking about enjoying weed.
Dana: You reefer smoking bisexual, you.
Chelsea: [laughs] But yeah, I mean, mean comments suck, but what are you going to do?
Eboni: Yeah. I tried to read the comments and engage with the readers. A while ago another writer suggest that I do that and just keep the conversation going in that way, and I really enjoy that actually. Sometimes it’s really hard not to get offended so what I try to do is take a step away and come back in a couple of hours, and usually by then I don’t even have to say anything because another reader has made my point. So it happened with me the Reign article that I wrote. Like the top five reasons to watch Reign, and one of them was the Caitlin Stasey being bisexual and we had actually sexually fluid characters. And some people said some nasty things about bisexuality or sexual fluidity and I just kind of stepped away from the computer, take a couple of deep breaths, and by the time I came back to write my response I didn’t have to because other people had done it for me. And so every single time I start getting disappointed with people, like get upset about the comments, I’ll remind myself that there are just as many people out there who are very open-minded and accepting, and like if they’re bisexual themselves or just are allies that-I don’t need to be the person to always like defend bisexuality or pansexuality, because there’s other people out there than can do it too. So, if I need to take a break from it or step away, I try to do that.
Ali: Yeah. And that’s the most important thing to remember is that people who aren’t angry are way less likely to leave a comment so you have to remember that you-I don’t know. Like it is interesting because the problem is that some people can’t do nuance. Like I think there are a couple of truly bisexual characters like a Lost Girl, like that really are bi, and then there’s the TV trope of the woman who’s been sleeping with women, and she slept with a man, and I get angry about that. It’s about being the way characters get treated not about the bisexuality, but I think some people have a hard time making that distinction honestly. I realized that during the fictional character Hunger Games tournament. There was a comment-OK, I was too involved. I’ll go ahead and say that right now. But someone was like, “Oh, I’m voting for this character over that character because this one is a real lesbian and that one is only bi.” And there was moment of like ugh, and then there’s a second moment of like I just got mad over a fictional character.
Dana Piccoli: And Miranda, you just came into this whole mess like full steam because you’re talking about a show (Person of Interest) where two characters are completely sexually fluid. Neither of them have claimed any sexuality, or identity, whatsoever.
Miranda: Yeah. And then they just killed one. Spoiler for Person of Interest. And probably within two minutes after that one of them was dead. And actually the biggest sort of what feels to me that one of the arguments that I’ve been having in the comments is people are like, ‘I don’t understand why you’re mad.’ Like awesome. But like most of the issues that I’ve had with the sexuality of these characters was actually before I started writing about the show for AfterEllen that like there was a series, an episode where Shaw was shown to be extremely sexually interested in a man, not particularly romantically interested. Like if you ask me, like my belief is that she’s bisexual, homo-romantic, but she was sexually interested in this man. And Root, this female character, got jealous about it. And everybody was like, “No. This is just like showrunners backpedaling on their relationship or on Shaw’s queerness.” And I’m like, “No it’s not. Like it’s obvious that her relationship with Root is still primary and like these two women are head over hills for each other in their like psychotic way, but that she’s also sexually interested in men. We have talked about this before on the show. Like she’s clearly like bi, pan or something.” And so like the fact that people saw it as this sort of something or like anytime she’s interested in men of any kind it means like negative queer points. [Editor’s Note: Shaw is not dead anymore! TV SURPRISE!]
Dana: Well, and so kind of like along those lines, we are an entertainment website. We talk a lot about television and film characters. So I want you each to tell me, growing up or even just now, bisexual characters that inspire or speak to you, and it doesn’t have to be a long answer. Just kind of just want to pick your brains.
Anna: Carrie Brownstein‘s character in Transparent as like the best bisexual character on earth because it doesn’t matter. It’s like not a big deal and nobody questions her. She just does whatever she wants and it’s fine. So, she’s my inspiration and my whatever, celebrity spank bank.
Chelsea: Well, I think the first-I know a lot of queer people hate this movie but, for me, Kissing Jessica Stein was like this seminal moment in my young coming out just because I was like here’s this like straight Jewish girl just like me, that she’s liking girls just like me. I thought it was like revelatory. Like I didn’t even think bisexuality could be a thing until I saw that and Chasing Amy. It’s weird talking and explain why I have so little dating skillswith women now that I’m looking back on it but I do. I still stand by those movies, and of course, Lost Girl is like, oh, my god. Are you kidding me? Bisexual paradise over there.
Eboni: This is a hard one for me because I don’t feel like bisexual characters are fully drawn all the time or really well drawn. I feel like I have some issue with the way Hollywood and the media portrayed a lot of queer women, queer women of color, women of color in general but particular bisexuals. But I think for me, I’d have to say Callie from Grey’s Anatomy because I actually stopped watching Grey’s Anatomy when-spoiler alert-Arizona cheats on her. So here’s a woman who had been married to a man and then started dating women, and then was married to a woman, and even though Arizona was always so threatened by the fact that Callie is bisexual and always saying these like really bi-phobic things that kind of get swept under the rug and never was really addressed on the show, and she was always kind of worried about her relationship with Mark. Arizona is the one that ends up cheating and Callie was able to for the most part-at one point she said, ‘This is not about me. This is about you.’ When they were going to therapy and she was like, “We need to forget what you want,” and was able to like not internalize that. Arizona’s bi-phobia or Arizona’s cheating and all that stuff. So, I mean that’s the best I got really. I mean I’m not a big fan of Arizona or I’m not a big fan of Calzona, but I am a big fan of Callie.
Ali: I’m in the same position where I enjoy bisexual characters, but to say I’ve been inspired by any has been-that’s a tricky one. I don’t know if we’ve had done well enough. I find Lost Girl great fun to watch but like in terms of the ones that like hit me they were definitely not exclusively bi. It was something where they were riding the lines. Either like-
Dana: You’re trying to say Xena, is what you’re trying to say.
Allie: Yes. Xena. So like yeah, Xena was around when that was happening and yeah, she did in terms of just because of what they were trying to get away with on television ended up being this character who didn’t explain herself, or like Jo on the Facts of Life where like, oh, she could break either way. And so like characters like that where you find the characters that live in gray areas are more inspiring to me, and I admit this as a writer it’s hard to get in the space of one thing and write a good bisexual character and I think that’s why so much of the cheating comes in. It was like I want to show someone’s bi, do I have to have them sleep with two people in the course of this hour and a half. So, like I think we will learn to do that but I don’t think a true bi character has really inspired me yet.
Chelsea: There’s a challenge, screenwriters.
Dana: All right. Miranda, now you kind of came up in an age where there were a lot more queer characters on TV and in the movies than we-even just a few years older than you had. So what about you? Any characters that really stick out to you?
Miranda: I’m really glad that Chelsea brought up Kissing Jessica Stein because I hadn’t thought about that in years, but I remember when I saw it. Like I don’t think I really understood why I responded so much to it because… I can’t remember the year it came out but I think I was pretty young.
Chelsea: It was 2000, 2001.
Dana: It was a long ass time ago.
Miranda: It came out and so I was just like, ‘This is, yes, good.’ But I didn’t really understand why. And I have really specific memories that are actually kind of more negative. There’s that long episode of Ally McBeal where she like starts seeing a bi man and then has an absolute like freak out over it when he comes out to her and has like a vision of him kissing another man and the it’s just like, “No. I can’t do it. I just can’t.” And I remember even at the time because again, I was still pretty young, just being like, “That doesn’t seem right.” And in retrospect I’m like, oh, of course that stuff was portrayed in a fairly clear way that I didn’t really, again, know why at the time. Sameen Shaw in Person of Interest, and it’s complicated. It’s like they were-I both want to be her and desperately want to be her. But I remember-I think last season maybe, she gave this whole speech about how she’s-she hadn’t verbally said anything about being interested in women but she started to demonstrate it through her behavior in ways that a lot of people began picking up on and has been pretty much confirmed by now, but she had this speech where she said, “I just don’t know what to do with men. Like they have all these emotions and everything gets in such a mess, and it’s just so tiring and like we don’t have the time.”
And I was just like yes, yes, because it is when dating men that they get weird in ways that I haven’t really experienced with women and that was just something that I really related to. Like, “Oh, who can deal with this?” That and then just the way she is. She’s checking out whoever she’s checking out. She thinks a woman walking around shooting through a plate glass window is hot, she’s going to say, ‘That’s hot.” And if she wants to like look at a guy’s ass, she’s going to do that too. Like she doesn’t think about what anybody else is going to think about it. She just kind of says whatever she wants and that’s something in general I would like emulate more in my life. So, yeah.
We want to encourage you to add your voice to the discussion. Do the experiences of our writers echo your own? Have their words moved you, or perhaps caused you to think differently? We want to know.
