The Eras of My Bisexuality
Queer people aren’t strangers to shame, or to reclaiming one of the darkest feelings a person can carry deep in their gut. Shame is distinct from guilt in that shame is about doing something nonnormative, whereas guilt implies a breach of morality. Still, the consequences of shame can be profound — isolation, stress, secrets. Shame is relative to our surroundings, to the people who have power over us or to the communities we try to find homes in. For this A+ personal essay series, writers wrote about things they can barely whisper to aloud, things they thought was once a blemish that they’ve turned into crown, things that make them feel like a “bad queer”, or the ways that other peoples’ shame has woven itself into their life and existence. Answers to nagging questions, positive conclusions from difficult times and happy endings are not necessary, and you might not find them in every essay in the SHAME series. But I do hope you fill find something that challenges some shame you might be feeling, that is too relatable, that leaves you questioning whether it is actually serving you to hide whatever it is you’re hiding. As always, thank you for the support that allows Autostraddle to publish the breadth of pieces that we do, whether we’re celebrating the bright spots or descending into the basements of our psyches — this is a space where queer people can pitch, write and publish work like nowhere else.
xoxo,
Nico
I hear “boyfriend” from femme-presenting folks and assume they’re straight. I openly admit it’s a problem, but a problem not uncommon within both the straight and queer communities. Most of us have fallen victim to biphobia (i.e. Alice and The L Word), but grouping myself in the community doesn’t give me any more of an excuse. It’s something I’ve always worked on, but feel even more shame about now that I’m on the other side.
The reality — or even option — of bisexuality, let alone lesbian relationships, was completely masked by Midwestern middle school boyfriend culture. My little suburban hometown was a microcosm of heternormative relationships at large. From the moment AFAB folks are born, some aunt or peer or person of influence in your life asks you if you have a boyfriend. People socialized as girls are conditioned into this, and I thrived in this little bubble of boys, crushes, lip gloss, and everything Barbiecore. Middle school boyfriend culture led me right into the hands of a new country artist with only one single released to the public. She was opening for Keith Urban in Toledo, Ohio, and I begged my parents to go. I wanted to cry about my 8th grade crush while my favorite artist, Taylor Swift, sang “Teardrops On My Guitar.” She was the only person who understood what I was going through.
In fact, she was the person I wanted to be while going through the pains of puberty. Only 15 at the time, she wasn’t yet a worldwide sensation, but she represented everything acceptable and praiseworthy. She was the straight, white, Christian girl who was so picture perfect no one could dislike her. She was the all-American girl who wasn’t afraid to cry over a boy and let people know about it. Growing up Asian and “obese” for my age, this wasn’t something I was given permission to do. Feelings for boys were “stupid” and “pointless.” I shouldn’t be filling my head with emotional garbage when I could be doing math homework. Even if I did spill my heart out to all the boys in 8th grade, there’s no way they would ever like me. I wasn’t skinny, blonde, or outgoing like Taylor. I was that weird, dark, chubby, shy kid in the corner who wasn’t even the smartest person in the class. Even though Taylor was the quintessential 15-year old, she still somehow seemed to understand the agony of having a secret yearning.
Her sophomore album, Fearless was released in the midst of my own highschool agony. It was all too perfect that tunes like “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me” made the charts just as I was first reading Romeo and Juliet and developing many crushes on the “it” guy, and eventually, “it” girl. My version of the popular jock was actually a series of closeted gay men, two very nerdy valedictorians, and the most beautiful, smart, talented girl in my school two grades above me. I never quite labeled this girl crush as a real crush, and yet I found myself thinking about her non-stop. When I wasn’t thinking about the boys I wanted to date, I was thinking about her.
Thankfully, Taylor released Speak Now, as I was getting acquainted with the idea that I was a Hopeless Romantic. I screamed about how “Sparks Fly” when I see that guy smile at me at the football game, or how I punched my pillow to “Better Than Revenge” when my ex-best friend started dating the guy I took to the winter formal. It’s like Taylor was there with me. Better yet, it was like I was her, the girl I always wanted to be.
When Red was released my senior year, I was caught up in many different love triangles, all while trying to stay thin, attract boys, look the best at prom, get straight A’s, run for student government, become team captain, and get the lead in the musical. It was a messy year for me, and Red was a messy album of breakups and transition. When I eventually secured a boyfriend for most of the year, I cried about my “Sad Beautiful Tragic” love affair even though I was fully responsible for leaving him for his best friend. Instead of studying for anatomy, I stared out the window singing about how my love for his best friend was “Treacherous” and so bad it was good. The fate of that fling fulfilled the breakup song’s prophecy when he eventually kissed me and I felt utterly confused. Out under the stars on a fleeting August night I wanted nothing more than to be with him, and there I was, shocked to learn that I felt no sexual attraction towards him. Angry with myself for not wanting to have sex with him, let alone kiss him, I would soon be comforted by the release of 1989.
Her first track, “Welcome to New York,” talked about boys liking boys and girls liking girls. At this point I was getting acquainted with big-city college life, learning that queerness was actually in fact a thing. Girls could actually like girls? More importantly, Taylor was okay with it?! I went to a Catholic school, so it wasn’t like I was running into queer folks left and right, but I was certainly exposed to other people navigating questions of gender and sexuality in the same ways Taylor was discovering the world of pop, sex, and more adult-like fantasies.
The three year gap between 1989 and Reputation settled stirring thoughts into silence. During this period I quietly flirted with the idea of religious life. I went to a high school partially run by nuns, and eventually in college I befriended many folks who went on to become nuns or priests. It was a very socially acceptable and commendable thing to do in my college culture. Plus, most of these folks genuinely seemed happy and well-respected. I wanted that. I wanted to feel the warmth of approval and the security of being cherished forever, especially if I couldn’t be Taylor Swift.
I was indoctrinated to believe I could only be called to one of three vocations: celibacy, marriage (with a man), or religious life. Many women I knew rest assured they were called to go into the Catholic sisterhood. I was jealous. I felt behind. Everyone else was happily engaged or married. I should already have this figured out just like my friends did, just like Taylor did in every one of her songs.
The messiest part of the silence was that I couldn’t visualize getting married to a man — or a man even liking me. The white wedding, the babies, the approval from so many people about doing “a beautiful thing for the church” was never something I could have. It wasn’t in the cards for me like it was for a straight, white, conventionally attractive woman. A celibate, single life by default seemed pointless when I could choose to opt and do the same thing around a bunch of lovely women. Conflicted but hopeful, I accepted my fate. I would become a nun. I pictured an end credit scene: me surrounded by a bunch of women knitting. It seemed quite satisfactory.
The summer before Reputation I thrust myself into pursuing this new calling. I consulted nun friends, attended discernment retreats, prayed a certain set of prayers regularly, and pretty much ran every Catholic religious event on campus. When studying abroad in Rome for a semester, instead of visiting historic landmarks, going to Italian bars and clubs, or even enjoying the sexy Italian culture, I spent my free time convent-hopping for prayer evenings or community meals. It felt good to be included, and even better to know that I would spend my entire life surrounded by women.
Sometime between praying the rosary and eating gelato I realized I could date women. It seems fairly obvious that a queer woman would be drawn to a life with other women, but at the time it didn’t make sense. Taylor hadn’t addressed this topic yet. Who was I supposed to model my life after? It felt like I was computing impossible math. It wasn’t even the church telling me I couldn’t be with women, but rather, the pressure to work towards achieving the American Dream of a husband with kids. If I had that, I had approval, resources, and a reason to be celebrated. I would have the wedding I always wanted. I wouldn’t have to be jealous.
Months later I found myself sitting in a weekly evening prayer night, kneeling in a pew, crying to Jesus and asking in desperation if I was gay. I didn’t even necessarily care that I was, I just wanted a clear answer. Steeped in my own shame, I felt paralyzed by the weight of what I should want versus what I actually wanted. I wanted the happiness all my white Christian friends seemed to have. I wanted to be adored like all the protagonists in Taylor’s music. If I was gay, none of it would apply to me. I would have to start from scratch, which was even more terrifying than complying with a life that was already mapped out for me.
The release of Reputation coincided with a full-blown attempt to explore my gayness. Despite the badass nature and high praise it instantly received, I actually hated the album at first. It was too bold, too risky, and too…different from her past stuff. It blended too many feelings, experiences, and genres together. I stopped listening to Taylor altogether, intimidated by all the straight cis women this new era of Taylor seemed to attract. I didn’t want to be seen as one of them. I wasn’t one of them. Freshly out of college and living in an intentional community in Tucson, Arizona I leaned into the many, many, many crushes I had on girls I worked with. During this time, I was still coming to terms with an unrequited girl crush from senior year and desperately sent her physical love letters confessing my stupidity for not acting sooner. It felt like I was paying for the time I lost in the three years of silence.
Vowing to never let the many girl crushes I had go unexplored, I eventually found my way into the arms of a woman I fell so hard for that I nearly broke myself. After our year-long relationship crashed and burned, Taylor released the ultimate album of love and heartbreak. Lover offered me mostly genderless love ballads and heart-wrenching lyrics like “saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts” that, I don’t know, felt oddly sapphic? The album held the fun careless nature of a summer fling and the devastating ending to a lifelong romance all in the span of an hour or so. It also offered me an outlet for getting rid of the crush I had on an engaged woman. I changed the lyrics from “I Think He Knows” to “I Think She Knows” (I have a crush on her). It felt radical and exhilarating, the way Taylor would always talk about her crushes.
When the next phase of life brought me to Los Angeles, I rid myself of Taylor Swift altogether. I was gay, and while Taylor had recently become a public ally with “You Need to Calm Down,” I felt Taylor Swift wasn’t actually for gay women. She was for straight folks just like her. Moving to LA was the personal justification I needed to swing the pendulum from hella straight to hella gay. The LA queer culture was so much more expansive than any version of this fantasy I never fit into. Queers were out on the streets being queer, refusing to fit into social norms, and finding different versions of their happy ending. The only difference is, they were all so much cooler than me.
Lesbians didn’t like Taylor Swift. They liked politics and science. The first girl I slept with in LA loved weed and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not some straight girl singing about her man problems. So, I assimilated. I needed to be seen as a part of the community. No lesbian I followed ever expressed interest in the whole heteronormative happy ending thing, let alone Taylor Swift’s music. Instead, I felt like I should deeply care about things in the world that actually mattered. Without the context of heteronormative culture around me, I felt much more equipped to rid myself of her music altogether, just like I got rid of all the past parts who liked men, the parts I was ashamed to admit were mine. None of these hot women liked men, so I couldn’t either. There was simply no space for someone who didn’t know what or who they wanted.
When I officially found my way into a relationship with a trans guy, I was forced to confront all the new labels I placed on myself. It was very harmful to call myself a lesbian, and bisexuality wasn’t a thing anyone I knew in LA would approve of, so I defaulted to “queer.” I didn’t want to deal with any further confusion or re-labeling. Taylor hadn’t released anything that explicitly gay and I never really followed her personal drama since the Reputation era got out of hand, so Gaylor culture was never really on my radar (even though I definitely think she’s had a few wlw flings). Instead, I anticipated her next album with the hope that I would find some solid ground. Folklore and then Evermore brought a depth I wasn’t ready for. Even though these albums brought even more straight women into the fandom, the whole thing felt like it was written by a queer person. Its quiet, intimate storytelling and gentle reflections on love and life were so new for her. When my ex and I eventually broke up, I was thrown into the mix of this new reflective territory. I was forced to accept a gentle change in pace. These albums invited folks to dream up lives they didn’t have, or maybe wanted to experiment with. It’s what I needed and certainly not what I wanted. Above all, these albums welcomed the kind of nostalgia I needed to get through COVID-19 and forget about who I was or how I identified, with or without a boyfriend.
When I eventually moved to Florida because I couldn’t afford LA, Midnights was just around the corner. I was desperately yearning for something bold, edgy, and gay. We knew it had a track labeled “Lavender Haze.” How could it not be gay? If this album confirmed the kind of fluid queerness tabloids were suggesting, maybe I could embrace a title like this, too. If she came out as queer, maybe that would justify my entire straight-passing childhood. If she were even a little gay, it would confirm that I, too, was a little gay even when I was 12 years old.
When the Midnights release proved to be not explicitly gay, I was angry, upset, and once again confused. I needed her to come out so that I could reconcile all these experiences I had with people of different genders. With nowhere left to turn about my own messy feelings about gender and sexuality, I spent the last few months of my LA years and an entire four day road trip considering what it might look like to intentionally date cis men…again. It felt like a reverse coming out. I called straight friends to ask about the dating culture, sex tips, and for general cis man education. I determined that — similar to discovering my attraction to other genders — I had to try it to actually figure it out.
Within a few months, I met a guy I really liked and started very seriously dating him. Never would I have thought that at 28 I would be dating a straight cis man I actually liked, but here I am, and he’s so wonderful. Yet, I’m still afraid to show him off or tell people I have a boyfriend. This isn’t because of anything to do with him, but because I’m afraid people will see me differently. People who know me may think I was just going through a gay phase. The old religious friends may think I “came back to God,” which makes me want to throw up. My family could think that I’m just confused and naive. Even more frightening, if people everywhere still think Taylor is straight, then it could mean I was straight all along. The irony is that bisexuality is queer to its core. It’s saying there’s no black and white, sexuality is fluid, and being queer is no one thing.
Now that I’ve worked through my religious trauma and have fully accepted Taylor’s sexuality for how she’s publicly identified, I’m starting to understand how my fixation on Taylor Swift was so much deeper than who I’m attracted to. It’s a product of so many intersectional identities and generational conflict between my Eastern and Western values. The shame rests in the dichotomy between white or POC, straight or gay, religious or secular. It’s a shame based in fear that if I’m not one thing or the other, I’m nonexistent. It means my whole life’s experiences are invalidated. If Taylor actually came out as bisexual, the general public would view her whole life as bisexual. So, when looking at the life I tried to model after hers, I, too, could count all my experiences as queer and not just straight with a brief identity crisis. I wanted — and in some ways still want — public permission.
Almost a year out from Midnights and in the midst of many Taylor’s Version releases, I’m attempting to re-integrate my genuine love for her music without connecting it to my own sexuality. As I leaned into going on dates with cis men, I leaned into the inner-child-Em singing “Picture to Burn” while glaring at her crush’s yearbook photo. Instead of keeping my best friends (and verified swifties) at arms length whenever they bring her up, I fully embrace the conversation, letting myself fawn over her new music. I tell people I like Taylor Swift, and I even post pictures from the Eras Tour without feeling the weight of shame. Now that I’m in a loving, healthy relationship with a cis man, I continue to express my love for Taylor while still working at my very gay job, hanging out with my very gay friends, and educating folks who are confused by my “sudden” change in interests.
Taylor Swift isn’t bisexual (as far as we know), but that doesn’t really matter to me anymore. I claim the things I like, as “straight” as they might seem to others, and also claim my bisexual identity. Queerness is as unique as the person who uses the label, and I am no exception. No matter how I was and continue to be perceived by others, I am the sum of all my bisexual eras.
Maryam Keshavarz on “The Persian Version,” Translating the Iranian American Experience On-Screen, and Cyndi Lauper
Maryam Keshavarz feature image photo by Amanda Edwards via Getty Images
It took approximately 30 seconds after the panel ended for Maryam Keshavarz, writer and director of The Persian Version, to demonstrate what our shared culture’s hospitality is all about. “Are you coming to the afterparty?” she asked me through a thicket of admirers. When my response (“what afterparty?”) proved unsatisfying, Keshavarz didn’t hesitate. “You’re coming. They got me a car, we’ll all get in, you’ve gotta come!”
CUT TO: 10 of us squished inside a studio-sponsored Escalade outside Nasrin’s Kitchen in Manhattan. The restaurant, a new enterprise from an Iranian refugee and her son, had cleared out the dining room after closing to accommodate this Persian version of an afterparty. Keshavarz clambered up the stairs to greet the crowd snacking on bite-sized barbari bread and kuku sabzi, exclaiming with glee and taking selfies with every new person she found. It didn’t matter if she was talking to NYU students, local cousins, fellow filmmakers, or the overwhelmed moderator of a panel she’d met three hours ago. Keshavarz was just thrilled to see us all there, buzzing and beaming, for her most personal film to date.
The Persian Version, which premiered at Sundance in January and is out in wide release November 3, tells the multi-generational story of Iranian-American Leila (Layla Mohammadi), her mother Shireen (Niousha Noor), and grandmother (Bella Warda). Based on Keshavarz’s life, the movie picks up with Leila fresh off a divorce from her wife, grappling with her mother’s enduring disapproval, and unraveling her own feelings towards motherhood. Complicating matters is that she (randomly, hilariously, perfectly) gets pregnant from a one-night stand with a man dressed to the nines in Hedwig and the Angry Inch drag, thus confusing her longtime self-identification as a lesbian.
Embracing comedy as well as drama, The Persian Version marks as much a departure for Keshavarz as it does a culmination of her life’s work to date. She got her start with the documentary The Color of Love, in which she interviewed generations of Iranians about romance and sex. Her 2011 feature Circumstance, a lesbian love story set in Tehran, earned her both admirers in Iran’s black market and a lifetime ban from ever returning to the Islamic Republic. With The Persian Version, a movie Keshavarz says she’s essentially been working on “since birth,” she gets to put all her experiences together and retell her and her family’s stories with heart, humor, and bracing honesty. It’s the kind of movie that I, another bisexual Iranian-American, never expected, and was incredibly moved to see.
A few days after Nasrin’s Kitchen, with Keshavarz back home in San Francisco after a whirlwind weekend of screenings, we reconnected over Zoom to get into translating the Iranian-American experience onscreen, watching the Women Life Freedom protests unfold in Iran from afar and, as I rather inartfully put it, “the gay shit.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Caroline Framke: Hello! It’s Caroline, how are you doing?
Maryam Keshavarz: Caroline Darya, right?
Caroline Darya Framke: Yes.
Maryam: I’m just going to call you Darya. You look like a Darya.
Caroline Darya: I know. I think if my mom were naming me all over again, “Darya” probably wouldn’t be my middle name, but here we are. So let’s get into it: what’s your version of why this movie is called The Persian Version? What does that phrase mean to you?
Maryam: I think it has two meanings. One, my name is Maryam, and people are always like, “how do you spell that?” “M-A-R-Y-A-M.” Then they go, “oh that’s so unusual!” and I say, “well, that’s the Persian version.” I don’t know why, but all over the world people laugh at this. Maybe because it rhymes? But it’s always been stuck in my head that everybody laughs. Then it’s also because Persians love to tell tall tales, as you know. There’s always “the Persian version” of a story that’s only partially truthful, but whatever’s the best story wins. In Farsi, it’s “laaf meezanan,” which means “to make it bigger.” So this is the Persian version of my family’s story.
Caroline Darya: It also feels like the Persian version of all the rom-com and family drama conventions you use.
Maryam: Yeah, that too. Even the last song in the movie is “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (The Persian Version).” We took Cyndi Lauper, put in Persian instrumentation, and had Niousha Noor sing it. We even changed some of the lines into Persian so it feels familiar, but Persian-ified.
Caroline Darya: Why did you choose that song?
Maryam: Besides the fact that I used to smuggle Cyndi Lauper and many other artists’ tapes into Iran, I personally always loved her. I remember when the “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” video came out. I’d never seen anything like it. There were people of all different colors and gender expressions, it was so radical at the time. She also didn’t adhere to conventions of feminine beauty. It was just like, “oh my god, this person is living her truth,” whatever that is. It wasn’t even just a typical punk thing; she was feminine, but in her own Cyndi Lauper way. I mean, I was Cyndi Lauper for Halloween in third grade! My hair’s very straight, I couldn’t get it to do all that crazy stuff. But for me, it was very symbolic. So with “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” it felt like a feminist call for arms.
Caroline Darya: It’s funny, I feel like I resisted that song for so long because I was like, (snobby teen voice), “Girls DON’T just wanna have fun, we wanna DO OTHER THINGS.” But maybe now I’ll come back around.
Maryam: (laughs) We wanna do other things, but with fun.
Caroline Darya: Exactly. So you mentioned that song showing you a more nontraditional female expression. That’s something we see a bit of in the movie, with young Leila stomping to the table in her leather jacket going, “I think this is cool, this is what I want to wear.” Was that true to your experience growing up?
Maryam: The thing with my family is that they never knew what would happen when I entered a room, with what I’d look like or what I’d say. I was always finding my own way, always pushing the boundaries to be truthful to what I was exploring at the time. That’s what that scene was about, and the brothers are supportive of her there. My siblings were not the cliché of “the Muslim brothers who are oppressive” at all. They were always very supportive, even with my coming out process. My eldest brother was just like, “well, some people like coffee, some people like tea.”
So I did have that support, but certainly they were constantly confused by my choices. Not because they were homophobic in the traditional sense, but because I myself was exploring what I was. I was very adamant in the beginning of my life that I was gay, and I was married to a woman. Then, obviously, I got pregnant, and that was very confusing even to myself.
So I took my family on my confusion ride. (laughs)
Caroline Darya: How old were you when you came out?
Maryam: I actually had my first relationship when I was in college, but I came out when I met my long-term partner of 12 years. After I graduated and lived in Iran for a year, I came back to Chicago and signed up for the Lesbian Women’s Basketball League. When I got there they were like, “that got canceled, it’s volleyball now.” By the way, I don’t really know how to play volleyball. But I was chatting with a girl and then this woman showed up. It was a warm September afternoon, she was on a Kawasaki Vulcan motorcycle in a leather jacket and shorts, and when she walked in I was like, “oh my god, who is that?” The girl went, “she’s on our volleyball team,” so I said, “oh yeah, I play volleyball.” So that’s how I met her, and early on in our relationship I came out to my family.
Caroline Darya: So you first came out as gay, but —
Maryam: But I was always bisexual. Even in college, I dated a man and a woman at the same time, and they knew about each other. But then I became more political and thought it was important, even though I myself knew I was bisexual, to identify as gay or queer to be really clear in this pursuit of gay rights. I guess in my mind I didn’t want to bring heterosexuality into the space in any way. Now I know that’s biphobia. Life is not that clear; it’s everything in between. But when you’re trying to get your rights, it feels like you have to erase some of the nuances to create something that’s more understandable to the mainstream. Once gay marriage passed and all those things, I think I felt a little differently about it all.
Caroline Darya: I don’t know if you felt similarly but for me, I definitely had some anxiety about coming out as bisexual to my mother because Iranians can be so black and white about everything.
Maryam: Exactly. But it’s not just Iranians, it’s most people. Even in the Q&A audience yesterday there were some jokes about it. It’s funny, because the journey of the film is about me as a confused twenty-something — and now I’m in my forties and I’m still confused in many ways. But I embrace that. There’s this concept of bisexuality that a person is confused and can’t choose. I just think life is confusing. But yeah, I agree with that for sure. It can be easier to say one thing and not “confuse” the issue.
Caroline Darya: Yeah. I can appreciate that you were with a woman you probably thought you’d be with a long time, and that it maybe just didn’t have to come up again.
Maryam: Right, and I was with her for a long time. Our relationship outlived most people’s marriages — but I still feel like a failure! Ha ha.
Caroline Darya: I mean, classic. Something I’ve also been thinking a lot about recently is what a queer Iranian-American experience or community looks like. How has that been for you? What does it look like?
Maryam: I live in San Francisco, which used to have the biggest queer Iranian women’s group in HASHA, and I also used to be part of one in Chicago. Those were so important in the 80’s and 90’s when women came from Iran, to help them settle in and get jobs. They were such a strong, tight community, and it grew. It’s so phenomenal how these 18, 19 year-old girls would help others come from Iran and create their own communities. It was so inspiring. I met them in 1999 when I moved to San Francisco as part of my PhD at Berkeley. I was blown away by that idea that they didn’t have to give up being Iranian just because they were gay. In fact, there was an entire, huge community of queer Iranians.
Now it’s years and years later and they all have kids. The next generation maybe has a different idea of identity, but it was such a dangerous thing in the 80’s and 90’s. It really was. It was so brave of them to create these communities when even in America they still didn’t have rights for gays. It was a sub-subculture. It’s so cool to see that they’re all still friends, and we all know each other even more than 20 years later.
Caroline Darya: Another thing I really appreciated about your movie is that even the circumstance of the pregnancy feels very queer. It’s not just that Leila gets pregnant, but that she gets pregnant with this cis guy who’s dressed as Hedwig, which is why she found him hot.
Maryam: I think thematically it made so much sense. She doesn’t care what the truth is. He’s trying to tell her he’s an actor when she thinks he’s a drag queen and she’s just like, “yeah whatever, you’re ruining my fantasy.” I do play a lot with why she finds him attractive. He looks like a woman with really long legs, the best of both worlds! It’s a playful moment. I’m really playing with all these notions of masculinity, femininity, what it means to be a father.
Caroline Darya: It’s another element of The Persian Version that feels like it could fuel its own whole movie. Your first draft was what, 180 pages?
Maryam: The original, yeah. The brothers and the father were much more prevalent in that script, but everything became sublimated to the women’s story. It all got stripped away. So much of writing is what we omit. Half our job is figuring out the things we don’t include on the page.
Caroline Darya: I know you can no longer go back to Iran after Circumstance. What has it been like to watch all the Women Life Freedom protests happening from here?
Maryam: It’s hard because I feel so connected to the movement, and seeing all these girls get hurt… they’re my daughter’s age. That part of it is difficult. But I think it’s exciting, because when I was in Iran I was part of the protests, and now it’s so massive and not stoppable. The difference now is that we can be their voice abroad. That there’s an idea internationally of supporting these women is very exciting. Having (imprisoned Iranian activist) Narges Mohammadi win the Nobel Peace Prize, that kind of recognition also amplifies so much of our movement.
Caroline Darya: Your movie does a really good job showing why Persian women have always been at the forefront of change in Iran. That’s something that maybe surprised some about the protest movement that’s been going on for a year now, but for us, it was like —
Maryam: “Have you ever met an Iranian woman?!”
Caroline Darya: [laughs] I mean, maybe not! So what would you say to those people who were surprised about Iranian women taking control in this way?
Maryam: Something like this doesn’t come overnight. Iranian women are highly educated; women are more than 50 percent of people at universities, more than 50 percent of doctors there are women. It’s also those women who come here to America and have to fight very difficult circumstances economically and socially. They’re resilient. They create joy for their families. They’re very, very strong individuals, and I don’t think anyone should be surprised. No matter if it’s this regime or the previous regime, Iranian women have always been fighting in very difficult circumstances to achieve those things.
So I think Iranian women are a symbol of resilience. They live in a very patriarchal world and yet they’ve attained so much. That’s because they live with the concept of “mobarezeh,” or fighting against the status quo. It’s very much ingrained in the psyche of Iranian women. They are not passive people. They run the household, they’re very aggressive and intelligent women. That is the history of Iranian women.
The Persian Version is now in theatres.
“Anatomy of a Fall” Is an Anti-Legal Drama With a Bisexual Protagonist
This review contains mild spoilers for Anatomy of a Fall.
There’s a moment in Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or-winning courtroom drama when I stopped caring if the protagonist had killed her husband.
Sandra is a German writer living in France. Her husband falls from the top floor of their house and Sandra’s lawyer is tasked with convincing the court it was suicide instead of murder. During this moment where I stopped caring, he describes Sandra’s husband’s imagined psychology in painful detail. As he speaks, Sandra’s son listens, every word increasing the young boy’s hurt.
Why do we have trials? Punishment? Prevention? An attempt to enforce our societies’ values? France’s approach to justice may differ slightly from the US, but they share a misguided momentum. There are two sides — one seeking a guilty verdict, the other an acquittal — and each side does whatever they can to win. People’s lives are turned into a game.
There is an argument for Sandra’s guilt. There is not an argument that the possibility of her guilt makes the trial that occurs better for society. She is made to suffer. Her son is made to suffer. Everyone in their life is made to suffer. All this when they’re already mourning the loss of another. Most of us can agree that murder is wrong. More of us should agree the way our societies handle murder — handle all crime — is even worse.
Anatomy of a Fall is invigorating as a character drama. Sandra Hüller in the lead role is a revelation and she’s nearly matched by the entire supporting cast. Triet’s style that shook with promise in Sybil settles here into its fulfilled potential. The two-and-a-half hour runtime clips along with the excitement one might expect from the crime genre. And yet, the film’s greatest strength is how severely it rebukes that genre and its sibling genre: the courtroom drama. As Sandra’s lawyer states early in the film, the point is not whether she is guilty or innocent. The court doesn’t care about truth — it cares about story.
One story the prosecutor tells is about Sandra’s bisexuality. Six months prior to her husband’s death, Sandra cheated on him with a woman. The cheating is used as evidence of her duplicitousness — as if breaking the seventh commandment also breaks the sixth. The person’s gender makes this even worse as the prosecutor feeds on a classic stereotype. He frames Sandra as a conniving bisexual woman who emasculated her husband and then pushed him to his death.
During this moment, I thought about Amber Heard. I thought about how quickly the public bought a story about another conniving bisexual. I thought about how Heard’s older, wealthier, and more famous ex-husband used the court itself as a weapon against her. I thought about how it worked.
What’s the point of a court that can itself be used as a weapon? How is that kind of system a harbinger of justice?
Triet portrays the cruelty of the court and the cruelty of the media that makes money off of it. But what makes the film such an effective abolitionist text is that it never gets lost in politics. By presenting reality with an eye toward character, the movie achieves more than if it had set out to prove the French legal system — and all our similar legal systems — should not exist.
Film and television has been representing the courtroom and the justice system for decades. Too often this work is more concerned with tight plotting and satisfying conclusions. Between Anatomy of a Fall, After the Fire, which also showed at this past TIFF, and last year’s Saint Omer, it feels like this is finally starting to change. These three French films point to a different kind of legal drama — an anti-legal drama. The question is no longer guilt or innocence. The films are more concerned with the reasons people — and the state — commit acts of violence and our responses to this violence after it occurs.
Focusing on character over plot and human beings over punishment might allow us to end our cycles of violence. The only people we’re hurting are ourselves.
Anatomy of a Fall is now playing in select theatres.
Prove Your Bicon Status By Identifying 35 Of These 50 Bisexual TV Characters
Let’s close out this fine bisexual week with testing your knowledge of just 50 of the hundreds of bisexual women characters who have graced our television screen over the years.
Happy Bi Week 2023 from Autostraddle!
Bisexuality, Queerness, Labels, Perception: A Conversation Between the EIC and the HBIC
Nico, Autostraddle Membership Director and Head Bisexual-in-Charge: Okay, so to intro this, we had the (in my opinion, divine) experience of getting to co-work with each other last week because we were both in the same city at the same time. During this co-working session, we got into a deep discussion about labels and bisexuality and queerness and various politics around expectations and visibility/invisibility with these labels. I’m a bisexual and genderfluid/genderqueer (although I accept the umbrella label of nonbinary) and Carmen identifies as a Black queer woman. And we were like — maybe we can do this for Bi+ Week! Does that sound right?
Also, do you remember at all how we got on the topic? Because I do not.
Carmen, Autostraddle Editor-in-Chief: You were telling me that you’d noticed there were certain ~trends in the responses to your profile on dating apps, and I was flabbergasted.
Nico: But that was in response to something! Wasn’t it?
Carmen: Hmmmm, I think it was us being messy overall? We had a whole discussion on whether or not I would have sex outside in the woods. (And dear reader: I would not.)
Though this is how I learned that tents apparently have floors? That are like, zippered into them? A wild learning experience for me.
Nico: Yes. I remember looking up photos of tent interiors to show you. So glad we could clear that up. Then you were like touching the brick wall and being like “This is like tree bark. we are not leaning against trees [for sex].”
Carmen: I stand by it. It was unyielding and rough and hurt. (no kink shame!)
Nico: No kink shame!… is that like “no homo”?
Carmen: Yes, same exact tone! Glad it came across lol.
Nico: Okay! Well! Somehow we got on it. So I am fully now publicly confessing to being on the dating apps. (Not on the relationship escalator though, don’t worry friends.)
Carmen: I think we went from outside tent sex to your hot date with an outdoorsy person, and that person helped you have a realization about (an ex) who had done something biphobic.
Nico: Oh yes okay!
We can start there.
So. Yeah. Let’s talk biphobia. And this specific story.
So, I was talking with a date (also bisexual), who was telling me about a partner they once had who said some biphobic shit to them. And how they stood up for themselves and were like “absolutely not.”
And I reflected on the fact that I had had a very similar experience in dating a woman who told me she felt unsure about me, because I was bisexual, and at any point I might leave her for a man. At the time, I didn’t push too much back on the general biphobia because I tried that and she doubled down, so I just was like… “I wouldn’t leave you for someone just because they’re a man.”
Which is a mistake because as you pointed out to me, anyone can leave anyone at any time. And also, that conversation is just so dripping with biphobia it’s ridiculous! But this was years ago. I hope I am slightly more secure and able to speak my mind these days.
Anyway, I said to my outdoorsy date, “Similar thing happened to me and I did not stick up for myself because I have no self respect.” And then they just looked at me.
I am now making finger guns at my computer. To diffuse the situation.
Carmen: 🤣
Nico: OH! This came up because while we’re on our date, this person is telling me about a very hot sounding 40-year-old bisexual femme friend of theirs who dates men and is open to dating women, but because she dates men, has trouble finding women to date.
Carmen: Right!! And this is where me being flabbergasted came in. Because I, very ignorantly, was like “this conversation cannot still be happening in sapphic communities. The idea that bisexuals have a hard time finding lesbians to date, because people are afraid of them ‘running back to men’ sounds like a plot from The L Word Season Three.”
Nico: Right! And I was like: no, it’s still going on.
Carmen: For the record and to provide even greater context, I also date and/or have sex with people of a variety of genders, though I have never identified as bisexual (or a lesbian) in explicit terms. I prefer the general umbrella of queer.
Nico: Yes, totally. You are queer. I am bisexual. I also ID as Queer. THEN I was like you know what… I am not dating any cis she/hers. Mostly it’s they/them’s with a dash of he/him’s.
And I suspect it might be because I use the label bisexual. And that’s a turn-off for some people.
Okay… I just opened up the HER app to verify what the layout of my matches looks like. I don’t have any cis she/her lesbians up in here that I know of. I have like, queers, bisexuals, pansexuals. So I don’t think I’m wrong about there being some kind of filtering situation here. I am swiping right on cis she/hers at times and like, cis she/her sapphics have to be more common even than she/they’s, right?
Cis people are more common than nonbinary/genderqueer/genderfluid people? Right? As if I don’t work at Autostraddle. I’m just like. Statistically. This means something. Is it maybe also gender-related? Who knows!
And you were saying that your experience is rather different.
Carmen: Yes! What’s really fascinating to me is that I don’t identify as a lesbian or as bisexual, but I most often have lesbian matches.
Nico: Oh wow!
I feel like those are so rare.
Compared to matching with fellow bisexuals/pansexuals/queer-identified folks.
Carmen: I think… ok now I have also opened up my HER app.
Nico: I’m like — should I pay for the premium so I can look at the 99 people who liked me, enter them into excel, and see how the demographics play out?
That’s a pretty good sample.
Carmen: LMAO statistics, done queerly.
I think it looks like a quick scroll has me at maybe 60/40? But with 60% being lesbians, yeah.
Nico: WOWOW
Carmen: I think part of what I’ve realized and has been sitting with me since our very first conversation… because I don’t know how I ultimately feel about it… is that I think people project onto me what they want to see, ultimately.
Nico: Yes, and so that is something we were talking about, with regards to your chosen label of queer.
As it becomes more and more of an umbrella term, it feels like people could absolutely take it to mean whatever they want it to mean. I am really curious about what your thoughts have been since our conversation.
Carmen: Well, yes, because I feel like — first, it probably helps to take it back. When I first came out, or perhaps even to go back further, before I came out — I was very much a “I’m not queer, but my politics are” type of ally. Which I feel like is a cliché, but also cliché’s have a lot of truths in them!
So once I did come out… for me, my queerness has always been tied to my political identity at least as much as it’s tied to whomever I’m sleeping with. So when I came out, I never felt an urge to drive down into specifics beyond “queer.” And I still don’t.
I identify as a queer Black person, and that puts me in community with pretty much everyone I need to be in community with.
Nico: Totally. There’s “queer” like gay and there’s what I refer to as “Queer with a capital Q” which is about living and acting outside of the bounds of heteronormative society and structuring your life in a way that resists certain assumed structures.
Carmen: Queer with a capital Q. I’m obsessed with that.
But I also realize that I have a lot of intersecting privileges layering in on top of that — namely, I’m cis, right? I’m a cis femme who has an attraction to queer masculinities (largely speaking) and I haven’t had sex with a cis man since I was in college. I’m the EIC of this website, which has historically been tied to lesbian culture. So even if I’m not a lesbian, I think a lot of people seem to project lesbianness onto me?
I think because I usually just identify as “queer” and stop there — there’s a lot of room for people to (perhaps even, unconsciously) slot me into the boxes that make the most sense to them. I love lesbians, and I love bisexuals, so I can’t say I’m ever offended by it! And yes, if filling out a census or something equally official, I will check a bisexual/pansexual box. But mostly I’m just… curiously amused? That “queer” isn’t enough?
However, these intersecting layers are also… I have to believe… shielding me from the types of biphobia in dating that you’ve been encountering.
Nico: It’s also a bit hard for me to suss out if it’s biphobia because I’m like… not even matching, you know? Like I’m never talking to someone. So it’s hard to see where it’s coming from.
There might be very few cis she/her lesbians in Pittsburgh for all I know.
But we’re both in the same age range, so it’s not an age thing. We’re both rust belt.
Carmen: I’m also uncomfortable with the realization, because I hadn’t really thought about it until our recent conversations… that my dates are likely just presuming I’m a lesbian? Or if not that I’m a lesbian (and again, love lesbians!) that I’m not someone they need to ask who I’m fucking in a way that it appears to be similarly policed for people who are having sex with cis men.
Nico: Yes! Like, I’m stuck on the story about my date’s friend, like how touching that boy-dick somehow puts a mark on you.
Oh! And I was talking to a friend about their experiences on FEELD (a dating app with a lot of poly people on it). We were talking about my use of it, and they were like, you’re doing great! And I was like “truly, generally having a good experience on this app.” And then they were talking about how they had a terrible time last time they were on it, because they had a cis-dude partner.
The app lets you choose a partner to add to your profile? Like, you can link your profiles if you’re on there and your partner is also there. And my friend thinks that people maybe stayed away from them because they could see they were dating a dude.
Carmen: That’s the part that was leaving me flabbergasted, because I cannot fathom how it’s anyone’s business.
Nico: Like the men are, presumably, not coming on the other dates, unless that’s explicitly arranged. So why is it an issue?
Carmen: Exactly!
And I think, in fully honesty, I also empathize with… there is a vulnerability in being a single person dating, right? Look I’ve been single the vast majority of my adult life, so I really do get it. And part of that vulnerability of course is that if you love someone and open your heart to them, they truly might just leave you. So, I get feeling guarded about that! But the reality of course is, if you’re gonna get left… then you’re gonna get left. The gender of the person that might be on the other side of that equation, that’s not going to ultimately change your hurt. That’s a biphobic misdirection.
Nico: I do feel like the concern is that any cis men someone is dating are somehow “in the room.”
I also think that this was one of a series of things that led to my no longer seeing that person… that they were, maybe, more about controlling me and keeping me on the defensive. She maybe just saw a way in using my bisexuality.
Carmen: Right. I think there’s like you know, this perceived stereotype of a manic pixie bisexual.
Nico: I do get that when wanting to live a life that is divested from the patriarchy, how it might be unsettling to be around people who fuck cis men. But also, yes, exactly, there is this idea that bisexuals are perhaps flaky? Or that bisexual people are more likely to align with the patriarchy? Which… I don’t know to be a thing that is inherent or dependent on any particular sexual orientation. That’s more like a way of living and a personal politic one has to arrive at for themselves.
I would also say that, you don’t fit into bisexual stereotypes, Carmen. You’re very put together. Whereas someone takes one look at me and is like “absolutely that is a bisexual goblin.”
Look at me reinforcing bisexual stereotypes. But like, the vibe is that bisexuals are… messier? WHICH IS NOT TRUE. Everyone is equally as messy.
Carmen: Right, and there are a lot of lesbian relationships that — if not aligned with “patriarchy ” per se — are modeled after certain gender norms. Which of course, as a femme attracted to mascs, I run into a lot.
Nico: Oooh, that’s interesting. And also totally a thing.
Carmen: And sometimes I will admit, I also play into! I have more than once in my life looked at Cherelle and Brittney Griner or Jessica Betts and Neicy Nash-Betts and said, “where is my studsband?”
But also, the very idea of a studsband… I mean, it’s in the word, right?
Nico: Listen, who among us has not looked at JB and NNB and been like — goals.
Also, studsband is the new word of the fall. Just in time for cuffing season, may we introduce the concept of the “studsband”?
Carmen: “May we introduce the concept of the ‘studsband'” would be what my group chat calls my entire life’s agenda.
Nico: ahahHAaHaHAHAha
Carmen: But I agree, bisexuals get the bad rep of “holding on to the patriarchy,” and I think that’s because it’s easier to scapegoat than reckon with the difficult reality that if you were raised on this earth, the patriarchy got baked into you young babe.
Nico: Yes. The patriarchy is something we have to divest from in bigger ways than like, who we might be pegging.
Carmen: I choked.
I think you really nailed it.
Nico: “Nailed it.” 🤨
Well, I think we landed on something interesting, which is that there might be this perceived gradient among gender/sexual orientation in the community, where some people — and especially bisexuals and bisexual femmes, as you talked about so beautifully in your piece on “Bongos” — are pinpointed as more aligned with patriarchy when that is not necessarily the truth and you have to take it person by person. Because, without throwing anyone under the bus, truly in my experience, appearance and labels are a very poor predictor of someone’s actual lived politics.
Carmen: I also did think about how gender is playing into this conversation. Because you’re also nonbinary — an enby bisexual, occupying a lot of grey/intermediary spaces — and I wonder how that also impacts dating pools.
Nico: Okay, so at first glance, I think that my gender definitely materially leads to me “swiping left” on any straight men who wander my way, because if they think that they get to call themselves straight while we’re fucking, they do not.
And it gets similarly uncomfortable with people who do the thing of being like —
… god what have I gotten…
The like “I like women and” [insert awkward moment] “people like you.”
Carmen: Oooooof
Nico: Like just say you like my big ass. That’s gender neutral. Jesus.
Carmen: Nico!!! I am screaming.
Nico: So in terms of who I ultimately might see or see again, there’s definitely a comfortability in someone who’s also on the bi+/pan spectrum, and maybe who is also gender nonconforming or nonbinary or trans, you know?
So in that case, I think that I’m not necessarily pre-selecting for fellow bisexuals, but I am finding that getting along/the vibes are easier with them.
Wait… but then also, I mostly only have bisexuals to choose from.
Now I’m caught in a weird loop.
Carmen: (I’m loving watching you work through this in real time! It’s like a circle of doom whirling on your computer when the internet breaks, but it’s actually a circle of brilliance.)
Nico: Yes okay haha I concluded that dating bisexuals is nice, but also that I only have a pool of bisexuals. (Or bi+/pan/queer folks.) That’s where we landed. There is no material value to this analysis along lines of sexual orientation. The sample is too homogenous.
[a moment passes]
Wait okay: I have the best experiences with people who date widely across gender and/or who are nonbinary/ trans/gnc. People who are cis and maybe tend to date a lot of cis women, that’s where I notice there are some issues with how I’m being perceived.
I feel like I had to get in there with a scalpel to separate that out.
Carmen: Yeah, I wondered about that because — I don’t have the stats in front of me to back it up, however! I know I’ve read it before and also I think we as a community have experienced it enough to also know that there’s truth here — there is also overlap between trans and bi folks right, so I think it’s important to always keep that door open.
Nico: Weren’t we just talking about that in a meeting?
Carmen: Yes! It came up in a recent editorial meeting! That might also be why its at the top of my mind.
Nico: There’s an intersection, that even qualitatively, is of interest.
I also don’t want to be down on like, the term lesbian, and its history of being inclusive of bisexual women as well as gender nonconforming and trans people. Because we know from sapphic history that a lot of early lesbian groups were comprised of women who, for example, had husbands! No one cared that these women might also be with men. They were lesbians because they sought romantic and sexual relationships with other women.
BUT today, these days, I think that if people are open to dating multiple genders, they put down queer, pan or bi.
And I think that bisexuality also maybe scoots sideways into an ease and openness to bending gender roles, to being gender expansive as individuals, to welcoming these qualities in a partner.
Carmen: One of your sentences keeps wrapping itself around in my mind, “They were lesbians because they sought romantic and sexual relationships with other women” — because, at its core, that’s the community we’ve all built, right? Those are the shoulders we stand on. And I also get that from where we are sitting in 2023… we have so many options for community! We have so many words to label ourselves to choose from! But sometimes, for lack of a better way to say it, it also bums me out that having all those words and options… the flip side of that is even more in-fighting and policing. It can feel like we’re losing the original recipes.
I also think we’re all trying to find new ways (or revamped old ways) to make those connections! Like how “sapphic” has really come back into style! When I was first coming up and coming out, that word was dated as hell, bordering on comical. Now its everywhere. Because we’re looking for ways to say that we recognize this elusive commonality that bridges across lesbian, bisexual, pan, queer, cis, trans, nonbinary.
I don’t think we’ve nailed it yet, obviously — I mean look at this conversation! — but I’m glad, Nico, that you brought us back down to our roots of it.
Nico: I’m really glad you were so down to talk about all this and to compare experiences. Talking about deep stuff with you is always a reward in itself.
Carmen: I feel the exact same way!
Happy Bi Week 2023 from Autostraddle!
Revisit Lani Kaʻahumanu’s Moving 1993 Speech on Bisexuality
The March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation took place on April 25, 1993. Bi folks were explicitly included in the official name of the march thanks to bisexual and feminist activist and writer Lani Kaʻahumanu, who organized and fought for bisexual inclusion in the march and rally. Of the many speakers at the march’s rally, Kaʻahumanu was the only out bisexual and the only person to speak explicitly about bisexuality. The ways she loudly and proudly celebrated bisexuality on that stage are just as powerful and moving today — during 2023’s Bi Week — as they were back then in 1993, when bisexual folks were often excluded from mainstream events and conversations about queer liberation.
Her speech can be viewed in full on C-Span and starts around the 5:44:31 timestamp. “Aloha, my name is Lani Kaʻahumanu” she begins as she takes the mic, “and it ain’t over til the bisexual speaks.” What follows is an eloquent speech that sounds like part essay, part spoken word poetry on bisexual identity, pride, and love. Kaʻahumanu also urgently and sharply critiques mainstream gay politics that exclude bisexual and transgender people. “Recognition of bisexual orientation and transgender issues presents a challenge to assumptions not previously explored within the politics of gay liberation,” she says. “What will it take for the gayristocracy to realize that bisexual, lesbian, transgender, and gay people are in this together, and together we can and will move the agenda forward. But this will not happen until public recognition of our common issues is made, and a sincere effort to confront biphobia and transphobia is made by the established gay and lesbian leadership in this country.”
Thirty years later, her words — especially about trans folks — still hold so much truth and resonance.
A transcription of the full speech lives on Kaʻahumanu’s website and is formatted like a gorgeous poem. Here’s an excerpt:
Bisexual pride
speaks to the truth
of behavior and identity.
No simple either/or divisions
fluid – ambiguous – subversive
bisexual pride challenges both
the heterosexual and the homosexual assumption.
Ten years before she gave this speech, Kaʻahumanu co-founded BiPOL, the country’s first bisexual political action group. A year later, Kaʻahumanu was at the center of a major action by BiPOL at the 1984 Democratic National Convention in an effort to increase bisexual visibility. As a publicity stunt, BiPOL nominated Kaʻahumanu for the office of Vice President. The day before the DNC, BiPOL hosted the country’s first official bisexual rights rally. Kaʻahumanu’s 1993 speech is the culmination of the decade plus of work she was already doing in the name of bisexual people.
Though the full video of the 1993 rally is over six hours, it’s worth watching other parts as well. In many ways, it’s a fun time capsule of queer culture and history. The band Betty! Eartha Kitt! Judith Light! There’s quite the crew of performers and speakers. But Lani Kaʻahumanu‘s speech really does stand out in the ways it centers and celebrates bisexual people. It’s a great slice of history to look back on thirty years later during a week meant to bolster bisexual visibility and pride.
Happy Bi Week 2023 from Autostraddle!
Weird Things the Victorians Did, Ranked by Bisexuality
Where did this pitch for the first day of Bi Week come from? From inside of a top hat, under the whalebone of a corset, from between the stitches of a stuffed mouse or perhaps from the dregs of a bottle of embalming fluid we then filled with beer and drank from leading to our untimely demise? I can’t prove it, but you know what feels bisexual? The bizarre habits of the infamously prudish (but irredeemably odd, okay) Victorian English people. So, in order from least to most bisexual, I have ranked things the Victorians liked doing. You’re welcome and g’day gov’nah.
9. Taking Photos With Dead People
Via duncan1890 / Getty Images I promise no one in this photo is dead. I’m not going to put a photo of an actual dead person in a humor article! GEEZE.
Life was fragile, and photography was extremely new and also expensive. Often, these post mortem photographs were the only image one would have of a deceased loved one, especially an infant. Lesbians, pansexuals, maybe even people who identify as queer would also do this. Not a uniquely bisexual-seeming activity but definitely not belonging solely to the straights either.
8. Making Up Chastity Belts, Attempting to Pass Off These Forgeries as “Real” Artifacts
The grainy quality of this photograph definitely makes it look EVEN WORSE.
The Victorians — in a white people trend that is definitely deserving of scrutiny — took it upon themselves to depict the middle ages as more bleak and violent than they actually were. The Victorian age was an age of progress, after all, wasn’t it? Not an age that might actually have anti-masturbation devices. Okay, and even if they did, they also had factories! And electricity! And photography!
“There was a certain branch of English manufacturers,” Classen says, “who realized that there was a huge market on the continent and elsewhere for chastity belts.” That market was museums and curiosity shows. The tight-laced Victorian crowd was willing to pay top dollar for a glimpse of any salacious Dark Age torture device, which were lovingly (and extravagantly) crafted to fit their notions of medieval barbarism. Thus, the chastity belt was forged. –How Stuff Works
This entry is slightly more bisexual, if only because it’s kinkier than taking photos with dead people (if you think otherwise, I’m open to discussion). But I am pretty sure bisexuals are into accurate history, unlike straight people who love to rewrite history so it’s less gay or so that the people of the past seem to have engaged in more meaningless acts of violence than we engage in today.
7. Doing the Same Thing with the Iron Maiden And The Pear Of Anguish
The art dealers who made this thing up had a “burning ambition” to get rich quick. Not very bisexual of them, sorry.
The history of the Iron Maiden is known and traceable back to Victorian con men. It’s not real, but it sure does leave an impression peoples’ psyches. There is something about coming up with something both so masculine and so feminine that gives me bisexual energy. Also, the Pear of Anguish — most likely not real, AGAIN likely made up by these horny Victorians — has haunted my dreams since I first heard of it and thought it was real. This gives it bisexual energy if only because bisexuals also haunt my dreams.
6. Obsessing Over Optical Illusions, See Also: “Ether Frolics”
This is what that looks-like-an-‘old woman’-until-you-flip-it-upside-down-and-then-it’s-a-‘young girl’ optical illusion trick looks like on ether.
Victorians loved optical illustions, in my opinion, because 1) optical illusions are objectively awesome and 2) because these people were hitting that ether left and right. Apparently, they drank ether in addition to just inhaling it, and sometimes it could make the drinker’s BREATH FLAMMABLE? You don’t need an optical illusion if that kind of business is already occurring in your parlor, but I guess no one asked my opinion. Anyway, giggling over Pepper’s ghost while either honking on ether or being shown a version of it by your fourth grade “enrichment” teacher is definitely an activity that ~feels bisexual, one way or another.
5. Loving Taxidermy
Apparently I’ll put an illustration of an Iron Maiden in this article, but I will DRAW THE LINE at actual taxidermy. Enjoy this guy. He’s working it.
It’s science! It’s art! It’s fashion! It’s death! But also whimsy! And home decor! It’s Victorian taxidermy! While definitely tinged all over with sapphicness, I can assure you that should I ever have the stats to back this up, that bisexuals would be, of all the sexual orientations, the most into taxidermy as a whole. Should I make this survey? Would you take this survey?
4. Going to Therapy
The uh…photos that come up for Victorian therapy all involve electric devices.
If you’re bisexual, you are more likely to have negative mental health experiences and therefore worse health outcomes. I hate it! So, you know, I’m not being unserious here. Take care of yourselves out there, my bisexual friends. Therapy has come a long, long way from Freud, and I am so glad we can have some contemporary trauma-informed therapy as opposed to our dear friend (who was perhaps necessary for the progress of the field, but still) jacked on cocaine telling us to look deeper into our dreams. (Although, sadly, there are a lot of therapists out there so I wouldn’t be surprised if some of y’all have also experienced this). Anyway, going to therapy seems like something many of us bisexuals need in a world rife with biphobia. This is a highly scientific ranking. And our Head of Victorian Science and Bisexual But Also Heartbreak, Mary Shelley, I am sure would agree with me.
3. Performing Seances
These guys are freaking out!! Someone get them some ether.
This is peak bisexual activity, whether you believe in the ghosts or you’re profiting from being a hot person who other people believe can talk to ghosts. At its peak, one Spiritualist book was published PER WEEK, so perhaps this movement can be compared to the astrology of today? And if that comparison can be made, I am almost certain that many queers had to have been involved. Knock once if you agree. (My certainty is based entirely on my own speculation, a tea reading of the vibes.)
2. Making Peculiar Hair Decisions
Vigorous. Hair.
Have you seen the TikToks lately? You know what ones I’m talking about? The ones where a lesbian woman will be like “I’m attracted to women. But men are cool, too.” And a straight woman will be like “I’m attracted to men. But women are cool!” And then a bisexual woman will be like “Women are the sun, the breath in my lungs, and I am a worm and I would be lucky if they cut me in half with scissors.” And then someone interjects, “but you like men, too?” And then it cuts to them vomiting and saying like “yeah.” Thank you for bearing with me and letting me manually explain and also butcher a TikTok I saw that also doesn’t really include nonbinary identities within the realm of bisexuality but it’s fine, we’re moving on. I feel like it is just this attitude toward women and nonbinary and trans people of any gender (but not particularly cis men) that would lead a bisexual to want to keep, collect, and then craft with the hair of a special “friend.”
1. Making Peculiar Chair Decisions
It’s good to know that literally nothing has changed about furniture salesmanship.
Haha. Yeah, it’s a joke about how bisexuals supposedly cannot sit in chairs. And as I write this, I was about to be like “and yet I am sitting high and mighty and totally in a standard fashion in a chair right now!” And reader, I just checked. I’m kind of standing, leaning on the outside of my feet, with my butt just kind of kissing the edge of a stool, while I loom over the laptop which is on a table much lower than I am, so no, this is a bisexual sitting travesty. Still, I challenge all of you, tell me how one is supposed to sit in this particular chair! It’s apparently a mystery! But if anyone can solve it, I am sure it’s you, dear Autostraddle readers.
Happy Bi Week 2023 from Autostraddle!
Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion Are Scissoring
By the time I woke up this morning my group chat was already ablaze. I think after 2020’s “WAP” everyone was on edge for “Bongos.” I mean, it would already be hard to outdo Cardi and Meg stroking and crawling on top of each other while wet from head to toe. But then “Bongos” had the bisexual rappers — did I mention that after two singles together and multiple years being two of the best rappers alive writing about pussy, Cardi has now taken to calling Meg her work wife? — interlocking legs and thighs, with Meg reverently caressing Cardi’s up and down, so now all bets are off.
A lot of “Bongos” hits the expected notes for anyone familiar with Cardi and Meg’s work — I don’t care what anyone says, it takes a lot of talent to write soliloquies like “Pussy get popped, piñata / Bitch, I look like money / You could print my face on a dollar.” And when asked by Cardi about her favorite song to have sex to, Meg responded “silence, because I need you to hear this booty clapping,” which in and of itself gives the song’s title a whole new meaning. But what I was most struck by comes in the last minute of the video (and yes, of course I’m talking about the scissoring).
It’s become a pretty common joke that all the popular rap girlies these days are some flavor of gay (Ice Spice, Rico Nasty, Yung Miami, Chika, the list goes on), but it often can feel like Black bisexual femme rappers who are either in long term relationships with men or write about enjoying the sex they have with men (or both) are constantly fighting off accusations that they aren’t actually bisexual at all. After their 2021 Grammys performance of “WAP” — which also involved Cardi and Meg mimicking scissoring during one point of their dance routine — Cardi B went as far as to publicly respond to a Rolling Stone article accusing her of queer baiting (note: this is an incorrect use of the term queer baiting, which was designed to address tropes in fiction writing, not actual bisexual or queer people) with “I’m married to a man, but I have express[ed] soo much about my bisexuality and my experiences wit girls.“ Despite having discussed her bisexual sexuality publicly for years, Megan Thee Stallion is frequently not mentioned on lists of queer or bisexual celebrities.
In fact, when Netflix released a two and half hour docuseries, Ladies First, looking at women’s contributions over the last 50 years of hip hop, during the section on queerness in the genre — Megan Thee Stallion was looped in with straight women rappers who “perform” queerness for straight audiences, and Cardi B wasn’t mentioned at all. And this is despite the fact that “WAP” was a shining piece at the center of the documentary’s discussion of (presumably straight) sexuality and the dynamics of women’s empowerment vs the male gaze. Even within their own community, Black women who love and contribute to hip hop, Cardi and Megan often find themselves in the throes of bi erasure — because they’re femme, because Black queerness is often presumed silent or unseen, because they’ve had longstanding relationships with men. But here, Cardi and Meg are sending a message. And that message was y’all keep erasing us if you want, but ✂️ ✂️ motherfuckers.
And maybe, just maybe, you’re thinking that I’m reading too much into a few dozen seconds of a dance move in a music video. But to that I’d say two things: First of all, unlike “WAP,” which had Cardi and Meg performing seductively and wet for an unseen audience behind the camera (which I’ll never read as a straight performance to begin with, but sure I’ll play along) — scissoring is a uniformly queer act. It is not designed for male approval, in fact it’s based in an ownership of sexuality and sexual pleasure that exists outside of cis straight men at all. Choosing to allude and mime that sex act in particular, by two bisexual rappers who are often left outside of queerness, that puts everyone else on notice.
Second, they filmed the entire music video at the same mansion where none other than Black bisexual legend Whitney Elizabeth Houston herself, in all her glory, filmed The Bodyguard. So. You know. Take from that what you will.
PS: They’re both wearing Bi Pride wigs in the cover art.
😜
15 of the Most Chaotically Bisexual Things I Did as a Bisexual 15-Year-Old
Happy Bisexuality Day 2022, we love you.
— Autostraddle
Why 15? Because at 15, for the first time, I was on a roll when it came to my bisexuality — in the sense that I was finally out there, expressing my desires in a way where lips connected with lips, where other people accurately termed me as bisexual, where as my sexuality boiled to the top it met with the heaving weight of the atmospheric pressure of my school trying to tamp it back down. My bisexuality was a resistance and a freedom and a liability. It was such a defining part of my life that I still cling to the word, to its shifting meaning, to all it can be and all the defiance it stands for. I love bisexuals and bisexual culture. I love to stand in defiance of being called greedy. As I said in high school, I LOVED to be greedy — because of course I wanted it all, all the love, all the experience, all of it. Who doesn’t? If you don’t, aren’t you denying yourself a little?
So, this one’s for my chaotic bisexuals of any age, even those of us in our 30’s laughing fondly about our youths and/or our early out days because there wasn’t a place to do that at the time (heyyy). Happy Bisexual Visibility Day, my loves!!!
15 of the most chaotically bisexual things I did as a bisexual 15-year-old:
- Argued on AIM with my girlfriend’s boyfriend about who loved her more.
- Also made out with my girlfriend’s boyfriend (at her urging, but also I wanted to).
- Made out with my girlfriend’s other sometimes hookup boy (in front of her, again, at her urging, in the shadows of the auditorium) after she made him and her boyfriend make out. Gotta complete the circle.
- Got caught making out with my girlfriend by our orchestra teacher who said, and I quote, “You two look like you ate a canary!” Which, sir, what the fuck.
- Wore all black and also dyed all my clothes that were not black using dye I got from the grocery store.
- Got caught making out with my girlfriend in the woods by our coach who (in retrospect was clearly gay) turned right around on her heel, walked the other way, and never said a damn thing. (My “girlfriend” was team captain and no, we were not openly together.)
- Studied Latin and laughed my ass off at the clearly gay character in our Ecce Romani books, Uncle Titus. He wore pink shoes and was ultimately stabbed to death in a storyline where we had to learn the Latin for…stabbing?
- Welcomed my friend sitting in my lap during free periods / before / after school who would also let me kiss her neck while insisting she was straight, inviting absolute chaos from passers by.
- Practiced witchcraft regularly.
- Literally wore a super cheesy vampire choker from Hot Topic so often.
- Forged new connections with my newly divorced parents once they finally got space to themselves, but especially got along with my deeply traumatized father and spent many nights eating pizza with him and my sister and various History and Discovery Channel documentaries about cryptids.
- Listened to a lot of Warren Zevon?
- Wrote short stories! I even read short stories, too.
- Hung out on new age forums [the pre-reddit era!]. Shit was really weird there! Not gonna lie!
- “Cheated” on my new secret boyfriend (because we didn’t want to hurt the one other boy ex’s feelings because they were best friends and there was some overlap) with my (ex?) girlfriend I’d never really broken up with (therefore also technically cheating on her?) (but also she had her own boyfriend so why couldn’t I have one?).
Anyway, then she slapped me full-on, in the face, in front of my whole math class.
The Echo of My Friend’s Casual Biphobia Destroyed Our Relationship
Happy Bisexuality Day 2022, we love you.
💗💜💙 — Autostraddle
“So what are you, like, bi now?” my best friend asks as we walk down the street.
It’s the beginning of the school year and we haven’t seen each other much over the summer. I hadn’t told her that I had been hooking up with a girl since before the previous school year ended. I didn’t really tell anyone about it, not because of shame, but more because I had never told most of my friends that I liked girls.
My sexuality was simply something that had never come up in conversation. This was 2003, as teenagers, we didn’t ask questions like that. By high school we had moved past the “truth or dare” type questions of “who do you like?” — that was information we just shared openly. I’ve never been the type of person to make a big deal out of who I like. I didn’t swoop in and dramatically declare crushes on anyone — was never my style. My bestie knew I had crushes on boys in the past, but that was all the way back in freshman year; we were seniors. There was a guy I went on a date with that summer, but I had to ask my friends if it was a date and he never even tried to kiss me.
I guess after hearing that, finding out that I was hooking up with a girl was a surprise. I wasn’t going to sit my friends down and have a “very special episode” type talk with them about the fact that I liked girls. I figured I’d let them know if and when there was a reason to. A select few friends knew that I was bi — they were subjected to my absolute meltdown during the Justified/Stripped Tour concert we went to. But I didn’t tell them about my crushes on both Justin and Christina before the show, they found out in real time. Since my attraction to girls was something that had been more theoretical until that summer, I kept the information on a need to know basis.
“Yeah, I dunno if I could be a lesbian though, I don’t know if I could go down on girls all the time.” I shrugged, kind of playing it off.
I honestly don’t know why I said that, even in the moment. I knew then that it wasn’t true, but I think it was some sort of coping mechanism. I don’t know exactly what kind of reaction I was anticipating from her, but the one I got wasn’t it. So I think I was thrown for a loop. Was I expecting a parade? Maybe. Of my group of friends, I was the last to have my first kiss. Even though I didn’t make a big deal out of it, I was hoping my best friend would. Isn’t that what best friends are supposed to do? Shouldn’t she have been excited first and then asked about the rest of it after?
About six months later, I hooked up with a boy for the first time. The two experiences could not have been more different in terms of my friends’ reactions. My bestie definitely threw me a parade this time. I’m almost entirely sure there was a high-five when I told her. She wanted every detail of how the whole thing unfolded from start to finish. This was everything I had wanted when I told her that I had kissed a girl over the summer.
I’m not saying that the way my best friend reacted to finding out that I was bi caused me to lock that part of myself away during college, but I’m also not not saying it, if you get what I’m saying. Being questioned about my sexual identity in such an accusatory way by someone that close to me made me fearful of how other people would react. So the easiest thing to do was just not tell anyone close to me. This way they couldn’t make me feel bad about it. But it went so much deeper than that, which is something I didn’t even realize until I was older.
That blow to my confidence didn’t just lead me to not revealing my sexuality to friends, it sent me so far back into the closet that I wouldn’t even consider pursuing women.
Since I was a kid, but especially during my teenage years, I was pretty outwardly boy crazy. I had these deep crushes that bordered on obsessive in elementary and intermediate school. I had two pretty intense crushes in freshman year of high school, but then that was it. The only guys I had crushes on after that were celebrities — by their nature, celebrity crushes are supposed to be obsessive. But even while I was publicly thirsting over Justin Timberlake, I was secretly searching for lesbian fan fiction featuring Christina Aguilera. Much like a millennial stereotype, I figured out I was attracted to women when I saw Angelina Jolie’s breasts in Gia when I was like, 12. My teenage bedroom was plastered with posters of the celeb guys I loved, so no one questioned why the wall of pop princesses was the one I could see when I laid in bed.
“Remember your bi phase?” my best friend asked when we were in our 20s. I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah. It was never a phase,” I groaned.
This wasn’t the first time she had asked the question, and it never got less upsetting. Just because I only hooked up with one girl doesn’t mean that it was just a phase. At the time, I didn’t really know how pervasive this line of thinking was, especially for bisexual women. I did know that every time my friend said those words, my skin started to crawl. No matter how many times I would correct her, she never seemed to receive it. I don’t know if it’s because she found it funny or because she knew it bothered me, but she never stopped referring to it as a phase.
After my son was born and my relationship with his dad started to deteriorate, I found myself being more attracted to women. I remember watching Orange is the New Black and being drawn to the lesbian relationships. I don’t think I shut up about how hot Ruby Rose was for weeks. I had a massive crush on a woman and even though nothing was ever going to come of it, this time, instead of running away from it, I ran towards it. Like clockwork, my friend busted out her usual response.
“Remember your bi phase?”
“Dude, I’ve told you. It was never just a phase,” I said, barely even mustering up the energy to do something about it.
Maybe if I had sat her down from the beginning and explained to her that my feelings were real and had existed for a long time, she would have responded differently. But I also don’t think it was my job to constantly beg her to validate my feelings when I knew they were real. Someone who is supposed to be your best friend shouldn’t need to be convinced to believe you. Plus, even if it had been a phase or a one time thing, that still doesn’t make it worthy of being treated as a footnote or an afterthought. That experience was an important part of who I am and how my life has gone since.
In 2017, at the ripe old age of 31, I decided to come out to everyone and share with the world that I was bisexual. I was tired of not being able to talk about my feelings openly with everyone. The following year, I decided that talking about it wasn’t enough and that I wanted to try pursuing relationships with women. I hadn’t been attracted to a man in years (again, celebrities don’t count) and I was beginning to realize that even though I was craving a relationship, my lack of attraction to men was what was holding me back from trying to date.
When I shared this with my best friend, she was glad I was starting to date, but seemed indifferent to the fact that I was dating women. She was never as invested in the trials and tribulations of my dating adventures, but would constantly expect me to care about what she was going through. When I met someone I really liked, she mustered up some excitement at first, but after our first date, she didn’t ask much more. So I didn’t share anything with her. I had lost interest in trying to get her to care about my attraction to women.
Her lack of interest is one of the many reasons why our relationship was coming to an end. I had other friends who were so invested in my romantic endeavors and they made me realize that I could choose who I shared that joy with. It was important to me, and I didn’t have to share it with people who couldn’t even pretend to muster up some excitement for me. As my relationship with the woman I was dating progressed, I only shared it with the people who I knew would honor my excitement and match it. If I hadn’t posted pictures on social media, she wouldn’t have known anything about the relationship — she never asked and I never told her. We stopped speaking for good a few months later.
The way my former best friend handled by bisexuality definitely hurt my feelings over the 10+ years of our relationship. At first we were young and it’s easy to see how she was blindsided and confused. But as time went on and I repeatedly told her that my feelings were real and never just a “phase,” she should have course corrected and tried to change her mindset. From what I’ve heard, she now identifies as pansexual, and I’m really happy for her. But I’ll admit that it hurts to see her twirling around in a rainbow skirt for Pride when my sexuality was a joke to her for so long.
It also hurts because she’ll never get to see me truly happy. She’ll never meet my fiancee, the woman I was meant to be with. But I’ve learned these things happen for a reason.
What People Said When I Came Out as Bisexual (Again)
Happy Bisexuality Day 2022, we love you.
💗💜💙 — Autostraddle
When I first came out as bisexual, I was 20 years old. I had kissed a girl the night before, and suddenly realized that I’d been falling in love with her the whole time we’d known each other. After years of dating frat boys and jocks, that one kiss crystallized a part of my identity I’d not even known to explore. When I moved to LA after graduating college three years later, when dating apps were no longer just a novel concept but the way of life, I set my apps to match with only women (I think anyone who has ever matched with straight men on dating apps can imagine why!), and for the next five years I used the word lesbian to describe myself.
I guess I always had in the back of my mind the idea that someday, if I met the right man at exactly the right time, I might be interested in him. But that seemed to me a more distant possibility every day (especially as I actively and intentionally built a community of queer people around me, divesting from straight men and straight culture as much as one can in this world), and not a possibility I wanted to explain to every person who heard me say the word “bisexual.” My experience with coming out at age 20 had shown me that most people assumed when I said “bisexual,” I really meant “I only date men, but I’m theoretically open to the idea of a woman.” I wanted a word that more easily explained my day-to-day reality: I was a woman who dated women and that was that.
So you can imagine my surprise, and the surprise of many around me, when I began dating a man this year, one who I actually met for the first time the same year I came out as bisexual, and who, for years, was always around at exactly the wrong time — until now. Nearly nine years after I first came out, I’m much more confident in asserting my queerness and how it shows up in my life (a lot, namely!), and I’ve honestly gotten a kick out the fact that I still have it in me to surprise people, straight and queer, with who I happen to be dating. These are some of my favorite reactions to my coming out as bisexual (again!).
Myself
Well this is the big one, isn’t it? After weeks and weeks of texting this man, watching a movie on Zoom together, and talking to my friends about how I might maybe want to kiss him but only because it’d be like, sooo funny haha right? I was finally ready to admit that I might have actual feelings for him when we hooked up for the first time, a sequence of events oddly reminiscent of the arc of my original coming out!
My close friends
I can’t lie, the homies deserve an award for listening to weeks of me asking them if they thought this man would sleep with me, just for fun, just in a like, friends with benefits way, just because I hadn’t had sex in forever and thought we could pull off a casual relationship. A special shout-out to the (bi) friend who said “you know you can just, be bisexual, right?” when I was spiraling about whether I’d have to give up being gay altogether and whether the last five years of my life had been a lie. (They weren’t a lie, and she was right!)
My mom
When I was 20, all I wanted was for my mom to quietly and calmly accept that I was bisexual. This time, all I wanted was a little bit of drama (yes, I am a Sagittarius, yes I do live for chaos, and yes as a recovering party girl I feel I have limited options for chaos at my disposal). Instead, my mom — inured to 28 years of my bullshit and dramatic proclamations—said simply “Oh. Cool.” Parents, they always know how to do the opposite of the thing you want.
My grandmother
I told my grandma about my boyfriend at the same time as I told her that the two of us were going on a big group trip to Barcelona. In response she said, “well if you and he feel moved in any of the churches to get married… just wait a day and call me so I can be there.” I would have felt weirder about this, because the last thing I want from any of my (older, Mexican, Catholic) family members is to think having a boyfriend means I am Straight and Traditional now, but then I remembered how supportive she was in 2019 when I had a girlfriend and called her crying to come out to her, when she said “all I want is for you to not keep any part of yourself from me.”
My former boss, randomly
When I was in a long-distance relationship with a woman in 2019, my boss at the time had been absolutely hooked on our love story updates, asking me how our visits had gone, letting me off work early when she came into town, etc. I saw him recently for the first time since then, and in catching up with me, he asked if I had “a girl in my life.” When I said I had a boyfriend, he responded, very earnestly, “Well that’s exciting!” then, flustered, “I mean, it’d be exciting if it weren’t a man too! I mean–” When I laughingly cut him off and said “yes, it’s been really exciting, though not what I expected!” he responded “Me either, obviously!”
My gay coworker
A gal who I first bonded with over our shared lesbianism and love/hate relationship with The L Word, in a conversation about my boyfriend, looked me deep in my eye and in the most deadpan voice I could imagine said “so, what do you like about him?” Honestly, incredibly affirming when I responded and she firmly and satisfiedly nodded at my answer.
My gay friends
If the scariest people to come out to when I was 20 had been my mom and my straight sorority friends, the people I was most afraid to come out to this time were all the cool lesbian friends I’d made in LA. Would I suddenly lose them? Would they think I had infiltrated their ranks under false pretense? Would they [insert biphobic or exclusionary reaction here]? I built up these conversations with them in my head, imagining disappointment or distance from them, and I never felt sillier than after each time I came out to one of them and was inevitably affirmed supported and encouraged in this relationship and new facet of my sexuality. Aside from a bit with my engaged lesbian friends about how my boyfriend is imaginary (they still haven’t met him, somehow), it couldn’t have gone smoother.
TikTok
I never had to come out to TikTok, just like I never had to tell TikTok that I’m Mexican, or have ADHD, or love late 2000s hip-hop music. At first, the algorithm gave me some very relatable bisexual content, but it’s since leaned too far the other direction: suddenly I’m edging into hetero TikTok where couples seem to hate each other, where men do really wild extreme sport stunts, and where people believe Taylor Swift is completely and totally straight.
If I had one wish in this whole thing, it’s that TikTok would continue to think I’m a lesbian!
TikTok figuring out that I have a boyfriend is truly the worst thing to ever happen to my FYP
— analyssa (@analoca_) September 19, 2022
“Wait, Is This a Date?” Podcast Episode 203: Dating Men
A fun fact about the queer community is most people have experience dating men. No, I’m not just talking about the cis gay boys — I’m talking about most of our listeners! (Though I do hope we have a large contingency of cis gay male listeners tbh.) Whether you’re a lesbian who dated men as a teen or a queer person who dates lots of genders, our community is far too mixed and gender is far too complicated to leave men — cis and trans — out of our discussions.
That’s why this week our topic is dating men and our very special guest is writer, director, podcaster, icon, and my best friend, Gabe Dunn! For those who don’t know them, Gabe has been dating men throughout their entire identity journey. They talk to us about dating men when they thought they were a cis woman and dating men now that they’re out as transmasculine. We also get into the awful cis men from Boston that Christina dated before coming out and wonder why I have a desire to fuck Jon Hamm.
But first! We play a game I call “Netflix & Shill” that asks such questions as: How gay is the Olsen Twin vehicle New York Minute?
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SHOW NOTES
+ If you want more of Gabe check out the episode of Bad with Money that Christina and I were on last year.
+ Since recording, Gabe got their two new Swayze tattoos!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CfelxPKp6lS/
+ And just a reminder: You should watch Road House.
+ Important footage of Jenifer Lewis at the 2019 GLAAD Awards:
+ Jaida Essence Hall. The hottest pig in town.
+ Watch Gabe’s short film, Grindr Baby.
EPISODE
Gaby: I think if I get top surgery, it’s going to change immensely. That’s my fear is that once I get top surgery, these guys are going to be like, “Wait a minute.”
Christina: “Hold on. You took the titties away.”
Gaby: Right. That’s what I think.
Christina: “What’s going on?”
Gaby: “Wait a minute. You have full facial hair and shh, but these titties are giving me an out” and then when I don’t have them, I’m curious what they’re going to think.
[theme song plays]
Drew: Hi, I’m Drew.
Christina: I’m Christina.
Drew: Welcome to, Wait, Is This a Date?
Christina: Wait, Is This a Date? is an Autostraddle podcast all about dating and figuring out if things are dates and other topics, as we decide, those topics will be, as we record more episodes of this podcast called, Wait, Is This a Date? That took a turn. Got to say, didn’t expect a single word to come out of my mouth in that order, but wow, here we are.
Drew: I realized that in our intro, I have given you the responsibility of saying something new every time. I say, “Welcome to Wait, Is This a Date?” Then I go, “Christina,” and you get to just ad lib and it’s always entertaining.
Christina: It’s always something. As they say, heavy is the head that wears the crown and my crown is, occasionally, these headphones and this podcast.
Drew: Incredible. My name is Drew Gregory. I am a writer for Autostraddle, a filmmaker. You said last time that I always paused before I say my identities. Once again, I’m a queer trans woman and general gay person.
Christina: That’s gorgeous. I’m Christina Tucker. I’m also a writer at Autostraddle and the internet abound, I am a gay cis woman. In that way, I think we’re a really beautiful team.
Drew: When I think of Christina, I think cis woman.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: I don’t think big faggot.
Christina: Yeah. No. Thank you. That is, actually, also a large part of my identity is being a gigantic faggot.
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: I’ve heard a rumor that you have a game for me.
Drew: I sure do.
Christina: By I’ve heard a rumor, I mean, you texted me directly.
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: In many ways, what is a rumor? Who can say? It can be whatever you want it to be for the sake of a podcast.
Drew: I hope this is okay.
Christina: Oh boy.
Drew: I’m just going to talk for a little while and you don’t have to say anything because I don’t want you to incriminate yourself.
Christina: Okay.
Drew: You used to work for an account called, Most. It wasn’t owned by Netflix. I don’t really understand the inner workings, but basically, it was in charge of sharing the queer content on Netflix each month. Now, before Netflix decided to fire a bunch of their queer employees right before Pride, but before that, you were part of the team that was in charge of pitching what I would say is Netflix’s lackluster queer content. Every month, the Most account was tasked with releasing the queer content for the month. A lot of times, there wasn’t enough queer content or the queer content that was there, Netflix, for some reason, didn’t want to promote because it was maybe too edgy or was foreign or whatever.
A lot of the stuff that’s on these lists is to call it queer is generous, but because you no longer have that job, I thought you could do one last hurrah, a two weeks notice if you will that was not granted by this corporation. I have a game called, “Netflix and Shill” where I’m going to name titles that were on the monthly “this is what’s queer and coming to Netflix.” I haven’t seen all of them, but I do think that most of them are not… at least the queerness is subtle or minor or supporting character. What I’m going to need from you is for you to explain to me why this work of media is so deeply important to queer history and the queer community.
Christina: Okay. I think I can do this and not get sued.
Drew: Great.
Christina: I think that’s thrilling.
Drew: Great. Well, okay. Our first title is, a Netflix flagship series. We’re going to go with Bridgerton.
Christina: Bridgerton. Bridgerton is deeply important to the queer community due to two actors, the leads of, I guess, this last season are both queer. We celebrate queer actors even if they are both playing straight in that way.
Drew: That’s really beautiful.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: Queer actors can play straight roles.
Christina: Yes, they can. Honestly, Jonathan Bailey did a pretty impressive job of being a straight man. Good for him.
Drew: I do love that. Okay. Next up, Is it Cake?
Christina: Is it Cake? Honestly, of Netflix reality shows that I watched during my tenure there, I had a ball watching Is it Cake? which is either a comment on how many terrible reality shows there are or how broken my brain was by this job. It’s tough to say. Is it Cake? had a bevy of queer contestants and also, many gay judges including Rebecca Black, which was very fun and thrilling.
Drew: Right. That’s nice.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: Okay. The ’90s film, You’ve Got Mail.
Christina: Quick cameo from Sara Ramirez and Nora Ephron really knows how to write and gays like writing. I don’t know.
Drew: I think we do like writing. I can attest to that.
Christina: It is not my favorite of the Ephrons, but it’s there. It’s in the canon.
Drew: Sure.
Christina: But I do think it was that 10-second Sara Ramirez moment.
Drew: Okay. Wow. I was going to say I should rewatch it because I don’t remember them being in it, but maybe I shouldn’t rewatch it. Who’s to say. Next up is, I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Christina: I’m going to draw a big old blank on this one. Gays do love horror in a way that I don’t because I am not that kind of gay. Screaming is camp. I don’t know. Who can say?
Drew: You heard it here, folks, screaming is camp.
Christina: Who can say? I don’t even know if I’ve ever seen that movie, to be honest. I must have as like a child. I must have looked at it and then decided, no, horror is simply not for me.
Drew: Next up is one that you probably have seen. New York Minute.
Christina: That’s the Lindsay Lohan film, I believe.
Drew: I think it’s Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.
Christina: There’s a Lindsay one that’s also about New York, but that has something to do with luck or something. Again, Mary-Kate and Ashley are iconic and that they are swamp witches now and refuse to do anything normal except for like, make large beige clothing for The Row, which is somehow pretty gay of them, but actually, I don’t think I have seen that film.
Drew: Wow.
Christina: I do support the Olsens in their work.
Drew: I love that.
Christina: And/or their lack of work recently. I think that’s actually equally inspirational. They really put in their time as children.
Drew: The next one I have not seen and you probably have not seen it. I tried to Google how gay it was and I don’t think it’s gay. Maybe it is gay and I just… The Lincoln Lawyer. Is The Lincoln Lawyer gay?
Christina: What?
Drew: With Matthew McConaughey?
Christina: If it is, I am shocked to hear it. I’m trying to… No, I’ve never seen it. I know a little bit about Lincoln. He was tall.
Drew: He was also rumored to be like a little gay, which is why I’m like, “Was The Lincoln Lawyer about… was Matthew McConaughey playing a gay lawyer?” I don’t think so based on my quick Google, but listener, if you’ve seen The Lincoln Lawyer, please send us an email. How gay is it?
Christina: Yeah. My guess would say that there’s some lightly gay subplot or there’s a gay actor in it.
Drew: Great.
Christina: That would be the two reasons it could make the list.
Drew: Okay. My Best Friend’s Wedding.
Christina: The most iconic gay friend, I think, of all time in Rupert Everett. Honestly, the only rom-com that has an ending that I’ve ever really identified with because girl, you will end up alone but you will have your best gay friend there at the wedding for you. That is gay culture.
Drew: That was an easy one, but it felt worth mentioning. This, also, might be an easy one for you specifically, the 1982, Annie.
Christina: Though I am a musical faggot, boy, do I hate Annie? Because boy, do I hate children singing more than almost anything in the world. I find them all incredibly annoying. I think, “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” is one of the worst songs in musical theater history.
Drew: Bernadette Peters is in this one, right?
Christina: Bernadette is in that one. That is the one with Bernadette, which feels like enough would be enough for me. She’s famously a sticker on my water bottle, but I got nothing.
Drew: That’s not an expression. I want to clarify.
Christina: No.
Drew: That is literally… There’s a Bernadette Peters sticker on Christina’s water bottle. Yeah, staring at it right now. There you go.
Christina: She’s above Viola Davis.
Drew: That’s beautiful.
Christina: I love history. Herstory, I’m sorry.
Drew: I have three more. Oscar nominated film, Don’t Look Up.
Christina: Cate Blanchett gets to say whatever she wants because of Carol, I think. I think that’s it.
Drew: Okay.
Christina: Gay men love Ariana Grande.
Drew: Yeah. I definitely saw that movie though I like to pretend in my brain that I didn’t because it was so bad, but I didn’t remember there being any gay characters. Was Jennifer Lawrence bisexual in it?
Christina: She had a bisexual haircut in it.
Drew: Okay. That’s enough. Okay. Two more. My Little Pony: A New Generation.
Christina: I don’t know what happens with those ponies.
Drew: Are they gay?
Christina: They’re ponies. My gut says yes. There’s something gay about saying the phrase, “My little pony,” but what occurs on that program, that’s not my business.
Drew: Great. Well then, we have one more, which I don’t know if you had to see this one for work, but I’ve heard things. Diana: The Musical.
Christina: Oh boy did I watch Diana: The Musical. That was really hard to watch. I know there is a contingent of theater gays who are like, “No. Actually, we’re bravely coming out to say that Diana: The Musical is brilliant.” I would like to have a very long talk with those gays because I am perplexed by that. Well, it’s musical, so kind of just like, gays love a musical, but also, I think her valet or something is gay but not specifically gay, but has a big gay man dressing a pretty woman energy. Boy, that musical was awful.
Drew: Is there mention of AIDS in the musical?
Christina: Oh yeah, there is a whole, in fact, scene that I actually blocked due to trauma because it is a musical number about having HIV and AIDS and it’s bad, bad, bad lyrics.
Drew: Wow.
Christina: Lyrically a flop.
Drew: Wow. Well, this was a really beautiful time.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: Thank you for playing this dangerous game with me. I’d just like to say that while I don’t support large corporations or comedians who are transphobic, I do love the show, Sex Education and I would take Netflix money to make my own show whenever they would like. Just putting that on the record.
Christina: I think that’s a great thing to be on the record.
Drew: Maybe after this I’ll pop some popcorn and watch The Lincoln Lawyer.
Christina: I love that. Of all the movies on the list, that’s the one where you’re like, “I’ve got some questions we got to untangle there.”
Drew: Well, let’s move on to our topic of the week, which is dating men. I often say, we have a very special guest because we don’t really do like not special guests because what’s the point of having a podcast for that.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: But this person is my best friend. I will let them introduce themselves.
Gaby: Oh my God. Hi. I’m Gaby Dunn. I’m Drew’s best friend. I’m also a writer and a noted internet bisexual gay person. Yeah. I work in TV and film. Sometimes books, sometimes podcasts. I’m sure you’ll do the thing at the end, which is like, “promote whatever you want to promote or whatever.” I won’t bore you up top, but…
Christina: Please don’t.
Gaby: Yeah. Mostly, I am your friend. Hi.
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah. That’s the best part, I think.
Drew: Have you ever dated a man?
Gaby: Oh my God. Oh boy. Okay. Here’s my journey.
Drew: Yeah.
Gaby: I was like the bisexual cis woman of the internet for a while. I, yeah, dated a lot of men. Now, I’m like a nonbinary transmasculine person. I’m still dating men, but it’s different. My partner is a transmasculine person. They’re on testosterone, then other people I’m seeing are a lot of trans men. There’s one cis man, but he is dead to me right now and then other people that… It’s gotten to be more of a T4T situation up in here, but yeah, I used to date a lot of… We’re roasting cis men. Is that what we’re doing?
Drew: No. No, I would never. No. I think what I’m interested in is, when we were first discussing the season and possible topics and guests, this was back in January, I was like, “Oh, well, by the time, we would have Gaby, I think they’ll be a man.” That’s also an interesting dynamic. I don’t know about that, but it definitely hasn’t not come true in certain ways. I’m interested in just mapping the trajectory of all the different ways. Obviously, gender is complicated. Every individual relationship is its own relationship, but I know Christina has experience dating cis men as a cis woman. You have experienced dating cis men as a “cis woman.”
Christina: Sure.
Drew: You have experience dating trans men as a “cis woman.”
Gaby: Yeah, air quotes. Air quotes around all of that.
Drew: Yeah. You can’t see the air quotes because—
Christina: Oh they could hear them. They were very audible to the audience.
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: Now, you’re a transmasculine person still dating men, both cis and trans. I don’t know. I’m just interested in getting into the differences and certain patterns.
Gaby: Sure.
Drew: And what your relationship was to men as… Really, there’s a huge difference between being a closeted transmasculine person and a cis woman.
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: You both offer those perspectives and wow.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: How exciting for me.
Gaby: Okay. Here’s the thing. I’m two months on T, right now, as we speak. That is a very different journey. I came out as nonbinary a year ago, almost a year ago. I was still super femme at the time although, what does that mean? I had long hair, but I now have cut my hair. I’m on T. The T is starting to show. I have a little mustache. I still have boobs. I just don’t ever acknowledge them. Now, it’s a little interesting with the cis straight men that I see because I’m like, “Do I have to care about what you identify as? Does that matter to me? What are you? What are you seeing me as? What is this?”
One of them I was hooking up with before. No, two. Well, here’s the journey. I was hooking up with them before I went on T and cut my hair, right? They’re still around. One of them… Okay. I was a woman. I went out with this person. They were sort of, on their Hinge bio they were like a guy, but there was something about them that was very effeminate. I was like, “This is interesting.” Then we went out. It was like, “Why did you swipe on me?” I was like, “You have a really feminine energy.” I was like, let’s see what this person says. They were like, “Oh, I love that. Thank you.” We hooked up regular, like straight people or whatever and then—
Christina: Hooked up regular is my new favorite phrase.
Gaby: Yeah. I don’t know. Boring. Later, I saw this person again. We started to hook up and then they just broke down. This was, now, I look this way. So the last time they saw me, I was a lady. Now, I look this way. They came to see me again. They hit me up. Just FYI, they were like, “I can’t get enough.”
Drew: Returning customers.
Gaby: Always. They just broke down and were like, “I don’t know. I think I’m a woman. I don’t know.” I was like, “Yeah, babe.” They were saying all this stuff where they were like, “Maybe I’m not queer. I’m just jealous of all queer people. What if people think I’m faking being a trans woman? I’m not a trans woman, but I just wish I could be as confident as a trans woman.” All this stuff that was like, “Babe, you could just be a trans woman.” Then they were like, “I don’t know. Maybe I’m like not actually queer and I’m just pretending.” I started laughing. I was like, “I don’t mean to laugh at you, but this is gay.”
Christina: Whatever experience you’re having here, something’s gay about it, my friend.
Gaby: Yeah. They’re like, “I don’t know. Maybe I’m not queer.” I’m just sitting there, literally, a transmasculine person with this AMAB person being like, “Really, I don’t want to tell you what’s happening to you right now, but we are in a bed kissing and cuddling. I got to let you know that you are having gay sex actively right now.”
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: This is gay right now.
Christina: Nothing straight is happening here in this conversation has ever happened betwixt us.
Gaby: They were like, “Oh,” and then, really, it just became like me sending them memes to try to get them to understand and then them being like, “Yeah, I’m probably trans feminine.” That was one of the last, “cis men” that had showed up in my life.
Drew: Right.
Gaby: I think even when I was very feminine, I had a lot of cis straight men that I dated who were unnerved. They liked me and they were into me, but there was some hump that they couldn’t get over there. There was some… And I didn’t know what they were reading on me at the time, but there was always this thing where they just couldn’t get a grasp on what I was and they were reading something that they liked a little bit because they got a proximity to queerness that they thought was interesting, but then it would start to get very queer and they were not into it. One partner that I had that was a long term boyfriend, just this is 2016 where I really thought I was a cis woman, I cut all my hair off and I started referring to myself as “ya boy.” I wore only men’s underwear. I wore men’s bathing suits.
At the time, this guy, this guy is the most cis straight, although now I suspect maybe something’s up with him, but anyway. When he was breaking up with me, he was like, “I feel like I’m not allowing you to be your true self.” I was like, “What an idiot.” I was like, “Why would he think that. That’s so fucking stupid. What a dumbass.” I actively had a coffee table book in my car that said genderqueer that was pictures of genderqueer people that I was going to put in my apartment as this was happening.
Christina: You were like, “Anyway, what a dummy. Ya boy out.”
Gaby: “What a fucking moron. Ya boy out.” Then I started dating a bi cis guy and that was very freeing. Now, in retrospect, I think being with him, let me feel like a gay guy. Because I had short hair, he was bi, everything we did was very faggoty. The last time I ran into him was at an Ariana Grande concert. I was like, “Oh, this person is my gender.” I don’t know. A lot of the men that I had dated in the past are now trans women.
Drew: I do know this about you.
Christina: That’s quite a pipeline. That’s—
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: I do love that anybody who is like… There’s this group of cis dudes on apps who are like, “I’m working through something. I’m going to swipe on this and see what happens.”
Gaby: Well, yeah. Also, it’s different people. Once I change my pronouns to they/them it’s a totally different crowd.
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: I always thought, even when I looked like a woman, right? My partner, Mal and I were in South Carolina and there was a group of frat guys in a car outside of a restaurant. We’re walking around the restaurant. I look like a woman, so they stop to check if I’m hot or whatever. I would say, out of the five of them, four of them are like, “That’s a weirdo.” One of the five does a second look. That’s happened my whole life. If I can get that fifth one, that’s the one I want and not anymore, but back when I was a woman. Because I’m like, “What’s up with you? You’re fucking weird.”
Christina: Yeah, something’s happening.
Gaby: You’re like bi or gay or you’re trans or something, because you took a second look at me and all your little frat bros didn’t. What’s your fucking deal?
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah, that’s going to be a sight that’s going to fester for that fifth one. That’s going to just be a recurring theme that they’re just going to keep running back to and being like, “What was that?”
Gaby: You’re different than your friends.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. One out of five dentists is super fucking gay.
Gaby: You’re going to try to get me to peg you or something and not tell your friends. I know. I can see you.
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: Listen, when you know, you know.
Drew: Well, now though, maybe this is a question for you in a year, but are you interacting with cis gay men now, in a new way? Do you feel like that world is starting to open up to you? Or is there just too much transphobia in the cis gay male world to quite get there yet?
Gaby: It depends. The big problem is, I still have boobs…
Drew: Right.
Gaby: …which I think gives the cis straight men that I date a little bit of an out, where they’re like, “Yeah, this is a person with facial hair and actively a man or a trans but titties are there, so plausible deniability.”
Drew: Right.
Gaby: Okay. Here’s what’s happening as I post more masculine thirst traps. The straight girls coming out of the woodwork.
Drew: Yeah.
Gaby: These are people that aren’t going to follow through, right? It’s the straight girls who are like, “Damn, thirst trapping.” And whatever. Those people are not going to follow through. The cis gay men who comment are also probably not going to follow through at this point.
Drew: Right.
Gaby: It is nice because they’ll write like, “Daddy” or whatever. I’m, literally, one of five tops in West Hollywood. Come on.
Christina: Well, well.
Gaby: There’s bottoms galore, but you need me. I don’t think they really have follow through. I don’t think they’re really going to try to ask me out or fuck me right now. You know what I mean? They’re like—
Drew: Right.
Christina: Yeah. They’re going to throw little heart eyes comment.
Gaby: Just to keep me on the line.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: Right.
Gaby: Keep me spicy until I pass.
Christina: Just keeping an eye.
Gaby: Yeah, which is a strange thing to keep me on the line until I pass just to see.
Drew: I’m also interested in this idea of like, “Oh, if this person hooks up with me, then they’re gay.” Because I also think that there’s a level of, I don’t know, how is someone seeing you, right?
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: I know in my experience, when I first moved to LA and my hair was luscious, but not quite so long, I was hit on a lot by cis gay men who were reading me as a little twink. The more… My boobs grew a little bit more and my hair got a little longer and then they disappeared.
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: Which—
Christina: Fade into the tall grass.
Drew: Yeah. They’re not really there anymore. It’s like, do we read those cis gay men as more bisexual than they let themselves on?
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: Or are they just transphobicly or ignorantly reading us differently. I think about that when it comes to the cis men, especially. I think with trans people and closeted trans people, we’re all on our own journeys. So it’s like what are you going to do?
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: But with the cis men, I’m always interested in this idea of what can we, as a culture, be like everyone’s a lot gayer and transer then they are willing to admit.
Gaby: Right.
Drew: They need to deal with that. Versus being like they’re not respecting us and they’re seeing us wrong and how much do we want to put up with that and that sort of thing.
Gaby: I don’t know because I’m also like, as I’m hooking up with more other transmasculine people, which has been a delight, I am realizing that a lot of them have an opposite experience to me where they were seen as lesbians or butch lesbians, have almost no experience with men, and then have become more “passing” trans-masculine people, and then all of a sudden are hooking up with men. But I’m the opposite. I was a hot girl. I had no problem being a hot girl. I didn’t feel awkward about it. I was doing the utmost level of drag. I’m not joking, a hot girl, nightclub hot girl. I have a lot of experience with men. They’re largely boring. I have a lot of confidence. Even when I would date men, I would fuck around. I would touch the small of their back to lead them places. I would do things to try to make them feel the girl. I was like—
Christina: No reason anyway.
Gaby: I know because I was like, “It’s a bit.” I just was always so confident. With men, right now, I have no problem. Even looking like this, I’m like, “I could probably still get you.” Men are like a paint by numbers. They’re so easy to me, but then the opposite thing with me was women, which is a thing with bisexuals where it’s like, “Women are more difficult.” Now then once women started to become easier to me, I was like great and I was hooking up with more women. I had a long term partner. I was like, “We are girlfriends.” That person is a trans-masculine person also. I think I have a different experience where a lot of the trans men that I’m friends with are like, “Oh my God, boys. What do I do? Boys.” I’m like, “Who needs it? It’s boring shit.”
Drew: It’s inspiring.
Gaby: Yeah. I just never had that experience. When my partner and I first started dating and I was very feminine and they’re a transmasculine person, we would go to a coffee shop and the barista would be like, “What are you going to get?” Leave a smiley face on Mal’s receipt. For me, I’d be like, “They forgot my drink, fully.” You know what I mean?
Drew: Now you walk back into the coffee shop like the scene from Pretty Woman and are like—
Gaby: Big mistake!
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: Huge!
Christina: Huge.
Drew: Christina, when you were in your straight era, what kind of men were drawn to you and what kind of men were you drawn to?
Christina: The worst kind. A lot of that, I will blame on living in Boston, Massachusetts.
Gaby: Hell yeah.
Christina: A thing that my friends love to joke about is like, “Well, thank God you’re a dyke now, because the men that you were dating were just the worst.” There is a straight version of me somewhere. She works in PR. Her boyfriend is some horrible capitalist, venture capitalist bro. Just like the doucheist finance lawyery types. Just like the…
Gaby: Oh my God.
Christina: …worst. I hated them because I was gay, but also, it was so easy to date them because I hated them. They were so into how uninterested I was in them that it made it very simple to just keep them around and then be like, “No, I’m done with this. I don’t like you. I don’t like being here.” Then three months later, I’d be like, “Let’s pick up another guy named John at a bar. Whatever.” It was just me negging men I could not stand due to being a dyke and then being like, “Yeah, I’m done. Done with this now.” It was a dark period.
Gaby: That is dark. I think I would pick not like that. I think I would pick effeminate guys and then I would be like, “We’re just both gay guys.” They would be like, “That’s not what’s happening.”
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: We’ve talked about this, but if we had met five years earlier, you would have ruined my life. I would’ve been obsessed with you.
Gaby: I would have been in love with you.
Drew: Yeah, but you also would’ve ruined my life.
Gaby: Absolutely. I’m a monster, but you—
Christina: Gorgeous transparency work right here. This is beautiful stuff. This is how communities stay together. This is nice.
Gaby: Drew as a boy was exactly who I would’ve gone after. Exactly. Which is like, then. she is a trans woman.
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah. The pattern continues.
Gaby: Yeah. I would’ve been like, “The little one who fucks.” That’s where I would’ve been like, “Hey.”
Christina: Hey.
Drew: I think I would’ve learned about bottoming a lot sooner.
Gaby: I was always trying to get those straight boys to let me at their butt holes. Sometimes they would do it and sometimes they would be like, “Why are you obsessed with this?”
Drew: I’ll tell you what, during that era, all I wanted was to not use my dick and to do exactly what my partner wanted—
Christina: Well…
Drew: Unfortunately, those things were in—
Christina: Constant conflict?
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: It is interesting to me because I don’t have a lot of experience dating men. And by not a lot, I mean, basically zero. But I do have experienced dating people who, at the time, I thought were women or were nonbinary fems and have since transitioned or have since become more masculine. It’s definitely changed my relationship to my identity. As you will note, when I pause in the beginning of the intros, last year would end with me saying, lesbian. Look, I think the term lesbian, historically, encompasses a lot of genders and a lot of sexualities. I think I still could identify as a lesbian if anyone who I was dating wasn’t bothered by it, but I have just been like, “I don’t know.”
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: I’m very open. I would love to have an experience… Love is maybe a strong word, but I do feel like, if, in my entire life, I never have sex with a cis man, that would be such a bummer. Just from a FOMO…
Christina: Wow.
Drew: …life experience sort of way.
Christina: Interesting.
Gaby: There’s some that you think are hot. You’ve said some are hot.
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: Usually, bisexual ones. Usually, queer. I love an effeminate queer man.
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: I don’t feel any attachment to genders of people that I date.
Gaby: No. It seems weird to.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: Also, a lot of the “women.” I don’t have to quote unquote, but women that I date. I don’t know. I will think of them more as, if we’re thinking of things in a binary way… Like I don’t generally date high femmes.
Christina: Right.
Drew: I generally date people who are tomboys. I’ve hooked up with a wide variety and have casually dated a wide variety, but most of the people I’ve had long term relationships with have a masculinity to them. Then it’s like, I don’t know. It just makes me feel like men be it like a binary trans guy or cis men are on the horizon at some point in my life. Why would you want to…? I just feel like… I don’t know. It also feels like I missed out on this really quintessential lesbian experience that Christina is describing where you date awful men for many years before you figure yourself out. I didn’t have that.
Christina:Yeah. You, too, could be miserable going on dates with men and slamming nips in the alleys before going to a date being like, “This is normal. This is what people who love dating men do. Just be like lightly blackout drunk when you arrive. It’s fine.”
Drew: To be fair. It does sound similar to what it was like dating straight girls, which I guess is another type of lesbian experience.
Christina: Well, sure. That is. That’s not one I’ve had, so in that way.
Drew: Oh.
Gaby: Christina, what’s your type?
Christina: See, and this is the other funny thing. Thinking about when we think about the genders that we are attracted to. When I was dating men, I was dating like, “That is a man. That is just like… That is a cis dude. That dude is big and like a giant. He had a big dumb head, just like a big idiot.” Every time I’m attracted to a woman, I’m like, “That is the most femme woman I’ve ever seen in my entire life.” I am extremely femme for femme even though my femme vibes have shifted to be more faggy. Truly, just Robin Williams in Birdcage femme.
Gaby: Yes.
Christina: I am always just like, it is very interesting that I went from extreme gender of man, extreme gender of woman, nothing in between. Like what is that about? What’s going on up here?
Drew: It’s interesting because so many people in the queer community are the opposite.
Christina: Yes.
Drew: Where they’re like, “I’m just attracted to androgyny.” Which I say in like a sarcastic voice, but I don’t mean it to be. If that’s what you’re into, that’s fine as long as you’re not being fetishy and weird. But it’s interesting that you’re the opposite.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: I don’t know a lot of people that are the opposite who are like, “Be binary.”
Christina: I don’t either.
Gaby: Christina, I think, probably when you are closeted and you’re trying to find a man, you don’t have your own radar.
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: You’re just like, “What has society told me? What have movies told me is a man.” I remember in middle school, I would just sit in the cafeteria and be like, “I got to choose a boy to have a crush on. Okay, who does everyone else like? Okay.”
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: “I can’t do that. It’s too obvious. I’ll do his friend.”
Christina: Yeah, with a slightly different version of that. Yeah.
Gaby: Yeah. You’re picking from what other people are saying is hot.
Christina: Yeah. Except that I’ve always had those friends who are like you two. Like, “I love this tiny little sensitive emotion.” I’m like get that shit away from me. I don’t want to hear a man talk about a feeling. Not one time. Stop that. Never again. No man with a guitar. No man writing poetry. I don’t want to look at it. I don’t want to hear it. I’m not interested in that energy. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just like, “Feelings boys, away. Away from me.”
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: Well, when you think of binary women who are very femme women, are they allowed to be super emotional?
Christina: Yeah. Women can do whatever they want.
Drew: Yeah, but like—
Christina: That’s science.
Drew: When I think of your crushes though, they are like ice queen mommi. Maybe that’s not in your actual dating life, it isn’t quite that, but in your crushes, that is what manifests and they are also not super emotional. There’s a masculinity… There is actually…
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: You can be so femme that you somehow gain a masculinity.
Gaby: Absolutely.
Christina: Right. That ice queen like emotionalist thing, I’m always like, “Is that a crush moment or is that a me feeling seen moment?” That’s always tough to say. Because like, “Is that just me? Am I just doing that?” That’s just what I do in the lack of feelings and vulnerability space that I’m constantly vibing in. Yeah. The women that I have tended to date, I’m always like, “Why am I dating another golden? Why is this golden retriever energy here? What is this peppy theater kid do-something-fun? What is this? Why am I here again?”
Gaby: Opposites attract.
Christina: Yes. A large part of it is that I am aware of who I am as a person and that I can be a stubborn and not fun. I do need someone to be like, “Shut the fuck up. We’re going outside today.”
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: Which is, yeah. I think that’s life sometimes, but yeah.
Gaby: Here’s another thing. Here’s a problem that I have had. Now, I’m unpacking it the opposite way. I had a thing where I was like oh, you don’t actually want to date these guys. You want to be them or you think that they are cool. Versus like… So I would be like oh, I want to be this person or I want to be like this person, so I’m going to get proximity to them. Or I see myself in them or I see something that I want to be or I want to take away in them, mostly from men. There’s two things, two lyrics that I like. There’s a Neko Case lyric where she is like, “I fucked every man that I wanted to be.” Then there’s a Lil Nas X lyric where he says, “I only fuck the ones I envy.”
Christina: Wow. The two genders, really, right?
Gaby: I know.
Christina: That’s where it is.
Gaby: The two genders. I was like, “Wow,” but then I thought that was bad. I was like, “Okay, you can’t do that anymore. That’s bad. You have to parse out. That’s not attraction. That’s not whatever.” Now, I’m back and I’m like, “Who cares? Why is that bad? People fuck for all kinds of reasons.”
Drew: Yeah.
Gaby: If I envy someone and I want to fuck them because I envy them, why am I pathologizing myself?
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah. I think, at some point, I do think it is good to be aware of the things that shape your desires and wants and et cetera, but I do think, at some point, pathologizing all of your interests, be it sexual, be it like… you’re going to run into trouble. It’s not going to be successful after a while.
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: You’re just going to end up tangled into a moral quandary where you’re like, “Can I do anything ever? Have I ever made a choice?” That doesn’t seem like a fun way to live.
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. I think it’s definitely good to… I agree with that. Be aware, but then also, at the end of the day…
Christina: You gotta get out of your head sometimes.
Drew: I do wonder what the experience would be like for me to like fuck Jon Hamm. One of those guys—
Gaby: Like a GUY.
Drew: A guy who… Like I wonder—
Gaby: Would you bottom for them?
Drew: Well, yeah.
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: That would be fun.
Christina: That does sound fun.
Drew: It’s also funny because I think of my five-foot-four cis woman girlfriend that way.
Gaby: Yeah. Well, she is.
Christina: Yeah. Well, she is.
Drew: You know what I mean?
Christina: Exactly.
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: So then it’s like, what is—
Christina: You could pop her right in Top Gun: Maverick and she’d be fine.
Drew: Wow. She’ll love to hear that.
Gaby: She’s so funny towards you where she’s just like a high school jock grabbing at your tits and you’re like, “Ahh,” but you like it.
Christina: Yeah, exactly that energy, in fact.
Drew: Yeah. It’s like why fuck Jon Hamm? What’s the need to do that? I don’t think Jon Hamm would be as good at sex.
Gaby: Right.
Drew: There is still a part of my brain that wants the bad experience or wants to try it out.
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: I do think, ultimately, if I were to have sex with a cis man, it would be a little twink. It probably would be a case where I was topping them, but I could do all of it.
Christina: I love the idea of being like this cis man, a little twink.
Gaby: Also like, what? The two of you would just, what, blow away in the wind? You need like a…
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: Just something to weigh you down.
Gaby: Yeah. I think you need a bigger guy.
Drew: It’d be interesting. What I’m saying… It’s funny though because I say this and then the majority of the people who hit on me and look, fellas, don’t stop. I love the praise. I love the validation, but it’s largely transmasculine people or queer cis men. That’s my demo. Those people are the most attracted to me of anyone. When I was single and actively dating a lot, I wasn’t usually into those individuals. So then it makes me go like, “Well, how much of it is just theoretical?”
Gaby: What if it was a cis straight guy was like, came to you and was like, into you?
Drew: Well, that’s what’s interesting, right? Is that like… I just think I maybe passed the place of finding validation in that.
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: Maybe I’m not as evolved as I think and maybe there would be something validating about it, but then at the end of the day, when you… I think it depends on how that experience went.
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: I don’t know. I guess, you and Mal are the only… You were figuring… Were you out as… No, you were starting to talk about it, but you weren’t fully—
Gaby: No, I wasn’t out.
Drew: You weren’t out.
Gaby: No, I wasn’t out.
Drew: You were starting to like… We were having gender conversations.
Gaby: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Drew: Mal was obviously out. I feel like the two of you are probably the most… Well, I can think of a couple other people, but those weren’t really good experiences.
Gaby: Right.
Drew: Of experiences that were generally positive, and it did feel different for sure.
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: It’s interesting, actually, what it allowed me was to be toppier.
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: Not with you because no one can top Gaby Dunn.
Gaby: No one can top me, obviously, but—
Drew: With Mal, it was interesting to be like, “Oh, because this person is a boy…” I’m being binary, but yeah.
Gaby: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Drew: I feel less. I think my relationship to being a top with partners who wanted that and were cis women, I was really following their lead. I wasn’t really owning it.
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: I was a little bit timid, which is not what you want from a top, but I could get into… I could do it. I could be like oh, they want me to do this thing, so I’ll do it and I’ll do it well. I can get into it and whatever. But I felt something very different when with someone who was masculine and able to be, I don’t know. I’m being very binary and very stereotypical.
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: Being like oh, masculinity isn’t as fragile and I don’t owe this person as much.
Gaby: Exactly.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: Or I’m not worried about being creepy to this person or I don’t even know. I can just let myself loose. There was something fun about that.
Christina: Well, yeah.
Drew: Maybe I’ll, maybe I’ll top Jon Hamm. Maybe that’s what I’ll do.
Gaby: Thank you.
Christina: Well, that would be hot.
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: That would rock. That’s what we’re all trying to see in this one nation.
Drew: Yeah. Yeah.
Gaby: Christina, who was your last straw? Like you dated a guy and you were like I’m done.
Christina: Oh God. That’s really taking me back. I’m trying to remember. I guarantee you, he had the name like Chris or something. I do think there was one hookup that I had met in a bar and I was like I am done. I just have such a feeling of waking up the next morning being like okay. No, thank you.
Gaby: Why?
Christina: I don’t remember. I was quite drunk. He definitely left in the middle of the night because he was like, “I’m really allergic to cats.” I was like, “Okay, whatever.” Then he came over and he was like, “No, but I’m really allergic to cats.” I was like, “I’m so uninterested in this narrative.” Like, “Are we having sex or not?” We did and then he did leave because he was sneezing quite a bit. Hope he’s well.
Drew: He died.
Christina: Then he died. His name was Matt, I think. I just remember being like okay. I think no more of that. I think I am making myself miserable in a way that I could probably not do and maybe I could have some more fun in this scenario.
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: Be less cranky and upset all the time because I’m just forcing myself to go on these horrible dates with men that I hate. It seems that I don’t have to do that.
Gaby: Why was it horrible? What were they doing? What were they doing?
Christina: Nothing. They were just being men talking to me and I was like, “I hate this. I hate everything about this.” Sure. They were all douchey in the way of, they were all, mostly, white guys from Boston.
Gaby: God. I’ve dated a lot of white guys from Boston too.
Christina: Can’t recommend it, but they weren’t horrible to me. I just hated the experience of speaking to them.
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: I was like, “Perhaps not everybody feels this way when they speak to men. Maybe I don’t have to feel like this.” My friends were like, “Fuckin, finally. Jesus Christ.” Yeah. I was doing my really iconic. “Oh, I’m just an ally for so long.” All of my friends were like, “Sure, sure. Okay. All right.”
Gaby: I guess what I’m getting at is, what is different? Because I’m imagining, literally, a split screen where a guy is like, “Yeah and then I got into venture capital” or whatever and then it’s like a high femme woman who’s like, “And then I got into venture capital,” and you’re like, “That is fascinating.”
Christina: Quite literally, that could be true. I don’t think I’ve dated any venture capitalist women, but I do think that, yeah, that would be, if my life were a sitcom, that would be the little split screen right there. If I had some HBO max series dedicated to my life, that would be the split screen.
Drew: Not to have a Bad with Money detour, but what’s a venture capitalist?
Gaby: It’s just like someone who invests money. It’s stupid.
Christina: They just have money to give other people money and there’s cocaine involved. I don’t know.
Gaby: Yeah. If you have a business, you go to them and you’re like, “Here’s a presentation. Do you want to invest in my business?” And they’re like, “Okay,” but that’s their whole thing.
Christina: Then they ruin it and then they shut it down three weeks later.
Gaby: Then they go, “Yeah, I have a bunch of ideas,” and you go, “I wish I was not involved with you,” and then—
Drew: Like Shark Tank?
Gaby: Yeah, like Shark Tank.
Christina: It’s Shark Tank. Yeah, it’s like Shark Tank.
Gaby: Yeah. Yeah, like Shark Tank.
Christina: Yeah. It’s like Shark Tank and then they say, “Should we pivot to video,” and then they shut it down.
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: I see.
Gaby: A real Succession.
Christina: Basically what happens. It’s what’s happened to media, basically.
Drew: Right. Cool. Cool.
Christina: It’s cool. It’s a cool thing to do. Yeah. I genuinely just… I was just like, “I don’t enjoy the experience of speaking to, specifically in that scenario, cis men.” I was like, “This is not fun for me.”
Gaby: I was going to say, were most of them white?
Christina: Majority. Actually, I do think the last guy I dated was Black and I was like, “This could work,” And then I was like, “No.”
Gaby: That’s why I’m wondering.
Christina: “No, this is not going to work either. I’m sorry.”
Gaby: Yeah. Yeah.
Drew: Now that you’re in a very gender diverse queer community, and I would imagine most of the men who you interact with are queer, are trans. Is it connected to being more attracted to more binary genders that’s preventing you? For Christina, like—
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: For dating men, dating nonbinary folks.
Drew: Yeah.
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. Is it something that you’re open to?
Christina: It’s definitely something I’m open to. I am… Living in my femme for femme life is always a struggle because it is a hard thing to do because a lot of the other femmes I know are interested in dating—
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: Either masc of center, masc folks, which I get and respect, but it has not happened to me. I have not had the great moment of some masc of center romance moment. Most of my friends who are some nonbinary, but even more like femme presenting, I’m always like, “Well, that is where my attraction would lie.”
Gaby: Right.
Christina: Yeah, it’s always just like that. I don’t know. I like a tiny little woman who’s going to yell at me. That’s really all I want. Just like a woman who is five-three to be mad at me.
Drew: Wow.
Gaby: Wow.
Drew: We should be able to find you that. I just can’t imagine that we couldn’t. You would have to date and that is something you’re reluctant to do, but—
Christina: Then it always comes back to that, doesn’t it?
Drew: They’re out there.
Gaby: Do you not want to date as much because you care more now?
Christina: Interesting. My gut says no, but maybe.
Gaby: Welcome to therapy, bitch.
Christina: Every time we hop on one of these goddamn podcast recording sessions, it’s a ding dang therapy session every single time. No, I think my lack of interest in dating is definitely tied to my lack of ability to be vulnerable, is definitely my fear of getting intimate with people that are not— in a romantic specific sense. I’m very good at being intimate with my friends. I do just find it more panic inducing for some reason in a romantic context. And it is a reason some have said that I should go to therapy, but–
Gaby: Well, okay, because I’m saying with men, you’re like, “I can have all these boyfriends. I don’t care. I don’t have to be vulnerable with them, whatever.” Whereas, once you start dating someone where you’re like, “Ah, fuck.”
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: “I actually want to be vulnerable with this person and there’s actual stakes here.” You’re like, “Well, fuck me.”
Christina: Yeah. Quite literally, yes.
Gaby: I didn’t even care. I cared about men, but I think I… Okay, so here we go. When I was a cis woman, which is what I’m calling my memoir.
Christina: Gorgeous.
Drew: That’ll sell quick, let me tell you.
Gaby: I know.
Christina: It really will.
Drew: That’s what they want from you.
Gaby: I know. When I was a cis woman, I was like, “Pfft.” I was one of those 2014 feminists who was like, “Men don’t have feelings. Kill all men.” I literally, had—
Christina: Get a bed frame.
Gaby: Girl, I had a male tears mug. When I started dating Mal, I would make them pose with it for pictures. They were like, “This is upsetting to me.” I’d be like, “No, it’s ironic now, you see.”
Christina: It’s feminism now.
Gaby: No, but they were like, “You used to be one of those.” I was like, “Absolutely.” Which, now, I have so much of a more expansive idea of what male is that I’m like, “That’s so dismissive and shitty and not great and not feminism and not funny.” Mal was like, when I showed them that mug, they thought I was like for real and they were like, “Oh my God, another femme who’s going to be mean to me just for being masc,” but then I was like, “No, no, it’s a bit you see.” Cut to three years later, I’m a man. Now, being on testosterone and stuff, I have this weird, now, like I’m getting more empathy for men, where something in my brain is being like, “This might be a little bit how they think.” I always thought that way, but I just was like, “It’s acceptable because I’m a woman, you see?”
It’s interesting. It’s going to be interesting for me to navigate being so confident and so forward. A friend of ours who won’t care, but a friend of ours posted a picture of her ass on close friends. I just immediately was like, “What that ass do,” right?
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: This is my friend, so it’s fine, but that’s going to be a little bit different in the world when I look different, I think.
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: Now, I’m like, “Oh, I see. Men have those thoughts, but they can’t say them,” but I—
Drew: When will men finally get to talk?
Christina: When will they get to say that a woman’s ass looks good? God.
Gaby: You know what I mean? It’s different. Now, I’m second guessing it or I’m like, “Well,” but I’m still at the place where it is flattering to some people or definitely to cis gay men, I’ll be like thirsty towards them and they’ll be like, “Mm-hmm.” They like it now, but I don’t know.
Drew: Yeah.
Gaby: It’s interesting.
Drew: No, it’s real. That’s definitely played a big part… I think I still have leftover stuff from like… and it all intersects with trans feelings and shame around all that.
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: When I was like… I thought it was a guy, I was so timid because I didn’t want to be a creepy guy.
Gaby: Right.
Drew: I didn’t want to be like that kind of guy. Something we talk about on this podcast so much is encouraging people to be forward and to talk. Literally, the title of the podcast. That’s something that we’re doing because it’s something that I still struggle with.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: It’s not because like oh, I’m an expert. And we’ve talked about this before, but I had to make the decision of like, “Oh, I’m never going to date anyone. I’m never going to have anything I want. I’m never going to be with anyone I want if I don’t get over myself and take some risks and get less rejection sensitive and get less…” It wasn’t even about the rejection itself, but about the idea of being a creepy trans woman.
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: Or previously, a creepy man, but it is so interesting. I get why it’s gendered in the sense that cis men cause a lot of the harm…
Gaby: Right.
Drew: …and sexual violence and et cetera, et cetera, but it also is this thing where like I don’t think the solution is for a level of shame. It’s more about like consent.
Gaby: No.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: Being like, “Okay, how well do I know this person I’m talking to?” It’s all just judgment calls and it’s all just people having to like, I don’t know, use some critical thinking and actually go case by case and try to be like, “Okay, would this person I know be okay with me being a little bit lewd? Yes or no or I don’t know.” If I don’t know, maybe it’s… Tone it down a little.
Gaby: No. Here’s the thing is that I’m infantilized right now. I’m two months on T. This is what I’m saying, is I’m two months on T, so I can be so forward to a cis gay guy and they’re like, “Oh, cutie.”
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: Or the queer women in my life are like, “Ahahah.” Or even the straight women. The straight women are like “Ahahah,” but it’s like, they think of me as like, I’m like a little brother.
Drew: Right.
Gaby: I’m like Roger from Tia and Tamera. They’re like, “Aw,” but also like, “Go home.”
Christina: “Isn’t it past your bad time now?”
Gaby: “Yeah, go home, Roger!” That’s my energy right now. I don’t know. When you’re talking about rejection sensitivity, I also throw things at the wall. I also maybe have no concept of looking transmasculine now. I, still, if I meet a cis guy or I have like a cis guy I used to hook up with, I’ll be like, “Hey, is that still on the table?” I’m very much like, “Is this a date?”
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: I’m thinking now about how I wasn’t like, “Hey, are you queer now with these guys?” I’m just like, “Do you want to still fuck?”
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah.
Gaby: I don’t ask like, “What’s your identity? Do you have any problems here?”
Drew: Yeah.
Gaby: Nothing like that.
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah. Sometimes that’s the question you want to ask. It’s not like, “Let’s talk about your identity.” It’s like, “Do you still want to smash?”
Gaby: Yeah. I don’t have time. It’s not occurring to me to be like, “What’s your”… The cis guy, that is dead to me now, is…
Christina: May he rest.
Gaby: Yeah, may he rest. It was not anything to do with… He was like, “I’m attracted to you regardless of gender. I don’t know what I am. I don’t care.” I think that’s true, but the reason that… I thought this is going to end because I’m on T, but what happened is, he had a polyamory freak out. I was like, “Oh, this isn’t even about…” The reason this ends isn’t because I went on testosterone and now I look like a guy. The reason this is ending is because you, all of a sudden, have decided polyamory is immoral. Fascinating.
Drew: Well, as a gender nonconforming trans person, I also know that sort of how someone identifies, you feel it more than you can hear it, right? I’ve had sex with people who don’t really know how they identify and maybe, don’t even know what gender they’re reading upon me, but just in our sexual interactions, I feel very affirmed and I feel very good with them.
Gaby: Yeah. Yeah.
Drew: It feels like they’re seeing me and seeing me as a person and seeing me as my gender. I’ve had sex with people who are proudly bisexual in the queer community.
Gaby: Right.
Drew: Love all genders and are very open about that and then treat me like a guy and it feels awful.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: It doesn’t matter, necessarily…
Christina: Matter.
Drew: …how. It’s like what someone… Not that it doesn’t matter what someone is saying, but I think you feel it and that’s more important.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: I think it would bother me if someone was like, “I would never be with a woman” and then is hooking up with me. That would feel weird.
Christina: Right.
Drew: But if someone is just like, “I don’t know,” then I’m like, “Okay, well, I know how it feels.”
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: Or it’s not my business. If you are still interested in fucking me, I’m not going to sit there and do a checklist and be like, “Are you queer?”
Drew: Right.
Gaby: Whatever.
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: You are in my mind, but sure. Live your life.
Christina: Yeah. I’m perceiving you in a way that works for me. You’re perceiving whatever you’re doing in your way. That, sometimes, is enough.
Gaby: I think if I get top surgery, it’s going to change immensely. That’s my fear. Is that once I get top surgery, these guys are going to be like, “Wait a minute.”
Christina: “Hold on. You took the titties away.”
Gaby: Right. That’s what I think.
Christina: “What’s going on?”
Gaby: “Wait a minute, you have full facial hair and shh, but these are giving me an out.” When I don’t have them, I’m curious what they’re going to think.
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: Doesn’t matter. I’ll probably still just be doing T4T anyway.
Drew: Well, we are going to have to have you back.
Christina: We’ll just have continual check-ins.
Gaby: Wait, Is This a Date: “Post-Titties.”
Christina: Yeah. Post-Titties edition.
Drew: Okay. Let’s move to our last segment, which I realized I didn’t prepare you for, but I think you should be able to. We always have a crush corner…
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: … which is like a person in pop culture that we’re crushing on and that is an excuse to talk about something or you can just to talk about a person. It can also be an actual person we know, but if you can think of someone while we say our crushes, then we’ll double back to you.
Gaby: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Drew: Okay. Because this is our dating men episode and because Gaby is here, I have two male crushes because I just saw Road House for the first time and my crushes are Patrick Swayze and Jane Campion hater himself, Sam Elliot.
Christina: Sam Elliot.
Drew: Who was so hot back in the day. I had no idea. That movie is incredible. It’s like—
Gaby: I have a Road House tattoo. I have a Road—
Drew: Yeah.
Gaby: Where is it? I have a Road House tattoo.
Drew: It’s on there. Yeah. What kind of fucking friend am I that I didn’t see that. I was just like, “Yeah, I’ll see it.” I just was dismissive of it and then it’s an incredible movie. I won’t do my—
Gaby: I was trying to tell you.
Drew: I won’t give my whole essay about why it’s really a great movie.
Gaby: It’s about class. It’s about masculinity.
Drew: It’s about how violence is… Physical violence is okay when faced with social violence.
Gaby: Yes.
Drew: Which so few movies, especially big budget movies are about that.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: It’s brilliant. It’s bonkers and a really good time. Patrick Swayze does rip a throat out, but it’s great. I’m big fan. Patrick Swayze…
Gaby: Swayze.
Drew: …Sam Elliott, hot, hot, hot. Love both of them. Yeah.
Christina: Iconic.
Gaby: Swayze is my boy. I have a Swayze sleeve that I’m working on.
Christina: Swayze.
Drew: What would be your third one, if you got to—
Gaby: Okay. I’m thinking of watermelon for Dirty Dancing because, “I carry the watermelon.”
Christina: Gorgeous.
Gaby: Then I’m thinking, okay, then like a surfboard for Point Break.
Christina: Sure.
Gaby: I’m thinking maybe a strawberry for To Wong Foo because it’s a strawberry festival, but I don’t know. I’m still up in the air about the To Wong Foo one if anyone’s interested. Maybe a hat, because it’s to say something hat day. I’m not sure, but right now, I just have “pain don’t hurt” and a ghost. I got to get the rest.
Christina: Got to get the rest. That’s a gorgeous sleeve.
Gaby: Thank you. Then I’m going to try to do the other side, Kurt Russell. I’m a cis woman.
Christina: Yeah. Okay. Just going to—
Gaby: My two boys.
Christina: No comment on that one. Much like Drew, I was thinking that I should, in honor of the episode, have a dating men appropriate crush, but then I was like the other week said your crush was Jerry Orbach on a totally unrelated episode.
Drew: That’s true.
Christina: On this episode, I would like to say that my crush this week is Jenifer Lewis. We have been watching I Love That for You, which is a show that is pretty good. I feel like it’s 6% away from being truly great. I don’t really know what’s missing, but there is something missing. Boy, what it’s not missing is Jenifer Lewis being literally the most perfect woman on earth to be alive. She is so mean. She drinks so many martinis. She has so much sex with men at just like a drop of a hat and then has her butler give them a goodbye gift bag. I think it’s gorgeous. She sang “Feeling Good” in the last episode. I was like, “Yeah, of course. Why not sing “Feeling Good” if you’re Jenifer Lewis and you’re on a television show. You should go to a piano bar exclusively to do that.” I accept this as a plot. Thank you so much. She truly is the mother of Black Hollywood and I have never loved a woman more.
Gaby: I love her.
Christina: Jenifer Lewis.
Gaby: I love her.
Christina: She’s a perfect person.
Gaby: I love her.
Christina: Simply perfect. Yeah.
Gaby: Saw her at the GLAAD awards once. I think she touched my hand. I don’t know. I blacked out.
Christina: Yeah. I would die.
Gaby: Yeah, it was crazy. She was acting like she ran that place. I was like, “You do.”
Christina: You do. If she could run at any place and I’d be like, “Absolutely. She’s Jennifer Lewis.”
Gaby: She walked in and was like, “This is the Jenifer Lewis awards.”
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: I was like, “I believe you.”
Christina: True. That’s gay culture.
Gaby: Yeah. I was like, “Gay what? Who cares? Give her all the awards.”
Christina: Who cares. Give it to her.
Gaby: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. I’ll give you two.
Christina: Great. Gorgeous.
Gaby: Right now, I’m watching All Stars 7 Drag Race. Jaida Essence Hall, so fucking gorgeous.
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: There was a challenge where she is dressed as a pig, a literal pig.
Drew: Oh my God.
Christina: Oh my God.
Drew: The hottest pig.
Gaby: She looks stunning. I would—
Christina: Truly like, “Do I have a pig fetish?”
Gaby: I would fuck that pig.
Christina: Like, “What’s happening?”
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: She’s so—
Drew: Her and Jinkx—
Gaby: Beautiful.
Drew: And Monet. Hottest pigs.
Gaby: Well, Jinkx is also very hot to me, but she is just stunning.
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: I would love to look at her. I would love to fuck her as a pig. I could not believe and just her face… That’s her face? That’s her face.
Drew: Yeah, yeah. That’s her face.
Gaby: Good fucking Lord. She got the short end of the stick in terms of winning during the pandemic. Honestly, I don’t want her to win All Stars 7, because that’ll be Jinkx’s game, but I do. Wow. She’s really beautiful.
Drew: Yeah. Top four for sure.
Christina: Yeah.
Gaby: Top four.
Christina: Yeah, no doubt.
Gaby: I love Raja too. I’m very sexually attracted to Raja, but…
Drew: All of them.
Gaby: …extremely. I don’t care. Lip sync, standing still. I don’t give a fuck, but yeah, I would say my crush is Jaida as a pig.
Christina: Okay.
Drew: Great.
Christina: I think that’s gorgeous.
Gaby: Yeah.
Drew: Thank you so much.
Gaby: You’re welcome.
Drew: Well, now is the time.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: Do you want to tell the people where they can find you and your work and what you’re working on and the million things you’re working on?
Gaby: Oh Lord.
Christina: Promote yourself.
Gaby: I’m @gabyroad on Instagram. I have a podcast called, Just Between Us. I have a podcast called, Bad With Money. Just Between Us is, we just had Monet X Change on, speaking of, and she and I fell in love, no big deal. Then I have a million. I have a Bad With Money book. I have a graphic novel called, Bury the Lede. I have a million things going on. I have eBook out called, Stimulus Wrecks. I do a show on AMP at 8:00 AM on Wednesday mornings called, This Week in Gay, where I talk about gay stuff and spin gay tunes. I don’t know. I feel like I don’t do anything, but here we are.
Drew: That’s absurd that you feel that way because it also like—
Christina: I was literally just going to say, I forgot how truly booked and busy your ass is.
Gaby: Yeah.
Christina: My good Lord.
Drew: There’s also 14 different things that you’re not allowed to talk about because they’re in development.
Gaby: Yeah, and then some development stuff that’s very nice. A lot of it is gay. Well, I would say, it’s all gay.
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: It’s all gay.
Gaby: I don’t know when this comes out, but if you want to see my short Grindr Baby, it’ll be on YouTube, but it’s also at Frameline festival and you can watch it on-
Drew: I think Frameline will have already.
Gaby: Okay.
Drew: Right. Right.
Gaby: Frameline passed, but you can see it on YouTube. It’s called, Grindr Baby.
Drew: Right. Thank you so much for listening to Wait, Is This a Date? You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at Wait Is This a Date? You can email us at waitisthisadate@gmail.com.
Christina: Our theme was written by Lauren Klein. Our logo is by Manya Dahr. This podcast was produced, edited and mixed by Lauren Klein.
Drew: You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, at draw_gregory.
Christina: You can find me on Twitter at C_GraceT and on Instagram at christina_gracet. You can find Autostraddle, of course, at Autostraddle.
Drew: You can find Autostraddle at autostraddle.com, the reason we’re all here today. Thank you so much and see you next week. Christina, what is the difference between a date and a podcast?
Christina: Actually, that’s really interesting that you asked that because scientists are, at this very moment, hurriedly trying to figure this out. We have some of our best scholars on this. On the case here, we don’t have an answer, but I think every day we journey closer to understanding.
Drew: I wish them and us the greatest luck.
Drew (voice memo): There have definitely been points in my life where if a reasonably attractive straight couple pulled like, “We saw you from across the bar and we really liked your vibe,” I would’ve done it just for the validation and experience. I don’t think I’m there anymore. They’d have to be actually attractive now. I think that’s growth.
Let’s Hear It for the Disaster Bisexuals
Wait, my friend Alicia texted me, have you ever identified as a disaster bisexual? We’d been exchanging jokes and memes about disaster bisexuals, noting which characteristics described us. (Excessive use of hand gestures? Getting fixated on a subject and dragging it into every conversation? A childhood mermaid phase?)
Urban Dictionary lists several definitions of disaster bisexual, among them “a person whose pure chaos has led you to the correct conclusion that they are bisexual,” “a very chaotic person who is quite visibly bisexual,” and “a person who is attracted to every hot person they meet but is a total mess about it, either by coming on way too strong or being unbearably awkward.” According to my cursory online research, the term originated on Tumblr (of course) in one of those D&D alignment chart memes (you know the ones: lawful good, chaotic neutral, etc). In fandom culture, and on the Internet in general, it has become a humorous self-identifier referring to the “disaster” traits some bisexuals claim to share, like social awkwardness and an inability to sit properly in a chair. According to a random sampling of self-proclaimed disaster bisexuals on Twitter, they are “painfully aware of [their] own flaws but wildly naïve about the flaws of others,” have “an exact 50% success rate when determining if someone is in love with [them] or not,” are “the living embodiment of that Alice in Wonderland quote about giving good advice but literally never following it,” and behave like “a flustered woman in an infomercial.”
To Alicia’s question, I replied: jokingly, I guess? I identify as bisexual, but the disaster part seemed like a stretch. I have my shit together, mostly. I’ve been in a stable, loving relationship for over a decade. I have a career. Fulfilling friendships. A retirement account. A therapist.
And yet, I admit a self-deprecating fondness for the term. Maybe because in addition to all the above I’m also neurotic. Prone to mood swings, anxiety spirals, and face-melting crushes. I can be impatient and impulsive. Also, I’m clumsy and spill stuff on myself. Like, a lot. Once, in my twenties, when I was teaching elementary school, I slopped coffee down my shirt and blurted to a class of fifth graders that I had a drinking problem. Reader, these ten-year-olds did not get the reference.
Recently, I joked to my friend and fellow author Emi Nietfeld that both our forthcoming debut books belong in what I call “the new canon of disaster bisexuals,” along with the TV show Euphoria. Emi’s book, Acceptance, is a memoir chronicling her journey from foster care and homelessness to Harvard and Big Tech, while mine, Sirens & Muses, is a novel that follows four striving artists at an elite art school and in Occupy-era NYC. Acceptance and Sirens & Muses are very different books, but like Euphoria they center flawed, talented young queer people struggling mightily with ambition, desire, and addiction while trying to find love and contentment on their own terms.
Emi had never heard the term “disaster bisexual” before, but she said that “deep in [her] bones” she knew it meant “being a hot mess while you figure yourself out.” My friend Alicia maintains that the original disaster bisexual is Jenny Schechter from The L Word, a sensitive, brooding writer who’s also a manipulative narcissist and a compulsive liar. She’s a disaster because she ruins multiple relationships in her quest to figure out her sexuality, and she’s bisexual because, well, she’s bisexual. Jenny is also a posterchild for all the worst stereotypes about bisexuals: She’s promiscuous, confused, selfish, and untrustworthy.
But it’s 2022 and time, I think, for an update. Less Jenny, more Ilana from Broad City. This new disaster bisexual is chaotic, sure, often awkward, messy at times, but she’s also fun and good at heart. She flirts with risk, makes mistakes, and experiences epic growing pains, but she’s self-aware and trying her best. She’s not a confused disaster because she’s bisexual, but because confusion and disaster are inseparable from the experience of growing up queer — of growing up, period. And maybe those brushes with disaster are an essential part of coming to terms with one’s queerness, at least for some of us.
In any case, my confused disaster of a teenage self could have used stories from this new canon of disaster bisexuals, stories about sexually fluid people in all their imperfections. These narratives would have given me a framework for understanding my own desires, and they would have reminded me to be kinder to myself, to approach relationships with compassion and a sense of humor, and to embrace that infomercial-lady flailing as part of the process of growing older and wiser. Perhaps because I didn’t have these stories when I was younger, I’ve found myself gravitating toward them as an adult. Toward shows like Euphoria and Broad City. Toward books like mine and like Emi’s. Like Sarah Thankam Mathews’ All This Could Be Different, Jen Winston’s Greedy, and Susan Choi’s My Education. Chronicles of the joy, sorrow, messiness, and confusion of stumbling your way through life and love in a state of constant flux. We talk a lot about positive queer representation — which, to be clear, is important — but stories about our flaws and foibles are just as valuable. Stories that tell us: you are not alone, and you are not bad; you are merely human.
So let’s hear it for the disaster bisexuals: the hot messes, the shitshows, the dazed and confused. They’re the spice of life — not to mention literature and TV — and they’re doing the best they can.
Sirens & Muses by Antonia Angress comes out July 12 and is available for preorder.
It’s Your Anniversary: My Rage at “Chasing Amy” Helped Me Find My Bisexuality
I saw Chasing Amy when it came out in 1997. Sitting through the nearly two-hour movie with my then-boyfriend questions like “Why would she sleep with a guy who can’t fathom the mechanics of lesbian sex” and “How can you make a movie about bisexuals and not even use the word once?” ran through my mind. When the credits rolled, we walked out of the theater quietly, only for me to explode as soon as we reached the car door. I lobbed more rhetorical questions from the passenger seat as my boyfriend stayed silent on our drive home.
Like the movie’s lead, I was a lesbian who’d inconveniently fallen in love with my best guy friend. I was hoping for a movie that would complicate queer identity, and I trusted director Kevin Smith—who had made loving satires of the Mid-Atlantic culture I was so familiar with—to give it to me. I should have been Chasing Amy’s core audience, but instead I left the film unsettled and angry.
Before Chasing Amy, I wavered between queer identities depending on the gender of my date or crush. I was a lesbian when my boyfriend and I unexpectedly fell for one another, and I fiercely held onto that identity despite others presuming I was now straight. Unlike the movie’s male lead, Holden played by Ben Affleck, my boyfriend was happy to accept me as a lesbian who’d dated across the gender spectrum. I wanted that—and so much more—for Alyssa, the leading lady played by 90s sweetheart star, Joey Lauren Adams, but midway through the movie, it was clear that a happy ending wasn’t ever in the cards for this queer character.
Few films have so effectively gotten under my skin as much as this one had. I was curious to see if I’d still hate it now that I’ve long stopped judging my queerness by my distance to gold star lesbian status. So I decided to mark the 25th anniversary of the film by rewatching it. Would it pack the same emotional punch now that I am nestled in the safety of my very gay marriage? I’d met my wife when I was a full-throated bisexual, and one of the things I love about her is her willingness to correct people when they assume that our marriage means I’m a lesbian. My annoyance at Chasing Amy helped me slough off my internalized biphobia, and I wondered if I would feel grateful now that I was older. My attempts to convince my wife, friends, or truly anyone, to watch this cismale fantasy about dating a lesbian were entirely unsuccessful so—I dug in alone.
Watching the movie again, I was surprised by how little of the plot I’d remembered. Holden and Alyssa are comic book creators who meet and bond over their suburban Jersey background and his fascination with her lesbianism. They become friends and eventually lovers, both to the disdain of his best dude pal and her lesbian girl squad, who look like half of the girls I dated in the 90s with their boy-band hair and earnest political statements. I’d also forgotten the scene-stealer that is Hooper X, played by Dwight Ewell, a mutual friend of Alyssa and Holden. He’s a gay creator who deploys a Black Panther-esque persona to sell books while torturing his straight friends with queer reinterpretations of classic comic books.
All this queerness is marred by casual cissexism. The characters regularly conflate gender and genitalia and penetrative sex with heterosexuality. In my memory, Alyssa was the star of the film, but in reality, the story is driven almost entirely by Holden—and she’s just a bad girl in a leather jacket who makes him feel powerless and unsure. Holden eventually learns that he’s not the first man she slept with, and destroys their relationship in a fit of male fragility. In 1997, I was a sex-positive feminist who rolled my eyes at Holden’s misogynistic attitude. I saw him as a stand-in for my fellow college students who claimed to be enlightened, but secretly didn’t see queer relationships as equally meaningful. By the end of the movie, Alyssa has just been a vehicle for the personal growth of another cishet white man. He’s learned to apologize, be less self-centered, and hopefully stop mansplaining sexual identity to his next partner, but her life is left virtually unchanged. Her new lover is dismissive of comics, and doesn’t understand her in the ways that Holden did. The ending was bittersweet in 1997, because it made me consider the longevity of my own relationship. Watching it now, I felt angry that Alyssa wasn’t given a better new girlfriend, and a chance to process her own feelings.
Like Alyssa, my 1997 romance ended in tears, but her story inspired me to fiercely claim my bisexuality, irrespective of who I was dating. It was watching Alyssa twist herself in knots trying to hold onto her lesbian identity that made me realize how ridiculous I was for doing the same thing. I was relieved when she ended up with a girl, but that hypocrisy felt disquieting. I was madly in love at the time, and I judged myself for reveling in a happy ending I didn’t want for myself. I worried that rewatching Chasing Amy would make me regret the end of that relationship, but instead, it made me sad for Alyssa. She wastes time worrying about being a “bad lesbian” but is still rejected by her queer community. In the 90s, some of my queer friends barely tolerated femmes, let alone bisexuals. Learning to embrace myself as a badass bi femme taught me courage and the power of authenticity. Alyssa is up against a barrage of sex-negative stereotypes but never enjoys the benefits of identifying as bi, or pan.
My rage at Chasing Amy might have helped me find my bisexuality, but by insisting that Alyssa was just a man-loving lesbian who needed cisboy dick, the movie erases hers. I remember wanting to scream at the screen, “Stop tripping you’re just bisexual!” but perhaps that rush of anger was really directed at myself. I worried that letting go of the word “lesbian” meant erasing my queerness. But I’m the only arbitrator of my queerness that matters. Chasing Amy may have been the accidental catalyst for my journey to firmly coming out as a bi babe, but this rewatch just confirmed that it’s still the bisexual movie that none of us actually needed or asked for—happy anniversary ‘tho.
Three Bisexuals in Their 30s on Coming Out While in Long Term, Monogomous Relationships
Feature photo by Sara Julie on Unsplash
For Bisexuality Visibility Day, I want to specifically address a question that bi+ people get all the time: “Why did you come out if you’re already in a monogamous relationship?”
I asked some friends and writers to join me in talking about coming out in a monogamous and/or long term relationship, how it impacted us, and why it felt important to claim our bisexuality in those moments.
Meg: The first time I ever came out as bisexual, I had been married for about three years to a straight, cis man, one that I remained married to for another eight years.
Mel: When I came out as bisexual two years ago, I was a working married mom in my 30s (I remain these things, and have recently even added a kid!). First I came out to my partner, then to my parents and my brother, and then to Facebook, because as mentioned above, I am in my 30s.
KaeLyn: I was out as bisexual before I got into my current long-term monogamous relationship, nearly 20 years ago. However, I continue to identify openly as bisexual and I have to come out all the time; I don’t get clocked as queer in most contexts.
Meg: Coming out as bisexual was something that I wrestled with for a long time, in large part because I wasn’t asking for my monogamous relationship to change in any way. I didn’t want a divorce, didn’t want to open our relationship, didn’t want to start dating other people — I just wanted to own this piece of myself that I’d spent a lifetime denying.
Mel: Coming out to my partner was a couple of conversations, clarifying what it meant to me and what I wanted. Coming out to my parents and my brother was a to-the-point text message met with supportive words and emojis — and also my brother coming out as bi+! — which was a neat surprise!
Meg: I’m not particularly proud of the way that I came out to my ex. I’d been drinking too much, using it to blur and numb my emotions, and after choking down a few bottles of prosecco with a friend, I blurted out “I’m bisexual” in the middle of climbing into the passenger seat of our car. He looked startled, then stunned, and then awkwardly smiled. “Okay.”
It wasn’t that easy, of course, and we talked about my queerness plenty in the coming weeks and years. (And while we did ultimately decide to get a divorce during the pandemic last year, it had nothing to do with my sexuality, and everything to do with the ways that we’d realized we needed different things in our relationship. Someday I will write an essay on this, but today is not that day.) But I’m so glad that I came out to him, because having my partner’s support in coming out to friends, to family, helped me find my footing in a world that believes we can never be queer enough.
Mel: When I came out on Facebook, it was with a cute picture of me labeled “i’m bi” in Microsoft Paint and an explanation of why I was even doing this. I realized being bi was a fact about me, so I wanted to correct the record and show it off a little, because sometimes it feels great to get to know yourself better. Another reason was that I had, and still have, “Straight American Lady Bingo” — stable job, stable marriage, a healthy kid, financial and housing security, and white privilege. Heteronormativity plays directly into all of these signifiers and the supremacy that comes with them, and so it was extra important to me to identify publicly as queer as soon as possible. I wanted to make sure that people from my high school and my home town and my job all clocked the change, and possibly altered their idea of what a queer person looks like.
KaeLyn: Yeah, even though I’m monogamous and partnered, I think it’s extremely important to be out. To push back on bi stereotypes, to find and meet other bisexual folks in the wild, to set an example for younger bisexual people and closeted bisexual people that we exist and defy stereotypes.
Meg: It scared me though, the thought of coming out! I was already wrestling with other things: purity culture, lack of community, not feeling queer enough. I was terrified of my husband judging me, rejecting me, deciding that my queerness was too big of a burden for him to bear. Yet hiding that identity was having a massive impact on my mental health, kicking up my depressive disorder and aggravating my already difficult-to-control insomnia to the point that I was a ghost, drifting through my days. I wanted to feel alive again, wanted to stop hiding.
Of course, I’ve had to come out many, many times since then. And now that I’m dating a femme lesbian, I still have to regularly come out as bisexual, still have to correct assumptions about my sexuality constantly.
KaeLyn: I get that! My partner and I are both queer, but we could somewhat choose to fly under the radar. We are usually interpreted either as a lesbian couple or a straight couple. We wouldn’t identify as either of those types of couples. So coming out is something I have to choose to do, wherever and whenever I want to be out.
Mel: My self-presentation is barely queer-coded now, and certainly wasn’t at all queer-coded then. I look like a mom in her 30s because that’s who I am!
I want people to remember that this is what a queer person looks like sometimes — a person in generously cut jeans and sensible shoes who maybe owns a little more flannel than she used to.
KaeLyn: My spouse and I have been together since we were baby gays in college, so we’ve been through several different versions of ourselves in the past sixteen years. One thing that’s remained constant is my identity as pan/queer/bi. I’m lucky that my partner has always been supportive and doesn’t have any weird hang-ups about bi women.
Meg:Yes! I’ve been very lucky to have had partners that are wildly supportive of me, that have made the endless need to come as bisexual a lot easier to do, and that have never made me regret my choice to own that identity.
Mel: When it comes down to it, my sexuality is as regular as anything else, because I wholeheartedly believe that being queer IS regular, and the only thing that makes us feel otherwise is the spirit-crushing falsehood that permeates our whole society: heteronormativity. It makes queerness dangerous and deadly in the worst instances, and unspeakable or uncomfortable in better ones. And so I would like to kick that falsehood right into the sun, you know?
After coming out, I heard from friends across time and state lines who were encountering their own bisexuality, but in different and sometimes more difficult ways. And it was just nice to see each other and be seen. Visibility isn’t available to everyone, but it is to me, and I will be as noisy about it as I possibly can, for anyone who needs to hear that they aren’t alone in how their hearts are behaving, now or in the future.
Navigating My Biracial, Bisexual Identities Is a Lot Like Physics (Stay With Me Here)
Feature image of author by Michael Kushner
Let me start out by saying: I’m not a physicist, so bear with me on this analogy. Newton’s Third Law states, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” That’s kind of how I feel navigating my biracial and bisexual identities — forces pushing off of each other. For every external action I take, I have an internal reaction asking myself which identity I’m uplifting, which I’m erasing, and is there a possibility to embrace both. Still with me?
With a society that seems to inherently divide itself into two options at any opportunity, the duality of existing in the in-between can seem confusing, complicated, or sometimes, downright impossible. My identities can feel like a negotiation within myself.
Everyone has these self-negotiation moments, but America’s roots in white supremacy and homophobia make biracial and bisexual bargaining seem like a more consistent practice. As society tries to course-correct centuries of injustice, I feel compelled to focus on uplifting my marginalized identities, putting distance between myself and my proximity to whiteness and heteronormativity. Perhaps it could be as simple as that, but it feels irresponsible to me to erase or ignore the privilege I hold within these groups.
Can I apply to an opportunity for Black women or am I stealing it away from someone whose parents are both Black? If I pass on joining an EDI committee, is it self-preservation to avoid educating white folks all of the time, or is it lazy white privilege?
When my gay and lesbian friends talk about their queer romantic firsts, I feel guilty that I enjoyed romantic milestones with men first, and then got to experience them again with women — and enjoyed those too.
And does any of this even matter when we have larger problems to address within both of these communities?
There are days where I feel completely solid and valid in my identities. On the bad days, I feel like a body of contradictions. The days where the imposter syndrome is on full blast, I ask myself, what is Black enough? What is queer enough? No identity group is a monolith, but they do develop their own cultures, and if I brush up against a cultural signifier that I don’t get, I feel like a fraud.
I cracked up at the relatability of #BlackSalonProblems, and I’ve commiserated about crushing on a woman to find out she identifies as straight. But I’ll admit, “That’s some white people shit,” or “that’s some straight people shit,” can make me prickle. On the one-hand, I completely get it — I’ve shared looks with Black folks on the subway when a white person is acting a fool; I’ve grimaced at the gender reveal photo shoots straight couples do on Instagram. Still, I automatically pull out a mental yardstick to see how I measure up, and wrack my brain if I’ve ever done anything similar.
As much as I can claim my own identity, our lives revolve around human interactions and social cues, and so it is still at the mercy of others’ equal and potentially opposite reactions.
I’ve reflected on how physical attributes play into all of this. I’m light-skinned and have 4b hair. To be honest, Black people usually know, but my interactions with white people growing up in the Pacific Northwest — peppered with “What are you?” — built up feelings of insecurity. I recently messaged a Black woman who I was on a Zoom training call with and said, “I was so grateful to see you, as the only other Black woman, on the call.” She replied, “I fully intended to look you up for the same reason!” My heart fluttered at the recognition, because just a few months earlier, someone commented on my TikTok thinking I was white. It took me several days to get the courage to correct them in the comments, because their comment had fueled a spell of self-consciousness. In a way, these moments feel like mini-comings out to me — an explanation of my identity that doesn’t fit with someone’s perceived ideas of me.
As a cis, (usually) feminine-presenting woman, conversations often featuring true mini-comings out. I remember the first time I actively corrected someone:
“Felicia, who is your spatula?”
“My what?”
“You know, the girl who would make you flip your sexuality!”
Excuse me? Consider me a whisk; there is no flipping here, I’m open to all gender identities at all times.
I count myself incredibly lucky that the partners I’ve been with have never expressed a problem with my bisexuality — no biphobia, fetishization, nor unwarranted threesome propositions. Going out with friends is when I feel most aware; feeling needlessly obligated to choose which gender and sexual orientation I “should” align with based on which bar we go to that night. Like the one time I was dancing with and kissing my friend who is a queer, cis man at a bar that caters to a majority gay male clientele, and two men pushed into us. Maybe they were just in a hurry to get more over-priced, watered-down drinks, but it felt intentional, and I couldn’t help but think it was because they thought we were a straight couple vacationing for the weekend. I couldn’t stand the hypocrisy of them seemingly trying to keep queer spaces safe for queer people, and because we didn’t fit their idea of it, we were slighted.
I think I will always view my identities as an internal negotiation, but I’m trying to reframe it as an agreeable dialogue instead of harsh haggling. The advice has been offered to me to think of these in-between identities not as limiting, but as expansive — I can be a liaison, a bridge between communities. I do appreciate that perspective, but I find comfort in seeing myself as one whole identity, and not just two halves.
In fact, one whole identity that is made up of all of the different identities and lived experiences that have shaped me: an only child raised by a single mom in the Pacific Northwest by way of California, with familial roots in Texas and Florida, who loves musical theatre and Disney, and is a Capricorn. And it is ever-evolving. Kind of like Newton’s First Law about inertia (I think).
Again, I’m not a physicist.
You Need Help: Why Be Out As Bisexual?
Q:
Howdy! I’m an out and proud bisexual woman. A good friend of mine who identifies as lesbian recently asked me why bi+ folx don’t just stay closeted and in hetero relationships to avoid the prejudice, pain, and judgement that so often comes with being gay. I was a bit taken aback by this question. I talked to her about that a lot of bi+ folx don’t come out, possibly for that reason; finding community for myself in queer spaces; that dating men vs dating women isn’t just substituting genitalia; that I feel different levels of attraction to different genders; mental health in the bi+ community; that being out is important to break heteronormativity and that we should all be fighting to crush it; etc etc. But she still feels like she doesn’t get why someone would “choose” to date someone of the same sex if they didn’t “have” to because of being gay.
These conversations have been challenging my perspective on being out as bi+. I struggle with classic bi mental gymnastics of “am I queer enough,” and I’ve started to wonder, “Why do I date women if I don’t have to? Am I forcing space in queer community for some reason?” The question is really screwing with my brain. Could you provide some outside perspective on why other bi+ folx come out or bother to not be in straight-appearing relationships? As someone who mostly knows folx who identify as either gay or straight, it would help me to get outside of my own perspective. Thanks!!
“It’s Just a Phase” — Bisexual and Ex-Orthodox Erasure in Netflix’s My Unorthodox Life
LGBTQIA+ and ex-Orthodox groups both talk about “coming out.” Those of us who belong to both groups often have to specify which one we mean: “I came out as ex-Orthodox” or “I came out as lesbian,” etc. Both groups also share the condescending doubt they face, often expressed as “it’s just a phase.” As an ex-Orthodox queer person myself, I’ve faced this kind of erasure in multiple parts of my life. Within the queer community, bisexual people often face erasure from their fellow queers or queer allies who assume that the bisexual person will eventually “figure out” whether they’re really gay or straight. In the case of bisexuality, people often have their identities mischaracterized as an insatiable desire for multiple sexual partners, and in the case of ex-Orthodoxy — an insatiable desire for material pleasure over spiritual.
The Netflix reality show My Unorthodox Life misrepresents Orthodox communities, ex-Orthodox individuals, and feminism. Its queer themes aren’t as prominent as its religious and feminist themes, with only two openly queer lead characters: Robert Brotherton, the gay COO of Elite World Group, and Miriam — Julia Haart’s bisexual daughter. While Robert’s sexuality is never questioned and never a major plot point – his reluctance to date has nothing to do with homophobia – the show reinforces negative stereotypes about bisexuality through its treatment of Miriam.
Speaking to her husband Ben, Bat says, “Miriam is in that time in her life where she is, like, trying everything out, but I definitely think it’s, like, an experimental stage… It’s like a shock value factor, I think she’ll still end up with a guy.” Ben agrees, “Yeah, I don’t see her settling down with a woman.” By the end of the season, Bat and Ben are proven right. While we see Miriam dating two girls over the course of the show, each of whom appears in just one episode, her boyfriend Nico appears in three episodes and the relationship appears to be going strong by the end of the season. While Miriam is a real person and this isn’t a scripted show, the framing of the season – beginning with Bat and Ben’s statement that Miriam will end up with a man and ending with that scenario apparently playing out – reinforces the idea that Miriam’s bisexuality was never real, that she was just “experimenting,” just “going through a phase.”
I am asexual/demisexual and panromantic, but my first queer coming-out was as bisexual. I came out at first to two bisexual friends who, incidentally, are married to each other. I grappled with the messages that I got from all kinds of media which I can now recognize as bi-erasure. When I felt safe enough to come out to more people, one lesbian friend said to me, “You’ll figure it out eventually,” as if coming out as bisexual was either just a step to figuring out that I was fully lesbian or testing the waters only to discover I was fully heterosexual. I don’t currently use the term bisexual for myself because my sexual and romantic orientations need more complex descriptors, but bisexuality still forms an important part of who I am.
The responses to my coming out as queer – both this coming-out as bisexual and my later coming-out as nonbinary – were similar to responses I got from family and community when I came out as ex-Orthodox. I moved out of my parents’ home in Boro Park, Brooklyn in January 2014. I came out to my mother in April, around Passover, when I could no longer avoid it. In June, while I was on my first non-Orthodox trip abroad at a summer program in Exeter, U.K., my mother told me that a cousin who’d hosted me for Shabbos a few times in Washington Heights, when I was exploring Modern Orthodoxy, had suggested a potential match. She found it ironic that the cousin said he was “not as religious as your daughter.” I asked her why she doesn’t just tell our cousin that I’m no longer religious, and if she’s not telling her or anyone else, then what does she tell the matchmakers who must still be calling? “I tell them you’re seeing somebody,” she said. “That way, when you come back, you won’t have damaged your reputation and you won’t have trouble finding a match.” To my mother, leaving Orthodoxy was a phase, even at age 25. I would eventually figure it out and come back.
In the show, Miriam is also portrayed as more freely sexual than the other gay and straight “characters”, dating three different partners over the course of the nine-episode show while all others either remain with one partner or take their relationships much more slowly. This portrayal echoes the equation of bisexuality with promiscuity that appears in both homophobic and queer spaces. In the first episode, Miriam invites Kai to her mother’s fashion show after only two dates. By the third episode, Miriam is dating Katherine, whom she brings to Robert’s birthday party.
By the seventh episode Miriam reveals that she is dating Nico, and at the launch party for Miriam’s new app, Miriam’s two exes meet her current boyfriend. From across the room, Robert and Bat comment that Miriam “has a menagerie of love over there,” and Robert then says to Miriam, “Every party I’ve been to, you made out with one of these people,” again equating bisexuality with promiscuity.
At one point in the series — in what she claims is an act of sisterly love — Bat points out, “You just had this girl like five seconds ago from Ima’s fashion show, and now you have this other girl.” In a confessional a few moments before, after witnessing Miriam making out with Katherine at a party with their Elite bosses in attendance, Bat says, “I 100% support Miriam if she says that she feels she’s bisexual…I’m just a little taken aback that she decides to do this in front of all her bosses.” In one sense, Bat has a point as Miriam’s makeout session gets shocked looks from everyone at the party. But her choice of words, “if she says that she feels she’s bisexual”, is loaded with doubt, and her comment about the rapid change in Miriam’s partners is tied to her bisexuality.
This perception of bisexuality as not so much a sexual orientation but a libido in overdrive is again similar to the perception of ex-Orthodox experiences. Shortly after coming out to my mother as ex-Orthodox, I had a tearful phone conversation with her in which she blamed my defection from religion on an inappropriate desire to be part of academia at the expense of my spiritual well-being. I was luckier than other ex-Orthodox people, whose materialistic desires are blamed on “immodest” clothing and sex. My materialistic desire was secular knowledge, but the message was the same: I wasn’t really a defector from Orthodox Judaism, it was just that my temptations and desires led me to a life of debauchery – just as Miriam wasn’t really bisexual, she was just playing around with sex.
It’s ironic that some of the methods used to delegitimize ex-Orthodox people are used to delegitimize bisexuality in a show about leaving Orthodoxy. To her credit, Julia counteracts Bat’s bi-erasure in the first episode, catching Miriam’s hedging when she tells her mother, “So, I was telling Bat that I’m, like, bi, whatever.” Julia replies, “Not bi-whatever. Bi. Own it.” But while Julia is continually shown berating Bat for letting Ben have a say in whether she wears pants or has a baby, she’s never shown berating Bat for her comments about Miriam’s bisexuality. We all — ex-Orthodox, Orthodox, and bisexual – deserve better from Netflix than the perpetuation of misconceptions about our identities.
You Need Help: Your Straight Partner Is a Great Ally – But His Parents Aren’t
Q:
I’m a pansexual gal in a relationship with a straight dude. My partner is 100% supportive of my queerness, and he’s an absolute delight. His parents, however… less of a delight! They have some rather backwards and gross opinions about the LGBTQ community. I’m currently closeted to them, and at the moment, it hasn’t made too much of a difference, as they live across the country and I see them very infrequently. However, this could change very soon. My partner is in the process of applying to grad schools, and there’s a good chance that we’ll be moving to the west coast, very close to his parents. We’ve even been talking about getting married. I think that he would be a great co-parent and life partner, but I’m not so sure that I want his parents to be my in-laws. The idea of them feeding those hateful ideas to my future kids makes me sick, and I don’t want to live my life in the closet to keep the peace. Do you think that an awesome relationship is worth saving if his family might make me miserable?
A:
I think this is unfortunately a really common problem, and I’m glad that you wrote in about it. As someone that spent 11 years married to a straight guy, I know how complicated it can be to navigate coming out to friends and family when you have a partner that hasn’t had to go through those same experiences themselves. It can feel complicated and isolating, and I just want to affirm that you are not alone in this experience, and that it’s absolutely possible to move through this with grace, support, and love.
Based on your note, it sounds like your relationship with your partner is supportive, is important to both of you, and holds space for your individual identity as a queer person. But there are some pieces that you left out that I want to address, because I think those missing bits may actually be part of the key to figuring out how best to navigate this. There are a few different angles that are worth considering, things that you should think about by yourself and things you should discuss further with your partner.
My first, most practical question for you is how aware your partner is about your level of discomfort around his parents. Is this something you talk about together regularly, or something you’ve felt that you had to hide? How does your partner feel about your parents’ opinions, and the ways that those opinions manifest in language and actions? Has he spoken to his parents to challenge their more harmful or hurtful beliefs? When his parents say something that causes you discomfort, do they push back, or stay silent? It sounds like you feel supported by your partner within the context of your relationship, but do you trust him to support you when it comes to conflict with his family? Does he take your concerns seriously, and value your comfort and safety?
Not being out around certain family members is absolutely a valid choice, and I completely understand wanting to protect both your privacy and your safety in this circumstance. When you don’t have to see people regularly, it can feel simpler to hide aspects of yourself, particularly when you feel certain that those people would not react positively to your truth. Yet I want to acknowledge your suffering in this instance, because staying in the closet can be draining and difficult — and in considering a move to be much closer to your partners’ parents, and potentially expanding your family together, I think it’s important for you to honor the weight of that decision. You absolutely do not have to come out to people that you don’t intend to have a close relationship with, but there will be a cost to that choice, and it’s important for both you and your partner to understand that.
Another thing that I want to ask about is how close your partner is to his parents. Do they talk every day, every week, every month, or a few times a year? Does your partner lean on them for advice and emotional support? Does your partner prefer to celebrate holidays or other regular events in person with his parents? Do your partners’ parents provide any financial support, either occasional or ongoing? Since you don’t mention how emotionally connected your partner is to his parents and family, it’s hard for me to know if moving to be close to them would mean that you would be in regular contact with them. But it sounds like you should think about what you would like your personal boundaries around your partner’s family to be, and to clearly identify what you would need from your partner in order to feel safe and supported moving forward.
The most important relationship for you in this situation is between you and your partner, but if your partner wants to have or maintain a close relationship with his parents, you may need to consider how that might impact you in the future. Are you comfortable with your partner still seeing his parents regularly? Is your partner comfortable spending time with his parents if you don’t attend? Particularly if you two are looking to expand your family, it will likely be important for you to be on the same page about your boundaries with this side of the family, and to begin upholding those boundaries before children enter the picture.
But now for the big part, the harder part, the underlying challenge at the heart of your note. Your last question has stayed with me, because it’s one that feels both easy and impossible to answer. You are in a relationship that you call awesome and supportive, but also write about your partners’ family in a way that makes me wonder how much support you can realistically count on. If you are expecting to be treated badly, to be miserable, to be forced to be in proximity to them, and to not have your partner standing up for you or supporting you in keeping your distance — that concerns me. Setting up boundaries around family members can be a complicated and painful thing, but doing so without the support of your partner will likely be even more difficult, and could potentially create some challenging situations for the two of you to navigate. Do you want to build a life with someone that isn’t willing or able to defend you, to choose you? I’m not saying that your partner has to completely cut off all contact with his parents — but I am saying that someone that isn’t willing to confront family about words or actions or opinions that they know are harming you is unfair to you, and will only cause more pain down the road.
It’s been said over and over on Autostraddle, but family is what you make of it — and I firmly believe that as queer people, we do not have to willingly subject ourselves to harm in order to protect the feelings of straight people who do not show us respect or consideration. You should not have to tolerate being treated badly by a loved one’s family. You should not have to worry about your future kids absorbing homophobic or hateful opinions from your in-laws. And you should not have to watch your partner sit quietly by while you deal with these issues alone.
So the real question is — are you alone, or not? Is your partner actually supporting you fully, even if that means stepping back from a close relationship with parents or family? What kinds of boundaries would make you feel safe and protected, and is your partner able to stand by your side and help you uphold them? Only you can decide if the potential pain of a difficult family is worth the joy of your relationship, but I would encourage you to consider how much support you are actually receiving, and if it will be enough moving forward.
Author’s Note 7/25/21: An original version of this post used incorrect pronouns and has since been corrected.
You Need Help: Is It a Crush Or Am I Just Lonely in Quarantine?
Q:
So not too long ago i figured out I’m bisexual. I came out to one of my best friends (she’s gay, it was all cool) and I’m planning to come out to the rest of my (super gay) friend group ~once the pandemic ends~ but in the meantime, I think i have a crush on my other best friend??? I haven’t seen her since January but she shows up in my dreams constantly and it’s always like I’m trying to kiss her or we’re in a relationship or something (she’s gay btw). In real life, yeah she’s gorgeous and single and i think it would be fun to date her, but how do I know this isn’t some quarantine induced haze and I’m just projecting my feelings of loneliness onto her?
A:
First of all, congrats on the bisexuality! Second of all, congrats on very swiftly completing the queer rite of passage of developing a crush on your best friend! You want to know if it’s a crush or if you’re just lonely, and to that I say: It’s probably both!
Everyone I know has experienced crushing loneliness over the past year in one way or another. And it makes sense to me that crushing loneliness might intensify crushes. I’m no dream expert, but the fact that you’re having romantic dreams about your best friend seems like a pretty straightforward way of your brain simultaneously processing the fact that you miss her and the fact that you just came out.
Honestly, you’re probably just going to have to assess how you feel when you see your friend again. There’s a chance that when you reunite you’ll be like “oh, the dreams were just dreams and I don’t have a crush on her irl,” but I think that chance is small. The fact that you’ve already thought that it would be fun to date her makes it clear to me that you have a crush! Could that crush be somewhat influenced by your loneliness and by being apart from the friend? Maybe! But that doesn’t actually make the feelings any less valid.
In some ways, I actually think that isolation has provided a lot of clarity for folks when it comes to their relationships and friendships. Lots of people are breaking up, because underlying relationship issues have become more evident under the intense stakes of quarantining with a partner. In a similar way, I’ve heard of a lot of people developing feelings for friends or roommates at this time, because seismic events as life-altering as the pandemic have a tendency to sharpen latent feelings and challenge us to examine our relationships.
But even with the pandemic aside, crushes are not really logical or clear-headed states of mind. Crushes activate chemical responses as well as fantasy and imagination. And then those things probably feel especially good right now. It’s also perfectly fine to just have a crush and not necessarily move forward with pursuing a relationship with someone.
We get so many questions here at Autostraddle from people who are panicking about crushing on a friend because they’re scared of ruining the friendship, so I thought that was where this letter was headed, but it sounds like you actually aren’t panicking at all, which is great! It sounds like you mostly just want to be told that your crush is a crush. To me, it sounds very much like a crush! And if it IS just a projection, you’re going to figure that out pretty quickly once you’re able to be around your friend again. Obviously be prepared for the reality that she might not want to date you, but just be honest about your feelings and see what happens. But if you really do want to date your friend, then shoot your shot!