Another night being interviewed by a student with a bisexual project under their belt - this time a drama student working on a play about being bi and finding a sense of community. It is quite scary how long I can dish out anecdotes and dubious wisdom, including that the Woody Allen line about bisexuals having twice the chance of a date on Friday night can fall down both where twice nothing is still nothing, and at the other extreme on account of the fact that bisexuals don't have twice as many Friday nights as the rest of the world.
Still, it'll be good if it helps there to be another one-woman-theatre type of a play about being bi. The Speed of Dating is very well and good but we could do with there being at least one thing like that a year to look forward to, rather than one in a blue moon.
Saturday 29 November 2008
Saturday 15 November 2008
bis get a bumrap
There is an unfortunately growing trend among the ill-informed and the ill-intending to mislabel bisexual as being somehow binarist, meaning that people are only interested in (cis) men and women and no other genders.
Now and then I do worry if I caused it myself, as in about 1996 I did make a remark about being "bisexual, I just haven't worked out which two yet", and who knows who may have been listening and failing to have any clue about humour. But I'm sure the same wrong silly notion can be thought of in many places at once: after all, just look at the number of Earth-creating gods we have.
Now, the slightest examination of the bi movement over the last twenty years or whatever would lay this silly binarist notion to rest, but the old adage about a lie being round the world before the truth has finished fastening its bootlaces holds painfully true in the internet age, where copypasta means that the lie can cite itself as its own reference a dozen times over.
Fervent messiahs of internet falsehood explain that pansexual good, bisexual bad, while never touching on how homosexual and heterosexual fit in to this model - despite those being the identities with the strength and power. As their work dissipates so much attracted-to-more-than-one-gender activist energy, one might ask whose agenda the trumpeters of "bi-is-binary" are serving; alas, they don't seem to think that bit through themselves. I have yet to find, though will be in a way pleased to, b-word-bashers who are as vigorous and challenging, pro-rata, of the monolithic powers of the Big Two in sexuality identity.
I'm one of the people the binarism supposedly inherent in 'bisexual' oppresses. When the spelling of bisexual is even in the top ten things that cause me trouble in this life, I will be living in such a utopian bliss I won't even bitch about it then.
In the meanwhile, I think I need to get some pin badges made. BUMRAP: the Bisexual Umbrella Movement to Rebut Antagonistic Panevangelists, perhaps?
Now and then I do worry if I caused it myself, as in about 1996 I did make a remark about being "bisexual, I just haven't worked out which two yet", and who knows who may have been listening and failing to have any clue about humour. But I'm sure the same wrong silly notion can be thought of in many places at once: after all, just look at the number of Earth-creating gods we have.
Now, the slightest examination of the bi movement over the last twenty years or whatever would lay this silly binarist notion to rest, but the old adage about a lie being round the world before the truth has finished fastening its bootlaces holds painfully true in the internet age, where copypasta means that the lie can cite itself as its own reference a dozen times over.
Fervent messiahs of internet falsehood explain that pansexual good, bisexual bad, while never touching on how homosexual and heterosexual fit in to this model - despite those being the identities with the strength and power. As their work dissipates so much attracted-to-more-than-one-gender activist energy, one might ask whose agenda the trumpeters of "bi-is-binary" are serving; alas, they don't seem to think that bit through themselves. I have yet to find, though will be in a way pleased to, b-word-bashers who are as vigorous and challenging, pro-rata, of the monolithic powers of the Big Two in sexuality identity.
I'm one of the people the binarism supposedly inherent in 'bisexual' oppresses. When the spelling of bisexual is even in the top ten things that cause me trouble in this life, I will be living in such a utopian bliss I won't even bitch about it then.
In the meanwhile, I think I need to get some pin badges made. BUMRAP: the Bisexual Umbrella Movement to Rebut Antagonistic Panevangelists, perhaps?
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