The LGBT is receiving media attention more today than ever before. Allies and the LGBT alike are learning through media representation what the LGBT experience is. But it begs the question whether each group under said umbrella is receiving equal amounts of representation. What is the quality of that representation and is it fair? Bisexuals are an often forgotten group when people think of the LGBT. Bisexual representation is hard to come by and even harder to find accurate depictions of on TV and in literature. So why is bisexual representation still so far behind in 2022?
There are harmful stereotypes about bisexuality that impacts the way that bisexual people are depicted. Common bisexual stereotypes are that bisexual people are promiscuous, greedy and deceitful. Sometimes they’re viewed as not bisexual at all, but wildly experimenting with their sexuality or rebelling against the norm. In 2022, I can think of many gay and transgender characters and celebrities who exceed the stereotypes their groups face. But bisexuality is treated differently, even within the LGBT due to the lack of attention that has been turned to dispelling stereotypes about the group. By looking at the stereotypes of bisexuality, we can understand better why their media representation is falling behind other marginalised groups.
Bisexual representation encourages the image that bisexuals are inherently promiscuous
The primary stereotype bisexual people face is that they are promiscuous. That they simultaneously have a male and female sexual partner at all times and that they have a uniquely strong sexual appetite which requires relationships with both sexes to be sated. Thus, some people look at bisexuals as inherently untrustworthy partners, incapable of committing to a monogamous relationship. With the unspoken connotations suggesting that they are likely to carry sexually transmitted diseases. In truth, being attracted to more than one sex does not incentivise bisexuals to be in relationships with men and women at the same time.
One of the first bisexual characters I ever saw in the media was Roger from ‘American Dad’. The character is hypersexual and usually depicted having sex or thinking about sex. The character is probably the longest-running bisexual character to be featured in a prime-time show since ‘American Dad’s’ inception in 2005. Roger’s stereotypical personality emphasises the stereotype that being constantly preoccupied with sex is a core feature of bisexuality. Along with this, bisexual people face the accusation that they are sexually adventurous, easily bored with partners and lack the average boundaries or inhibitions. In truth, bisexuals are no more likely to be promiscuous than heterosexual, gay or lesbian people because being attracted to twice the number of genders, doesn’t require twice the number of partners.
Bisexuals have it easier than other LGBT groups?
Bisexuality is heavily misunderstood.
Many heterosexual people view bisexuality as ‘confusing’. They see bisexual people as people who haven’t figured out their sexuality yet. Bisexuals even face discrimination within the LGBT from gay and lesbian people. They stay ‘in the closet’ longer as a result. In a study by Stanford University, a survey found that only 19% of bisexuals were out to all of their friends and family, whereas a whopping 75% of gay and lesbian people were out to theirs. The fun-loving, sex-obsessed image that has been cultivated in the media for bisexual people is far removed from reality. The discrimination that bisexual people face impacts how safe and accepted bisexual people feel coming out and living their lives.
As a result, the ‘deceptive’ stereotype for bisexual people is more likely to come from secrecy as a result of fearing persecution. Rather than as an inherent feature of bisexuality itself.
Sometimes the accusation of ‘straight-passing’ is levelled at bisexual people by other LGBT groups. People believe it is less easy to spot a bisexual person by looking at them, which some gay and lesbian people suggest makes being bisexual easier. But if it comes alongside a lack of support from outside and inside the umbrella group, it isn’t a privilege, but rather a reason to look at how the different groups experience discrimination and persecution differently.
Bisexuals aren’t equal among their peers in the LGBT
Bisexuals are often used as a shock factor in movies and TV. The group has the worst mental health among all the other LGBT groups. The reasons are nuanced but it appears to be because bisexual people feel a lack of community and acceptance at even greater rates than their gay and lesbian peers. The idea that bisexual people are harder to spot than gay and lesbian people can make people uncomfortable with the idea of having a bisexual friend, child or colleague. Every now and then I find characters coded as bisexual in the media depicted as threatening and their sexuality is revealed with worrying surprise.
In ‘Skyfall’ 2012, the villain Silva’s sexuality is revealed specifically to unnerve and scare James Bond. While he interrogates the hero there is a threat of rape looming in the atmosphere. Male bisexual characters are particularly used in this way. With the implication being that bisexual people wait for an opportunity to predate upon unsuspecting enemies or even friends. Such as with the character Kenny Al-Bahir in the show ‘The War at Home’.
The gender disparity in bisexual representation
There’s a difference in the way bisexual men are treated from bisexual women. Bisexual men are viewed as secretly gay and bisexual women are often fetishized. Overwhelmingly, true male bisexual characters are absent from the media. Bisexual female characters are included in movies and TV to titillate, particularly for the male gaze. Often kissing other women or putting on a sexual performance to entice a male partner. The way bisexuals are represented by gender has led to the image in the media that bisexuals don’t ‘really’ exist. It suggests bisexuality is more of an act than an identity, which is problematic.
Men often face horrific bullying and harassment for being gay. Therefore they might feel more comfortable coming out as bisexual first. But by doing this, they leave a space for people to accuse them of being confused about their sexuality or being deceitful about their sexuality. This has unwittingly led to actual bisexual people not being believed when they ‘come out’. As it is referred to as a phase or stepping stone to admitting that they are gay.
The first time I saw this in celebrity culture was with the ‘Made in Chelsea’ star Ollie Locke. I found many people around me using this high-profile story as an example of how bisexual men are deceitful. The gay friends that I have who first came out as bisexual express feelings of regret about the way it confuses people about bisexuality. Giving fuel to the stereotype that bi men are actually gay men coming to terms with their identity.
Bisexual women in the media, often in movies, tend to drop their bisexual label quickly. Putting their bisexuality down to a simple ‘college-fling’ or an excuse to experiment.
Bisexuality in marketing
The image that bisexual women exist to express a threesome-fantasy for men can be seen in so many pop songs. Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed a Girl’ can be credited with boosting the ‘cool’ reputation bisexuality gained around 2008. Recently Rita Ora’s ‘Girls‘ received heavy backlash from bisexual and lesbian singers and fans for playing into the stereotype that bisexual women are a man’s fantasy. Bisexuality being used as a marketing ploy is not uncommon.
Bisexual-for-pay?
t.A.T.u was a Russian pop-duo I looked up to in my childhood. I loved their music and the duo sparked my interest in the Russian language. But their disappointing admission that their lesbian relationship was all an act helped to harm bisexual representation in the media right after they had been praised for their brave and progressive performances. The girls flip-flopped between calling themselves lesbian, bisexual and straight towards the end of their career together. Eventually, the girls admitted that they had been instructed to kiss on stage and pretend to be sexually involved with each other to excite viewers in music videos and live concerts. The group was so popular at their peak that they were considered the most successful international Russian singers and also gay icons.
The disappointment didn’t stop there when former member Julia Volkova denounced the gay community, which once supported her, as sinful. She stated that she would not accept a gay son and while they were better than “murderers” in her eyes, she would encourage them not to be a “fag” and instead “be a man”. Her vile comments were condemned around the world as hypocritical and hateful. Volkova also stated that she could make excuses for lesbianism because it looks “aesthetically much nicer”.
Volkova’s deception encapsulates the hypocritical way that bisexuality is depicted in the media: as something hot and cool, but shameful and wrong. Bisexuals make up the biggest group in the LGBT but are heavily underrepresented in LGBT activism and leadership roles. In 2022, there are very few prominent bisexual celebrities willing and available to speak up and provide healthy representation to the group.
Bisexuality – the sexuality that never was
It’s hard for me to conjure many bisexual characters to mind. And even when they are shown in television and movies, they are almost never explicitly referred to as such. The same can rarely be said for ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ in this day and age. But the word ‘bisexual’ alone is mentioned rarely in media.
Within the LGBT, lesbians and bisexuals are comparatively less represented than their gay and trans counterparts. Even in so-called ‘progressive’ media. When they are, their depictions are often offensively stereotyped i.e. ‘Orange is the New Black’, ‘Sex and the City’, ‘The L Word’, ‘Glee’ and ‘Big Mouth’. It appears to be more than biphobia, but sexism subtly invading the way we see gay characters different from lesbian or bisexual characters.
In the show ‘Orange is the New Black’, the protagonist Piper is bisexual. Her bisexuality is routinely called ‘lesbianism’ when she is dating Alex, her female ex. And her bisexuality is dismissed as a phase by her friends and family when she returns to dating her current boyfriend. Piper is finally referred to as bisexual, for the first time, by her mother in the show’s last season in episode 89. The show depicts a wide variety of marginalised groups, including Laverne Cox who is transgender. But somehow Piper’s bisexuality is depicted strangely and stereotypically at the same time. Piper’s bisexuality is used as an extended metaphor for her indecisive personality. The plot repeatedly positions her love for Alex and her fiancé as polar opposites. Her lesbian romance with Alex is presented as dangerous, fun and exciting. Her heterosexual relationship with her fiancé is shown to be dull, safe and socially acceptable.
A lack of bisexual ‘voices’ to stand up
In season one, Piper’s family is judgemental of her bisexuality. Her partner treats her sexuality like an inconvenience. It is often implied by her fiancé and his family as the reason for the breakdown of her engagement. Once again tying bisexuality to unfaithfulness rather than Piper’s own personality. Piper’s character is strong in many ways. But she lacks the agency to stand up and define her sexuality for herself. Instead, she allows others to tease her and degrade her sexuality without much protest.
The writer of the original autobiography the show is based on is openly bisexual and yet the writers of the show were unwilling to use the word bisexual until the very last season. Bisexual representation has been made unnecessarily complicated. The show manages a nuanced depiction of transphobia, bigotry and prison life for women but Piper is interchangeably called ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ by other characters. But never simply bisexual. Why would there be so much refusal to simply use the word bisexual?
Bisexuality as the ‘trendy’ type of gay
There was a phase in the 200s where popular female celebrities began coming out as bisexual in droves.
The trend was implied to be cool and interesting by media outlets who praised these women as ‘forward-thinking’ and unique. It was easy in those years to misinterpret this as being ‘progressive and accepting’ for bisexual people. While I can’t prove exactly which celebrities are really bisexual and which ones were saying it to appear more interesting, it shows how othering bisexuality allows it to be seen as cool when it is convenient. And an identity that is shed quickly when it is no longer in style.
In the media, there is a severe lack of bisexual representation from people who are BIPOC, disabled and neuro-divergent. Bisexuality is often used to ‘spice up’ a soap opera’s storyline or a pop singer’s image. But rarely does it ever seem to be here to stay.
This made it difficult for my LGBT peers in childhood to be taken seriously when celebrities with major platforms began taking back their bisexual claim once it no longer served them like Jessie J. Again and again, I saw celebrities who swore it wasn’t a ‘phase’ taking it back. This makes the ‘coming out’ experience as a bisexual person very different to gay or lesbian experiences. I knew a couple of girls who identified as bi in their teens who went back to being biphobic once the celebrity ‘coming out’ trend for bisexuality looked like it was over.
The celebrity impact of bisexual representation
Many celebrities become tongue-tied or upset when they’re asked about their past comments talking about their bisexuality. David Bowie famously regretted coming out as bisexual. He felt it was being used to define his identity too much. Tom Hardy snapped at a journalist when asked about celebrities ‘coming out’ and how difficult it might be. There are a lot of studies that suggest bisexual people do not view their sexuality as being as integral to their identity as gay and lesbian people do. But, one similarity in the experience between gay, lesbian and bisexual people is the feeling that once they have ‘come out’, their sexuality is used to define their entire personality.
There are plenty of celebrities who have claimed to be bisexual who still identify as such like Katy Perry, Cardi B and Lady Gaga. Perhaps they don’t receive as much media attention as they should. As it would help to dispel the idea that whenever bisexuality is mentioned in the media, it is for negative or deceptive reasons.
Internalised biphobia
Biphobia is poorly understood and rarely spoken about in the media. Bisexuals have an experience of biphobia that is different from homophobia. This is because bisexual people often experience biphobia from within the LGBT. Bisexuals experience biphobia while dating which can cause depression and anxiety. Sometimes biphobia is so traumatising that bisexuals begin to internalise stereotypes about their own group.
As teens, some of my own bisexual friends thought they were different from other bisexuals because they didn’t match up to all of the negative stereotypes. A number of them went on to experience discrimination in the dating world from lesbians, gays and heterosexuals alike who thought that having a bisexual partner would surely end in infidelity. This kind of treatment that bisexual people face can lead to a lack of confidence in dating and a fear of coming out to their partner for fear of their reaction. A lack of healthy bisexual representation in the media has led to bigoted attitudes that bisexual people can internalise and project onto the other people that they meet.
The positives of bisexual representation
I’m finding more well-rounded bisexual characters in TV, movies and literature every year. While progress for bisexual representation is slow, it is happening.
In ‘Game of Thrones’ there was Oberyn Martell. There was Rose Quartz in ‘Steven Universe’. In ‘The Legend of Korra’, there was Korra and Asami. The show was a ground-breaking way to introduce LGBT role models in teen programming. While these bisexual features are small, they are there and they’re becoming more and more noticeable. One of the great aspects of modern bisexual representation is that they are nuanced and the characters’ sexuality isn’t always the most interesting aspect of their personality.
Representation of minority groups provides education in entertainment. particularly for young people. When I was a child, gay people were seen in media but almost never explicitly referred to as such. When they were, they were depicted as predators or as comedy-relief characters.
Why positive bisexual representation actually matters
Before that during my parents’ generation, gay characters were mentioned extremely rarely which gave their generation the impression that gay people made up an extremely small percentage of the population. It also left them with the impression that their activism, as a result, was not very important, as it only affected a tiny group. As time goes on and people are more able to be themselves, we’ve found that gay, lesbian and bisexual people make up a much larger percentage than previously thought. Every marginalised group deserves to see a healthy representation of themselves in the media and bisexuals are no different.
Hopefully going forwards there will be more bisexual characters written well. There is plenty of growing evidence that bisexual representation can be achieved and when we see ourselves reflected in the media, it gives us a better impression of what we’re capable of. And how we can succeed.
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Written by Chanté-Marie Young
Illustrated by Francesca Mariama
