Being Bisexual

Executive Director of PhillyGayCalendar

I guess I should start this column with a disclaimer: I am a full stop homosexual, a gold star gay if you will. My insights into the bisexual orientation come from a variety of interviews. That being said I don’t have the time, resources or stamina to interview every bisexual across America, so the 11 people I talked to will have to do.

The idea for this article started out like most do, a question was posed while drinking a beer with some friends.

"Remember when being bisexual was all the rage?"

The conversation proceeded for a few minutes with opponents on both sides, some saying that bisexuality wasn’t a trend and it’s just as relevant today as it was 10 years ago, others saying that before it was safe to be 100% gay, bisexuality served as a middle ground. Coming out as bisexual or even as bi-curious gave you a safety net. If shit hit the fan and people weren’t as accepting of your life choices as you had hoped, you could easily claim it was a phase and that you were still into the opposite sex.

I started large scale, and tried to gauge the public interest in bisexuality over the years. The quick and dirty way was to consult Google, but not in the way you might think. Google Trends is a program that analyzes the frequency of search terms over a designated span of time. Using Google Trends it became clear that the number of people searching for bisexuality (in correlation to sexual orientation, not porn) had a downward curve between 2006-2012. Recently though, the number of users googling bisexuality (again in regards to sexual orientation) was on the rise.

I knew the answer to the budding question about the prevalence of bisexuality in today’s culture wasn’t going to yield a definitive answer. So I took to the "streets" of the internet (Reddit) to ask a few questions to a few bisexual strangers. I started on a topical level and asked gay men three questions;

1. How do you feel about Bisexual guys?
2. What is your opinion on Bisexuality?
3. Has time changed your opinion?

While the answers varied slightly, the most common theme was that Bisexual guys are (and always have been) just as cool as gay men, time hasn’t changed much. BUT although the question was never asked, almost every guy said they would never date a bisexual guy. I poked and prodded them as to why, and the few that did respond said they’d be nervous that their bi-boyfriend would seek out a female companion. There are some very NSFW answers to that original question in the Reddit Thread here – http://bit.ly/BiBoyQA

So it seems I had answered, vaguely, the original question: bisexuality wasn’t as much of a "trend" as Google searches had suggested.

Quite a few men on the above thread are bisexual, so I saw an opportunity to explore the a different matter further and direct messaged them to ask them so deeper questions, I asked 11 men

1. Do people (strangers or friends) ever question your sexual preference, or accuse you of “covering” something up?
2. Do you lean one way or the other?
3. Do you feel coming out as Bisexual is similar or different than coming out as gay?
4. If you could screw a celebrity, who would it be?

With the last question being mostly for my entertainment.

The men of course had varying answers, but the attitude and mood had a common feel to them. It should be noted that all of the men had come out within the last 10 years. All of the men stated that coming out as bisexual led to NO confusion with their peers, but quite a bit with their immediate family. As for which way and how much the men lean? That varied, but 8/11 leaned towards dudes. All of the men said they thought coming out as bisexual is / would be harder than coming out as gay because there was more explaining that had to happen. "You have to abate everyone’s question of ‘are you sure you’re not just indecisive?’" – Reddit User.

A couple of the guys mentioned how difficult relationships can be, "nobody seems to trust me; they think that because I like both genders; I’ll cheat just to fulfill a temptation or need; It’s not the case, a faithful man is a faithful man" – Reddit User.

And of course the final question… 7 / 11 people interviewed said they’d screw Justin Timberlake, I’m not sure if that’s a bisexual thing, or just an anyone that walks the planet thing.

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