"My hero was my father, a closeted bisexual Army major general who, in the 1990s, argued in favor of gays in the military by reminding people that they’ve always been there."

"Yes, the military vibe could be depressingly macho, but it’s also about having your buddies’ backs, no matter their gender, sexuality or race. I spoke about the subject of my new play, Claude Cahun, a French Jewish Surrealist who, with her partner, Marcel Moore, broke into a church at night during the Nazi occupation and put up a banner, reading: 'Jesus is great. But Hitler is greater. Because Jesus died for people — but people die for Hitler.' Voilà, punk!"

That's an excerpt from "Today’s Young People Need to Learn How to Be Punk" by John Cameron Mitchell, the filmmaker (notably of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch").

The expression of the French Jewish Surrealist is something you can work out on your own, no? Key words: "during the Nazi occupation."

I want to focus on "closeted bisexual." Mitchell's father was married to his mother, so how does he count as closeted if he just kept quiet about who else he's sexually attracted to? That's the general practice among married people, not to speak out about your interest in anyone other than your spouse and not to do anything about it. It might be a more poignant case if the man married a woman but only felt attracted to men, but this, we're told, was a bisexual. Presumably, he was attracted to his wife. Where's the closeting in restricting your sex relations to your spouse? It's not as if heterosexuals feel free to speak out and act out about their sexual attraction to others. No one admires these adulterers for "coming out of the closet."

Anyway,  John Cameron Mitchell is reporting on his speaking tour, interacting with students. He told them: "Your homework is to stop canceling each other, find out about punk, and get laid while you’re at it.... Punk isn’t a hairstyle; it’s getting your friends together to make useful stories outside approved systems. And it’s still happening right now, all over the world." He says, "MAGA has adopted an authoritarian style of punk that disdains what Elon Musk calls our 'greatest human weakness,' empathy. But O.G. punk, while equally free of trigger warnings, is constructive and caring."

"The whole point of this bill wasn't to get it passed. The whole point of this bill was to call out the hypocrisy."

BREAKING: Ohio lawmakers have proposed a new law that bans men from ejaculating without intent of conception, would fine men up to $10,000 per ejaculation. pic.twitter.com/eOtMUatSPt

— Daily Loud (@DailyLoud) February 14, 2025

If there's an exception for LGBTQ people, it seems you could avoid the $10,000 fine, by identifying as bisexual or "queer." Who could challenge you? You are what you say... among the kind of people who would institute an exception like this.

Not that anyone would ever really get charged. And obviously and admittedly, the bill will not get passed. Republicans control the Ohio legislature.

These Democrats are introducing The Conception Begins at Erection Act for rhetorical purposes. They want to expose hypocrisy within the anti-abortion group, which tends to say to women, if you don't want to get pregnant, don't have sex. 

ADDED: These Democrats present the idea of leveling. Since sexual intercourse only risks pregnancy for the women, the law should impose an equivalent burden on men. Equity = $10,000. This reminds me of the much-loved Kurt Vonnegut story, "Harrison Bergeron," which begins:

"My daughter... has queer friends who sometimes pass through on their way to the basement lair and stop to talk about... tattoos, the queer art they're making, or the queer anarchist collectives they're living in."

Writes Noah Berlatsky, in "My wife is bisexual and nonbinary, and my daughter is transgender. My queer family helped me better understand myself and my masculinity" (Insider).

This article is ripe chum for right-wingers, so please use your judgment (if and when you comment).

The daughter is 19, and "still lives with us, but she often communicates in brief grunts as she scurries down to her basement lair, emerging only to let in friends and forage for chicken nuggets."

Me, I'm just really uncomfortable with anarchists in the basement, and "lair" along with "grunts" is... well, it's intended to yank your chain. 

Berlatsky calls himself a "boring cisgender, straight guy," but here he is presenting himself as interesting because of the 2 women who are living in his house with him. He's appropriating and parading their (seeming) coolness. Is that okay?

It reminds me a bit of the male law professors we women law professors used to make fun of for saying they're not sexist, because their wife is a feminist.

Policing the "overcalculated playfulness" of actors wearing fashions that might not align with their sexual orientation.

I'm reading "Is Celebrity ‘Queer Baiting’ Really Such a Crime? Even as gender and masculinity are more fluid than ever, it can still rankle when male stars co-opt traditionally gay codes and styles" by Mark Harris (NYT Style Magazine).

"The Woman Wondering If She’s Bisexual Enough to Come Out."

Great headline. It's on one of those NY Magazine "Sex Diaries." These purport to be true-life accounts. This one is about a 28-year-old woman. Excerpt:

DAY FIVE... 

11 a.m. I am violently hung-over and on my way to my Nana’s 92nd birthday. 

1 p.m. At her celebration, I feel crushing hangxiety about almost everything I said or did the night before. Hidden behind my sunglasses and nursing a piece of watermelon, I contemplate whether or not I feel bisexual enough to come out to my family, and if I ever will or if I even need to....

The author did not invent the word "hangxiety." Here's a CNN article from 2 months ago: "Why you may experience 'hangxiety' during a hangover." Something about cortisol. Go read it if you need to.

It's not an advice column, but if anyone actually wants to know when are you "bisexual enough to come out to [your] family," the answer is that it's the wrong question. The issue is never how bisexual are you, but what is your relationship to your family and what do you want to do with it? The answer to that question is never I'm bored and these people are boring. I mean, for one thing, it might turn out that you yourself are boring.

"Ollie says one of the 'rules' of the experiment is that he and Zoe, both bisexual, will only hook up with same-sex partners."

"But whoops, Zoe replies, she already broke that rule by sleeping with a man. Later, Ollie is dating and sleeping with a woman. We don’t see them discussing their rules, why they exist, why they might change, how they talk about the ones they’ve broken. Ollie’s narration adds no clarity.... While Ollie and Zoe are just kind of irritating—we’re treated to long sequences of them frolicking naked in fields; Ollie waxes poetic about how he loves Zoe for being such an 'adult,' because she soaks her oats overnight—what’s hardest to watch is how they’re hurting each other because they don’t communicate with specificity or empathy, or even agree why they’re doing this in the first place.... Zoe, Tom, and the other non-Ollie characters are played by actors, and the film is a re-creation of Ollie’s experience with the real Zoe.... Ollie and Real Zoe did try an open relationship and were documenting it, and Real Zoe really did end their relationship to be with another man, but what we see on screen here is not a documentary of an experiment in real time so much as Ollie’s on-screen memoir, starring himself...."

From "What HBO’s New Documentary Gets Wrong About Open Relationships/I’ve been in a nonmonogamous relationship for six years, and I’m tired of movies like There’s No 'I' in Threesome" (Slate).

I'm almost tempted to watch this just to see how terrible it is. It  might be funny.... oh, no.... I just looked at the trailer, here. I was thinking of embedding it. But watching it, I had to force myself, and by 0:34, I had to turn it off. The visuals are very unappealing.

"I’m sad to report that three or four decades ago, many gay-assertive people (myself included) looked at some of those who identified as bisexual with suspicion..."

"... if not scorn. It wasn’t because we didn’t believe that many were telling the truth about their experience. It was because so many people that I, for one, knew actually identified as gay had been exploiting the 'bi' term as a sexual caveat to avoid the risks of coming out completely. Or, at the very least, they were taking the term on loan as a baby step in that direction.... When celebrities whom everyone knew to be gay—but who hadn’t affirmed it in the media—were asked about such things, they tended to deliver exactly the kinds of statements we hear from some LGBTQ people today. They’d say, 'I don’t want to be labeled,' or 'I’m just sexual,' or 'I’m open.' Today, those descriptions signal broad-mindedness. Back then, they felt like a betrayal, a hedging that pushed the movement back a step, making those of us who had come out feel more isolated and vulnerable at a time when being out had far greater consequence.... If nearly any progressively minded person can find some way to identify as queer, what, exactly, does the term even mean? When I hear about fluidity in that context, it sounds like something made to wash away gay history—my history—drowning it in inclusiveness to broaden its clout."

From "Categorically Gay/For queer people who grew up in an era when rigid identities were essential, today’s fluidity can feel like their history is washing out with the tide" by Jim Farber (in Slate).

Drowning it in inclusiveness to broaden its clout — an interesting phrase. The metaphor is a little overambitious. You've got the water of "fluidity" and it's "washing away" and "drowning," but it's also designed to have "clout." A "clout" is something done with a fist or a hard object. "Fluidity" doesn't deliver "clout."

I'm just talking about whether the metaphor is good, not saying I can't puzzle out the meaning. Bear with me a little longer.

In the phrase, what's getting washed away and drowned is gay history, but the clout has a different target. The clout is to — what? — all the forces of heteronormativity (or something like that). There's too much going on there.

But I can see what he means. Broadening is weakening. Inclusiveness is diluting.

"These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks is some sort of feminism..."

"... because they’re choosing to live that life. That’s bullshit. I mean, what the f*** are we really talking about here?"

Said Kyrsten Sinema back in 2006. She's now the Democratic Party's nominee to represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate.

I haven't been following the Sinema drama, so anything about her is news to me. But I was motivated to read her Wikipedia page because I wanted to know if she had children. If you stay home with children, you probably don't see yourself as "leeching." Some facts:

Sinema married, and later divorced, her BYU classmate Blake Dain.

On November 17, 2013, Sinema completed an Ironman Triathlon in a little more than 15 hours. Sinema was the second active member of Congress—behind Senator Jeff Merkley—to finish a long distance triathlon, and the first to complete an Ironman-branded race. On December 25, 2013, Sinema summited Mount Kilimanjaro.

So, her idea of doing difficult things is way beyond the average person's. But if you're running for office, it's not a good idea to reveal to ordinary people that you basically think they're not working hard enough. The normal bullshit is to butter them up continually, calling them "hard-working" and blaming government and corporations for their insufficiently affluent condition. But Sinema wants to call bullshit on that bullshit. Okay, Sinema. It won't get you into the Senate, I don't think, but it's kind of wonderful, shouted from the top of Mount Kilamanjaro.

Sinema is now the only openly non-theist or atheist member of Congress, although she herself has rejected such labels. She is also the first openly bisexual member of Congress.

Okay with me.

Obama "had thought about and considered gayness, but ultimately had decided that a same-sex relationship would be less challenging and demanding than developing one with the opposite sex."

That's a paraphrase of something Obama supposedly wrote — "somewhat elusively to his first intimate girlfriend" — that appears in a book by David J. Garrow that comes out next month "Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama." Garrow is, I think, a trustworthy writer. I know him mostly from "Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade," a book I read carefully when it came out and assigned in a seminar I taught on the right of privacy.

I'd like to see the text of the original letter, but just going on the paraphrase, it sounds humorous, especially if he used the word "gayness," but especially with this idea — expressed to his girlfriend — that he wanted to do the "challenging" thing and develop a relationship with a person of the opposite sex. Speaking of "challenging," he's presenting a challenging viewpoint to his girlfriend, stirring up conversation.

Is it, in fact, easier to be gay, because you only have to figure out how to get along with and be companionable to somebody who is like you or who, at least, you can have the illusion is pretty much like you? Certainly, the same-sex partner has a body like yours, and you might feel that you know your way around the territory and can predict how things will feel from the inside.

And then there's the question whether a person should want that kind of ease or whether it's better to take on the challenge of understanding the body and mind of a human creature who is so different from you. I'm just saying this is a good topic of conversation to bring up in a letter to your girlfriend. There's a lot that could be said here!

Now, of course, it's conventional to say that sexual orientation is not a choice, but:

1. These are still great conversation topics. You can easily make a hypothetical that excludes the problem that it's not a choice. Just say: Assume you had the choice, would it be better to be gay because it's easier (and is it easier?), or would it be better to be straight because it's more of a challenge (and is it more of a challenge)? (You can also tweak the hypothetical to remove complications about discrimination or other externally imposed difficulties to being gay.)

2. The not-a-choice orientation could be bisexual. If you are — not by choice — bisexual, you do have a choice whether to take an opposite sex or a same-sex partner.

3. A person with a homosexual orientation could choose to form a relationship with an opposite-sex partner for social and reproductive reasons and could take on the problem of lack of sexual interest in his partner. (I'm sure plenty of heterosexual individuals have opposite-sex marriage partners to whom they feel no sexual attraction.) Talk about challenges! That's a challenge. I'm seeing some commentators encountering Garrow's paraphrase as a contradiction to the proposition that homosexuality is a permanent and unchangeable characteristic. But I don't see a necessary contradiction.

Ludicrous headline at The Daily Beast: "Why Do Bi Women Smoke So Much Weed?"

Subhead: "Excluded by both straight and lesbian peer groups, bi women face one of the most challenging psychological spaces."

It's tough to face space. It's challenging to me to face the space of the compose window on this post, because look at the crash up of things we're supposed to believe: 1. People smoke marijuana to deal with their problems (not just for fun or to relax), 2. Being bisexual is a problem, 3. It's okay to talk about sexual orientation as a problem, 4. It's probably the bisexuality causing the marijuana smoking, not the marijuana causing sexual experimentation or a person's liberal-mindedness and pleasure-seeking causing both.

And the "so much" in that "so much weed" is just any marijuana use in the last year. It really should say, at best, "Why Do So Many Bi Women Smoke Weed?"  The statistics are: 38% of bisexual women "reported marijuana use in the last year," compared to 20% for lesbians and 5% for straight women. My hypothesis would be that the women who say they are bisexual are just more likely to try different things, to be more adventurous.

But, no, here's a "research scientist," from the Ontario HIV Treatment Network, Dr. Margaret Robinson, "who is herself bisexual": "[B]isexual women are exposed to sexism as well as biphobia and homophobia. It could be something about the anxiety we feel living at the intersection of multiple oppressions that instigates such elevated use of cannabis.”

Anxiety does indeed seem to be a strong undercurrent of bisexual life. The high prevalence of anxiety disorders among bisexual women, in particular, is a well-known psychological truism. Several studies have found that bi women have worse mental health outcomes than straight and lesbian women, including higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders. One 2010 study suggests that the poor mental health of bi women could result, in part, from enduring the “psychic toll” of biphobia without having an “identifiable community” to provide support.

Robinson is "skeptical of previous research that suggests that bisexual women’s marijuana use could be ascribed to their 'sensation seeking.'" Why? "We have to look at trends in a broader context and the context for bisexuals is generally one of high stigma and social isolation. People rarely thrive under those conditions." I guess it has to be a problem.

"Oregon's new governor will be the first open bisexual to serve as a state's chief executive when Secretary of State Kate Brown steps in for resigning Gov. John Kitzhaber on Friday."

"Brown is married to a man but has made no secret about her sexual orientation – and has been embraced for it in one of America's bluest states whose largest city has adopted the slogan 'Keep Portland weird.'"

A woman is married to a man. Noted.

ADDED: Calling bisexuality "weird" is, ironically, demeaning.

The conundrum of the monogamous bisexual.

Larry King is very old and he asks questions, often (and quite successfully) from the dumb guy perspective, but his simple, conversation-advancing "Are you a non-practicing bisexual?" and "But you were bisexual?" — asked of Anna Paquin — moved Amanda Marcotte to tongue lash the elderly interviewer.

Your sexuality may exist inside your head, but most people are going to judge your orientation by who you’re partnered with. And so monogamous married people tend to “read” as gay or straight, but some may actually be bisexual. “When you're bisexual or pansexual, but you're in a long-term relationship, your bi/pansexuality can become invisible,” Greta Christina, the author of Coming Out Atheist and expert on all things coming out sexuality-related or not, explained to me. “People often assume that you're gay or straight, based on who you're involved with now—and it kind of eradicates your history and your identity.”

This is a problem because, as the gay rights movement has shown, visibility helps—a lot. There are many myths that proliferate about bisexuals, including the myth that they are oversexed and can’t be monogamous, a myth that King was pushing with this line of questioning whether he intended to or not....

Inevitably when you start having discussions about this, someone feels the need to pop in and say, “Why do we need labels at all?” But the problem of bisexual invisibility shows exactly why we need labels and how much good they really can do. Naming a phenomenon makes it visible. Populating that name with examples that people can relate to makes it understandable. People who are putting their face out there and declaring their bisexuality are helping demystify it. Though it would be nice if they could do it without being peppered by a bunch of rude questions from Larry King.

I think it's rude to say that Larry was rude. Also to call him dumb. Though it's kind of complimentary to characterize his questions as a peppering. I'd thought he was considered maddeningly bland. But good for Larry that anybody still cares what he might be implying and for getting reasonably relevant pop culture characters to receive a peppering of his old-man questions.

As for bisexuals married to opposite-sex partners, do they have a special exception from the usual rule that a married person ought not to talk about his or her sexual attraction to persons who are not his or her spouse?  If they do, is it because we think they have a more persuasive argument that there's something they want that they're not getting from their spouse, or is it the seemingly loftier goal of increasing visibility for a group that monogamy would otherwise erase? 

And I suspect half my commenters are about to write something along the lines of: Why does anyone need to talk about the orientation of their sexuality? How about everybody shutting up about it?

A big new NIH survey finds only 1.6% of American adults say they are gay or lesbian.

And only 0.7% say bisexual.

Why are these numbers so low? Is it that people are hiding or in denial, or is the proportion of nonhetereosexuals really pretty much that low?

"My wife and I have always made our whole lives a part of the discourse in the family."

"So if something one of my boyfriends once told me makes me laugh, I'll say that -- 'Oh god that reminds me of something my boyfriend once said.' Or if wife says, 'Oh my god that woman looks like my ex-girlfriend' -- we just don't edit ourselves. And I don't think any bisexual, gay person, lesbian person -- they should not edit themselves in front of their children. Because if you edit yourself your children will grow up to edit themselves and the problem perpetuates."

From a HuffPo article about a married couple discussing "the ways they navigate the ins an outs of an open relationship and information-sharing with their children."

So no editing, that's the goal? I wonder what will happen when these children who have grown up learning not to edit the discourse become teenagers and speak without repression. It's delusional to imagine that teenagers will not get sick of hearing their parents gush about their other sexual partners and — I hope — hearing "Oh God" or "Oh my God" at the beginning of each gush.

Couldn't you at least edit out the part where you gratuitously and inanely take the Lord's name in vain?

And HuffPo, couldn't you edit a capital "G" on "God"? Maybe it's a way not to take the Lord's name in vain, to write "God" as "god," to it look as though these people are continually evoking some minor deity nobody even believes in....

"There’s nothing lesbians hate more than women like me. I know, because back when I was a lesbian..."

"... I hated me. Or at least I empathized with my ex-girlfriend when she talked about hating who I’ve become. Bisexuals, she said, glommed onto lesbians because they feared their fathers, or had been devastated by ex-boyfriends. For them, lesbianism was a vacation from the pressures of heterosexuality. Even feminine lesbians were to be regarded with healthy skepticism. You never knew when one might turn...."

"Well, bisexual people are kind of like that dog... They’re misunderstood. They’re ignored. They’re mocked."

"Even within the gay community, I can’t tell you how many people have told me, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t date a bisexual.’ Or, ‘Bisexuals aren’t real.’ There’s this idea, especially among gay men, that guys who say they’re bisexual are lying, on their way to being gay, or just kind of unserious and unfocused."

Said a man who identifies as a bisexual. He also identifies as a lawyer, and he once represented a lady whose gay neighbors were — as the NYT article "The Scientific Quest to Prove Bisexuality Exists" puts it — "trying to have her dog put down." The man, Brad S. Kane, said he took the side of the dog — not the anti-dog gay guys — because the dog was "the underdog." "The dog needed help, needed a voice."

Nothing I've quoted above says "science" to me. I think there's a social quest to affirm the existence of bisexuality. People choose (or happen) to think of themselves that way and feel that it's mean not to accept them at their word. But that can be a prompt for scientific research. Somehow, I don't believe people really want a scientific answer to the question... unless it's the answer they want.

The lack of scientific orientation is apparent in the article title, which, you'll note, is not The Scientific Inquiry Into Whether Bisexuality Exists.

Suddenly, I feel like paraphrasing Voltaire: If bisexuality did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.

"Population-based studies... indicate that bisexuality is in fact more common than exclusively same-sex attraction..."

"... and that female libido is particularly open-ended," writes Michael Shulman in the NYT.

In a recent Modern Love essay in The New York Times revealing her relationship with another woman, the actress Maria Bello wrote, “My feelings about attachment and partnership have always been that they are fluid and evolving.” Before marrying Bill de Blasio, Chirlane McCray identified as a lesbian, which has become part of the progressive credentials of New York’s first family.

Male bisexuality, by contrast, is more vexed,

"Two bisexual activists... recommended casual 'water cooler' ways of bringing up your sexual identity through current events."

"'I was thrilled to hear that Clive Davis came out as bisexual, being bisexual myself,' or 'Did you hear that same-sex couples will soon be able to marry in Delaware? It means a lot to me since I’m bisexual.'"

From a NYT column attempting serious advice about how to "come out as bisexual at work." I copied those quotes because I could picture a comedy sketch giving those lines to a character who has no clue about how to sound casual around an office water cooler.

"I like the soft roundedness I’ve found in women, the scratchy ridiculousness I’ve found in men, and the culinary generosity I’ve found in both."

"If you lined up 100 people I’m physically drawn to, maybe only 4 would be women, but the depth of attraction I’d feel for those women would be the same as for the men. This was true when I was 23 and entered my first romantic relationship (with a woman), and it’s true now that I’m 38. I do not think of myself as 4 percent lesbian but 100 percent bisexual."

Writes a woman named Wilson Diehl — op-edding in the NYT — who seems irritated that people won't believe her. She married a man named Jared:

Jared contacted me on an online dating site, and before we had even met I told him via e-mail that I hate tofu, sausage and girlie cocktails; I’m sensitive about textures, depictions of violence and buzzing noises....

Sensitive about textures.... presumably that explains scratchy ridiculousness.

Anyway, she's a stay-at-home mother (working on a book), and she doesn't use bisexuality as a reason to be nonmonogamous. Her "bi-ness seldom has occasion to come up organically," so she makes jokes like "I can’t pick a restaurant — I’m bisexual."

Cynthia Nixon gets right with ideologues.

Originally, she said:

I understand that for many people it's not, but for me it's a choice, and you don't get to define my gayness for me... A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it's a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn't matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.

In a second interview, she was pushed to use the term "bisexual," and she resisted:

"I don't pull out the 'bisexual' word because nobody likes the bisexuals. Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals... But I do completely feel that when I was in relationships with men, I was in love and in lust with those men. And then I met (her fiance) Christine and I fell in love and lust with her. I am completely the same person and I was not walking around in some kind of fog. I just responded to the people in front of me the way I truly felt."

Now, she's yielded to pressure. She gives an "exclusive statement" to The Advocate:

My recent comments... were about me and my personal story of being gay. I believe we all have different ways we came to the gay community and we can't and shouldn't be pigeon-holed into one cultural narrative which can be uninclusive and disempowering. However, to the extent that anyone wishes to interpret my words in a strictly legal context I would like to clarify...

Strictly legal?!

While I don't often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have 'chosen' is to be in a gay relationship.

... I do, however, believe that most members of our community — as well as the majority of heterosexuals — cannot and do not choose the gender of the persons with whom they seek to have intimate relationships because, unlike me, they are only attracted to one sex.

Interestingly, the comments over at The Advocate are about the way gay people disrespect people who say they are bisexual.