writhing on the shag pile

bsn bi-faq

... or handy responses to dim questions...

I’m a lesbian, but I really fancy a boy. Just the one. That doesn’t make me bisexual, does it? Only my friends keep insisting that I’m bisexual now.

Well, really, it comes down to this: You can decide what you want to be called. You, and you alone, know what’s in your heart and - more importantly - in your loins. If you want to call yourself lesbian and still idly think of having some rough man’s tongue working its way over your cracks and crevices, that’s up to you. Only you can’t get too upset if your friends choose to think of you as bisexual. It’s a slippery term, bisexual, and it really only means what the person using the word at the time thinks it means. For some, it can mean that the person has sex as often with men as with women; for some, that the person might only have sex with women but from time to time idly daydream about being undressed and ravaged by Noam Chomsky. Some people - we’ve noticed more often, it’s people who identify themselves as gay - bristle badly when people tell them that their feelings for members of the gender they don’t usually fancy is enough for them to be shifted over to the bisexual box. They shouldn’t. It’s not that their friends are making assumptions about what they’ll be doing sexually with the rest of their lives, just marking that they’ve now moved into their friend’s particular definition of ‘bisexual.’ Really, it’s not worth bothering about

Do bisexuals have more fun?

It’s tempting to say yes. But, no, not really.

Does being bisexual “double your chances of getting a date on Saturday night”?

This is mathematically wrong. It assumes that a person is going to attract an equal number of mates of either sex. Since most people don’t allow themselves to entertain the idea of a same-sex partner, the opening up of your pool of potential partners if you moved from heterosexuality to bisexuality will probably add only one in ten members of your own gender to your likely pullees. So, rather than doubling, on the generally accepted figures of the prevelance for same-sex relationships in the population at large, you will only be increasing your chances of getting a date by ten per cent. However, if you are moving from a homosexual stance to a bisexual stance, your chances of getting a date will increase ten fold.

It should be remember, however, that if everybody got in touch with their innate bisexuality, your chances of getting a date would not improve at all, all other things being equal. Indeed, since you’re the sort of person who lives their life by Woody Allen aphorisms, the chances are that, since you previously perspective partners now have a wider range of others to choose from, your chance of dating would fall.

One of my children has just told me they’re bisexual. What should I do?

Nothing. What do you want to be advised to do? How to get it out their systems? Or how to help them? Generally, you don’t need to do anything. There are no pressure points that need to be pressed. We really don’t recommend that you read any books in a bid to bond with them, unless you’re the sort of parent who would read books to try and bond with your kid if they came out as gay. And if you are the sort of parent who’d do that: we insist you don’t do it. Generally, kids don’t want their parents to sit on the end of their beds and discuss their sex lives with them. Under any circumstances.

What is the origin of the phrase ‘Arthur or Martha’?

We don’t know who first used it but we can only assume it was someone about three hundred years ago. It’s sometimes used to describe bisexuals - they don’t care if it’s arthur or martha who they date - but frankly, unless you are dating someone in their seventies its not a very useful term. Its not like there aren’t other rhyming names that sound less drab - Steve or Eve, Jerry or Kerry, Helen or a hole cut into a melon. We think its got more to do with the implication that bisexuals aren’t that fussy.

Bisexuals are just people who aren’t that fussy, aren’t they?

Yes, you’ve got us banged to rights. Finding people of either gender sexually attractive isn’t because we tend to find the beauty in a person’s soul rather than in their genitals; its because we’re just so horny we don’t care what we stick in our holes or where we stick our cocks. In fact, bisexuality is no different to shagging the first thing you see in the morning.

Bisexuals are people who are scared to come out as being properly gay, aren’t they?

Of course. Because bigotted members of the heterosexual world aren’t going to hate you if you cancel out the taint of buggery with the occasional proper shag. It’s so much easier to say “look, I have sex with men, but not always” than “I’m gay.” And choosing a stance which is liable to get you shunned by “proper” gays as being “too scared to come out” rather than settling down into the occasionaly self-satisified gay community would be the cowardly option.

Isn’t it the fault of you lot that Aids spread from gays to straights?

Yeah. If you like. Why not? We also brought down Columbia, you know.

Why are there so few bisexual support groups?

We’d like to think it’s because we’re pretty well adjusted and don’t need them. Although its probably more due to the wide ranging definition of what actually constitutes bisexual - really, most bisexuals don’t have a great deal in common with other bisexuals, apart from the non-bisexual bits. And, presumably, since you’ve always been able to do the opposite-sex part of dating, there wouldn’t have been the same desperate urge to group together felt by yer homosexuals. That could be it.

Why do Gay and Lesbian events often tack an “and bisexual” on the end, when usually there’s nothing aimed at bisexuals there, and very little tolerance generally?

Probably to put bums on seats. The curious thing, of course, is that the idea is to promote tolerance, and yet quite often you’ll be out marching for tolerance alongside people who don’t really want to tolerate your sexuality. Try an experiment: if you’re a bisexual man, at the next GLB event you find yourself at, ask a random woman if she’d like to come with you on a date. Chances are you'll not find much tolerance there.