How much does social acceptance or rejection define our sexual identity and orientation? It’s curious to see that Generation Z is the one with most LGBTQIA+ members, and, going back, there’s less and less in each generation. What’s the correlation between the two factors? 

Social acceptance has a big impact on how open people feel able to be about their sexual attractions and how free they feel to act upon them. It’s likely that shifting proportions of LGBTQIA+ people across the generations reflects how socially acceptable diverse sexualities and genders are in wider culture, as well as how possible it has been to act upon them without stigma, discrimination, or restriction. Another factor is how important it has been seen over the years to identify your sexuality and gender.

It’s also important to remember that the proportion of people who identify with a particular sexuality is the tip of the iceberg. For example, with bisexuality, far more people will have sexual experiences with more than one gender than identify as bisexual, and even more will experience attraction to more than one gender which they don’t act upon.

Are sexual orientation and identity biological or a social construct?  

Both! Our sexuality is biopsychosocial, which means that – like most aspects of human experience – it comes down to a mixture of the social context we grow up in, the experiences that we have through our lives, and the ways in which our body and brain function. All of these things interact with each other in complex ways that we could never really tease apart. For example, the ways in which our body and brain function impact how we’re treated by others in our particular culture, and also the wider culture shapes the experiences that we’re able to have, which – in turn – shapes our bodies and brains.

You might think about the ways in which certain body shapes and sizes, and mental abilities, are deemed ‘sexually attractive’ in our culture, leading those who have them to have radically different experiences of sex and relationships. Or you might think about the ways in which culture enables and restricts certain forms of sexual expression, meaning that we’re more or less likely to have access to those experiences, which will impact how our bodies and brains will respond to those possibilities (e.g. with pleasure, joy, fear, shame, etc.).

What impact does fear of child sexuality have on how we develop our sexual identity and preference? 

Fear of childhood sexuality has a massive impact at the moment. Few children receive anything like a good education around sex and relationships because there is so much anxiety about talking with kids about sex. Tragically this actually results in more young people have abusive, unwanted, and risky sexual experiences, not less, because they are so ill-equipped to talk about sex or to navigate sex consensually. Certainly most sex education and advice assumes that people will be heterosexual, or only includes LGB sexualities very briefly. This restricts how able young people are to explore the full range of possible sexual and asexual identites and experiences.

It is often said that everyone is bisexual or that no one is, which are biphobic expressions. Why does society have trouble accepting bisexuality specifically. Could it be a human need to categorize everything in extremes? (black and white/ good and bad)

This is an idea that my co-author Alex Iantaffi and I explore at length in our book Life Isn’t Binary. It certainly seems that humans – particularly in western cultures – are drawn to these kinds of binary polarisations when, of course, so much about human life is diverse rather than binary. It wouldn’t make sense to divide people into short and tall – clearly height is a spectrum. A similar thing could be said about various mental capacities, we can’t divide people into a binary of unintilligent or intelligent, rather we can locate people in different places on a number of spectrums of various abilities (mathematical, linguistic, spatial, etc.). So why, when it comes to sexuality and gender, do we assume a binary?

You’re right that, many times over the years, people have tried to argue that either nobody is ‘really’ bisexual, or that everybody is bisexual. Both of those extremes risk erasing actual bisexual experience, as well as limiting human sexuality to one dimension (the gender of the people we’re attracted to), when really there is a lot more to it than that.

It is often said that putting labels on ourselves or others can be damaging, but by not calling something by a name, you can deny its existence. Do we really need labels to identify ourselves and what we’re attracted to? Why?  

This is another non-binary! There are many arguments for and against people labelling their sexuality. I find it more helpful to ask what labels open up, and close down, for people, assuming that they probably do both. For people whose sexual attractions – or absence of attractions – are marginalised, labels can be important in claiming their experience, communicating it to others, and finding supportive community within a world that harms them. At the same time, labels can come with a set of expectations which can be limiting and rigid, and it can be difficult to let go of labels – and all that they bring – if things change for you.

Culturally we’re in a place where the only accepted way to fight for equal human rights is generally on the basis of identity labels. It’s very hard to fight for the rights of a group to be treated in just ways unless that group identifies under a label and can prove, through research, the negative impact that marginalisation has upon them. This has been a key tension in discussions of the labels around attraction to multiple genders. Some argue for the dropping of labels entirely, or embracing multiple labels like pansexual, queer, omnisexual, plurisexual, and so on. However, most governments and organisations only recognise the ‘B’ for bisexual, so there are strategic reasons for people to use that term, even when it may not feel the best fit for them.

At least in the United States, bisexuals comprise more than half the LGBTQIA+ collective, but that’s not what it looks like. It seems that they’re actually a minority. Why could that be?   

There’s a long history of bisexual people being treated with suspicion in the wider LGB movement and community. This dates back to the fact that ‘gay rights’ were often fought for on the basis of the idea that sexuality was binary (straight or gay) and that gay people were a minority group who were marginalised and oppressed within that binary. Anybody whose sexuality didn’t fit that binary model were seen as ‘muddying the water’ and potentially jeopardising the fight for gay rights. 

Many theorists and scientists now recognise that human sexuality is actually diverse and fluid across many dimensions, and that the proportion of people attracted to the same gender or more than one gender is probably at least equal to the number of people who are attracted to the ‘opposite’ gender only. However it is taking a long time for this way of seeing things to find its way into mainstream culture and governmental policies.

Have the different definitions of bisexuality through history influenced biphobia and formed misconceptions on what bisexuality is?  

Yes certainly they have. The most widely accepted definition of bisexuality within the bi+ community today is ‘attraction to more than one gender’, with some also using ‘attraction regardless of gender’. However, early definitions of bisexuality mixed gender and sexuality and saw bisexual people as people who had more than one gender. Later definitions assumed that bisexual people were attracted exactly equally to men and women. We see the legacy of these kinds of definitions in the assumptions that bisexual people will also be androgynous, and in the equation of bisexual with attraction to only two genders. As The Bisexual Index points out, if people are concerned about the ‘bi’ in bisexual meaning ‘two’, they can understand it as ‘attraction to both people of the same gender as themselves, and to people of different genders to themselves’.

It’s not common to hear about bisexual characters on the history of LGBTQIA+ rights although they’re there. Why are they not that visible?  

This is particularly striking when you think that one of the most famous sexologists of all time (Alfred Kinsey) and the woman who co-ordinated the first Pride march in 1970 (Brenda Howard) were both bi! However people who identified as bi or had attractions to more than one gender are often erased from LGBTQIA+ history. I suspect this is for the same reason that I mentioned above: that a lot of gay rights has been fought for on the basis of a straight (majority) / gay (minority) binary, and the existence and prevalence of bisexuality seems like a threat to this.

What is the reason that bisexual women are the ones to experience the most sexual violence? 

Bi women seem to experience higher levels of both sexual and relationship abuse than straight or lesbian women. One reason for this is the stereotype of bi women as hypersexual and sexually available, which means they experience higher levels of sexual harassment of all kinds. Another reason is that so many people find the idea of bisexuality threatening, and sexual violence can be used as a way of policing and punishing that. In relationships, the stereotype of bi people as promiscuous, suspicious, and lying means that bi people are often wrongly assumed to be more likely to leave – or cheat on – a partner. This can lead to biphobia in relationships where bi people are encouraged to hide their sexuality, and may be treated in controlling – even violent – ways by partners who are insecure about their bi-ness.

How do we work towards ending biphobia? 

I’d like to see far better awareness and education in wider culture, and for young people, about the diversity of sexuality, moving away from binary models which see it as being all about the gender of the people we’re attracted to. In my book Sexuality: A Graphic Guide I draw together lots of theories and research which suggests that there are many dimensions to sexuality, including the amount of sexual attraction that we experience, the kinds of erotic desires we have, the other features of a person that we find attractive beyond gender, and much more. We need to get to a point where we see all forms of erotic experience as equally legitimate and beautiful, so long as they are acted upon consensually.

The post Bisexuality and biphobia appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Is it common for people to question their sexuality?

It’s actually really common. Although many people assume that we’re born with a fixed sexual orientation, actually recent research has found that most people’s sexuality is fluid, meaning that it changes over the course of their lives. For example, we might have been attracted to one gender for our whole lives but experience an attraction to somebody of another gender. This might start us questioning how we identify our sexuality going forward.

It’s also important to remember that sexuality isn’t just about what gender or genders we’re attracted to. It’s also about the amount of sexual attraction we experience (from none to high), the kinds of sex we enjoy, the types of people we find attractive, the roles we like to take sexually (more active or passive, submissive or dominant), and many other things. All of these aspects of our sexuality can change over time meaning that we might start to question what our sexuality is, or how we identify it.

Can this happen at any time in your life?

Absolutely. Most people experience some changes in their sexuality over the course of their lives, for example in the age of the people they’re attracted to, the amount of sex they want to have, or the types of things that turn them on. Our sexuality can be impacted by our physical and mental health, the amount of energy we have, the people we hang out with, who we’re in relationships with, and the messages about sex that are around us in our communities and cultures. All of those things change over time as well.

Why might someone question their sexuality?

Some common reasons for questioning our sexuality include:

• Finding that we’re attracted to someone who is quite different to our usual attractions (e.g. a different gender, physical appearance, or background)
• A friend, colleague or family member coming out as a different sexuality which can make us realise that it might apply to us too
• Learning about a sexuality we were previously unfamiliar with in the media or from a friend. This can give us a sudden sense of realisation: ‘oh maybe I could be that,’ ‘that label might apply to me.’
• Watching porn, reading erotica, or having a fantasy and realising we’re turned on by something that we didn’t used to be turned on by, or which we just hadn’t thought about before.

What should you do if you think you might be gay, bisexual, pansexual, queer etc?

First of all it’s really important to remember that whatever your sexuality is – and however you decide to label it – is absolutely fine. Sadly we live in a culture which gives us the idea that it’s more ‘normal’ or ‘better’ to be straight than it is to be gay, bisexual, pansexual, queer, etc. Actually, recent research suggests that at least as many young people are on the spectrum from ‘exclusively heterosexual’ to ‘exclusively homosexual’ than are at the ‘exclusive heterosexual’ end of that spectrum. Also more people have some kind of kinky sexual desires than don’t. And many people are on the asexual spectrum. Even if your sexuality is very rare or unusual, it’s still completely legitimate, so long as you only act on it consensually (that’s also true for common sexualities too of course!)

If you think you might be a different sexuality than the one you thought you were then it’s a great idea to do some self-exploration. Give yourself time to reflect on your sexuality and how you might like to label it, if at all. Journalling, engaging with ethical porn (and paying for it!), reading erotica, and fantasising are all great ways to do self-exploration.

It can also be really helpful to get support from other people who are in these sexual communities. There are online groups, meet-up groups, and community resources for all of these sexualities, as well as books and videos online. Check this stuff out but do remember that nobody should be pressurising you to label yourself in any way, or to come out unless that feels good to you. Go gently and take your time.

Is there a way to know?

Sexuality is a complex, constantly changing and evolving, thing so there’s no way to be sure whether you are ‘really’ straight, gay, bi, pansexual, asexual, demisexual, submissive, etc. It’s much more about whether those words – or others – feel like a good fit for you. It’s fine to just call yourself ‘questioning’ for as long as that feels right, or simply not to label yourself. It’s also fine to use one label for a while, and then change it if it stops feeling like such a good fit.

The main thing to remember is that it is perfectly legitimate to have whatever attractions and desires you have sexually, so long as you only act upon them consensually. If that feels like a struggle for you – or if these questions are causing you distress – then it’s worth getting some professional help from a therapist or counsellor. The Pink Therapy list in the UK is a good one for therapists who specialise in this area. The Kink Aware Professionals and Poly Friendly Professionals lists online are also useful international resources.

What would you recommend for people who think they might be but aren’t sure – any resources, books, practical tips?

I’m writing a book called How To Understand Your Sexuality next year which will hopefully be helpful! Meanwhile BishUK and Scarleteen are excellent resources for younger people questioning their sexuality, and contain useful material for people of all ages too. 

You might also find these zines helpful to work through:

Mapping Your Sexuality

Make Your Own Sex Manual

Justin Hancock and I talk about these themes often on our podcast at megjohnandjustin.com.

The post Figuring out your sexuality appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

You can read the article here, and my full interview below.

Why are people calling this gay instead of sexually fluid or bisexual?

This story is being treated in a very similar way to ‘Brokeback Mountain’, which was almost unanimously hailed as a ‘gay cowboy story’ although it could more accurately be described as a ‘bisexual shepherd story’, given that both male characters had female partners and there was certainly some depiction of romantic and erotic attraction within those relationships too.

The reason for this is certainly that we’re culturally mired in the gay/straight binary. We see a similar thing when celebrities mention attraction to more than one gender, often mainstream media announces that they are ‘gay now’. Unfortunately the interconnected binary understanding of gender and sexuality is strongly embedded in Western culture. Until recently even the science of sexology insisted that humans could only be men or women, and could only be attracted to the ‘same’ or ‘opposite’ sex. 

Thankfully the work of sex historians, queer theorists, bisexuality researchers, and scientists have challenged this view, pointing out that this is a relatively recent way of understanding human experience, which is a poor fit for many people, and which isn’t supported by either biological or psychological research. Not only is sexual attraction not a same/opposite binary, but sexuality is fluid (our attractions, desires, and identities can change over time), and multidimensional (not just about gender of attraction). 

Is bisexuality still being erased or considered non-existent? Do we need more fiction like this that envisions desire as unmoored from gender and sexual identities?

Sadly bisexuality is still erased. Until recently most mainstream depictions of characters with attraction to more than one gender were almost always depicted as going from straight to gay or gay to straight. If they were depicted, bisexual characters were confused, going through a phase, or otherwise suspicious. Still bisexual characters are often represented as evil, greedy, or manipulative, think of Frank Underwood in House of Cards, for example (check out the media section of The Bisexuality Report for more examples).

It would be great to see more fiction that unmoors desire from gender and sexual identities. We know that around 40% of young people experience their attraction as somewhere between ‘exclusively heterosexual’ and ‘exclusively homosexual’. Many identify as bisexual (attracted to more than one gender), pansexual (gender not being the key feature of their sexual attraction), or queer (challenging the whole gay/straight binary). 

Going back to multiple dimensions of sexuality, many find that their extent of sexual attraction is equally – or more – important than gender of attraction (people on the asexual spectrum). Many define themselves more in terms of the kind of people they’re into (e.g. sapiosexual), the kind of desires they have (e.g. people in the kink or BDSM community), the positions they take (e.g. top, bottom, switch), or the kind of relationships they form (e.g. solo-poly, monogamish). People can be in different places in relation to their erotic attractions and their nurturing attractions (the people they want to form more romantic or close bonds with), and in relation to what they enjoy in solo sex or fantasy, and in sex with other people. Sari van Anders is one key researcher who is teasing apart these dimensions in scientific research (basic overview here).

Is there something political or profound about imagining non-normative desire/ love that is unhindered by the usual obstacles, and not sensationalized or othered?

In a world which is still mired in an outdated understanding of sexuality as fixed, defined by gender of attraction, and only acceptable within a monogamous context, I would say that this kind of fiction is indeed political. It’s worth remembering that the dominant cultural understanding of sexuality – where heterosexuality is normal, homosexuality is less than normal (still requiring of explanations and people ‘coming out’) and anything else is invisible – is grounded in a historical approach to science and psychiatry which saw its purpose as delineating ‘normal’ from ‘abnormal’ behaviour. This, itself, was related to the early 20th century scientific projects of delineating different races as inferior/superior (in order to justify colonialism), and the eugenics movement (trying to prevent supposedly inferior classes and races, as well as disabled people, from reproducing). 

Producing depictions of non-normative desire are a step in the direction of challenging all sense that there is a normative (white, middle class, male, heterosexual) way of being that everyone should be judged against, and questioning the related view that some bodies and lives are inherently more valuable than others. Follow this thread and it leads to some far more obviously political questions about the way we relate to other humans, other species, and the planet. 

Are portrayals of desire as sexually fluid/ bisexual becoming more common? Are there any examples in contemporary culture that you feel are getting it right?

The majority of depictions do still fit the monogamous gay/straight binary model sadly. However, we do now have some excellent stereotype-busting bi characters now in the form of Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn 99 and Callie Torres in Grey’s Anatomy. Bisexuality is also well represented in Issa Rae’s TV show Insecure, and will be centred in her follow-up Him or Her. Relatedly, we’ve seen some good depictions of non-binary gender in shows like Billions and Grey’s Anatomy.

Very few mainstream depictions ever truly acknowledge that a person can be attracted to – or love – more than one person without that being a problem. So much drama revolves around the love triangle.

Sense8 is an example of a nice recent exception. The movies Shortbus and Kinsey from a while back, and more recently Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, are pretty positive. The TV shows You, Me, Her and She’s Gotta Have It deal with this topic, but fall into some more stereotypical and problematic portrayals of open non-monogamy. Queer fans enjoy the depictions of gender, sexuality, and relationships in the cartoon series Steven Universe for being far less normative, and sci-fi and fantasy in general can be better places to turn for non-normative depictions. 

What are the possible benefits of seeing examples of openly non-monogamous desire in fiction and film?

The benefits are potentially huge. Monogamous relationships are currently under huge pressure to meet all of a person’s needs, with partners expected to provide sexual passion, best-friendship, caring support, co-habiting, co-parenting, and more, for life. Therapists like Esther Perel point out that it’s incredibly hard to get both ‘warm love’ and ‘hot love‘ within the same relationship, and this may explain why over fifty percent of people see themselves as having one or more sexual dysfunctions, and rates of infidelity are similarly high.

The pressure on monogamy keeps many people in unhappy and damaging relationships, while others go from break-up to break-up because nobody can match up to these high ideals, collecting more emotional bruises along the way.

We need depictions of people doing relationships in all kinds of other ways in order to know that these are available and to have some model for how to navigate them. Open non-monogamy is just one example. It would be great to also see positive depictions of soloness and singledom, people who prioritise friendship over love when it comes to close relationships or cohabiting, aromantic people, relationship anarchists, people whose relationship style is based around friends-with-benefits, fuckbuddy, or hook-up arrangements. People are living their lives in these ways but struggling to see themselves represented.

The post Sexual fluidity and ‘Call Me By Your Name’ appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

There’s also a podcast and blog post all about bi visibility over on megjohnandjustin.com.

Gay Invisibility

Imagine a world where bi people were treated like gay & lesbian people, and vice versa…

You wake up in the morning and smile, remembering it’s Pride day. You’re going to get to march with all your lesbian and gay mates. Then your heart sinks a little remembering previous Prides. You’ll probably be relegated to the back of the march again after all the hundreds of bi charities and groups and organisations. Sure some of them have finally added LG to their names these days, but BTLG is mostly about the B and everyone knows it. It’s crazy-making when we know that LG people make up around half of all LGB people. Where are they all?

You know you’ll also be lucky this afternoon if there’s even one gay or lesbian identified person up on the stage at the end of Pride. Last year one gay activist got about a minute up there before the next bi band came on. It’s like the Purple List of influential BTLG people: Published in a major national newspaper every year and almost everyone on it is bi. A small gay magazine published a ‘rainbow list’, to make the point that there are lots of influential LG people too, but people didn’t pay much attention to that. It’s so frustrating because you know for a fact that many of the famous bi actors, sportspeople, and pop stars only ever have same-sex relationships, but they still call themselves ‘bi’ because being gay is so stigmatised. When that swimmer came out a couple of years back the bi press immediately called him bi even though he deliberately only said that he was attracted to people of the same-sex. There’s so few gay role-models or gay storylines on TV programmes. It only makes lesbian and gay people more invisible.

You sigh. It’s hard being gay in a world where everyone’s divided into heterosexual or bisexual. They’ve even done research now to try to prove that same-sex-only attraction doesn’t exist: that you’re either ‘straight, bi, or lying’. People can wrap their head around attraction to the opposite gender, or to people of any gender, but not to only being attracted to the same gender only. When you try to point out that Kinsey found that sexuality was a spectrum: there were people at the far end who were just attracted to the same gender, they just dismiss you saying that research is outdated.

Over breakfast you flick through the latest report from a major BTLG mental health charity. It’s great work they’re doing and you try to support them, but the gay invisibility really gets on your nerves. Several places in the document talk about ‘biphobia and transphobia’ and don’t mention homophobia at all. You’ve brought that up with them in the past and they just claim that homophobia is a subset of biphobia. It’s the same kind of argument as people who use ‘bi’ as an umbrella term for everyone with same-sex attraction whether they’re also attracted to the opposite sex or not. You’ve tried to point out that the word ‘bisexual’ doesn’t accurately capture your sexual orientation but they just look at you like you’re making a big deal over nothing. It’s all ‘bi people’, ‘bi relationships’, ‘bi parents’, ‘the bi community’ etc. etc. etc.

The report talks about the fact that BLG people have worse mental health than straight people, but it just lumps all BLG people together. You find that annoying because you know that it’s the lesbian and gay people who actually have the highest rates of depression, self-harm and suicide. Research like this means that the money and resources go to BLG people as a whole rather than to LG people in particular. And that mostly means the big commercial ‘bi scene’ which very few LG people actually access. So the help isn’t going to the people who need it most, and the bis are the ones who get all the funding.

Again you’ve tried to point this out, but the bi activists you’ve spoken to argue that it’s important to get everyone accepting bisexuality fully as the first step to BTLG rights. Once that’s happened they can work on the more ‘complicated’ identities like gay and lesbian. That’s why so many people’s energy went into the multiple marriage campaign. Now polyamorous bisexual and straight people can marry more than one partner, or one opposite-sex partner. But there’s still no allowance for gay people – and monogamous bisexuals – who want to marry one same-sex partner only. Even during the campaign loads of people were saying that there was a danger that multiple marriage would open the floodgates to same-sex-only marriage, comparing it to incest and bestiality. They call multiple marriage ‘equal marriage’ now, but it’s not truly equal. When you point that out people just accuse you of sour grapes.

Last BTLG history month you tried to get your organisation’s BTLG group to do an exhibition of famous LG people through history, but the other people on the committee (all bi of course) said that most of the people you suggested were ‘probably bi really’. And they’re always going on about Stonewall as this big event in BT history, dismissing all the gay people who were also involved at the forefront of what happened back then. The committee ended up putting a bunch of the Stonewall posters up round the organisation: ‘Some people are bi, get over it’ and ‘One is bi. If that bothers people, our work continues.’ You pointed out that there were actually ‘gay’ posters available as well but they just gave you a look and said ‘the campaign’s about eradicating biphobia in the workplace, alright.’ You hear that Stonewall have consulted with lesbian and gay people to try to improve inclusion, but you feel so jaded after all this time that you’ll believe that when you see it.

You check your phone. Looks like a bunch of your mates are going out to a bi bar after the Pride event. You’re not tempted. Last time you did that everyone assumed you’d be attracted to multiple genders and it was really uncomfortable when you came out as gay. Like at work and with your family they also kept forgetting and assuming you were bi, so you had to come out again and again. And you’re so sick of the stereotypes. Some bi people won’t date you for fear that you’ll leave them for another gay person. Others treat you with suspicion: ‘are you sure you’re really gay?’

The double discrimination is probably the worst thing. You kind of expect homophobia from the straight world, but getting it from bi people as well is really hard. Like when you finally left the football team you were on because of the homophobic discrimination there, and joined a BTLG football team only to find that they called you ‘gold star’ like it was a big joke, and kept going on about your sexuality and how you must be ‘picky’ or ‘confused’.

You remember back to last year’s Pride. Double discrimination there too. Your group marching past a bunch of bi people and they all started singing some old Eurovision song ‘loosen you mind up’ which you know was a homophobic joke. Mostly though the crowd just went quiet when your group walked past and then started cheering for the next bi group.

When you told your bi friends about it in the pub afterwards they said you were probably just exaggerating or being over-sensitive. They think you’re crazy to be so bothered by it, but you think the world is crazy for not being able to see gay invisibility when it’s right in their face.

Maybe you’ll just stay at home.

This story is based on all based on research on bisexuality reviewed in The Bisexuality Report (with the sexualities reversed of course!)
With many thanks to Catherine Butler and colleagues for their inspiration with the Homoworld story and short film, as well as this US version.

The post Bi visibility day: Gay invisibility appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Why is the notion that genetics might be responsible for our sexual orientations so popular with some LGBTQ people?

I think a big part of the reason is that wider culture tends to regard things that are genetic, or biological in any way, as more real. The idea that we are ‘born gay’ and that it is in our genes is tempting because it contradicts the homophobic notion that people choose to be gay, or are socialised into it, and could (and should) therefore be otherwise. Gay rights activism has often been based on trying to prove that lesbian and gay people are just as legitimate as heterosexual people and therefore deserving of equal treatment. So you can see why the idea that being gay is genetic might be popular.

However there are some big problems with this approach:

1. It buys into the idea that things that are ‘natural’ are more legitimate than things that are chosen or social. That presents a problem, for example, for those feminists who chose to be lesbian as a political point, or for anybody whose experience of being gay is not something they’ve always known from as young as they can remember.
2. We know that sexuality – like most aspects of human experience – is both fluid (changing over time) and biopsychosocial. That means that our sexualities are the result of an array of biological, psychological and social factors, all mixed together in a complex way. There aren’t single genes for even very simple things like height or eye colour, so it is very unlikely that there would be for sexuality. Also epigenetics shows us that genes interact with our environment: life experiences can determine whether genes are ‘switched off’ or ‘switched on’. It may well be that our genetic make-up tilts us in certain directions in all kinds of ways, but as soon as we are born, our biology interacts with the culture we’re born into – the social messages we receive, our experiences, and the ways we make sense of them – in all kinds of ways. This make it impossible to tease out what is ‘nature’ and what is ‘nurture’. It leaves each individual with a unique constellation that makes up their own particularly sexuality.
3. The Surrey psychologist Peter Hegarty has found that believing in a biological basis of sexuality does not make people less homophobic, so arguing for LGBT rights on this basis is unlikely to work.

Being LGBT is not only okay if it is ‘natural’ or genetic to be so, it is okay regardless of why a person is LGBT, and to suggest otherwise is to buy into some pretty troubling assumptions.

Why does the focus on the search for the “gay gene” let down bi people in particular?

A lot of the people who argue for a gay gene do so on the basis that sexuality is binary (people are either gay or they are straight). For example the authors of the book Born Gay made exactly this point, and it is part of the reason that there has been a lot of research suggesting that bisexual people don’t really exist (which even the researchers who conducted that research now dispute).

So the search for a gay gene is implicated in bisexual erasure, which we know to be a big part of why bisexual people experience even higher levels of mental health problems than lesbian and gay people.

An alternative model of human sexuality is that, as with most aspects of human experience, it is on more of a continuum. The Kinsey scale is one (albeit over-simplified) example of such a model.

The idea that sexuality and gender are diverse and fluid has a lot more room in it for bisexuality and for all the other people who don’t experience themselves in a binary manner, or don’t experience their sexuality as being all about the gender they’re attracted to. Suddenly instead of there being a small percentage of LGBT people, we can see that people as a whole are gender and sexually diverse, and that at least a third of people experience their sexual and/or gender as somehow beyond the binary.

Might there be such thing as a “bi gene”? Would looking for that too make things more fair?

As with the gay gene it would be very unlikely that there was a single gene for bisexuality, and also given the biopsychosocial nature of sexuality, I would see it as rather problematic to just focus on the biological part. There’s something political about all this research which focuses on genes and on brains (most of which is far more funded than other kinds of research). It seems to be based on the assumption that we need to prove that we are real in order to be treated fairly. And it is based on the assumption that we need to explain why people are gay or bisexual, in a way that we never do in relation to heterosexuality.

I’m not saying that we should never research the biological elements of human experience. It is certainly part of the picture. But we do need to consider why we focus on it to the exclusion of other elements.

Sexuality is diverse thing. We are attracted to all different kinds of people (not just on the basis of gender), we enjoy a wide variety of sexual practices, we take on different roles, we have different fantasies. Perhaps instead of focusing on how to explain one small aspect of human sexuality, we could expand out to capture the full diversity of it in a way that might really let people know that their sexuality was just as acceptable as anybody else’s.

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What first drew you to focus on academic research into bisexuality?

A combination of things really. From a research point of view I was always interested in people whose identities were outside the mainstream in some way and what that experience was like. I was engaged with bisexual communities myself so that seemed an obvious place to study.

As I got more involved with bisexual activism I realised how invisible bisexuality was, and how research was needed to increase awareness of the issues faced by bisexual people. That was the thinking behind setting up BiUK (an organisation for bringing together bisexual research and activism), the BiReCon conference, and the Bisexuality Report.

Finally, as I’ve studied these areas, I’ve become particularly intrigued how wider culture often sees things in binary ways (e.g. women and men, gay and straight) so my research around sexuality, gender and relationships has focused more on how these things can challenge such binaries.

How do you feel about current bi visibility/portrayal in media?

Generally speaking this remains a big issue. A lot of people still don’t regard anything other than gay/straight as viable identity terms to use, despite being attracted to more than one gender. I think that is in large part to do with the fact that there are so few representations of bisexual people around them.

People often assume that bisexuality is rare because few people they know are out as bisexual, but statistics suggest that bisexuality is more common than being lesbian or gay. It is just that people are far less comfortable being out about it due to the stigma they face if they are (often from straight and gay/lesbian people). So there is a vicious cycle of invisibility.

There have been a few more recent portrayals of bisexual people, such as Captain Jack in Dr.Who/Torchwood, Ralph Fienne’s concierge in The Grand Budapest Hotel movie, or Piper Chapman in Orange is the New Black. The word “bisexual” is very rarely used to describe any of these characters but at least they are fairly positive portrayals of people who are attracted to more than one gender.

How do you feel about the difference between how bi men and bi women are perceived or portrayed, both in the media and by the “(wo)man” on the street?

We still have quite a gap in this area. Both bisexual women and men are often portrayed as both promiscuous and untrustworthy, with suspicion over whether they are “really” bisexual. But bisexual men are often assumed to be “really” gay, and there has been more suspicion over whether male bisexuality exists at all than female bisexuality. Bisexual women are often assumed to be “bi-curious” and mostly interested in men, and are often presented as hypersexual and titillating to straight men. Some researchers have pointed out the misogyny in the assumption that everybody will really be more sexually interested in men!

There are also increasing numbers of people experiencing themselves as non-binary in terms of both their sexuality (e.g. bisexual, pansexual, or queer) and their gender (e.g. genderqueer, gender fluid, or bigender). There are very few portrayals of this in the media so far, but the Facebook recognition of multiple genders suggests that this will probably be something that is talked about a lot more in the coming years, as it challenges the idea that sexuality and gender are binary.

How do you feel about the state of bi activism worldwide at the moment?

There is some amazing stuff happening in bi activism globally, and the movement is definitely in a pretty healthy state I would say. I’m not an expert in international bi movements, but Surya Monro (an academic up in Huddersfield) is currently researching this area and finding great examples of bisexual activism across different cultures which also engages in intersectional issues (such as anti racism, class politics, trans politics, etc). The UK and US bi movements have a lot to learn from other movements worldwide I think.

A brilliant example is Shiri Eisner who wrote the book Bi: Notes for a bisexual revolution* which links bisexual activism to feminism, trans activism, anti racism, and the conflict in Israel/Occupied Palestine.

I’m also pleased that the BiReCon conference that we set up in the UK, with the idea of bringing toether academics/researchers together with activists, community members, and relevant organisations, has been taken up internationally. There has been a European BiReCon and a US BiReCon already as well as the international BiReCon in London 2010.

How does it make you feel that we still have even high profile LGBT groups seemingly forgetting the “b”?

Sometimes it feels pretty dispiriting and exhausting. I move between spaces where everybody gets the importance of the B in LGBT and talks about “homophobia, biphobia and transphobia”, to other spaces where people still question the existence of bisexuality or regard it as a minority within a minority which is fine to include in only a tokenistic manner. “B-no” is a great phrase to capture the fact that so many groups and events are “bisexual in name only”.

When this is pointed out people are often a little embarrassed, or just shrug it off or joke about attempts to make them properly bi-inclusive, but it’s important to remember that we’re talking about a group of people who have higher rates of mental health problems, suicide, and domestic violence than either heterosexual, or lesbian and gay people. This invisibility takes a real toll on people’s lives, and is even putting lives at risk.

Labelling is a hugely tricky issue when discussing gender and sexuality, with many vehemently opposed to the “bisexual” label. What are your thoughts on how to get round this? We try our best but here at Biscuit we’re still well aware that, usually for the sake of brevity, we use cis pronouns and refer to bisexuality rather than pan/ambi/omnisexuality etc most of the time – and we are not at all alone in that as a “bi” organisation!

I generally embrace the moves towards a multiplicity of labels for sexuality and gender, including those who prefer not to label these things. Recent studies of young people, like the Metro Youth Chances Survey, suggest that more and more people are using terms beyond the ‘LGBT’ acronym to describe their sexuality and gender, and it is important to respect that. Also, the proliferation of terms is helpful in demonstrating that both sexuality and gender are not binary, and that everybody experiences them in different ways.

Obviously though this does raise challenges for LGBT movements and publications. BiUK still uses the term “bisexual” (for attraction to more than one gender) as this is well-understood by the people and groups that we are trying to train (for example). But it is important also to consider non-binary sexualities as a whole too, as there are many similar issues faced by all whose attraction is either not based on gender, or to more than one gender.

Regarding pronouns the way to go is to use people’s preferred pronouns and to ask if unsure. Again I think the move towards checking out preferred pronouns is a great way of signalling awareness that people experience gender in a multiplicity of ways.

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