I wrote last week about this University of Michigan study about, ugh, bisexuality and risk taking that just gave me a bad feeling; somewhat predictably, that study has gotten traction in the press and taken over my Google Alerts for bi stuff (it’s all either that or reactions to that weird New York Times about Taylor Swift and queerness that I will hopefully be able to muster the energy to write about soon), and… it is not doing much to improve my mood, I will tell you that.
There’s a couple things that are bugging me. First and foremost, there’s just the fact that any of this is being taken seriously — that anyone cares about a study that so obviously seems like junk science that offers zero useful information to anyone (least of all bisexuals) that they’re giving it press; even press that critically engages with the study is giving it legitimacy. (Though I fault the study’s funders and Science Advances even more for that problem, they’re the ones who enabled it to be put out into the world!).
But there’s also a secondary problem which I think is best illustrated by the headline Futurism chose for their write up of the study and the backlash it has provoked:
CONTROVERSIAL NEW RESEARCH FIND THAT BISEXUALS ARE A BUNCH OF RASCALS
I am just so irritated by that headline. I don’t know the background of the person who wrote it, but if they’re not bisexual, I just want to yell at them that they don’t know me and don’t get to talk about my community like that; and if they are bisexual, I want to yell at them that this is not the kind of joke you make on the public stage, in front of all the normals.
And maybe that seems like an overreaction, but for me it’s rooted in the fact that, you know, there really is crucial research that needs to be done about bisexuals. More than that, there are serious conversations that are worth having about the social position of bisexuality: about how being attracted to multiple genders sets you up to be ostracized, isolated, and with access to fewer resources; how it makes you vulnerable in so many ways that simply do not get discussed in any meaningful way.
This broad reaction to this study — which seems to largely be either people breathlessly buying into its claims that bisexual men are slutty sluts having a bunch of babies, or jokingly rolling their eyes at it in a way that still kinda turns bisexuality into a joke — it’s just not helping anyone. It’s not highlighting the issues that actually affect bisexuals, it’s not normalizing bisexuality, it’s not doing anything that pushes the conversation forward.
It’s just further positioning us as the freaks, the weirdos, the medical mystery. And the fact that so few people even seem to see that… I mean, like I said. It’s putting me in a bad mood.
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