New Book Tells Bisexual Men's Stories

Submitted by Matt on Sun, 2014-10-26 03:39

Article here. Bisexuality is very much in vogue these days, at least in much of the US and Europe -- if you're female. Young women can make out publicly in clubs and bars or on the street, hold hands, hug and kiss, date boys, girls, or both, all without fear of having the living $hit kicked out of them by either men or women. Men, on the other hand, dare not hold hands in public without fear of getting beaten senseless by a bunch of homophobic bigots (of either or both sexes) except in just a few places (at least here in the US). As for visibility in the media as characters on contemporary TV shows, gay/bi women substantially outnumber gay/bi men, much less have much visibility generally even within LGBT-oriented organizations. So it's good to see a book like this come out (as it were). Excerpt:

'The Bisexual Resource Center has released a new collection of stories highlighting  the voices of 63 cisgender and transgender bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, and sexually fluid men from countries all around the world. Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men includes short fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, personal narratives, critical essays, and visual art features meant to recognize the diversity of the bisexual male population.

The 300-page anthology is meant to be a resource to those seeking to understand male bisexuality. “This is an important book for lesbians, gays, and heterosexuals because it provides them with examples of bisexual male personhood from the perspective of bisexual men,” says Dr. Herukhuti (H. Sharif Williams), a bisexual activist and coeditor. “If you want to know what it means to be a bisexual man, what bisexual men look like, how bisexual men experience love and life, then let them tell you through the pages of this anthology in their own voices.”'

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That'd be: http://www.therainbowtimesmass.com/2014/09/30/bisexual-men-fight-visibility/. At the moment it's "Awaiting moderation", so we'll see if they let it through. In case they don't, well, here it be:

'Dr. Herukhuti's comments about how male bisexuality doesn't titillate heterosexual men's sexual fantasies and thus is a lot less likely to be accepted in media or given attention is only partially true.  The average viewer of TV shows, esp. prime-time dramas, is not just female but overwhelmingly female.  Yet, bi and gay female characters are a lot more likely to be represented therein than gay or bi male ones.  The producers know the demographic as do the networks.  (It's urban females aged 18-35.)  You need only watch the ads to see who the viewers are.  Ads for bras, skin cream, feminine hygiene products, "soccer mom" vans, etc., pretty much give it away.  So it isn't straight men's viewership driving the character dev't or personalities thereof, it's female viewership, straight or otherwise.  Best explanation I can think of is that the minority sexual orientation of one or more of the characters on a show adds some drama/suspense by opening plot line  opportunities that an all-heterosexual character lineup wouldn't provide.  In addition, it's a way to increase the appeal to a broader subsection of the target demographic (gay/bi 18-35 YO urban females) and so long as it doesn't occupy too much of the plot line, fine.  But why only have gay/bi women?

Ah-ha.  That is because gay/bi men don't hold any erotic titillation value for the typical woman, whether she is straight, gay, bi, or something else.  Most women of any persuasion find the idea of men engaged in sexual or erotic behavior at least unappealing and at most revolting.  Only a very small number of women as a percentage of the adult female pop'n find the idea of men having sex with men appealing erotically.  And, men as characters on a TV series who are unavailable as sexual or romantic interests to the female characters doesn't appeal to female viewers, either.  The goal of TV shows is to sell airtime to advertisers.  To do this, you need viewership.  You get that by finding a way to get ppl to watch faithfully the TV series in question.  The best way to do this is to create characters with which they identify, projecting their own identities onto the characters.  In short, you find a way to mass-hypnotize millions of viewers into thinking if even for a brief time that what they're seeing is 1) real and 2) relevant to their lives.  Insidious, but highly effective.  Now, do millions of 18-35 YO urban females want to watch TV shows about groups of men and women wherein, for example, of 10 regular characters, 5 are men and 5 are women, but one man is gay and so inaccessible to any of the women relationship-drama-wise, and another is bi so that now a female character involved with him has to worry not just abt another woman nabbing him from her, but also possibly a man?  Yeah, young urban women'll just LOVE that show!  Try re-arranging the gender dist'n and in both cases, you've lost the demographic, too.  Too many women take the "fun" out of it for the ladies, since they will have a much harder time keeping the attention of the fewer men.  But even worse, the eye candy factor for the female viewers is undercut.  Now, increase the men relative to the women and the demographic is unhappy about how in the undoubtedly professional env. the drama is set in, the show is depicting a "male-dominated" workplace.  Only way to remove that complaint is for the female characters to p-whip/humiliate the male ones, and then the female viewership will again lose interest as gee, how can you respect a man who's been p-whipped/humiliated by women like that?

See the no-win situation here?  Lacking a substantial, money-making motive to add gay/bi men to the cast of characters in any of these prime time drama shows whose principle audience/target demographic is 18-35 YO urban females, you just won't see them.

Now if chicks got turned on by guys making out and so on, it'd be a whole different story. ;)'

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Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2014-10-27 02:56

10/28 Update: Well, surprise, surprise, as America's favorite comedic Marine character of decades past used to say. Looks like they decided to post it in all its politically incorrect glory after all. Maybe the mod was just out yesterday. That'll teach me to jump willy-nilly* to conclusions, won't it? (Yeah, right, if I haven't learned to be less jaded and hard-nosed by now... ;) )

* "willy-nilly"... I have to use that more in formal writing as well as casual conversations. In fact, I hope one day to see a new special kind of law covering something less serious than "disorderly conduct" but which still fish face-slaps something needing to be stopped or at least addressed by The Man. Such a law could be named, I dunno, "Carrying on in public, acting the fool, raising a ruckus, and otherwise bouncing around willy-nilly until bystanders had quite enough of you and called the cops". Yeah, long name for a law. But it'd be a lot of fun telling people why you were busted for that. ("Disorderly conduct" makes it sound like you were actually doing something wrong!)

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... they didn't approve it. Funny, that. Not even a comment in support in some way was allowed to appear. Why? Possibly because it told it like it is. But b/c, perhaps, I had the temerity to suggest there may be a motivation around the relative dearth of bi male TV characters for some reason other than that straight male viewers aren't titillated by watching 2 guys swap spit as opposed to 2 girls. To suggest perhaps that the viewership for prime time dramas would much rather watch hunky straight guys stumble through a landscape of romantically ambivalent fields whose terrain is re-arranged at will by high-achieving super-women than bi or gay guys pay more attention to the copier repairman and supply ice cream and red wine to soothe the female characters' heartaches over failed love affairs with straight men who get only 5-10 mins. of scene time every 2 weeks may be just too much to bear!

Ahh, but to be PC and keep what allies you believe you have, you dare not allow for anything that could *offend* them. Too bad. It's such an approach which frequently dooms any cause. After all, were Adams, Jefferson, or Susan B Anthony afraid of *offending* even their friendly associates with their ideas about things? No. "Well-behaved _____ rarely make history." Just fill it in with whatever you call yourself and use/enjoy your new-found freedom. :)

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Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2014-10-27 23:51