Not that kind of bisexual
So I try to be out in the classroom. I try to make sure my examples involve male and female partners. And though I don’t talk much about my personal life, I think it’s important for a wide range of reasons, given the world we live in, that my students know I am a bisexual. But these days I am encountering an interesting generation gap as my use of the word "bisexual" doesn’t match up so well with the word as it’s used by my students. If my student newspaper’s sex survey is to be believed fully 25% of my female students count themselves as "bi." Does this mean that 1/4 of my female students have relationships with other women? Sadly no. Would that it were so. The student facebook interest groups include the following when you search for "bisexuality":
- A woman is like spaghetti - they’re all straight until you
get them wet …
- A straight girl is just a sober bisexual
Now I’m no model of perfection here says the married (to a man) with 3 kids bisexual…maybe it’s a case of people in their yellow brick houses shouldn’t throw stones! But my bisexuality is more than a party trick, more than a taste I indulge in bars when drunk. Certainly it’s not something I do to impress or turn on straight men. And part of me really hopes that it is more than that for these young women too. We should all resist divisions among us and be wary whenever we want to say "I’m not that sort of queer." So as much as I think I am not that kind of bisexual, I try not to ever say it. People who would judge my sex life as sinful and evil would certainly lump them in with me. And I can’t regret the freedom these young women have to experiment, who knows what they will discover. I can wish it were there for the young men too. I don’t hear much talk of young men making out in bars to impress the girls. That might be fun but from what I can tell it isn’t happening. Soon maybe.
