Why You Should Care about Bisexuality (Even If You’re a Tory)

Considering that I was able to non-sexually share a bed with someone and not make a big deal about it when I was still in high school, I was shocked to learn last week that such a big fuss had been made of William Hague's sleeping arrangements that, among other things, a job's been lost and a couple have had their many miscarriages made a public matter in the desperate attempt to dispel "gay rumours."

I can't help but think how different the situation would've been had Christopher Myers' part in this sordid little drama been played by a woman instead.  One expects that Hague would not share a hotel room with a female employee, but assuming similarly silly and spurious "evidence" could be used to fuel the rumours (as indeed it was in this case, with much trumpeting of the two of them walking near each other, in public, smiling even, while photographs were being taken...), it would still be a very different kind of story.

Politicians are almost expected to have affairs with young beautiful assistants and, though no one expects better of them, the press never fail to report breathlessly on the implications of such behaviour to the politician's marriage, and thus to his (it always seems to be a "him", isn't it?) supposed values and morals on which we are meant to believe he won his position in the first place.

But this time, there's a twist to the tale: it's not just that Hague's family values are being threatened by his potential unfaithfulness, it's that they're also threatened by homosexuality.  These are gay rumours, not adulterous rumours or anything else.  That Hague felt compelled to share the personal and surely painful details of his wife's miscarriages would never have happened if he'd been accused of your good old-fashioned heterosexual dalliance.  Only being accused of gayness could force such a justification of lack of ability to be fruitful and multiply.  I think that's terribly sad in many ways -- a couple's decisions and circumstances around parenting should be treated with much more discretion than they are, for one thing -- but a big one, it strikes me, is that this is yet another way our culture harms us by thinking of attraction as a binary thing.

The implicit reasoning goes something like "If Hague's shagged this young man, that means he's gay.  And if he's gay, that means his marriage must be at best in tatters and at worst a lie all along...  Depending on whether he turned gay just now, or has been all along."

The notion that a person's sexual attraction could be any more complicated than this is usually nothing more than something I hear my fellow bisexuals tell each other.  We are very much preaching to the choir, having all experienced ourselves, in some way or another, an attraction that defies this simple dichotomy.

But because bisexuals are an oppressed minority within the oppressed minority we call "the LGBT community," we do sometimes have to remind ourselves of these things to gird our loins against those who would deny our very existence (you'd be surprised the number of people who see the, literal or metaphorical, banner we march under and tell us they don't believe bisexuals are real! we still seem to have no problem interacting with everyday objects so if we're not real we're certainly defying several laws of physics!).

If it could be acknowledged that William Hague, or any person, could fancy, shag, have relationships with, or otherwise be It's-Complicated with a man without it necessarily signifying anything about his ability to fancy, shag, have relationships etc. with a woman... we'd all be better off.  Even the Tories!  Espeically the Tories, if this damages Hague's position for them.

You don't have to be queer to be affected by queer activism, awareness, campaigns or rights.

I'm not saying there'd be no rumours to dispel, no scandal.  But I can't stop thinking of the surely painful admissions of miscarriages, an experience bad enough on its own, all in the name of justifying one's procreative interests.  To expect all and only straight couples to have children is another way in which this attraction-binary assumption harms us all: gay, straight, bisexual, asexual or unwilling to label themselves; of any gender or none; parents, childless and child-free alike.

You don't have to be queer to be affected by queer activism, awareness, campaigns or rights.

Attitudes toward sexual minorities have progressed a fair bit in this country, but that's easiy to say when homosexuality's legalisation is still short of the half-century mark.  Some great obvious victories have been won in the continuing push for equality -- if watching my fellow Americans struggle for gay marriage and some of the attendant rights that are already taken for granted here has taught me anything, it's that things have indeed improved here in the UK -- but some of the less obvious benefits will take a lot longer to percolate through the culture.

Sometimes it's hard to wait; I can't help but think how much better off we will all be once they do.