Celebrities like Anna Paquin and Margaret Cho are open about their bisexuality, but where are the bi men?
With the exception of Alan Cumming, bi guys seem to be few and far between, and Washington Post writer and social media producer (and bi guy) Ryan Carey-Mahoney wants to know why. He writes:
In the 20-odd years before I came out as bisexual, I was a very lost soul. My only exposure to bisexuality was the promiscuous partygoer or the flirty college girl tropes you see in movies. I viewed it as a women’s thing, and, in my warped mind, any man identifying as bisexual was just lying to himself about being gay.
Oh, how blind I was. Now, having been out for about two years, I know that there’s no shame in who I am: Hey, I’m just RCM and I’m attracted to more than one gender. Big whoop! But coming out is just the beginning. It’s the next phase that seems harder — and I’m still searching for wiser bi men to serve as role models.
He’s right. RCM points to some stats that prove that, yes, bisexuals exist…and their numbers are going up. And we’ve all been reminded on multiple occasions that “straight” guys experimenting with their bi side is becoming more common.
Related: “Straight” Guys Are Having More Bisexual Sex Than Ever Before, Study Finds
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Still, he laments the lack of prominent bisexual male role models and the stereotypes that come with being bi:
Bisexual people are often stereotyped as promiscuous. If you’re a bi man, for example, many in the gay and straight communities will say you’re actually gay. And if you’re a bi woman, it’s assumed that you’re experimenting with your sexuality and will eventually end up with a man.
And, he eventually figures out that what he’s looking for may be staring at him in the mirror:
In my short time being out and proud, I’ve seen some of these moments myself. Close friends responded to my coming out with their own; others thanked me for speaking up. One stranger even made me the first person they ever told. It’s funny. While I was looking for a role model, I realized: I’m slowly becoming one.
Bi guys: they’re not just in porn anymore!
But seriously, we all have our biases about bi guys, whether fetishizing them via porn or excluding them from our dating pools (this writer personally had a no bi guys policy back in his single days), but more visibility definitely helps.
More out and proud bi guys will definitely help to change minds in the future!
Related: Is It Harder To Be Bisexual Than Gay? These Guys Think So
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
Ohhhhhh this ain’t gonna end well
Billy Budd
Only 3-10 percent of guys are totally gay. But a large portion of heterosexual guys are potentially bisexual and would indeed turn bisexual if the environment allowed. Bisexuality is INDEED the future.
DCguy
Of course it seems like they don’t exist, all the blog sites keep running stories about guys who sleep with guys and girls and calling them “Heteroflexible”.
So even when there ARE bisexuals in the story, the blog sites are relabeling them with a much more straight friendly title, after all, it has the word “Hetero” in it.
etseq
After reading this guys op-ed in USA Today where he used his position as “social media promoter” to pen a “coming out” story that is both tragic and manipulative. The article starts off like a PR fluff piece promoting Caitlyn Jenner’s reality TV train wreck but half way through he uses it to “come out” as self-loathing closet case. The bulk of the article relates how disgusted he was after hooking up with a guy and then implies he is back to dating girls while he “works on his issues”! Typical self-loather…
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/07/23/caitlyn-jenner-lgbt-coming-out/30484849/
bi_guy_09
It’s funny to me how any gay man could have a bias against a bisexual guy..question his sexuality or anything like that. We call ourselves the LGBT(etc.) community, and yet you ostracize one of its sub communities? Refuse to date or otherwise? Makes no sense (I’m talking to you Rob Smith). Not fully embracing Bisexuals makes it harder for the completely Hetero population to take any of us seriously. I realize that it might be a head scratcher for some of you, but we EXIST. another news flash: We’re not gay. As in, we desire, lust, fuck, & love other genders. It doesn’t make us confused. We know exactly what we want when we lay our eyes on it. Doesn’t make us sluts, either. Wanting something doesn’t mean we have to have it. I guess, you’re not required to understand, but you are required to acknowledge it and respect it, just like you ask of so many others to do for you.
etseq
@Billy Budd: Keep telling yourself this…Someone should do an academic study on Queerty’s resident trolls – it would be fascinating.
etseq
@bi_guy_09: Sorry but why do gay men have to “respect” heterosexuality? Is it not privileged enough all ready? Why do you need gay men to validate your need to extoll the virtues of men having sex with women? Of course we know that you exist – we have heard this all of lives from society so why would we want anything to do with men who think they are somehow entitled to sex from us while basically living life enjoying the privileges of heterosexuality without respecting the sacrifices gay men have made to carve out a tiny sliver of society that doesn’t privilege heterosexuality? Attacking gay men isn’t going to help your cause – attack homophobia and heterosexism and show your solidarity to gay men rather than licking the boots of your oppressors…
Billy Budd
@etseq: I am thinking of writing an academic study on biased views on Blogs, bisexual shaming, prejudice inside the gay community and general stupidity.
DCguy
@Billy Budd:
And Boobs, don’t forget to mention Boobs, because I hear that all of the “Hetero Flexible” guys LOVE them! 😉
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
I’m sexually hypnotised by large bouncing breasts and got the gif collection to prove it. But completely turned off by women’s faces. I don’t even know how you categorise that. Except as some kind of sexual wiring fuckup. Oh well
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
@PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID: Adittionally, I might or might not cop to downloading an oiled-up big butt bitches DVD…with the same aforementioned disclaimer
I know it’s terribly off message but I’ll admit I’m confused as fuck sexually and always have been. Sometimes I like that very quality. Oftentimes though I do not. It can be a dark place to find yourself unrelatable . Oh fuck I feel a Tumblr coming..I …must..resist…
Hussain-TheCanadian
I think many of us are skeptical about Bisexuality because many of us used it when we were in the closed, I know I did. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist because logically it has to since we see it in nature, and those of use who believe in God know that God’s variety in creation is a must.
@PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID: eeeew why? When I look at breasts I remember the milk bags that we sell here.
Hussain-TheCanadian
@DCguy: LOOOOL now that’s funny!
inbama
@bi_guy_09:
“We call ourselves the LGBT…”
Actually, I don’t.
Being a letter is dehumanizing.
I am just gay – which makes my only natural allies lesbians.
You can sort yourself out.
If you want to call Oscar Wilde “bisexual” as he managed to father some children, but then discovered young men and never looked back, take the ego-boost.
And if you enjoy speaking trans-tongue with words like “cisgender” and “assigned at birth,” and if you want to call lesbians who won’t fellate transwomen “transphobic,” more power to you.
If you want to spend political capital on the right of gender-fluids to demand their own individual pronouns like “it,’ “hen” and “they,” then bless your heart.
This ridiculous string of letters has become an anti-gay and lesbian movement that grows more lunatic by the day.
I am sick of hearing what villains we are, and I want no part of it.
Enjoy being a “B.”
kent25
You Speak The TRUTH
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
@Hussain-TheCanadian: The more pressing enquiry is: you sell milk in bags!??? What kind of devil fuckery???? I always suspected something untoward and twisted lurking behind your nation’s nice guy image *shudder*
Paco
They are already standing up. They call themselves “straight” or “heteroflexible” while regularly having homosexual sex. They claim it is just to get off and that there is no attraction or desire. But with female strippers, prostitutes, and home wreckers being a common and VERY popular outlet for truly heterosexual men who just want to get off, we know the truth about them, even if they and the gay men they have sex with won’t admit it.
The funny thing is, many gay men will reject the openly bi guy, but will become obsessed with and lust after the closeted bisexual guy that is calling himself straight or heteroflexible. Strange mental gymnastics happening there.
Stop encouraging the closet cases to stay in the closet and maybe more will openly stand up to be counted.
Hussain-TheCanadian
@PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID: Yes……………………..Yes we do……………I don’t know why, but I guess some farmer back in the day thought it was a good way to help the environment…….and possibly its a low cost vs the carton (which we do have too)…………..please don’t ask any more questions about this topic its supposed to be a secret 😉
So………………………………….you were saying something about boobs?
OzJosh
Where are all the bi men, you ask? Why they’re everywhere – on Craigslist and Grindr and every other hook-up app. Of course, if you get to know these bi men you’ll generally find that they almost exclusively have sex with men, and they’re still clinging to that girl they dated back in high-school or the drunk woman they once slept with at an office party as evidence of swinging both ways. Then there are are those bi married men who, if you ever get to know them well enough to have an honest conversation, will confess that they have sex with their wives once or twice a year (or after ten years of marriage not at all), but sometimes devote hours of every day to cruising for sex with men, either online or at beats. Yes, bi men are everywhere. Oh, and Alan Cumming is married to a man, after several successive relationships with men. And that relationship with a woman was pre-coming out as, ahem, “bi”. A common, pretty much universal pattern, I think you’ll find. Just sayin’.
Pistolo
I think bisexuals just need to embrace the term “bisexual” because of insecurity over how they’ll be perceived or what people will read into about their relationships. This bothers me because sometimes they’ll go down the route of saying they’re gay which is deceptive and misleading to gay people who admire them OR they’ll say they refuse labels- which is just offensive to anybody who is OK identifying with a specific term (most people, really).
I looked up to Bryan Singer as a gay person and, it turns out, he’s dating women and having sex with women and having babies with women. The press could’ve easily turned him into a yestergay or someone who CHOSE to be straight since he said he was gay for years- a very dangerous concept to perpetuate. It turns out he’s bisexual, which is fine, but I thought it was really irresponsible of him to exploit the term “gay” because he didn’t want to have to explain himself just SLIGHTLY.
If you’re bi, for gods sake, FKING say it.
Brian
Men are not rewarded for their bisexuality. In fact, they are punished for it by women. That’s why men hide it.
Women, on the other hand, are rewarded for their bisexuality even if it’s fake. It’s a form of female prostitution that is always rewarded by men.
etseq
@Pistolo: Bryan Singer can claim all he wants but that is just typical hollywood PR BS and the woman he is having a child with is basically a surrogate. Don’t believe the hype…
crumb bum
@OzJosh @Pistolo: I’d like you to read each other’s comments.
Brian
I disapprove of the word “bisexual”. It falsely suggests that one’s sexual feelings are equally divided in strength and frequency between the two sexes. It also falsely suggests that one is interested in having sex with men and women at the same time. These are not correct definitions.
.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
@Hussain-TheCanadian: My udders are at your disposal
Paco
@Brian: the definition of bisexual is being sexually attracted to both men and women.
There is nothing in the definition of bisexual suggesting an equal attraction to both sexes or having sex with both sexes at the same time. You are corrupting the definition with your own sh!t.
Sansacro
@Brian: Completely agree. Bisexual men, or, more accurately, men sexually attracted to both men and women, identify as straight because they can and they loose none of their social status. Men who identify as bisexual are usually gay, in my experience. If a man can have a satisfactory sexual relationship with a woman there is nothing for him to gain about owning up to, or even exploring, his attraction to men (unless he is drunk and, then, pretends it never happened). As male-male sex becomes less stigmatized, more straight-identified bisexual men will explore their homosexual impulses, but there is still nothing for them to gain socially by identifying as bi and much for them to loose.
Brian
@Sansacro: So true. Men are punished if they say they are bisexual. It’s women who punish them because a woman always feels extra-threatened by a man who can discern amongst men in addition to being able to discern amongst women.
Many people don’t want to admit that women have this nasty, homophobic side. Liberal women are probably the worst because their feminism makes them even more hostile to men in general.
crumb bum
@Sansacro: Wow. Just wow. You assume that every – or almost every – bi guy either is super invested in heteronormativity or is gay, and then you have the gall to talk about stigma. How’s that for stigma?
And then there’s this little gem:
“If a man can have a satisfactory sexual relationship with a woman there is nothing for him to gain about owning up to, or even exploring, his attraction to men (unless he is drunk and, then, pretends it never happened).”
How would you know what a bi man has to gain by exploring his attractions? Say, self-knowledge and the ability to be at peace with himself? You paint bi men as either liars who are really gay or closet cases desperately clinging to hetero privilege – as if we can’t possible benefit from living openly and honestly. Yeah, that’s only for gay people. Sure.
Maybe – if you listened to what bi people have been saying *forever* – you might get an inkling that part of the struggle we face is that a subset of gay people are regularly super shitty to us by, for instance, denying our existence or painting us as betrayers of queerdom. I’m not walking around spouting stereotypes about gay men, so why do you think it’s okay to make these sweeping comments about a population you clearly don’t know very well?
Masc Pride
I think the Hollywood coming out train has pretty much come to a complete halt. It’s not trendy anymore. It doesn’t offer the same pat on the back celebs used to get. It won’t be the story of the day like it used to be. I think this is all a good thing because it shows a change in attitude and it also shows a lot of the public coming outs were mostly about attention.
There are more visible bisexual females because bisexuality in women is much less taboo and is almost encouraged in society, particularly if it’s male-friendly. If we saw the same social acceptance for bisexual men, we would see more bisexual men.
Brian
@Masc Pride: Keep in mind that women who say they are bisexual are often doing it to obtain the approval of sleazy straight guys. These women are pathetic approval seekers who fake it.
crumb bum
@Brian: JFC, dude. This is like biphobia 101.
crumb bum
@Brian: What’s next? “And the rest can’t make up their minds, amirite?” Ugh.
If you want to talk about pathetic, let’s look at blindly trotting out tired stereotypes of bi people as if you know what you’re talking about.
kzen64
At 51, I have nothing to gain or lose by coming out as bisexual. First, it’s not really an issue, even here in Central Indiana. No forms to fill out, no extra check boxes. A coworker was objecting to my “living with a man.” My boss and HR took care of it, lest they lose me. There are dumb hicks who stare at the two of us when we are together out in public. To anyone looking at us I’m sure they think we are just a gay couple. Not like I’m going to go correct their perceptions. If it comes up, I state that I’m bisexual.
My fiance and I are both bisexual males. We do not have an open relationship currently. If we do in the future, we will be looking at threesomes with either men or women. We both also believe in polyamory, and I believe if we found the right woman, one we both loved, we would have her in the relationship.
DMRX
@Paco: Re: Brian. Don’t feed the troll. He wouldn’t know logic of it slapped him in the face.
Jimmy98178
I’m standing up so everyone can see there’s another straight guy who loves having sex with men. I’ve been reading what others have written regarding this question of Where are these bisexual men? I’ll just speak about myself. The reason you can’t see me is that my sexual relationships with men are private and only our business. I’m breaking that cover of secrecy by not using anything to ID me on this blog. If no-one knows about my behavior then there’s no need for labels. I don’t really even refer to myself as bisexual, who would I tell it to anyway?. What our open society will see is that I’m a happily married man with children, engaged in my community as a professional person. Looking at me in my public life you’s say I’m straight. I feel straight because I’ve made a public lifetime commitment to my wife (a woman). I’ve taken vows to be faithful to her so I don’t have sex with other women.
I want to be clear about the fact I’ve hidden my sexual relations with men. There’s no emotional involvement (except for friendship and respect), not going steady or getting married to these men, no rings, no pictures, no acknowledgements. It’s just my desires for m2m sex. I’m in a foxhole with these desires and I can’t be seen, no witnesses, no discussions, no proof, no labels. You may think I’ve constructed a meaningless existence based on a denial and bullshit. But you’re wrong and you should sit in on my sex with a man sometime. You’d see feelings, real risk, genuine connections, very human exposure of my desires, tenderness, intimacy and a very loving way.
I’m explaining my behavior as the new social norm of today. If I were to discuss this reality with my family or friends I’d have to provide information and explanations, time lines and all that one needs to disclose in our open society. Not at all like when I first meet a man for sex, we don’t have labels or explanations or any details regarding our position, no past, no other guys. Just him and me and what we want from and for each other right then and there.
The reality of two men opening up to each other with their lustful desires and only sharing the pleasures they each want. It’s the only part that I want to have in my private sexual life. As I read what other have written here in this blog there are many definitions, explanations and even some accusations. I can only relate to this blog in very small ways. That’s why you’re asked the question, where are these men. Answer: they’re here and there, hidden away so they don’t have to spend their time making it easy for you. This goes against the new norm of self exposure and the use of a social system we have created. The modern heterosexual man of today prefers to be separate, self-defined and not at all interested in doing what the gay men of America have had to do. By proclaiming their public love and demonstrating to the rest of us that they are legitimate and real. Gays have had a very tough road in America. In contrast the ‘bisexual man’ with his heterosexual armor can simply sidestep what the Gays have endured. Honestly that’s a big part of why the bisexual man of today is growing in numbers. We don’t need to go public, there is no benefit to do so. I’m perfectly happy down inside of my foxhole.
kent25
I tell them all the time just stay in the closet, no one need to know you like to get your freak on. It’s all about sex and nothing more. They have grindr for men like you. You know DOWNLOW LMAO