A young woman from Iowa isn’t sure what to make of her boyfriend who has taken a hankering to hot male models on Instagram, so she’s turning to advice guru Dear Abby for help.
The woman writes, “I am 19 and love my boyfriend a lot. He is very sweet and would do anything for me. However, I am beginning to think there may be someone else.”
The someone else, she says, is another guy.
“My boyfriend has become very secretive lately with his phone,” she continues, “and I’ve noticed he’s followed a lot of male modeling accounts on Instagram.”
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She wonders: “Should I confront him about it, or am I overthinking things?”
Related: Study finds ‘double discrimination’ and loneliness disproportionately affect bisexuals
In her response, Abby tells the young woman that she’s definitely not overthinking, and that her boyfriend may be trouble.
“Because you are having doubts about your boyfriend’s faithfulness, ask him why he has become secretive with his phone and why he is viewing male models on Instagram,” she says.
Abby continues: “Unless he’s trying to become a model, it is possible that he may be bisexual. If that’s the case–and you are correct that he would ‘do anything’ for you–he should level with you about it.”
Related: See what ‘Newsweek’ was writing about bisexuals back in 1995
OK, all that is fine. But it’s Abby’s post script that’s raising some eyebrows.
She writes: “P.S. If you have been having unprotected sex with this young man, I urge you to be tested for STDs as soon as possible.”
Is it just us, or did that last remark seem to come out of nowhere? After all, the woman didn’t mention anything about the couple’s sex life, or even that she suspected her boyfriend was hooking up with other people, she only said that he’s been surfing Instagram.
What do you think? Did Dear Abby just perpetuate biphobic stereotype? Or was she making a valid point? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Kieran
I think homophobia is very pervasive throughout our society. Nobody should be surprised that it often rears its ugly head in places where it shouldn’t be expected.
paul peniscocker
I agree with the author of the article. I have been working with AIDS charities for over 17 years. There still is this automatic jump to “fear of STDs” when discussing M on M sex. This was a extra mention which most likely wouldn’t have been added if it were about him talking to a bunch of female models. It’s not an intentional act, but many people still associate gay sex with disease. It’s part of the stigma about being gay, so it should be identified when it’s done. It doesn’t mean the straight person hates gays. The act of assuming the negative stereotype is homophobic. that doesn’t mean SHE is homophobic. Same as when you see someone associate a negative trait to a persons race. The comment is a racist comment, you shouldn’t jump immediately that the person IS 100% Racist.
You shouldn’t let comments like that slide. It’s not a Paula Dean plantation wedding though, so I think the quick little mention the author wrote is fine. I find this assumption to be more offensive than people saying “that’s gay” when they see something lame.
DarkZephyr
“Is it just us, or did that last remark seem to come out of nowhere? After all, the woman didn’t mention anything about the couple’s sex life, or even that she suspected her boyfriend was hooking up with other people, she only said that he’s been surfing Instagram.”
Actually, within the body of your own article you quote this:
“The woman writes, ‘I am 19 and love my boyfriend a lot. He is very sweet and would do anything for me. However, I am beginning to think there may be someone else.’ ”
I think its perfectly reasonable for Dear Abby to suggest that she gets tested if there “might be someone else”. Frankly, I think its a reasonable suggestion regardless. Isn’t that our own message to our own people, for pity’s sake? If sexually active, regular testing? Why get offended if heterosexuals are given the exact same message? C’mon now Queerty. This wasn’t an example of homophobia or biphobia. It was an example of wise advise that the girl really should take.
tnguy222
She is absolutely not out of line nor homophobic. In my experience, normally it is the bisexual closet cases who have unprotected sex, getting gangbanged by the whole gay rugby team (True story).
I think that they get entranced with all the excitement of dodging around, and get lured into having extremely dangerous and risky sex.
Kick his confused butt to the street; solidly bisexual men are not long-term dating potential.
Juanjo
I agree. I do not care what the sexual orientation of the person is, if they are sneaking around behind their partner’s back or potentially doing so, it is a fair thing to take precautions. I have seen far too many people caught unawares by that little issue.
CastleSF
tnguy, your story doesn’t seem to make much sense. I have almost no experience with bi guys but I would think that they are the more cautious type. They have a GF or a wife at home so they should be more discreet about what they are doing outside their relationship.
tnguy222
Castle, I think you are right in that bisexual men with wives/gfs are obsessed with hiding their philandering ways.
I think also that this pressure to obfuscate and lie constantly helps to drive dangerous and risky sexual behavior. Add in societal shame and personal guilt, and you have a rich breeding ground for self destructive behavior. I know that many of us engaged in more dangerous behavior when we were unable to live fully, freely, and comfortably in our sexuality. I know that I did (fortunately relatively consequence free).
Just as banning abortion doesn’t stop abortion — it just makes it more dangerous, I think that denying yourself the right to live freely and openly in your homosexuality doesn’t stop gay impulses– it just makes those behaviors more extreme and indulgent.
Kangol
I’m going to agree with tnguy on this one; the bi *and* DL–not bi and out–married to/dating a woman guys I’ve known out the years have been wild. As in *do anything* wild. They put the “eek” in “freak.” Also, most did not want to use protection and I can tell you, they weren’t on PrEP either.
CastleSF
The self destructive behaviors of these bi guys are frightfully alarming, If both of your accounts about them are to be believed. One cannot comprehend what demons would drive these men to indulge in such reckless acts, to the extent that they have no regard for the well-being of their girlfriend or wife? This raises the second question: is bisexuality inherently a character flaw or selfish abandonment?
Erik
The biphobia/homophobia lies with Graham, not Dear Abby. Anyone, of any sexual orientation, who is having unprotected sex, with a partner of any gender, needs to be tested for STD’s.
It isn’t the sexual orientation or gender that creates the risk of STD’s, it is the unprotected sex. Worldwide, the proportional majority of all cases of HIV are in heterosexuals. And since het couples generally rely on the pill for pregnancy prevention, but it provides no protection against HIV and other STD’s, Abby’s advice is appropriate. To turn a warning about the dangers of unprotected sex into ‘Abby is biphobic’ is itself biphobic, since it was Graham, not Abby, who presumed that bi = infected. Queerty should fire him for his overt bias against bi men.
Bear in mind, like the pill, Truvada doesn’t protect against any STD other than HIV, and coupled with the ‘truvada not condoms’ thinking that is becoming increasingly mainstream, is why there has been an uptick in cases of Syphilis and other STD’s paralleling the increased popularity of PrEP.
Jaxton
There is no evidence that the boyfriend is physically cheating on her.
Women have always used their fear of catching STD’s to justify their homophobic attitudes to bi men. What about promiscuous bisexual women and thair STD- spreading ways?
Because of the difference in the power of the sex drive between men and women,, men are far more likely to take a risk with a woman than a woman is with a man. That does NOT justify women’s bi-phobic attitudes to men, however.
Brian
Why does there have to be evidence? It’s a freaking Dear Abby letter, not a court case.
dwes09
@Jaxton:
Her letter says she thinks there might be someone else. That is reason enough for her to get tested for STD’s and the advice is sound. When people like you think their biases and delusions are stronger than reality, they really need to get help.
Jaxton
Of course it’s homophobic. Women have always been homophobic about bisexual men.
The idea that her boyfriend might find men hot is very dis-empowering to women in general as it removes from women the special power of consent that the female sex has over the male sex.
Ask yourselves these questions: if there is no evidence that the woman’s boyyfriend is physically cheating on her, why is Abby recommending she take an STD test?
Would Abby recommend the same advice to a man who suspects his girlfriend is bisexual?
dwes09
Probably. Because her advice is reality based, not based on her delusions and neuroses.
Chris
I would be thinking that, too. Not because he’s bisexual, but because he’s possibly screwing around with someone else.
RnDC
Whether or not someone considers it homophobic, it is still good advice for anyone. Dear Abby has been quite supportive of the gay community and that should be recognized.
Jaxton
Like many women, Abby may find male bisexuality dis- empowering?
Mick406
Abby died in 2013 from alzheimers. The column is now written by her daughter, Jeanne Phillips. Her twin sister wrote the equally popular “Ask Ann Landers”. Both were very supportive of the gay community.
Another double-talk posting by Queerty.
JaredMacBride
Pretty standard advice from a newspaper columnist. Nothing to see here, move on.
dfwenigma
Assuming that young adults are not sexually active isn’t somehow more LGBTQ friendly it’s dangerous. Hormones rage. Young men and women, especially younger people, tend to have a strong desire to try different things. Its tough to remember that at 19 a young man isn’t fully grown. This despite the insistance that 18 is the age of adulthood in many jurisdictions. But men are not fully psychologically and socially developed until they’re about 27. Girls develop much earier – first physically and then psycho-sexually. Often before puberty. Assuming that a 19 year old might be sexually active with not just one but many partners isn’t outside the realm of realism. In fact it’s pretty healthy to assume they are. If they aren’t – so much the better for them in some respects. Where I come from we’re seeing a huge increase in teen pregnancy. And I suspect as society changes and gender norming and fluidity become the rule rather than the exception the STD incidence rate will skyrocket. Parents, grandparents and other adults aren’t going to understand this strange new world. I think they don’t know. Fluid sexuailty may have always been a reality but the awareness is greater today than it’s ever been. I think columnists who state the obvious: get checked, take care of yourself aren’t being phobic they’re being sensible. The semantics are prtty awful.
Heywood Jablowme
“But men are not fully psychologically and socially developed until they’re about 27.”
Do you have an actual scientific citation for that? (At least, a citation that isn’t from some wacko anti-marijuana organization? That’s a modern Reefer Madness “statistic” lately.)
Jeez, that age keeps creeping upward & upward. A few years ago the B.S. was “not fully developed until they’re 24.”
dwes09
There is a British study from 2015 that claims women reach full emotional maturity 11 years or so before men, and that men cannot be considered emotionally mature until around 40!
Most studies demonstrate that both men and women have poor impulse control before around 25, though men are always more impulsive and greater risk takers than women. Oddly the only area where women seem to show less impulse control and greater risk taking is around addictive behavior like smoking and drug abuse.
The 25 year old age is well supported by crime demographics as well as morbidity and mortality statistics. As for the 40 year old age for emotional maturity, I believe that men often never achieve emotional maturity.
Tobi
What a load of old bollocks. It’s only in the last hundred years that life expectancy has got much past 40, due to advances in medicine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
1RedHottSexyMama
What keeps bisexual men staying in the closet far longer than the average gay man is that they aren’t really accepted by gay or straight men. Also most women don’t accept them either. I dated a man that was bisexual and I knew from day one. It never bothered me because while we were a couple he had no encounters with anyone else. I had him go to a doctor with me and watched the entire procedure to make sure he didn’t have any diseases. We still never had unprotected sex not once. Can’t be to careful no matter what sexual orientation you are born with.
Donston
The thing is most people are not completely, fully, down to the last molecule gay or straight. And most people (particularly people who are 35 or younger) have had some type of experience with more than one gender. While the 30-40% of people who are truly, thoroughly straight or gay don’t “get it”.
The concept of bisexuality is more of a socialogical and mental trap than anything else. It’s about whether or not you can be fully romantically, sexually and emotionally satisfied with one gender or one person. People who have constant contradictions within those elements, contend with self-loathing/self-resentment, are sexual megalomaniacs or are in denial about the rate of their attractions, sexual instincts, sexual satisfactions, passions, romantic satisfactions, etc. are usually the ones that feel a persistent need to have constant and concurrent sex with multiple genders. So, thinking that just because someone isn’t 100% straight or gay means they’re gonna cheat is a stretch. You have to ask quite a few more in depth questions and get to know who someone is and their motivations.
Donston
If you suspect the person you’re with to be fvcking someone on the side then getting an STD test makes sense. Also, yeah, most STDs are more easily transferrable from male to male than from female to male. We need to stop seeing that reality as “homophobic”.
Jaxton
No major disease is gender-specific. Stop your bias against men.
Donston
Stop your woman hating and your internalized homophobia first.
Many STDs are far easier to transfer from man to man or from man to woman than from woman to man. It’s not “man bias”. It’s reality. Though I know you like to twist reality to suit your own personal frustrations.
dwes09
Actually Jaxton, STI’s can favor one gender over another. Male-male transmission of HIV is more likely than male-female, and female-female is highly unlikely. And that is just one particular infection. This is simple fact, unlike your neurosis based drivel.
Given that women are more sexually mutable than men (more likely to change orientation over their lifetime) it makes more actual sense that they would not hate or fear homosexuals and bisexuals. And that seems to be congruent with reality. Men are the more likely to be homophobic, and the more likely to denigrate other bisexual males (though with females it plays into their sad fantasy of three ways with two hot lesbians/bi girls). One sees that truth played out every day as women are almost never implicated in anti gay hate crimes.
Get a fucking grip!
dwes09
Actually Jaxton, STI’s can favor one gender over another. Male-male transmission of HIV is more likely than male-female, and female-female is highly unlikely. And that is just one particular infection. This is simple fact, unlike your neurosis based drivel.
Given that women are more sexually mutable than men (more likely to change orientation over their lifetime) it makes more actual sense that they would not hate or fear homosexuals and bisexuals. And that seems to be congruent with reality. Men are the more likely to be homophobic, and the more likely to denigrate other bisexual males (though with females it plays into their sad fantasy of three ways with two hot lesbians/bi girls). One sees that truth played out every day as women are almost never implicated in anti gay hate crimes.
Also many diseases (AIDS and Heart Disease as well as some cancers for example) seem to have markedly different symptoms, progressions and prognoses for men and women. Facts have no intrinsic bias, myths that spring from neuroses certainly do!
Tobi
@Jaxton – Brian, you moron, STDs are far more prevalent in men, data shows they account for 91% of all cases of syphilis, with the lesbian community accounting for less than 1%.
Jaxton
Women fear male sexuality due to its power. Always have.
Women fear male bisexuality because it represents power x 100. Always have.
In the old days, men were able to force women to accept the natural bisexuality of men. Today, feminisn has empowered women to refute male bisexuality. Feminism has thus increased homophobic attitudes toward male bisexuality.
Donston
You really do just copy and paste the same four or five lines. It’s time to at least try to change up the word patterns.
Donston
I really do wonder if people like you have legit attraction, arousal, passion, desire, romantic instincts and romantic satisfaction towards any particular gender or is your behavior and sense of self just driven by hated of another gender and/or self-hate.
dwes09
He really does seem entirely driven by misogyny and fictions about women. It is shrill, tiresome and totally incorrect.
dwes09
Jaxton, child: Women fear men’s greater upper body strength and their consequent ability to force themselves on women. They do not fear some mythical “sexual power.”
Please provide some proof other than your imagination that “In the old days, men were able to force women to accept the natural bisexuality of men. Today, feminisn (sic) has empowered women to refute male bisexuality.”
In actuality “in the old days” when marriages were usually arranged and loveless by modern standards of romance, both men and women had affairs with both other men and women, and discretion was the rule. The 18th-century French novel Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos makes the behavior of these folks pretty clear. Other novels, plays, poetry and art makes this clear as well and gives lie to your delusions about sexual politics/power dynamic.
Tobi
@Donston — Brian (@Jaxton) can’t help it, according to him, during birth his head got stuck in his Ma’s vagina, he was in there, open-mouthed for hours.
Jaxton
Men are more naturally bisexual than women. This dis-empowers women and makes them.angry. it’s why women are very intolerant of male bisexuality. I know there are exceptions to this rule but this does not disprove the rule.
A woman’s sexuality largely revolves around pregnancy and, when not interested in becoming pregnant, reward-seeking. Reward-seeking may turn into prostitution. The ability of women to accept cash in exchange for her sexual consent is well-known.
Because male bisexuality dis-empowers women, it has produced a liberal bias against male bisexuality. Liberals always take the side of the woman, don’t forget.
Tobi
You have a whole committee of voices chattering away in your head, Brian, don’t you?
tham
“Men are more naturally bisexual than women”. Obviously he did go to college in the US.
tham
Didn’t…man I hate touchscreens.
chris33133
Getting back to the headline and question ending this article; I read it as a specific case for the general rule that any person (in this case, a woman) who is having unprotected sex with another person (in this case, a bi man) and discovers that the relationship is non-monogamous (in this case, he’s cheating on her possibly with other men) should get tested for STIs.
I see nothing bi- or homophobic about either the rule or this specific case.
Had Abby stated the general rule, people would be pointing out her lack of grammatical sense, or worse yet, her being needlessly PC in an effort to avoid harming the snowflakes who’d read -phobia into the specific case.
Jaxton
But he isn’t cheating on her. You shouldn’t automatically assume that a man who is bisexually oriented is also a cheater.
What about the woman, by the way? How do you know that she isn’t the one who is cheating? Maybe the guy should insist that she get tested just in case she spreads something to him…..
chris33133
She thinks he is. She should get tested. ….. As should anyone (man or woman) who thinks their partner is cheating. ….. Your point about women’s trust issues, whether true or not, is irrelevant to the advice of getting tested.
Jaxton
I read a survey that found women are 7 times less likely to accept bisexuality in their male partners than men are to accept bisexuality in their female partners. It’s a startling difference that demonstrates the homophobic and intolerant attitudes possessed by women in general.
Tobi
Link? …. or was this survey conducted by the voices in your head?
Jaxton
This idea that bisexual men automatically carry an STD is pure homophobic nonsense put out by sleazy bisexual women – as in prostitutes – and their enablers in the form of girly gay guys who hate the idea of being men and would rather have a female body with its associated privileges.
Man-haters united in hate is what these bisexually-prostituting women and girly gay guys are.
Tobi
Brian, you moron, STDs are far more prevalent in men, data shows they account for 91% of all cases of syphilis, with the lesbian community accounting for less than 1%.
Donston
Even when he’s confronted with the most undeniable reality, facts and stats he can’t deal with it and tries to contort it into something else. That’s how you can tell when someone’s delusional/crazy.
He’s a warning that attaining self-comfort and ridding yourself of prejudices and resentment of one’s own self is ridiculously important. Otherwise, you’ll end up hating women and gay and gay-leaning men, leaving you bitter and with nothing but “straight guys” to chase after.
Tobi
@Donston — I don’t think any self-respecting straight boy is going to fancy Brian (@Jaxon) swishing about in his twin-set and pearls, I’ve no doubt they’d rather have a real woman.
MinnesotaNotNice
I’m with Dear Abby on this one. It makes perfect sense for someone who may be the victim of a cheating boyfriend or girlfriend to get tested for STD’s. There’s nothing homophobic about it as I view it, it’s just common sense and protecting your health.
Jaxton
It is homophobic if the advice is given in relation to bisexual men but not bisexual women. It’s actually a bisexual double standard.
Tobi
The majority of STDs are contracted by men, for example, 91% of syphilis cases are men, or can’t your pea-sized brain compute that fact?
Jaxton
It’s hilarious how you queens go after bisexual men with your phobias about what they may or may not have seeing you’re the first to accuse others of homophobia. You have a phobia double standard.
Tobi
Brian (@Jaxton) — LOL, at least we don’t have a phobia about women, I know, I know, you got your head got stuck in your Ma’s birth canal, and you were in there, open-mouthed, screaming for hours-and-hours. Get over it. Oh, and as for calling other men “queens”, no self-respecting straight macho stud will want you swishing about in your twin-set and pearls, they’d rather have a real woman.
tham
Dear Abby is still a thing? Ok…