Refusing to Date Bi Men
Jen sent me Why bi guys aren’t for me, a piece by Nick Burns over at MSN Dating and Personals.
I would never comment on how people shouldn’t block off entire groups from their dating world. That one would get back to me way quick! So I agree that Nick shouldn’t have to date bi guys (or sporty guys or short guys or older guys) if he doesn’t want to. At the same time you gotta wonder about all the energy he’s putting into his opinion of them, and his reasoning behind it too.
1. A bi guy isn’t sure of his identity. It confounds me to think that some people can hop from side to side without tripping over the fence. Frankly, plenty of bi guys will eventually come out on one side or the other and reveal that they never really liked the neighbor’s garden. “I don’t date bi men because they are usually just gay but haven’t coped with the fact that they’re really gay,†says my friend Harry. “They have a lot of baggage that I don’t want to deal with.†Harry’s thoughts are common for gay men, and that’s why bi guys are often not fully accepted in the gay community.
Maybe some bi guys aren’t sure about their identity (and will come out as gay one day), but I’m sure some are. If the gay community doesn’t accept a guy while he is questioning his identity, he may just decide that gay isn’t for him out of fear that he’ll never be accepted. And what about men who identify as gay and still sleep with women every now and then? Does it make a difference if someone behaves as bi as opposed to identifying as bi? As for the baggage, everyone has a ton of it.
2. He sleeps with women—yuck! Ask most gay guys if they’d date a bi man and you’re met with the response: “Oh no, you don’t know where they’ve been!†Well, we have an idea where they’ve been; we just don’t want to think about it. Gay guys (including myself) get squeamish when conversation swerves into a discussion of hetero sex and the accoutrements of a woman’s birthday suit. Perhaps we never outgrew the idea that girls have cooties, and we’re afraid that we’ll catch them from being with someone who plays on both sides.
Yuck? Plenty of straight people think the sex lives of gay men are “yucky” and “gross.” I can’t see how it helps the queer community to continue on with immature and hurtful your sex life disgusts me talk.
3. He has twice the opportunity to cheat. If I did I end up in a monogamous, long-term relationship with a switch-hitter, he’d have to sacrifice more than most—starting with an entire gender. Bi men have a larger dating pool, which means a larger cheating pool, too. Sending a gay boyfriend out into the night with his girlfriends is fine, but when he’s bi, any friend he spends a lot of time with is a potential threat. So you can understand why I’d be left with a hefty case of paranoia that my man is stepping out on me. I’m sure that there are plenty of bisexual people in happy relationships, but I know just as many couples that have broken up because the bisexual partner decided to sniff the flowers across the way.
The way I see it, when you end up in a monogamous relationship you have to sacrifice all genders. That’s what being monogamous is. I don’t see how this is different for a gay man, a bi man, a lesbian or anyone else. We all give up the same thing, and that is everyone else. If a partner is going to cheat, they’re going to cheat. Man or woman, the message is the same: they don’t want a monogamous relationship (well, they don’t want to be monogamous anyway).
I’m gonna continue refusing to date most of the population for one reason or another, but that doesn’t mean I think anything about anyone I don’t feel compatible with is yucky.
I was surprised when I initially learned that bisexuals were not accepted in the LGBT community. Then, I heard all the same stereotypes repeated and I realized anew that queer people are, first and foremost, people and we therefore suffer from many of the same shortcomings and shortsightedness that everyone else does. One common response that I hear (that fits in with #3 above) is that “I would never date a bi person; I would feel like I could never completely satisfy them”. Huh? Why would a bi person be less satisfiable than anyone else by being in a monogamous relationship? We have far to go!
“We have far to go! ”
I agree!
How are you feeling?