I have to agree with you. I think that having Lindsey cheat was a poor way to feature a look at bisexuality. Bisexuals get the slutty "You'll screw anything, won't you?" label enough as it is.
I started thinking about that after I watched this episode and after my initial little gladness that they're interested in bisexuality at all, I began to realize that they've not done their best here.
It would have been more appealing for one of the single characters to explore bisexuality, and not allow their first foray into that subject to be tainted with some of the stereotypes of confusion and promiscuousness that abound anyway. Slutty is slutty, regardless of who you're being slutty with, in other words.
There are serial bisexuals, or "either/or" bisexuals, who are as serially monogamous as anyone. They have one relationship at a time, it's just that they're attracted almost equally to male and female. And there bisexuals who seem to need both male and female relationships in sort of a polyandrous situation. They seem to need something from both sexes at once. That's a hard one to work out in our culture, but there are a few that don't see this as a big deal.
The whole thing really hasn't been researched enough to know why anyone is attracted to anyone, period. But, as intriguing as the Linds story line is, it didn't do a lot for the bi image in some ways. It's no more a synonym for "confused" as any other orientation.
A lot of so-called straight people are "bi-curious" in that they do some experimenting with the same sex. Kinsey says that technically makes you bisexual, but some people define you only as that if you've had some sort of long standing attraction or ongoing relationships with both sexes. Whatever. But, it's only confusing if you don't know that some degree of bisexuality may well be the norm for humans.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-06-30 01:30 pm (UTC)I started thinking about that after I watched this episode and after my initial little gladness that they're interested in bisexuality at all, I began to realize that they've not done their best here.
It would have been more appealing for one of the single characters to explore bisexuality, and not allow their first foray into that subject to be tainted with some of the stereotypes of confusion and promiscuousness that abound anyway. Slutty is slutty, regardless of who you're being slutty with, in other words.
There are serial bisexuals, or "either/or" bisexuals, who are as serially monogamous as anyone. They have one relationship at a time, it's just that they're attracted almost equally to male and female.
And there bisexuals who seem to need both male and female relationships in sort of a polyandrous situation. They seem to need something from both sexes at once. That's a hard one to work out in our culture, but there are a few that don't see this as a big deal.
The whole thing really hasn't been researched enough to know why anyone is attracted to anyone, period. But, as intriguing as the Linds story line is, it didn't do a lot for the bi image in some ways. It's no more a synonym for "confused" as any other orientation.
A lot of so-called straight people are "bi-curious" in that they do some experimenting with the same sex. Kinsey says that technically makes you bisexual, but some people define you only as that if you've had some sort of long standing attraction or ongoing relationships with both sexes. Whatever.
But, it's only confusing if you don't know that some degree of bisexuality may well be the norm for humans.