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The last person out of the closet? The bisexual male – CNN.com

Posted: July 1st, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Briefs | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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"Coming out bisexual in the 1980s was an agonizing experience for [Robert] Winn, who was raised Methodist in a military family," Stephanie Chen reports. "When Winn was a teenager in the 1980s, public support toward gays and bisexuals plummeted as the HIV panic stigmatized the gay community. Bisexuals were blamed for spreading the virus to the straight population."

Robert Winn, a physician monogamously married to a woman for 18 years, is not an exception among bisexual men. "Joshua Verbeke, a 29-year-old business student at Indiana University…played along with being gay [while working with advocacy organizations] to avoid criticism and questions about being bisexual," and "John, 41, a bisexual from California, said his sexual orientation makes him open-minded."

This balanced article is a rarity, and Stephanie Chen touches on many issues: "being openly bisexual can be complicated." Stereotyped promiscuity, gay camouflage, and disease make being a bisexual man harder than it sounds.

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2 Comments on “The last person out of the closet? The bisexual male – CNN.com”

  1. 1 Iamcuriousblue said at 8:01 pm on July 1st, 2010:

    Greeta Christina did a couple of article about this last year that were very good:

    http://blog.blowfish.com/culture/greta-christina-all-boy-boy-action/1209

    http://blog.blowfish.com/culture/greta-christina-the-case-of-the-missing-bisexual/

    BTW, in the comments on the latter article, I give my own pet hypothesis on why open bisexuality seems to be so much more common among women than men at the current time.

  2. 2 maymay said at 8:47 pm on July 1st, 2010:

    Thanks for the pointer, Blue! I think your comment was spot-on. At least, I can corroborate this statement you made with my own personal experiences:

    A negative response toward bisexuality, on the other hand, will tend to push someone away from bisexuality more toward the gender that they lean to. I think that this is the case for bisexual men. While bisexual men may be less common to begin with, there’s also a lot of disincentives. I generally don’t hear women speak nearly as positively about male partner’s same-sex history as would be the case if the genders were reversed. And gay men are notoriously bi-unfriendly as well.

    If I were not such a frustrating contrarian so much of the time, I would probably have “settled” for the false dichotomy of gay or straight many years ago. And even as it happens, it was not until I turned nearly 25—after several homosexual encounters—did I truly feel confident in my own bisexuality.

    Anywho, thanks for your comment, and your continued interaction with me/us on these little link posts. :) That’s precisely the sort of thing I’ve been hoping to see happen from our Kink On Tap Briefs link-blog effort.

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