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‘Person of Interest’s Sameen Shaw Stamps Her Place in TV’s Bisexual Landscape

She is a victor, a fighter, and a survivor. Shaw is a queer, neurodivergent, woman of color, and she was allowed to be all of these things without ever being judged or punished for them. Though ‘Person of Interest’ never used the label, and Shaw herself is not likely to ever use such labels, she is unmistakably a bisexual character, and her status as such is treated by the narrative with matter-of-factness, but also with respect and compassion.

This guest post written by Sophie Willard appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation. | Spoilers ahead for all 5 seasons.

Bisexual people are familiar with erasure, vilification, and demonization. We live in a world where most people think Freddie Mercury was gay and Lady Gaga is straight; where Amber Heard’s bisexuality is held to blame for the abuse she suffered from her husband, Johnny Depp. There is an ever-present need for positive bisexual representation within media, be it found in film / book / television characters, pop stars, actors, writers, or other media makers. The continued scarcity of such representation only renders what is out there even more important. Every instance of bisexual representation, intentionally or not, serves to combat misconceptions and dismantle myopic attitudes towards bisexuality. Of course, not every example of bisexual representation is favorable, and certainly there exist characterizations that reinforce toxic stereotypes and a harmful misunderstanding of what it means to be bisexual.

Nonetheless, there is an increasing number of positive portrayals that we can look to for inspiration, comfort, strength, and affirmation. Sameen Shaw of the CBS television series Person of Interest is one of those portrayals. Sameen (more commonly referred to by her surname) is played by Iranian-American actress Sarah Shahi, originally familiar to many queer female fans for her recurring guest role on The L Word. Shahi herself has spoken of her pride in providing representation for lesbian and bisexual fans with her characters, and brought with her to Person of Interest an earnest maturity and an awareness of the struggles faced by members of the LGBTQ community.

Yet, interestingly, when her character was first introduced on the show, there had been no specific intention for her to be queer. Fans are more than familiar with this story, but for those unaware, it’s helpful to first know a little about the character of Shaw. A government operative when she first appears in the show’s second season, Shaw tracked down and killed terrorists. Her partner in these operations, Michael Cole, was carrying out his own off-the-books investigation into a prior mission of theirs, having reservations about the culpability of the target they had killed. When his findings suggest a government cover-up, his and Shaw’s employers decide they must be dealt with — permanently. Cole was killed but Shaw escaped, and — seeking revenge — resumes his investigation. This leads her to a chance meeting that has serious repercussions for the rest of the series. Though she thought she was meeting with Cole’s CIA contact, Veronica Sinclair, Shaw was in fact meeting with a woman who had taken Veronica hostage and interrogated her. This woman was Root (portrayed by Amy Acker), who had already been established within the show as an antagonist to the heroes. Shaw, however, was none the wiser and conversed with who she thought to be Veronica, until Root took her by surprise, tasered her, tied her to a chair, and threatened to burn her with a hot iron. Thus followed a now infamous exchange between the two women:

Shaw: One of the things I left out of my file … I kind of enjoy this sort of thing.
Root: [smiling] I am so glad you said that. I do too.

Both actresses at this point were only guest stars on the show, with the future still uncertain for Shahi’s character in particular. But the chemistry between them when filming this scene proved undeniable, and was picked up on by those writing and producing the show. Though nothing in the script or direction hinted at a sexual tension between the two characters, it nonetheless sparked in that scene, and the foundations of subtext were laid in that moment. Both actresses were subsequently promoted to series regulars, and the writing team took advantage of their chemistry to craft a relationship that forever changed both characters. It was a refreshing decision; few TV series take care to develop relationships that were not originally planned for, particularly those involving queer characters.

Nonetheless, the relationship between Shaw and Root took its time to develop, and was by no means conventional. This was a show that did not prioritize romantic sub-plots or sexual escapades. On Person of Interest, platonic friendships were always regarded with as much importance as romantic and/or sexual relationships. While series lead, John Reese (Jim Caviezel), had lost the woman he loved before the events of the show began, his new employer, Harold Finch (Michael Emerson) was still grappling with the loss of his best friend, Nathan. The way the show portrays their sense of loss and pain is equal — no more weight is given to one personal connection than the other. While over the course of the series, Reese enjoys a casual sexual relationship with a woman they sometimes enlist the help of, Zoe, their rendezvous are only ever hinted at subtextually, with not even a kiss shared between them on-screen.

With this in mind, it is even more remarkable that Root and Shaw’s relationship was allowed to flourish as it did. Certainly there was animosity between them to begin with, and Shaw was eager to exact her revenge for almost being tortured, but Root was clearly quite smitten from early on and soon began to unabashedly flirt with Shaw. For a long time, Shaw would roll her eyes and brush off Root’s advances, though her own attraction to Root could be inferred from the occasional comment. There came a point, however, when Root’s come-ons belied deeper feelings for Shaw, beyond simple attraction. Sameen Shaw, with a self-diagnosed personality disorder, experienced a limited range of emotions, and at a much lower potency than most people. As Root began to express her feelings for Shaw more frequently and honestly, Shaw recognizes that Root would have an expectation for a connection that went beyond the physical. It was something that she thought she could not offer, yet as she later learned, Root appreciates Shaw exactly for who she is.

Though Shaw is unable to express emotionally what Root means to her, she conveys enough through her actions. In the season three finale, when Root embarks on a solo mission into what was deemed the belly of the beast, Shaw cycles into the next state in the middle of a blackout to help her. “Root’s going to get herself killed,” she tells John, though when she eventually catches up with the other woman, she instead tries to suggest that she was worried about the mission more than anything else.

In the show’s fourth season, unspoken words between these two finally bubble up to the surface, and Root tries to convince Shaw that they would be perfect together. Shaw admits that she’s undeniably attracted to Root, but again brushes her off. Moments later, however, she makes the decision to sacrifice herself to save her teammates, and when Root tries to dissuade her, Shaw pulls the other woman in for a brief kiss, partly to give Root some sort of confirmation of her own feelings, partly to distract Root, and no doubt partly for herself. Though her departure from the show was for practical reasons (Shahi was pregnant with twins), Shaw remained alive and Root searched furiously for her whereabouts.

It was not until the fourth episode of the show’s fifth and final season that we were finally gifted with Shaw’s return, in an episode that proved to be not only dark, action-packed, and heart-breaking, but also conveyed to audiences that Shaw truly feels deeply about Root too, despite her inability to express as much. The entire episode places her within a virtual reality simulation crafted by the malevolent Artificial Super Intelligence that held her captive. Within the simulation, Shaw seeks comfort in small ways, despite the simulation mandate to kill her teammates and locate their base of operations. One way she comforts herself is through finding a taxi driver who’s a fellow Persian. Though Shaw’s Persian heritage had been established on the show, and she had spoken before of her mother’s immigration from Iran and early experiences in New York City, the only time that she spoke Farsi was within this simulation. This small interaction seems to speak to a subconscious desire to find something safe and familiar, while feeling an intense pressure to carry out a task she didn’t want to do.

The other way in which she sought comfort within the simulation was to have Root find and rescue her. In the simulation, Root calls her numerous pet names. Root gives Shaw her jacket when Shaw feels cold. Root takes Shaw back to her ‘apartment,’ and though none of it was real, we saw them consummate their relationship — quite explosively. Later in the episode, Shaw ends the simulation by shooting herself in the head, but not before admitting to Root that the other woman was her “safe place,” and that Shaw always thought of her whenever the psychological torture grew too difficult to bear. We learn in the episode’s closing moments, that Shaw had actually undergone 6,741 of these simulations, all with the same outcome: rather than shoot Root and betray her friends, she killed herself every time.

“It was all a dream” is an oft-ridiculed and rather dated trope in storytelling, and certainly had this episode focused on any other character, it would have been a waste of time. But with Sameen Shaw — a character who rarely emotes, who’s difficult to read, and up until this point, had not been especially clear on whether or not Root meant much to her — this episode was invaluable in opening up her mind. It allowed us to see that, yes, Shaw did reciprocate Root’s feelings, certainly just as intensely, even if they were all internalized. After nine months of capture and torture, Shaw longed to be with Root again, to feel safe in her arms.

Root and Shaw were eventually reunited, and though the reunion was sadly short-lived, Root did get a chance to open up to Shaw, and Shaw let her in. They held hands for a brief moment — no doubt the first time Sameen Shaw had ever allowed anybody to hold her hand — and Root shared that what they had between them was good enough for her, and better than anything she had ever hoped to experience in life.

Shaw had expressed physical attraction to men before on the show, and there was certainly enough subtext to suggest that she was attracted to women other than Root, but Root was the person she was tethered to, and certainly the only person we ever saw her intimately involved with. Root provided action, excitement, and unpredictability — elements that sustained Shaw. Yet, at the same time, it is important to remember that queer people are not defined solely by their relationships, and Shaw certainly has enough personality to go around. She’s often terse, frequently blunt, and exercises a moral flexibility, but she also has a strong sense of wrong and right; she is highly capable, protective, intelligent, and heroic. She ended the series as a one-woman team, accompanied solely by her dog, Bear. She is a victor, a fighter, and a survivor. She is a queer, neurodivergent, woman of color, and she was allowed to be all of these things without ever being judged or punished for them.

Though Person of Interest never used the label, and Shaw herself is not likely to ever use such labels, she is unmistakably a bisexual character, and her status as such is treated by the narrative with matter-of-factness, but also with respect and compassion. She is a source of strength for queer viewers, and a solid, positive representation of how bisexuality can be expressed by some people. Everyone wants a hero they can identify with — queer women no less — and Sameen Shaw is one of our very own.

Sophie Willard is a 20-something gal currently residing in the East of England. She has a BA in English Language with Creative Writing. You can follow her on Twitter @cake_emu where she discusses film, TV, current affairs, and more. She writes about TV and film from a queer, feminist perspective on her blog, The Television Will Be Revolutionised.

‘Jennifer’s Body’ and Bisexuality

We don’t have direct evidence of how Jennifer or Needy would describe their sexual orientations, but ‘Jennifer’s Body’ works as a depiction of the relationship between two young bisexual women. If nothing else, it subverts expectations around gender and sexuality in horror films. … Even when Jennifer and Needy resort to physical violence with each other, their conflict has an erotic, and even romantic, subtext.

This guest post written by Tessa Racked appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation. | Spoilers ahead.

While the feminist merits of the 2009 horror film Jennifer’s Body remain up for debate, there is no denying that it is a standout in its genre for being female-centric. Directed by Karyn Kusama and written by Diablo Cody, Jennifer’s Body follows the story of Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) and Anita “Needy” Lesnicky (Amanda Seyfried), two teenage girls from a small town whose troubled friendship is shaken up when Jennifer is turned into a demon who must feed on human flesh. The film revels in Jennifer’s seduction and consumption of boys, but it simultaneously gives importance to the conflict between her and Needy. The film throws many heteronormative assumptions made by the audience into doubt. Jennifer isn’t afraid to talk about or act on her desire to have sex with men, but the most important relationship in her life is with Needy, and that relationship is eroticized at some key moments, including Jennifer referencing how they used to “play boyfriend-girlfriend.”

In a 2009 interview with The New York Times, Megan Fox describes Jennifer as a “cannibalistic lesbian cheerleader.” We don’t have direct evidence of how Jennifer or Needy would describe their sexual orientations, but Jennifer’s Body works as a depiction of the relationship between two young bisexual women.

If nothing else, Jennifer’s Body subverts expectations around gender and sexuality in horror films. Sexually active young women commonly meet their fates early on at the hands of the antagonist while their innocent/virginal counterparts survive. But as Gaayathri Nair observes in her article “Does Jennifer’s Body Turn the Possession Genre on Its Head?,” “Jennifer’s lack of purity saves her. The fact that she is not actually a virgin means that she gets a second shot at life.” Not only is she more than fodder for the sake of building tension, Jennifer becomes the most powerful character in the film, as Needy goes from her sidekick to her nemesis. Instead of being fueled by revenge or menace, Jennifer’s love/hate relationship with Needy is the driving force behind Jennifer’s Body. A competitive tension exists between their relationship and how they relate to the male characters that suggests an equal emotional, and even erotic, importance to their connection to each other.

When Needy introduces us to the setting of Devil’s Kettle High School, we see a scene of her watching Jennifer performing with the flag team from the bleachers. The setting and camera work — alternating between and slowly pushing in on Jennifer and Needy — acts as a visual homage to the cheerleader routine sequence from American Beauty. However, instead of emphasizing voyeurism and fantasy, as in the American Beauty scene, we see Jennifer and Needy smiling and waving, connected and mutually happy to see each other. Any potential voyeurism is also undermined by a classmate sitting behind Needy, who describes her relationship with Jennifer as “totally lesbi-gay.” The depth of the two girls’ connection reveals itself to be borderline supernatural even before the occult aspects of the film are introduced, when Needy senses Jennifer’s arrival to her house before we hear her at the door. “That’s fucking weird,” Needy’s boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons) comments.

When Jennifer becomes a demon, her bizarre behavior (including the murders) strains Needy’s love for her, but also intensifies their connection. The one actual sex scene in the film, between Needy and Chip, is cross-cut with Jennifer killing and eating Colin (Kyle Gallner). Not only does this equate Jennifer’s consumption of a male body with the more conventional eroticism of Needy and Chip having sex because they love each other, but the two scenes blend together as Needy has visions of blood seeping through her ceiling, and a demonic Jennifer standing over a previous victim. “I need you hopeless,” Jennifer growls at her prey, as Needy begins to whisper “hopeless” over and over, without seeming to know why. Even when trying to satisfy their hunger or connect with someone else, they can’t separate from each other.

Jennifer poses a threat to the young men of Devil’s Kettle, but Jennifer’s Body pushes male characters to the side, relegating them to tropes often embodied by women or other historically marginalized groups. In the beginning of the film, Jennifer refers to men as “morsels;” even before she literally eats them, she views men who she wants to sleep with as disposable objects for her consumption. Roman (Chris Pratt), Jonas (Josh Emerson), Ahmet (Aman Johal), and Colin are Jennifer’s prey, brought into her story so that she can exercise power and prestige both before she becomes a demon (Roman is a police academy cadet, which Jennifer claims gives her legal immunity) and after (she feeds on classmates Ahmet, Jonas, and Colin to replenish her powers). In the extended cut, Needy tries to reason with Jennifer, stating that they need to look for a cure so she can stop “killing people.” “No, I’m killing boys,” Jennifer responds, “Boys are placeholders. They come and they go.” Where characters who wield threatening magic in horror films are usually from marginalized groups — for example, the stereotype of a Romani woman cursing someone — Jennifer’s Body has Low Shoulder, the good-looking, white, male indie rock band who turn Jennifer into a demon as a side-effect of their quest to be “rich and awesome like that guy from Maroon 5.” And then there’s Chip, who takes on the role of the dutiful if clueless partner who needs saving from the supernatural threat in the third act.

If Jennifer were purely a stereotypical bisexual seductress sprung from a heteropatriarchal imagination, she would use erotic interaction between herself and Needy as an accessory to appear more attractive to the male gaze. Instead, Jennifer performs heterosexuality to get a response from Needy. Jennifer agrees to go on a date with Colin after Needy says that she thinks he’s cool, and threatens Needy by stating that she finds Chip attractive, intimating that she is going to fuck, kill, and eat him. In a role that is often filled by an attractive female character, Chip becomes a battleground between Jennifer and Needy.

Jennifer, Needy, and Chip’s dynamic allows space in the film for sexual attraction between characters of both same and other genders. If the film were to go with heteronormative expectations, Jennifer and Needy would be vying with each other for Chip’s affections. Rather, Jennifer and Chip are vying with each other for Needy’s time and attention.

Jennifer and Needy have been best friends since early childhood (“sandbox love,” as Needy calls it), and Jennifer doesn’t have much of an interest in supporting her friend’s romantic relationship. In the first conversation we see between them, Jennifer convinces Needy to ditch Chip and go to Low Shoulder’s show with her. In the next scene, Needy gets dressed to meet Jennifer’s specifications (“I could show my stomach but never my cleavage. Tits were her trademark.”), while Chip sullenly criticizes the low cut of her jeans from the background. Jennifer asks if they’ve been “fucking,” to which Needy giggles and calls her “gross.” Jennifer then indulges in some gloating as the two girls leave together. “You’re just jello because you’re not invited…” she tells Chip, “You’re lime green jello and you can’t even admit it to yourself.” “Stop kidnapping my girlfriend,” Chip responds helplessly. Chip’s insecurity about his standing with Needy is his Achilles heel. Jennifer isn’t able to seduce him as easily as Jonas or Colin, but she is able to lower his defenses by telling him that Needy cheated on him.

Jennifer sees the female body as a weapon. She tells Needy that her breasts are “like smart bombs: point them in the right direction and shit gets real.” Jennifer receives an array of powers when she comes back as a succubus, but also becomes more aggressive, both sexually and overall. She makes rude, callous comments about the Melody Lane Fire and its victims; she uses her beauty and sexuality to lure her victims into secluded areas where she can kill and eat them. It would only make sense that she would use her body as a weapon against Needy once the conflict between them surfaces. And the conflict between them is definitely eroticized, but their preexisting close relationship adds a layer of depth to the violence that is not present when Jennifer hunts her prey.

After resurrecting as a succubus, Jennifer shows up at Needy’s house, covered in blood but smiling at her friend (albeit creepily). I imagine that being sacrificed to the devil and coming back to earth as a demon would leave one a little punch-drunk, but considering that Jennifer recounts later that “[she] woke up and [she] found her way back to [Needy],” it could be a smile of relief to see her friend. She pushes Needy against a wall and nips at her neck, both alluring and terrifying. After she eats Colin, Jennifer turns up in Needy’s bed (literally) and tries to seduce her. Although Needy stops her, the scene is shot quite differently from Jennifer’s seduction of Jonas or Colin, or Needy and Chip’s sex scene. There’s no distracting humor, such as Chip’s inexperience in putting on a condom, or the wild animals that flock to Jennifer’s presence when she’s in seduction mode. Instead of dialogue or soundtrack, the sound cuts out completely. The sequence also includes extreme close-ups of their lips and backs. These factors all give their make out scene a more intimate, sensual tone than their sexual encounters with boys.

Jennifer’s reasons for trying to seduce Needy are never clearly outlined, but given that she had just fed on Colin and is at the height of her powers and confidence, it’s likely that she is reveling in her abilities by exerting control over Needy, or using their interaction as a celebratory indulgence. However, considering that this scene also includes her mentioning that they used to “play boyfriend-girlfriend,” and that Needy is active in their kissing before pushing Jennifer away, we are led to believe that there is some precedent in the two having sexual feelings for each other.

Even when Jennifer and Needy resort to physical violence with each other, their conflict has an erotic, and even romantic, subtext. When Needy tries to save Chip from being eaten, we get an exchange that is the closest the film comes to explicitly identifying either of them as bisexual. When Jennifer threatens to “eat [her] soul and shit it out,” Needy tells her, “I thought you only murdered boys.” “I go both ways,” Jennifer responds. This is a Diablo Cody script, smothered in sarcasm and quips, but given the prevalence of bisexual erasure, at least we have a little text to accompany the subtext.

Their final fight begins with Needy gazing through a bedroom window at Jennifer, reminiscent of a typically masculine fetishistic role of voyeur (and Jennifer’s role of hunter). They grapple with each other in bed: Needy straddles Jennifer, who calls her “butch” for using a box cutter as her weapon. Jennifer begins to use her powers to levitate, but when Needy sees the matching BFF necklace from Jennifer’s neck, she becomes vulnerable for a moment and they fall back to the mattress in an oddly sensual slow-motion shot. It’s only when Needy metaphorically stabs Jennifer through the heart that she gets the opportunity to literally do so as well. But even death can’t separate Jennifer and Needy from each other: Needy’s narration informs us during the denouement that some of Jennifer’s demon powers transferred to her when she was bitten during their final showdown. The end credits document a more powerful, vengeful Needy unleashing a satisfyingly bloody revenge on Low Shoulder.

Jennifer and Needy’s relationship is not a very healthy one, characterized by a power imbalance even before Jennifer gains her demonic abilities. The supernatural forces at play in Jennifer’s Body serve as a metaphor for Jennifer’s narcissism, as well as forcing the tension in their relationship to the surface. But even if their friendship isn’t allowing them to be their best selves, their love for each other proves to be the driving force in the film, giving the audience a level of emotional engagement deeper than a conflict for survival between a human and a force of evil. By giving attention both to what Needy and Jennifer want and pursue out of sexual relationships with boys and delving into the romantic and sexual component of their relationship with each other, the film gives enough space to their emotional lives to depict desire for characters of both same and other genders.

Films are imbued with amazing powers when they delve into female characters beyond the depictions of prey and love interests. In the case of Jennifer’s Body, LGBTQ audience members can see an aspect of themselves reflected on the screen.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Does Jennifer’s Body Turn the Possession Genre on Its Head?
Jennifer’s Body: The Sexuality of Female Possession and How the Devil Didn’t Need to Make Her Do It
From Ginger Snaps to Jennifer’s Body: The Contamination of Violent Women

Tessa Racked writes about depictions of fat people in cinema at Consistent Panda Bear Shape and displays Diablo Cody-level feats of wit on Twitter @tessa_racked.

‘Grace and Frankie’ and the Binary of Bisexual Erasure and Representation

What makes it even more exciting to me, as a queer woman, is that not only are we being treated to these stories of our elders but that queerness is acknowledged and exists amongst older people in this television series. … My one bone to pick with ‘Grace and Frankie,’ for all of my true and deep love, is the decision to make Sol and Robert come out as being gay after 40 years of consummated, loving marriage to their wives. Surely, there was a possibility they were in fact bisexual?

This guest post written by Leena van Deventer appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

Advancing women’s representation in film and television is without a doubt a noble cause, as is improving the representation of many different marginalized groups. Our media should reflect the community the story is about, and our communities are full of people of different genders, races, ages, sizes, and sexual orientations. Failure to do so can contribute to the greater erasure, dehumanization, and intentional ignorance of a marginalized group’s existence, which can have devastating effects on marginalized folks in our society.

Cheers can be heard all through the internet every time a new movie is announced with a strong female character as the lead role. But those roles have changed over the last 20 or so years, and if we’re concerned with raising a generation of girls readying themselves for the coming feminist revolution, we need to consider whether we’re doing them a disservice by holding up this combat and conflict-driven Lone Wolf Badass as Finally The Female Character That Will Deliver Us From Evil and Seize the Means of Production While Looking Fabulous.

When I look back at the movies I held dear as a teen (no judgment okay), I’m reminded of The Craft, Thelma and Louise, Sister Act (1 & 2), A League of Their Own, Now and Then, or Steel Magnolias. A common thread through all of these stories was that of women’s friendship. These women knew they would live and die for each other; they knew they were better off together than alone. This has probably subconsciously affected my feminist practice, and influenced how much Molly Lambert’s article, “Can’t Be Tamed: A Manifesto,” resonated with me on a molecular level. It’s a tool of the patriarchy to convince women that women are their own worst enemies and can’t get along; it’s a radical act to actively push against that and love harder than you ever have before.

Imagine how much more Hermione Granger could have achieved if she had a Thelma to her Louise? A smart or brave or rough best friend who would do anything for her? What about Katniss Everdeen or Bella from Twilight? Who would they spend Galentine’s Day with? Who would die to protect her? While it’s inspiring to see badass women, like Rey, Furiosa, or possibly even a new Rocketeer (which is exciting as the sequel will star a Black woman), it’s easy to see the narrative being easily hijacked from women’s collective advancement to one of insular capitalist bootstrapping, a narrative which broadly prioritizes men (and stereotypically masculine qualities) over women. We shouldn’t be leaving a trail of bodies behind us, we should be amassing an army along the way.

The modern tale of female friendship I was looking for popped up in an unexpected place, to minimal fanfare, and has now officially taken up residence in a permanently rent-controlled corner of my heart. Netflix’s Grace and Frankie is a tale of female friendship and strength, with season two recently dropping and a third season on its way. It’s a tale of two septuagenarian women being bound together by adversity to find the good in each other and potentially resign to the fact that they may be the last great loves of their lives.

The first season introduced the main characters: Robert and Grace Hanson (played by Martin Sheen and Jane Fonda), and Sol and Frankie Bergstein (played by Sam Waterson and Lily Tomlin). These couples were brought together by Sol and Robert working together as partners in their law firm, and as such, both families spent a lot of time together over their 40 years of marriage, including their now adult children, who all have cousin-esque relationships with each other for the most part. They bought a shared beach house, which after Sol and Robert come clean that they have in fact been in love with each other for the last half of their marriages, becomes the primary residence of the now-displaced wives, Grace and Frankie.

Season one had many saccharine moments that I have no doubt turned a lot of people off continuing to watch, but Season two doesn’t make that same mistake. It’s sharper, wittier, and we get to see more of what makes these women tick. They know each other’s routines and quirks now, after living together for so long, and they’ve grown more fond of each other. What was once a one-dimensional joke about a control freak, push-your-feelings-down, Type A woman living with a pot-smoking, tie-dye wearing, hippie (Ho ho! The odd couple! What hijinks will ensue?) has now become less about how different the two women are and more about how they can parlay their respective strengths and weaknesses into finding a way to be there for each other no matter what.

Grace and Frankie understand the importance of banding together, and we see this in the episode where Grace catches up with some snooty country club friends after not being in contact since the break-up. The women scoff at what it must be like to live with a strange eccentric like Frankie, and Grace reminds them that she’s the only person who understands what this situation feels like, and the only person who reached out to help her, before telling them they’re assholes and leaving to go hang out with Frankie instead. The second season is underscored by a commitment between these two women; they will be there for each other to the end.

It’s thrilling for me to experience the stories of these women. As a 31-year-old woman, I cannot possibly comprehend what it would be like to lose a friend I’d loved deeply for 40 years. I was yelping and hooting and hollering at the closing scene, as Grace and Frankie walk in slow motion out of the house, onward to their new sex-toy-making empire that markets vibrators to older women (dishwasher-safe with large font instructions and comfortable grips to compensate for arthritis). We don’t hear these stories about older people enough.

What makes it even more exciting to me, as a queer woman, is that not only are we being treated to these stories of our elders but that queerness is acknowledged and exists amongst older people in this television series. Homophobia is so often linked with being old-fashioned; more prolific in previous generations. Queer stories of our elders are crucially important to our history, a sentiment further impressed upon me at the recent screening of Winter and Westbeth, a stunning and uplifting documentary about queer older people and the rich, full lives they led as artists in public housing in New York’s West Village. We need more older characters on-screen, especially LGBTQ people and people of color.

While we may be coming in leaps and bounds in terms of LGBTQ representation, I fear we still have a long way to go for equal acceptance for the “B” (and definitely the “T”) portions of that acronym. My one bone to pick with Grace and Frankie, for all of my true and deep love, is the decision to make Sol and Robert come out as being gay after 40 years of consummated, loving marriage to their wives. Surely, there was a possibility they were in fact bisexual? Was it because gay is easier for audiences to understand than “those confusing bisexuals”? Bisexual erasure frequently occurs in media and is common even within our own activist circles. People (even prominent LGBTQ activists) make biphobic comments about how bisexual teens are just confused; or bi people are promiscuous, greedy, and can’t be monogamous; or the very tired quip, “Bisexuality is just a truck stop on the road to gay,” as if bisexuality doesn’t exist and people must choose. So I can understand how difficult it can be for us who are bisexual to have some issues with representation when we struggle with representation in our very own dedicated spaces.

With a lack of bisexual characters in film and television and damaging tropes about bi people in media, it would have been great to see two bi men in Grace and Frankie, especially two older men. Bi men characters and queer characters who are older are both rarely depicted in film and television.

Because I do love the show so much, perhaps I would like to imagine the decision to make Sol and Robert gay as opposed to bisexual is because of the history of the (undeserving, cruel) association between bisexual people and infidelity, given that the men in this show engaged in a 20-year affair with each other. Perhaps co-creators Marta Kauffman (who has absolutely managed to inject more heart into this show than previous works such as Friends) and Howard J. Morris wanted to avoid contributing to that damaging stereotype? But that’s probably being too kind.

We have a long way to go with representation of all kinds: race, gender, age, size, disability, sexuality. We can get better at advancing this cause by being critical of the things we love. We can write as many strong female characters as we like in the hopes it will advance feminism, but a lone wolf isn’t going to get much done. We also need more female characters who aren’t just young, cis, straight, white women. We need to inspire girls by showing them inclusive representation and the power of women’s friendship, and we need to show them that those women can be of any age, and that strength isn’t always about picking up a bow or aiming the crosshairs at the bad guys. Sometimes it’s about holding your best friend’s hand while you do something scary.

Leena van Deventer is a game developer, writer, and educator from Melbourne, Australia. She has taught interactive storytelling at RMIT and Swinburne Universities and is co-author of Game Changers: From Minecraft to Misogyny, the Fight for the Future of Videogames with Dan Golding for Affirm Press. You can find her on Twitter @LeenaVanD.

How ‘My Own Private Idaho’ Changed My Life as a Bisexual Man

The film never demonizes either Mike or Scott for their sexuality or their profession, which is great, but it also never feels the need to explain their sexuality. Maybe these characters haven’t quite figured it out yet. Maybe Mike is gay and maybe Scott is straight, or maybe they’re both bisexual, but from the film itself, it makes more sense to me to not label them. They simply fall somewhere on the wide spectrum of sexuality. You have no idea how important it is for me to see this on-screen.

This guest post written by Logan Kenny appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

My Own Private Idaho‘s Mike (River Phoenix) is always destined to end up in the same place. No matter where he goes, he will always end up on this deserted road in Idaho where the film begins. He can go anywhere in the world and he’ll end up back where he started, dealing with his thoughts, his fading memories, and his narcolepsy. This is his existence, almost the entirety of it: go somewhere, meet people, have sex, come back here. My Own Private Idaho is an almost aimless film, there is no traditional narrative and many scenes occur with no real sense or purpose. While there is sometimes the idea of a plot or narrative goal, the film isn’t really about that; instead, it’s a film about characters and how they live their lives, their circumstances, and the things that haunt them.

Mike is a hustler living on the streets, the cities change but that stays the same. He’s a drifter and a sex worker. His narcolepsy affects every part of his existence: frequently when he engages in sexual acts, his body shakes and he falls to the ground. Mike is haunted by his past, often having flashbacks: visions of a house crashing down onto the road and smashing completely; the same woman is always there, looking at him; so close yet not there. Mike stands on a road in Idaho and collapses. The film then cuts to Seattle where Mike receives oral sex from a male client. The film doesn’t show how Mike ended up here, it doesn’t matter; he’s here now and won’t be for long. He engages with a few clients before ending up with a wealthy woman (Grace Zabriskie). His friend Scott (Keanu Reeves) and acquaintance Gary (Rodney Harvey) are there as well. Scott is Mike’s best friend, the man who carries him when he loses consciousness, holds him when he cries, and who never seems to fail to make Mike a bit happier. This journey is as much Scott’s as it is Mike’s. These two are connected under the same circumstances, yet different reasons have brought them together.

Mike has no other way to make money. He has a dysfunctional relationship with his father and is haunted by his mother leaving him. The family collapsing, the house falling down and breaking apart. Scott is here to kill time. He has sex with men for money not because he needs it but because the prospect of living like Mike thrills him. Scott lives on the streets and drifts from place to place in order to experience life. He’s a rich kid, the son of a mayor. This existence is merely temporary for Scott. He does seem to genuinely care about Mike though, their relationship is extremely strong and he’s willing to do a lot for his friend. Mike is quite awkward and reluctant to truly be himself. He doesn’t really interact well with many people apart from Scott. In certain scenes, Mike only starts speaking loudly because Scott did first. Scott is the opposite, as he’s immensely charismatic and outspoken. He can interact with seemingly anyone and his charm benefits him especially in sexual situations.

Whenever Mike has a narcoleptic attack, My Own Private Idaho either shows Scott or someone else deal with the situation, or the film cuts to a title screen, stating the name of their current location. This is a film about a journey yet we never really get to witness it. The audience experiences snippets, tiny fractions of the characters’ lives, which is perfect because this film works much better without a conventional narrative and character arcs. Some characters do achieve proper resolution by the film’s end, this chapter of their lives has concluded and the next one shall begin. Other characters will continue meandering through life, destined for nothing but to repeat the same cycle over and over. This sounds really bleak, and it certainly is, but it’s not nihilistic. It’s a remarkably human film where every character, whether likable or not, feels alive and three-dimensional. Mike and Scott are sympathetic people, you grow to care about both of them. You form a real connection with the two of them as the film progresses, which makes the overall bleakness of the film much more genuinely affecting.

The acting is incredible, especially by River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves. One of the most powerful moments in My Own Private Idaho — which is amplified considering that Phoenix died not long after — is the scene where Mike and Scott ride through Portland on a motorbike. When they stop at a red light, they start talking about how long they’ve driven down the street and how long they’ve known each other. Then Scott says, “We’re still alive,” and my heart shatters every time I hear that line. Phoenix is revelatory throughout; this is a star-making performance. He captures vulnerability better than most actors ever could and conveys so much emotional range. Keanu is also brilliant, showcasing so much power as an actor at such a young age. There are frequent shots of just his face which are some of the most poignant moments of the film. He is far more subtle than Phoenix but his approach is just as wonderful.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film is that about a third of it is based on William Shakespeare’s Henry V, along with Shakespeare inspired dialogue. These scenes all take place in Portland, where Scott’s father is the mayor. Every scene with Bob Pigeon (William Richert), the middle-aged leader of the men on the street, is presented with long speeches, using certain phrases and language that wouldn’t commonly be used in the time period of the film. This adds to the overall strangeness of the film’s universe, that this world on the street is unlike anywhere else. This reality is different, this place changes people; even the mayor talks in this style of speech. The entire city is a surreal descent into another existence: an existence of depravity, robbery, sex, infrequent drug use, and long soliloquies. These scenes all feel disjointed, almost as if they don’t belong, but in a good way. The film’s tone is often bizarre, to say the least. There is a scene where Mike and Scott are represented as talking models in magazine covers which remarkably manages to be weirder than it sounds. A lot of the imagery in flashbacks and several supporting characters also contribute to the film’s surrealistic tone.

Nearly halfway through the film, a template of a plot is introduced. There is a narrative guide, motivations for the characters, and an actual destination. Mike wants to find his mother and Scott accompanies him in this journey. Yet, this doesn’t really feel like the focus of the film. Mike’s mother is crucial to the story because of her absence. His memories of her are hazy at best and it seems that he wants to find her in order to fix himself: not the narcolepsy, but rather his sense of aimlessness. My Own Private Idaho has no interest in making this a sentimental experience nor does it want to make it like any other cinematic journey. The addition of an admittedly bare-bones plot doesn’t really change the film thematically and is clearly designed to further develop and portray the main characters. The events that take place during Mike and Scott’s travels are without a doubt some of the best sequences in film, especially the campfire scene which I won’t spoil. It’s melancholic throughout and from this point onward, becomes increasingly pensive and poignant. The last 20 minutes are flawless and the ending is perfect. When the end credits roll, I always think that it is one of the best films ever made. I love it so much.

I’m discussing this film thematically because its themes are so central to its portrayal of sexuality, or more specifically, its lack of definition of the sexuality of its protagonists. Mike is clearly attracted to men and it’s never expressly stated that he is attracted to women. But Scott is clearly attracted to women but also has sexual interactions with men for money. My belief is that neither Mike or Scott are gay or straight but both fall somewhere in the middle. I don’t think I can specifically call either of them bisexual or pansexual, since sexuality is very hard for some to define, especially if we aren’t given explicit self-identification or clear insight into their sexual orientations. The film never demonizes either Mike or Scott for their sexuality or their profession, which is great, but it also never feels the need to explain their sexuality. Maybe these characters haven’t quite figured it out yet. Maybe Mike is gay and maybe Scott is straight, or maybe they’re both bisexual, but from the film itself, it makes more sense to me to not label them. They simply fall somewhere on the wide spectrum of sexuality. You have no idea how important it is for me to see this on-screen.

I’m a bisexual man. I realized I was bi earlier this year. I haven’t known who I really am for very long and since I’m young, I still have a lot to learn about myself. The first time I watched My Own Private Idaho was the first time I felt like I wasn’t straight. It kick-started my awakening sexuality, the first step of many in realizing who I truly am. It was the first time I felt sexual desires towards men and for a couple weeks, I thought that I could be gay since I thought like this. Then I realized that I was attracted to both women and men and I didn’t have to choose; I could be attracted to both and that would be okay. I came out to my parents, a lot of my friends, and my girlfriend. This film changed everything about my life, nothing was the same for me after watching.

Rewatching the film means even more to me as a bi man because of how it portrays sexuality, something that passed me by the first time. I started to notice so much more and I cried a lot. That’s okay though because this film means more to me than I can ever fully describe. We need more films with the sexual representation of My Own Private Idaho so that other queer kids like me can figure out who they really are. It is truly a spectacular piece of work.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

A Place to Call Home: The Search for Love and Identity in My Own Private Idaho

Logan Kenny is a bisexual man with autism. He has an obsessive love of movies and music. He frequently rambles about lots of trivial things. You can follow him on Twitter @LoganKenny1.

‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Gets Bisexual Representation Right

The musical sitcom shows the gradual development of a male bisexual character, who willfully rejects bi stereotypes to the point of addressing them in song and dance. And for anyone who cares about bisexual representation on-screen, it is magnificent. … The image of a bi character both confident in his identity and committed to addressing biphobic stereotypes — not to mention the incredible catchiness of the tune — is deeply satisfying.

This guest post written by Alex Kittle appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

Rachel Bloom’s risky, groundbreaking, Emmy-winning musical sitcom Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is often (and rightfully) praised for its focus on a protagonist with mental illness, depicting the ins and outs of anxiety and depression with frankness, compassion, and humor (despite the series’ ableist title). What might be equally significant for some viewers is the gradual development of a male bisexual character, who willfully rejects bi stereotypes to the point of addressing them in song and dance. And for anyone who cares about bisexual representation on-screen, it is magnificent.

In the pilot, Darryl Whitefeather (played by Pete Gardner) is introduced as a fairly flat supporting character: our protagonist’s new boss and something of a walking punchline. Rebecca (Rachel Bloom), a well-educated but emotionally precarious lawyer, takes a job at Whitefeather & Associates as an excuse to move to West Covina, CA, where her first love Josh Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III) just happens to live. Though his name is on the letterhead, Darryl doesn’t seem to have much authority or confidence, and he is ecstatic that a well-respected New York lawyer like Rebecca would deign to join his firm. He immediately overshares about his pending divorce as well as his Native American heritage (1/8 Chippewa), while managing to embarrass himself in front of his new Jewish employee with an anti-Semitic remark. It feels like the show is setting him up as a kind of Michael Scott-esque character, a floundering, ineffectual, ignorant boss who talks too much and is overly self-involved.

As the season progresses he becomes more fleshed out, more sympathetic, and more likable. We see that the most important thing in his life is his young daughter, of whom he is considered the “primary parent,” as he argues for custody during his divorce. His first song is a country-western parody about his love for her, which jokingly reveals how easy it is for for declarations of fatherly affection to sound, well, icky. Darryl is shown as unabashedly emotional and loving, setting him apart early on from the other men in the show who exhibit more traditionally “masculine” traits.

But Darryl’s sexuality is never a question until he meets Josh “White Josh” Wilson (David Hull), a handsome, good-natured trainer and one of Josh Chan’s best friends. They meet on a party bus rented by Rebecca for a Josh Chan-related scheme, and immediately separate themselves from the drama, bonding over fitness talk. Some time later, feeling lonely and out of sorts while his daughter is away, Darryl throws a party for Josh and some of his friends. After staying to help him clean up, Josh kisses Darryl goodbye, igniting a chain reaction of self-discovery. He finds out Josh is gay and that Josh had assumed he was gay (he picked up “the gay vibe”), but Darryl reacts defensively, asserting that he is attracted to women, was married to a woman, and had a child with a woman. Josh assumes he’s in denial but doesn’t push it.

Still clearly unsure about whatever feelings Josh seems to have stirred within him, Darryl has a sudden realization during dance class, as he appreciatively eyes the backsides of both a man and woman in front of him: he is attracted to both! Thrilled that it all makes sense, he rushes to come out to Josh, but is nervous about embarking publicly in a same-sex relationship. Josh — who has been out since he was a tween — has no desire to hide any of his relationships from others. After wrestling with it, Darryl realizes he was wrong in trying to keep it secret, and that he is ready to be an out bisexual as he re-enters the dating pool. Over the rest of the season, they gradually become the most stable, uncomplicated relationship on the show, spending the finale together at the climactic wedding, proudly wearing matching tuxedos and seeming comfortable both with each other and with anyone else who might see them.

In the episode “Josh is Going to Hawaii!,” Darryl comes out to his staff through a Huey Lewis-inspired musical number, in what is to me one of the most important and enjoyable segments of the entire first season of this series. With candy-colored lighting, multiple popped collars, and a heaping dose of saxophone, he sings his way through the simple facts of bisexuality, the unfair stereotyping associated with it, and the excitement of coming out. With the through-line “I’m g-g-g-g-gettin’ bi,” lyrics include: “Now some may say / Are you just gay? / Why don’t you just go gay all the way? / But that’s not it / ‘Cause bi’s legit!”; “I tell you what / Being bi does not imply / That you’re a ‘player’ or a ‘slut’”; “It’s not a phase / I’m not confused / Not indecisive / I don’t have the gotta-choose blues”; and of course, the soon-to-be-classic, “It doesn’t take an intellectual / To get that I’m bisexual.”

Darryl dances and bounds around the meeting room as well as an imaginary stage, relieved upon having this realization about himself and gleeful about sharing it with others. The image of a bi character both confident in his identity and committed to addressing biphobic stereotypes — not to mention the incredible catchiness of the tune — is deeply satisfying. And revealing the mixture of support and disinterest from his friends and coworkers imagines a possible future where people are accepting of different sexual orientations, while not being fixated on them. As one of his staff points out, the weirdest thing about their boss coming out is that he called a meeting just to tell everyone in the office that.

Bi characters are already less common in film and television, and when they do show up, they are often predatory, overly sexualized, or “going through a phase.” In many cases, the term “bisexual” (or pansexual or any of the concept’s variants) may never even be used, erasing the identity altogether by refusing to name it. One common experience I’ve observed among many bisexual people is that the lack of media representation led to some confusion while growing up, questioning the validity of the identity, and struggling to come to terms with what it means and how it fits into the larger queer community. Can I say I’m bisexual if I’m not fully sure of my preference? If I haven’t dated anyone? If I’ve only dated one gender? If I’m in a serious male/female relationship? Could this be a phase? Do I have to pick a side?

Today, more and more visible celebrities are coming out as bi, and that’s fantastic, but it is still crucial for popular media to positively depict bi characters and give them their own stories. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend not only names it, but celebrates and nurtures it, developing Darryl’s subplot across several episodes as he moves from being in a monogamous “straight” relationship in which he was unhappy for years, to recognizing his own preferences and finding acceptance from both self and others. By the season one finale, he is even given the possibility of a happy (and adorable) ending, and I can’t wait to see where things go from here.

Alex Kittle is an artist, writer, retail buyer, and curator who lives and works in the Boston area. She is passionate about many things, including horror movies, 80s new wave, feminist art history, crossword puzzles, and science-fiction. You can find her at almost any given time of day hanging out on Twitter @alexxkittle.

‘The O.C.’s Alex Kelly Deserved Better; All Bisexual Characters Do

I’ve had countless conversations with other queer women who had similar awakenings in 2004, when Alex Kelly burst onto our TV screens and shook up the Orange County. But upon subsequent re-watches, I’ve been forced to notice that Alex’s storyline isn’t the empowering queer narrative I remembered. For one thing, all of her romantic interests take advantage of her and use her for personal gain.

This guest post written by Kate Sloan appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

The first time Olivia Wilde’s character Alex Kelly appears on-screen in The O.C., protagonist Seth (Adam Brody) creeps up behind her while she’s wearing headphones. Startled, she traps him in a headlock. “Touch me again, I’ll hurt you,” she promises. But actually, it’s Alex who ends up getting hurt, over and over again, by every character she gets close to. She enters the television show tough and fighting, and leaves it heartbroken and crying. She’s used, thrown aside, and objectified. I want better for Alex, because she deserves it, and I want better for every other bisexual character, too.

Alex is introduced in season two of The O.C. as a love interest for Seth Cohen, the show’s awkward, geeky, self-absorbed antihero. Seth needs tickets to a sold-out concert to impress his ex-girlfriend Summer (Rachel Bilson), so he shows up at music venue the Bait Shop to try to weasel his way into the show. There, he finds Alex, the Bait Shop’s bartender and de facto manager. To get the tickets, he applies to work at the club as a janitor, and she hires him. But as is always the way with drama-soaked soap operas like The O.C., their professional relationship quickly becomes more than that.

Alex is everything the show’s spoiled protagonists are not (with the exception of “beautiful,” because everyone on this show is beautiful). Her blue-streaked blonde hair, tough tattoos, and rock-’n’-roll fashion sense make her stick out like a cactus spike amongst all the wealthy girl-next-door types in the cast. By the age of 17, we learn, Alex has been expelled from three different high schools for misbehaving, and her parents kicked her out when they discovered she was dating a girl. But she petitioned the court for emancipation, successfully escaped her parents, got the Bait Shop job, and moved into her own apartment. She’s doing well; she’s happy. At least, until Seth and his friends enter her life.

I’m enormously sentimental about The O.C. It was formative viewing for me at the tender age of 12, when the openly bisexual Alex made me realize that I, too, might be queer. I devoured each new episode with rabid enthusiasm, and pored over Alex-related fanfiction, LiveJournal discussions, and screencaps. She was tenacious and bold, but also feminine and sweet. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to make out with her, be her best friend, or be her. I’ve had countless conversations with other queer women who had similar awakenings in 2004, when Alex Kelly burst onto our TV screens and shook up the Orange County.

But upon subsequent re-watches, I’ve been forced to notice that Alex’s storyline isn’t the empowering queer narrative I remembered.

For one thing, all of her romantic interests take advantage of her and use her for personal gain. Seth, the cute dweeb she starts dating shortly after she hires him to clean her club’s toilets, just wants her so he can make his ex-girlfriend jealous: he brags about her in front of Summer. He consistently fetishizes her rebelliousness and queerness, talking about her like her tattoos, underage alcohol consumption, and sexual encounters with other girls are the most interesting things about her. He eventually breaks up with her because he says her too-cool persona is an “act,” a “crutch,” when in fact it seems to be the only thing that drew him to her in the first place.

From the ashes of her romance with Seth, Alex falls into a fling with Marissa (Mischa Barton), the show’s beautiful, rich, vapid female lead. Marissa’s spent the entire series rebelling against her mom, whom she hates. Earlier in the season, Marissa dates her family’s hot gardener, intentionally inciting her mother’s classist rage by mingling with such an undesirable person. “I’m not saying you didn’t like me,” he says when he breaks up with her, “just not as much as you hate [your mom].” But just a few episodes later, Marissa’s pulling the exact same trick again, by dating someone who’s not only working-class but also (gasp!) a girl.

To the credit of actors Olivia Wilde and Mischa Barton, their courtship is portrayed with an authenticity and vulnerability that the writing lacks. There’s one memorable episode where Alex’s vindictive ex makes off with her favorite heart-shaped necklace and Marissa accompanies her on a road trip to recover it. “You can’t let her steal your heart,” Marissa says, and the look they share is meant to be smoldering but comes across as sweet. It’s an emotional closeness I recognize from my own exciting initial forays into queer romance.

It’s heartbreaking for both Alex and the viewer, then, when Marissa gets overwhelmed by the social stigma of dating a girl and runs back into the arms of her safe ex-boyfriend. “I didn’t ask you to give up your life,” Alex pleads during their break-up scene, “All I ever wanted was to be a part of it.” For the remainder of the show’s four-season run, there were no further indications that Marissa actually liked women or identified as anything other than straight. She tried on bisexuality, and Alex, like a Marc Jacobs trench coat, before deciding it was so last season and she didn’t want it after all. And Alex disappeared from the show, just a footnote in the lives of the characters who had walked all over her.

Because of the sweet and brave way Olivia Wilde played her, I love Alex. I want a different outcome for her every time I rewatch her plot arc, but she always gets pigeonholed and mistreated in the end. I want her to be more than a “sweeps-week lesbian”; I want the other characters to appreciate her for qualities other than her aesthetic and her sex life; I want the show’s creator to have thought of her as more than just a punchline for the male lead. Josh Schwartz has written other queer characters whose storylines were meaningful and defied stereotypes: Eric van der Woodsen and Jonathan Whitney in Gossip Girl, and even another character from earlier in The O.C.’s run: Carson Ward. Why can’t he seem to craft a female queer character who isn’t a mishmash of stereotypes, objectification, and sad endings?

Call me a sap if you will, but I want a better outcome for Marissa, too. Actual queer women know how life-changing it is to fall for another woman for the first time. You don’t just dust yourself off and go back to a fancy-free life of shopping, lounging by the pool, and dating exclusively boys after a breakthrough like that. I want a Marissa whose queer identity matters to her, informs her decisions, or at least brings up some big questions for her. I don’t want it swept under the rug as soon as the “lesbian storyline” is wrapped up.

Bisexual characters shouldn’t be props, caricatures, or Manic Pixie Dream Girls. They deserve better than that. Bisexual people deserve better than that.

Kate Sloan’s writing on sex, kink, and feminism has appeared in The Establishment, The Plaid Zebra, Maisonneuve, Herizons, and her blog. You can follow her on Twitter @Girly_Juice and Instagram, and subscribe to her podcast for sex nerds, The Dildorks, on iTunes. Kate lives in Toronto and spends her free time playing the ukulele, curating her impeccable sex toy collection, and swooning over Olivia Wilde.

Biphobia in ‘Basic Instinct’

The film is extremely biphobic and includes many of the most negative stereotypes about bisexuality, particularly in terms of bisexual women… ‘Basic Instinct’ manages to have not one but three queer women characters, including two canonically bisexual ones, and they all are written as stereotypes.

This guest post written by L.M. Zoller appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation. | Spoilers ahead.

[Trigger warning: discussions of biphobia and mentions of sexual violence.]

Director Paul Verhoeven desperately wants Basic Instinct to be an updated Hitchcock classic (not that Hitchcock was so great on the “evil queer” angle either), taking the psychosexual element to the MPAA limit for 1991, but he clearly forgot that biphobia and “edgy” sex scenes make for a terrible thriller. The film is extremely biphobic and includes many of the most negative stereotypes about bisexuality, particularly in terms of bisexual women: that bisexuality is fake, particularly in the sense of heteronormativity and sapphophobia; conflating bisexuality with mental illness; that queer women exist for the male gaze; and the idea that queer women “recruit” straight women. All this, and the word “bisexual” is never even uttered once.

At the beginning of the film, Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) has been called in to investigate the murder of aging rock star Johnny Boz, whom we see being tied to a bed and stabbed to death with an ice pick by a blonde woman whose face we never see. The primary suspect is Boz’s eventual girlfriend Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), a novelist who writes murder mysteries; her latest novel was about an aging rock star murdered in the exact fashion Boz was. Nick falls into instant lust with Catherine but isn’t sure if she’s the killer; Catherine decides to write a book about Nick, about “a detective who falls in love with the wrong woman.”

One of the issues with queer representation in media is that tokenism creates the burden of representation: the one character must then represent all of queerdom — and none of its intersections or the diversity of LGBTQIA+ experiences. Thus, including more queer characters ought to offset the burden and allow the creators to show a diversity of personalities, gender expressions, and lived experiences, as well as intersections with socioeconomic status, race, ability, etc. Basic Instinct manages to have not one but three queer women characters, including two canonically bisexual ones, and they all are written as stereotypes.

The queer community protested the film in 1991-2 during the filming and release for exactly this reason. In the article “Homosexuals In Film: The Controversy Gay Activists Say ‘Basic Instinct,’ Opening Friday, Is A Perfect Example Of What Is Wrong With Hollywood’s Vision,” journalist and film critic Lewis Beale collected the same comments from activists that we’re still making in 2016 regarding better representation of queer characters, especially non-monosexual and trans characters:

“There has been a nonstop, decades-long portrayal of gays as psychopaths, sociopaths and screaming queens,” says Robert Bray of the Washington-based National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. “I don’t mind a gay villain or two, but I also wouldn’t mind a gay or lesbian hero. No one is calling for cultural censorship, but we are asking for diverse representations.”

….As Leonard Maltin, the film historian who appears on Entertainment Tonight, puts it: “If gays are frequently portrayed on film, then the fact that some are villains isn’t going to matter. But when you see them infrequently, then each portrayal carries a disproportionate amount of weight with the audience.”

(Please note that some of the language in this article, including quotes by activists, does not include the term bisexual.)

Catherine Trammel is a bisexual, polyamorous, possibly aromantic novelist who specializes in murder mysteries that happen to come true. Let me be clear that this film does not paint Catherine as the hero or even the anti-hero, but rather as a hypersexualized sociopath. The detectives are incredulous that she wasn’t in love with Johnny Boz but had a long-term sexual relationship with him, which she initiated to write her novel and maintained because she enjoyed sex with him. Catherine is supposed to have this cat-and-mouse sexual tension with Nick, but it rings false: she actually seems to be calling him out on his heterosexism by talking back to him. However, because the film conflates bisexuality with psychopathy, her flippant remarks to Nick Carran are supposed to be interpreted as the evil queer woman using her sexuality to goad the heroic everyman character into ruining his life for her. For example, when Nick announces that the sex they just had — exceedingly heteronormative fare other than the fact she ties him up like Boz — was the “fuck of the century,” Catherine laughs at him and says it was “a pretty good start.” He thinks he’s God’s gift to women; she’s clear with him several times that their relationship is a means for her to write her detective novel.

Catherine’s refusal to even acknowledge Nick’s puffed-up male-privilege-steeped ego enters into both of their relationships with the second queer character in the film, Roxy (Leilani Sarelle). Roxy is Catherine’s girlfriend; she is only shown as Catherine’s partner and barely has any lines at all, so it’s unclear if she is also bisexual or if she identifies as a lesbian. Roxy is portrayed as a tomboy femme and a different stereotype — the jealous lover who is ousted by a straight man. In the scene prior to the sex scene, Nick picks up Catherine in a club. Everyone looks fabulous and fierce, especially Roxy and Catherine; Nick walks in wearing a dad sweater and jeans. Catherine picks him to go home with instead of Roxy in what feels like a heavy-handed metaphor for compulsory heterosexuality. He merely has to show up and ham-fistedly grab her butt for her to be more interested in him than in Roxy.

When Roxy confronts Nick in the bathroom after Catherine and Nick have had sex, Roxy claims Catherine likes her to watch her have sex; when Catherine confirms that Roxy likes to watch, the following exchange happens:

Nick: I guess Roxy’s not taking this too well.
Catherine: She’s seen me fuck plenty of guys.
Nick: Well, maybe she saw something she’s never seen before.
Catherine: She’s seen everything before.
Nick: Honey, I thought I’d seen everything before.
Catherine: Did you really think it was so special?

Catherine rebukes him at every turn about her relationship with Roxy; Nick continues to mansplain her own relationship to her. However, Roxy really is angry with him and tries to run him over with her car as he exits a bar. He chases her in his car, eventually running her off the road, and killing her in a classic case of dead lesbian/bisexual syndrome. She never got jealous about other men, according to Catherine, but Nick is so special that apparently she has to murder him, picking up the tropes of jealous partner, murderous queer woman, and angry (soft) butch all in one go.

The final queer woman character is Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), who fulfills the stereotype of a straight woman “recruited” by (murderous) queer women or the murderous closet case. Beth is a psychologist working with the San Francisco Police and acting as Nick’s psychologist after an incident where he shot several tourists by accident. She slept with Catherine in college; she had a relationship with Nick and used to be married to another man; a former acquaintance tells Nick that Beth’s marriage dissolved because she had a girlfriend. However, when Nick questions her about sleeping with Catherine, Beth claims that she isn’t queer: “Hey, guys, I’m not gay, but I did fuck your suspect? I was experimenting; it was the only time I’ve been with a woman.” Immediately after, she says, “She’s really sick you know,” and claims that Catherine was stalking her in college, which counters Catherine’s claim that Beth was obsessed with her.

Of course, Beth’s fear of being out at work or being connected to the suspect isn’t unmerited. Whereas Catherine, a mystery writer, remains unaffected in her career by her sexuality and sexual history, Beth might not be taken seriously as a psychologist or in law enforcement if she were out as bisexual, and coming out to a room full of men who can barely understand a woman having sex for pleasure seems like a nightmare. Instead of using this plot line as a vehicle to discuss bi erasure, the need for LGBTQIA-inclusive ENDA or anti-oppression training, or the concept of bisexuality as who you are, not whom you’re with, the film just conflates her sexuality with psychopathy. She and Catherine both accuse each other of stalking, and Beth is later revealed or framed (?) as the murderer. Like Roxy, Beth is also killed by Nick, who shoots her because he thinks she has a weapon.

Throughout this whole film, no one ever says the word bisexual. Catherine doesn’t discuss her sexuality at all but discusses past and present partners of same and different genders without hesitation. Roxy barely gets to speak, let alone discuss her sexual orientation. Beth claims not to be “gay” (which could be read as either a 90s umbrella term or as lesbian-identified/monosexual). The lack of inclusion of the term is just the cherry on the biphobia sundae that is Basic Instinct.

It’s also important to note that of the three women, only Catherine survives. Are both Roxy and Beth dead because they refused to do what Nick, the cishet man, wanted? Or, if the film is actually Catherine’s novel Shooter, did she or Nick tack on the “happy ending” at his request instead of having the “wrong woman” murder him?

Nick is a biphobic, mansplaining rapist (trigger warning: there is a scene in which Nick and Beth are having consensual sex where she tells him to stop and he doesn’t) with an inflated ego and anger management issues who is decidedly not redeemed in the narrative of the film. While he had tried to redeem himself after committing violence prior to the start of the film, he got sober but didn’t work on any of his numerous issues with male privilege, rape culture, or monosexism. From a bisexual lens, the element of horror in this film is not that Catherine or Beth might be a murderer, but that Nick is supposed to be the hero.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

The Trope of the Murderous Bisexual Woman

L.M. Zoller is a genderqueer bisexual writer living in Seattle. Ze write the blogs I’ll Make It Myself!, about food and gender, and The Lobster Dance, a blog about about geekery and gender, featuring the annual Feminist Halloween series and The Non-Binary Book Club. Zir work has been published in Render: Food and Culture Quarterly (forthcoming Fall 2016), Feministe, and Have You Nerd?.

If It Were, We’d be Dating: The Tale of Brittany and Bisexuality on ‘Glee’

Brittany’s sexuality, while never explicitly stated by the character as bisexual, goes unconcealed for the most part because the ‘Glee’ audience is led to believe that she doesn’t have much agency over her own personal life. … Sure, ‘Glee’ might be one of the only shows on television to use the word bisexual to describe a character, but all the biphobia it exhibits sort of nullifies that progress.

This guest post written by Shira Feder appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

“Sex is not dating,” Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera), the outspoken Latina cheerleader, announces. It is season one, episode thirteen of Glee, the newest hit teen show to grace America’s television sets, and millions of people are watching.

“If it were, Santana and I would be dating,” parries Brittany S. Pierce (Heather Morris). An unquantifiable number of interested audiences lean forward, crane their heads. Did she really just say that? Yes, Brittany did, and thus the romance between goofy, purportedly bisexual Brittany Pierce and self-proclaimed “bitch” with a heart of gold, Latina lesbian Santana Lopez would go on to catalyze some of Glee’s highest highs and lowest lows.

TV isn’t created in a vacuum. Today more than ever, fan influence has planted itself inside the writers room. Brittany’s throwaway joke inspired interested fans in what was potentially Glee’s first Sapphic coupling. Fans rallied themselves in endorsement of the couple, but had to wait until season two, episode four, to see any intimacy between the two, presented in the form of neck nuzzling because on-camera kissing may have been “too scandalous” for a family show.

“Bisexual’s a term that gay guys in high school use when they wanna hold hands with girls and feel like a normal person for a change,” Kurt tells the undecided Blaine in season two, episode fourteen. While Kurt’s comment could have been further explored, it’s not; it’s a stance of bi erasure, and one that remains firmly in place amongst the series’ ideologies, right between “The show must go on!” and “80% of screen time is reserved for heterosexual couples.”

Brittany’s sexuality, while never explicitly stated by the character as bisexual, goes unconcealed for the most part because the Glee audience is led to believe that she doesn’t have much agency over her own personal life. The folks behind Glee, Ryan Murphy and company, have never known quite what to do with Brittany. Her character fluctuates from being an infantilized teen who believes in magic combs and allows Santana to manipulate her into sex — which reinforces rape culture and plays into the ugly underpinnings of stereotypes, all of them involving the myth of the voracious lesbian who preys on innocent straight girls — to a Mensa-accepted mathematical genius. The implication that Brittany is flighty or vapid thus “excuses” her bisexuality by the show’s terms because she is not fully aware of what she is doing, bouncing from one person to the next. Various writers and critics have even questioned her ability to even consent to sex after exhibiting such childlike tendencies. So, the only known bisexual character on Glee is not exactly drowning in self-awareness, making this already lukewarm support of bisexuality even less encouraging than it could (or should) be. Then again, this is Glee; if you’re not insulted by something the series does, you aren’t paying attention.

In season four, episode nine, Brittany tells Sam she cannot date him because she is worried the lesbians of the nation will harass him:

“It’s like, all the lesbians of the nation, and I don’t know how they found out about Santana and I dating, but once they did, they started sending me, like, tweets and Facebook messages on Lord Tubbington’s wall. I think it means a lot to them to see two super hot, popular girls in love, and I worry if they find out about you and I dating that they’ll turn on you and get really violent and hurt your beautiful face and mouth.”

In trying to prevent fan backlash by acknowledging it, the writers instead managed to alienate a diverse fanbase, by refusing to even mention bisexuality. The preemptive assumption in these lines, that Brittany and Santana’s relationship is only for the “lesbians of the nation,” thereby excluding any other sexualities, ignores the variety of different “Brittana” fans who exist that might have been proud to see a fellow bisexual person on-screen. The writers should’ve known better than to alienate their fanbase by defensively accusing them of caring too much, immediately followed by the threat of violence. Brittany’s confusing response, where she doesn’t mention her own sexual orientation and instead speaks in vague terms about lesbians, presents Glee’s lack of clarity on sexual fluidity.

The other narrow-minded conjecture here is that lesbians in the audience will be actively upset that Brittany is not dating another girl because of the television fallacy that bisexual people “become straight” when they are dating someone of the opposite gender. The so called “lesbians of the nation” were not angry about Sam; they were concerned about the possibility of Glee reinventing Brittany’s character as someone who experimented in high school, as character continuity was never Glee’s strong suit. They’re angry about being insulted in a tossed off meta-reference reducing their valid emotions and opinions about representation into a punchline. There is definitely an interesting argument to make against fan entitlement, but it doesn’t belong here.

The lesbian anger that erupted because of Brittany’s line seemed to be less about Brit moving on with Sam and more about the fact that their new relationship was given more airtime than Brittany and Santana’s relationship ever was. Brittany being with Sam doesn’t dilute her bisexuality, yet by the narrow binary Glee created, it does. “But she was bi!” protests Sam about Brittany in this same episode, as though being bisexual precludes him from ever being able to think of Brittany romantically. When Brittany finally decides Sam is too hilarious to let go, Brittany tells a worried Sam that the lesbian blogger community is “not gonna like it, but the way I figure is that, they know they’re my sisters, and love is love.”

Using the phrase “love is love” is a pretty interesting word choice here, considering that exact phrase was used as a campaign tool during the marriage equality fight to legalize same-sex marriages in the U.S. The phrase was used to appeal to the straight majority of Americans by showing them how “normal” LGBTQ people are, that queer people are capable of love and monogamy just like straight people and they wanted access to the same rights as everyone else. Using this queer-coded terminology here, after railing against the lesbian blogger community, is an odd choice to defend a relationship that passes as heterosexual.

In season five, episode two, long after the couple has broken up, Santana says about her new lesbian girlfriend:

“Isn’t it amazing how life seems so easy when you just don’t give a fart? I mean, look at this: Hummel is getting married, Berry is just full of confidence, and I finally have a girlfriend who I don’t have to worry about straying for penis.”

Now, this is Brittany who Santana is referencing. This is the girl who worshiped and protected Santana, who took awhile to even think about another person after Santana broke up with her. This biphobic line furthers the trope of the promiscuous bisexual. Santana says this in front of people who knew her and Brittany in high school and were aware of how sacred Brittany saw their relationship. Santana’s “hilarious” zinger goes unchallenged, even though it flies in the face of every minute of character development we’ve previously seen from both Brittany and Santana, painting Brittany as sexually rapacious and Santana as the self righteous, biphobic lesbian. Sure, Glee might be one of the only shows on television to use the word bisexual to describe a character, but all the biphobia it exhibits sort of nullifies that progress.

It wasn’t just the show’s writing that confused viewers; its personal politics were often drawn into question as well. The actors involved ventured into perilous territory when discussing the two girls. Chris Colfer, who played Kurt Hummel, said in an AfterEllen interview: “Maybe Brittany and Santana are just so sexual they don’t know how to have a relationship with anyone that isn’t sexual.” This is an unfortunate statement that pushes the damaging stereotype of the predatory, promiscuous bisexual.

When asked in an interview with The Advocate about the possibility of an on-screen kiss between the girls, Heather Morris said, “I don’t think so. I asked Ryan [Murphy] about that and he said there was no way. He said that since we’re a prime-time television show, he didn’t want to do that.” Brittany had already been filmed kissing a member of the opposite sex. The abundance of screen time Brittany was given when in a heterosexually passing relationship (with Sam and Artie) only complicates the fraught relationship Glee has with representation, walking a fine line between being a “family-friendly show” (as if somehow LGBTQ characters and their relationships aren’t family-friendly) and a television series that is a safe haven for the misunderstood and marginalized.

In season six of Glee, Brittany and Santana reunite. They get their own happily ever after episode, complete with two wedding dresses and talks of forever. They shared more on-screen kisses in season six than any other season, which perhaps has something to do with the fact that this is the disgraced Glee’s final swan song, in a last ditch attempt to cement its legacy as an LGBTQ-friendly prime-time television show. Brittany seems to have forgotten she ever dated Sam, which can be generously viewed as Brittany wanting to commit to her future without thinking of the past, rather than the writers again not knowing how to handle Brittany’s sexual orientation.

Amid the murky mire of Glee’s personal politics, a path to a blissful conclusion has been carved out for the fan favorites. “The world seemed so scary and confusing. It was just too fast. It made me feel dumb, just because my brain worked differently,” says Brittany in her vows. “I would’ve suffered it all just for the tiny chance to be standing up here marrying you.” Next to her, Santana beams. Bisexuality is irrelevant when there is monogamy to think about. While it’s great to see a happy ending for two queer women characters (one a woman of color), it’s frustrating it occurred amidst bi erasure and biphobia.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Queer Women as Sexual Beings: The L Word and More
Glee and Trans Men
Becky, Adelaide, and Nan: Women with Down Syndrome on Glee and American Horror Story
Glee‘s Not So Gleeful Representation of Women with Disabilities
Women and Gender in Musicals Week: Glee

Recommended Reading:

The Most Random Fandom | A well curated blog with brilliant analysis of Brittany and Santana that handles each Glee episode individually.
13 TV Shows with Lesbian and Bisexual Female Characters Who Are Getting It Right via Autostraddle

Shira Feder is a writer from New York who can be found at http://shirafeder.tumblr.com/ if she ever figures out how to use it.

‘Firefly’: Mixed Messages on Inara’s Sexuality

In ‘Firefly,’ women can be strong, they can be independent, they can be respected, but they are still fetishized for their sexual choices. Inara’s queerness is less a way to incorporate diverse sexuality into the show and more to stoke a fantasy of women for the consumption of heterosexual men.

This guest post written by A Little Tiefling appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

Previous articles have discussed the less-than-egalitarian portrayal of Inara Serra on Joss Whedon’s cult television series, Firefly, in her role as respected sex worker. But the framing of her sexuality is also far more traditionally heteronormative than it first appears.

Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin) is a Companion: more than a high-class escort, she has been trained in Tantric mysticism, the arts, etiquette etc. Companions are so respected that they can select their clients and command huge sums. They can also afford to reject clients, unlike their lower class counterparts who have far less freedom to turn down income. All this suggests Companions choose clients based on personal preferences, including sexual ones.

Inara selects patrons with whom she shares chemistry. In the episode “Shindig,” she rejects a timid male suitor and selects Atherton Wing (Edward Atterton), a confident and attractive man. Thus the show establishes Inara exercising control over her partners. It should be noted that in the same episode, two women can be seen among Inara’s potential clients, but she has no further interactions with them and even rejects one before speaking to her.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKVqNcRj_sY”]

Inara’s clients are overwhelmingly male. She says it herself to her one on-screen female client. This can only partly be chalked up to the seediness of Serenity’s crew and shipping routes. Inara has a large measure of freedom, being able to pilot her shuttle to more cosmopolitan ports than what her traveling companions can access. And yet, the female client with whom Inara seems to have a strong affection is never seen again. She’s never mentioned again. Their brief sexual encounter lasts a short time, but there are many lingering moments of heterosexual sex. Inara never interacts with another woman in the same intimate and sexual manner, though in theory she has the complete freedom to. She’s even portrayed to have a close platonic friendship with engineer Kaylee (Jewel Staite).

The show could have evolved their friendship into something more romantic or at least give the women time to discuss their closeness. There is some subtextual support that Kaylee has romantic feelings for Inara. They spend at least one scene grooming each other’s hair and discussing love and sex. However, Kaylee, who is just as openly sexual as Inara, pines for a man, while Inara has conflicted feelings for Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion). This is where the show undercuts Inara’s sexual freedom further. Inara’s interactions with other women, whether openly sexual or hinted, are used primarily to antagonize Mal into more open declarations of his own feelings.

In the episode “War Stories,” there’s a scene of Inara engaging with a female client whom she clearly deeply likes. She spends time worrying about the state of Serenity and discusses the woman in intimate terms, as “a very private person.” The scene suggests friendship as well as desire, based on the women’s body language and interactions. They hold a lingering smile and walk side by side, rather than The Councilor (Katherine Kendall) leading Inara. This isn’t a client Inara considers a one-off, but someone she’s met before and enjoys the company of.

A later intimate scene shows Inara giving the woman a massage, helping her to relax and in turn relaxing herself. Inara’s sexuality is clear from the way she is at ease around the councilor. She sought out a female client, alone, not as part of an MFF threesome or because she needed the money. This should have demonstrated Inara acting on her sexual preferences. However, the scene is undercut by the heteronormative tone of the bulk of the show.

Upon learning that Inara has been engaged by a female client, Jayne (Adam Baldwin), Mal, and Kaylee all express some form of arousal, and in Book (Ron Glass)’s case, shock. This grossly inappropriate behavior serves to fetishize Inara’s relationship with a woman. To rub salt in the wound, rather than behave as the flashy Atherton, who flaunts his assignations with Inara, the female client is “private” and desires to meet Inara in secret; as though she is ashamed.

Inara is not a queer woman with the autonomy to choose her clients, as the show tells us. Inara’s requests for respect and privacy with the female councillor go ignored. Instead, the show fetishizes her relationship, mirroring the in-universe delight demonstrated by the observers. Inara’s behavior isn’t her private choice, but meant to be publicly consumed for the titillation of both Mal and Jayne and the audience of the show.

In the episode “Our Mrs. Reynolds,” Mal is both fascinated and smug about Inara’s supposed kiss with Saffron (Christina Hendricks). Inara herself recognizes Saffron’s strategy of seduction and tries to turn it back on her, unsuccessfully. It’s Saffron’s open seduction that makes Inara suspect the con-artist had Companion training. This suggests less that Companions are allowed and encouraged to pursue same-sex relationships and more that they are trained for same-sex flirtation, that all Companions are “gay for pay” and not queer because they follow the human spectrum of sexualities. “War Stories” demonstrates that “gay for pay” attitude extends to the crew. The music of the scene, the over-the-top shock and delight expressed by the observers, all suggest that Inara’s taking a female client is new, faintly ridiculous, or something to be fantasized about but not pursued in depth.

This fetishization of Inara’s (and Kaylee’s, and Saffron’s) queerness further undermines the supposed egalitarian nature of Whedon’s universe. Women can be strong, they can be independent, they can be respected, but they are still fetishized for their sexual choices. Inara’s queerness is less a way to incorporate diverse sexuality into the show and more to stoke a fantasy of women for the consumption of heterosexual men. This is not a progressive view, especially of bisexuality, which is one of the least-portrayed of human sexualities in film and television, while one of the most misrepresented and fetishized. Firefly did not have the time to develop human relationships as fully as it could have, had it not been cancelled after one season. But the relationships that are developed are overwhelmingly heterosexual or heteronormative. Inara may be bisexual, but her queerness is fleeting and fetishized. Her primary role on the show is of teasing love interest. Even her queerness is less about her own autonomy and more about her objectification and sexualized image.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Inara Serra and the Future of Sex Work
The Strong, Intelligent and Diverse Women of Firefly and Serenity

A Little Tiefling is a mild-mannered library worker by day and tarantula-loving guinea pig herder by night. Like all tieflings, this one is interested in writing on matters of sex, desire and the odder things in life.

Bisexuality in ‘Kissing Jessica Stein’ and ‘I Love You Phillip Morris’

Both films, then, arguably fit a wider cultural pattern of bi erasure, suggesting that bisexual characters must “resolve” themselves as either gay or straight. I would argue, however, that what marks ‘I Love You Phillip Morris’ and ‘Kissing Jessica Stein’ as something more nuanced and interesting than another tale of “inauthentic” bisexuality, is the subtlety with which they examine all sexual orientations as limited by our internalized need to socially perform.

This post written by staff writer Brigit McCone appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation. | Spoilers ahead.

How is bisexuality defined? If it is defined by sexual performance, then all the protagonists of the romantic comedies I Love You Phillip Morris and Kissing Jessica Stein must qualify: Steven Russell fathers a child with his wife while taking male lovers, while Jessica Stein and Helen Cooper are heterosexually active women who embark on a sexual relationship with each other. Yet, if bisexuality is defined by self-identification or by profound desire for both genders, then arguably none of these characters qualify: Steven Russell identifies exclusively as gay and appears passionless in his marriage; Jessica Stein is identified as straight even by her female lover, and cannot sustain sexual desire in her lesbian relationship; Helen Cooper, while attracted to men and women, appears emotionally detached and utilitarian towards all her male lovers, finding desire for romantic commitment only with women.

Both films, then, arguably fit a wider cultural pattern of bi erasure, suggesting that bisexual characters must “resolve” themselves as either gay or straight. I would argue, however, that what marks I Love You Phillip Morris and Kissing Jessica Stein as something more nuanced and interesting than another tale of “inauthentic” bisexuality, is the subtlety with which they examine all sexual orientations as limited by our internalized need to socially perform.

In I Love You Phillip Morris, Steven Russell (Jim Carrey) is introduced as a pillar of the community, a proud family man, an active member of his church and a policeman. The film suggests that Steven’s discovery that he was adopted, and the trauma of rejection by his birth mother, are the psychological triggers driving his powerful need for social approval, which includes suppressing the fact that he is gay. When driving back from a rendezvous with a male lover, a collision destroys his sports car and puts him in a neck-brace. Shorn of his status symbol and physically restrained, Stephen is mentally released and resolves to come out of the closet — the first of many moments when the physical restraint of jail or hospitalization triggers emotional liberation.

It may be controversial even to consider Steven as a potentially bisexual character, when his marriage is dictated by the demands of a closeted life, in a conservative culture of compulsory heterosexuality. Yet his coming out of the closet does not instantly transform him from “living a lie” to authenticity. Rather, he plays another social role, sporting extravagant status symbols and elaborate grooming to win the approval of the gay community, discovering that “being gay is really expensive.” As Steven turns to fraud to finance his extravagances, the film has fun with the idea that he has been psychologically prepared for the socially unacceptable role of con man by the socially demanded con of compulsory heterosexuality. As both wife Debbie (Leslie Mann) and boyfriend Jimmy (Rodrigo Santoro) unite to chase Steven and hold him accountable, we see that Steven’s compulsion to perform socially has been the driving force shaping both relationships, gay and straight.

Once in jail, I Love You Phillip Morris plays out like a rom-com spin on The Shawshank Redemption. Like The Shawshank Redemption‘s Andy Dufresne, Steven finds purification and transcendence by the power of his human will to cling to hope of escape, resisting the mental pressures of institutionalization. But where Andy’s sexual aspirations were represented only by a Rita Hayworth poster on his wall, Steven finds true love behind bars in Ewan McGregor’s winsome Phillip Morris. The famous Shawshank Redemption scene where Andy snatches an illicit moment to play Mozart over the PA system, is paralleled by a slow dance between Steven and Phillip to the strains of “Chances Are,” against a background of escalating prison brutality. Yet after emerging from prison, Steven’s lying and con-artistry rapidly resume, eventually alienating Phillip. Steven has been more deeply institutionalized by the society around him than he ever was by jail. As the film ends, he runs for freedom yet again, the dream of a perfectly realized love hanging over him as clear and yet elusive as a penis-shaped cloud.

As a representation of a bisexual woman, Kissing Jessica Stein‘s Jessica Stein (Jennifer Westfeldt) is a disappointment. Even after enjoyably consummating her relationship with Helen (Heather Juergensen), Jessica confesses to finding sex with a woman “all wrong.” However, if we accept Jessica as straight, made no more bisexual by her ability to perform sexually with a woman than Steven Russell is by his, then Kissing Jessica Stein (written by Westfeldt and Juergensen) changes from a bisexual rom-com into something else: a portrait of the price that the social institution of compulsory heterosexuality takes on a straight woman. Jessica is drawn to Helen by a Rilke quotation in her personal ad: “Only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live their relation to another as something alive.” It is Jessica’s heterosexuality that is characterized by the film as a space of deadness, inertia, and monotonous repetition, urgently in need of radical renewal and dismantled preconceptions.

The film opens with Jessica’s mother busily matchmaking her daughter in a synagogue. The men around her are reduced to a list of “suitable” qualities, from physical appearance to wealth and availability; Jessica is urged to force her feelings into finding their suitability attractive. Later, we see her endure a round of dates, each following the same formula of dinner and interrogation, and even taking place in the same restaurant. Jessica’s love life has become institutionalized. We also learn that she has already had a serious relationship with Josh (Scott Cohen), who will emerge as her final love interest. This earlier relationship failed because of Jessica’s intolerance over Josh’s perceived lack of ambition. Everything that we learn about Jessica’s loyalty in friendship indicates that she would be unfailingly supportive to a friend who was struggling in their career. But Jessica’s fixed, socialized preconceptions about the role of boyfriends or “husband material” mean that her lover must perform success, to become the expression of her own ambitions and perfectionism. It is heterosexual connection, not bisexuality, that Josh sees Jessica as “clearly not open to.” In a brilliantly acted and moving scene, Jessica’s mother (Tovah Feldshuh) reveals that it is this perfectionism that made her fear for her daughter’s happiness, while surprising her by accepting her lesbian lover.

This, then, is the role that bisexuality plays in Kissing Jessica Stein: the renewal of Jessica’s heterosexuality through the radical elimination of her romantic preconceptions, and through the thought experiment of reimagining female friendship as romance. Only in the ethics of female friendship, with its emphasis on unconditional loyalty, openness, and mutual support, does Jessica find the proper mental attitude from which to approach relationships, to live them in Rilke’s words as “something alive.” In a comic scene, Jessica pushes Helen towards a male lover because “he’s a sure thing” and Jessica would feel guilty if she was unable to perform. While this may be taken as yet additional proof that Jessica does not take Helen seriously as a romantic partner, it equally shows a classic female friendship’s ideals of unselfish support, that could even encompass a polyamorous relationship. Where are Jessica’s limits, once she releases herself from the narrow, social roles of compulsory heterosexuality? Is it ethical to reduce bisexuality to a plot device for exploring heterosexual frustrations? But, how else could those frustrations have been tackled?

Helen Cooper is introduced to us juggling male lovers: a married man whom she can call if she’s “hungry,” an intellectual she can call if she’s “bored,” and a younger, sexually enthusiastic messenger boy to call if she’s “horny.” This utilitarian attitude to her lovers is matched by a consistent emotional detachment in her dealings with them. Yet her gay friend Martin (Michael Mastro) uses the fact of her promiscuity alone to define her as straight, denying that she could feel lesbian attraction “because you have had more cock than I have, and I was a big whore in the 80s.” His denial of the possibility of bisexuality seems to stem from his need to assert his gay identity; bi erasure and biphobia are damaging and negatively impact and ignore bisexual people’s realities.

As Helen advertises for a lesbian lover, the women whose phone messages she receives seem trapped in fixed preconceptions of their own, as narrow as the expectations of the men that Jessica dates. They seek Helen as an emotional savior or to mother a child with them, rather than expressing openness to Rilke’s exploration of “something alive.” It is, perhaps, precisely Jessica Stein’s straightness that forces Helen to seduce her gradually and through the medium of friendship. In this combination of friendship with sexual allure, Helen seems to find committed romance for the first time. After she and Jessica break up, Helen moves into an apparently committed relationship with another woman, bickering good-naturedly over their sleeping arrangements before going for a friendly brunch with Jessica. Does this indicate that Helen has discovered her orientation as a lesbian? Is she a bisexual woman (since the gender of a person’s current romantic partner doesn’t determine their sexual orientation)? Or is she a bisexual woman who, like Jessica, was limited in her romantic satisfaction with men by her inability to see them as friends? Does it matter?

Surely, if there is a message to Kissing Jessica Stein and I Love You Phillip Morris, it is that social pressures and imposed roles must be unlearned before romantic fulfillment can be achieved. So then, at what point does a label become a limitation?

See also at Bitch Flicks:

LGBTQI Week: Kissing Jessica Stein

Brigit McCone is worried that her dating life may be becoming indescribably monotonous and unrenewed. She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and staring at nature documentaries.

Bisexuality and Masculinity in ‘Y Tu Mamá También’

‘Y Tu Mamá También’ points out the elastic, freeing nature of femininity compared to the toxic, fragile nature of masculinity. Over the course of the film, Luisa only becomes a month or so older and finds truth, or at the very least solace for herself, while Julio and Tenoch go from brash young adults to estranged, closed-off adult men, refusing to come to terms with their bisexuality.

This guest post written by Andy Herrera appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation. | Spoilers ahead.

At first glance, Y Tu Mamá También looks and feels like a classic American sex comedy. You have two ostensibly straight young men desperate for sex who, when suddenly faced with the horrible predicament of not being able to have sex with their girlfriends while they are out of the country, befriend an attractive older women, lie to her about a beautiful beach destination, and both have sex with her. Even from this facile reading of the film, Y Tu Mamá También still invigorates that sometimes tired genre. Unlike American sex comedies, the sexual antics that our main characters, Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael García Bernal), get into are funny by virtue of how oversexed they themselves are and not the sex acts themselves, and the sexual humor is often at the expense of the men, not the women they have sex with.

The camerawork during the sex scenes often feels as lively as the people having sex on-screen as it moves in and out, creating a kinetic feel to each scene. When the movie is not explicitly about sex and sexuality, it’s a lovely travelogue of Mexico, shot beautifully by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and interspersed with small visual reminders of political unrest juxtaposed with the natural beauty of the country. Director Alfonso Cuarón not only created a visually stunning sex comedy, however, he also created a complex character study that often points towards a bisexual subtext between our two leads.

Cuarón specifically cast Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal as the leads, as they have been friends since childhood, and this shows in their natural chemistry on-screen. It’s clear why these two characters are friends and how they compliment each other. Going along with the film’s visual political commentary, there is also classism prevalent in the relationship between Tenoch and Julio. Tenoch’s father works for the Mexican government and Julio’s family is leftist and middle class, already setting up clear political and class conflict between the two boys that they nonetheless have managed to ignore in their friendship. As with other issues laid dormant in their relationship, Tenoch’s classism only comes out during a shouting match late in the film, as he calls Julio “a hillbilly.” The woman they go on a road trip with, Luisa (Maribel Verdú), proves to be the catalyst in unearthing the many repressed issues within their relationship, whether political or sexual.

The trope of an older woman teaching young men about life and love became ridiculous pretty much after Weird Science and it’s strange here too, yet is justified in retrospect at the end of the film, when Tenoch informs Julio that Luisa died a month after the trip and that she knew she had cancer the entire time. While Julio and Tenoch go on that journey with her, just for the virtue of being around an attractive woman that may have sex with them, Luisa went on that journey to find peace and truth within her life and impart wisdom on to someone, anyone, as her entire family is deceased and her husband repeatedly cheated on her. Luisa ultimately succeeds in finding truth for herself and for Julio and Tenoch, but for them the truth permanently fractures their relationship.

At the beginning of their journey, as Julio and Tenoch get to know Luisa, Julio states that “truth is cool but unattainable… the truth is totally amazing but you can never reach it.” Their trip to the beach allows Julio and Tenoch to come close to unearthing deep sexual truths about themselves, but his words become a self-fulfilling prophecy as they never reach the truth. At the beginning of the film, Julio and Tenoch start out as brash and sexually pompous (despite both of them admitting they’ve only had sex with their current girlfriends) young men. Out of a need for sexual intimacy with men she trusts more than her cheating husband, Luisa has sex with both of them and sexual dysfunctions are revealed: Julio reaches climax too quickly; Tenoch has a habit of saying “Mama” when he reaches his own climax. These idiosyncrasies are pointed out to them by Luisa, exemplifying their sexual immaturity and inexperience. It’s soon revealed that both Julio and Tenoch have slept with each other’s girlfriends in a scenario that’s first presented as dramatic and potentially friendship ending, but then is reframed as comedic as more of their sexual dalliances are revealed in farcical fashion. Their friendship remains intact.

As Julio and Tenoch come to a head in their argument over who had sex with whose girlfriend, Luisa becomes angry and leaves, exclaiming, “What [they] really want to do is fuck each other!” This statement, while humorous within the scene, gains weight when read in context with scenes before and after this one. Earlier in the film, Julio and Tenoch play around naked while showering, masturbate together, and even note a picture of a penis together. They remark that they never see a friend anymore since he came out of the closet, but are nonetheless accepting of him, despite their heavy usage of homophobic slurs throughout the film.

After they reconcile, Julio, Tenoch, and Luisa all have sex while intoxicated, which leads to Julio and Tenoch passionately kissing. The revelatory aspect of this threesome scene is that Tenoch and Julio’s kiss isn’t played for gay panic humor as it typically would be in other sex comedies, but rather as tender, loving, and a natural growth of their sexualities. There’s never a doubt that they’re attracted to women, but this scene confirms they are also definitely attracted to each other as more than friends (even Diego Luna can’t stop thinking about it). Luisa, once again, is the catalyst that leads them to this truth, it’s up to them whether or not they accept it.

Due to society’s (and their own ingrained) heteronormativity, Julio and Tenoch do not accept this truth, however. The morning after their tryst, they choose to go home immediately, with Luisa staying behind voluntarily. The narrator states that their girlfriends later broke up with them, they found new women to date, and they eventually stopped seeing each other. Julio and Tenoch only meet once again a year later, to discuss Luisa’s fate, before never meeting again. Luisa finds peace in nature and with her true self, and while she pushed Julio and Tenoch towards some harsh truths, they ultimately rejected them.

Y Tu Mamá También points out the elastic, freeing nature of femininity compared to the toxic, fragile nature of masculinity. Over the course of the film, Luisa only becomes a month or so older and finds truth, or at the very least solace for herself, while Julio and Tenoch go from brash young adults to estranged, closed-off adult men, refusing to come to terms with their bisexuality. The children are Mexico’s (and every country’s) future but even they cannot survive in an oppressive society without obscuring some fundamental truth about who they are.

Andy Herrera was born in New York, raised in Florida, and is now back in New York again. He was raised on TV shows and movies and now all he does is write about them.

‘Lost Girl’: Breaking the Mold For Bisexual Representation on TV

Series creator and season one’s co-showrunner, Michelle Lovretta structured the idea of a bisexual female superhero around being a succubus: “a mythological being who uses sex to feed, heal, and kill” — a traditionally vilified female role that used sex as a weapon. … Awareness of the unique challenges of bisexual representation allowed Bo to be a genuinely complex heroine, instead of just a problematic stereotype. She was carefully crafted to be sex positive, while being defined by her relationships, instead of her sexuality.

This guest post written by Laura LaVertu appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

The Canadian fantasy television series, Lost Girl, had a complex and intimate relationship with bisexual representation. Like most shows, years of development had to occur before it appeared on television. During this time, there was a deliberate attempt to counter negative perceptions of bisexual characters in its writing. It also had a rather fraught path to the small screen, one that producer Jay Firestone laid squarely at the feet of its “bisexual element.” He described how he first thought of the idea, in a 2012 Comic-Con interview:

“A couple of my friends and I were talking about what sort of Buffy would be like today versus when Buffy was out. And I made a joke at one point and said Buffy would be bisexual, and everyone said what a cool idea! So we started developing it from there.”

But the production team had a hard time finding a workable script. Series creator and season one’s co-showrunner, Michelle Lovretta, eventually landed it for them, structuring the idea of a bisexual female superhero around being a succubus: “a mythological being who uses sex to feed, heal, and kill” — a traditionally vilified female role that used sex as a weapon. Both Lovretta and Firestone expressed the difficulties they had in managing a television series around Bo (Anna Silk), such a sexually powerful, bisexual lead character:

“I went and sold it, tried to sell it, to everybody… and they were all scared of it a bit… They were nervous about the bisexual element,” Firestone said. “That’s what scared everybody.”

Lovretta relates her own anxiety about the show in this Watercooler Journal interview:

“But after that initial excitement came trepidation – it is so, so incredibly easy with a template like that to create something mind-numbingly insulting, anti-female, and exploitative. I wouldn’t want my name on that. And, as someone who respects both the straight and queer communities, I was afraid of alienating either of them in the process… or, of just making neutered, boring TV by overthinking it and being too PC. Gah!! The challenge was to create a fun, sex-positive world that celebrates provocative cheesecake for everyone, without falling into base stereotypes or misogynistic (or misandristic) exploitation along the way.”

She set up a series of rules in her writers’ room to address the problems:

“Sexual orientation is not discussed, and never an issue;
“No slut shaming – Bo is allowed to have sex outside of relationships
“Bo’s male and female partners are equally viable;
“Bo is capable of monogamy, when desired;
“Both genders are to be (adoringly!) objectified — equal opportunity eye candy FTW.”

Lovretta admitted they could not always adhere to all of the rules in the “thick of production,” but they always “tried.” She was not fond of anything “too prurient;” and although she said she wrote with no specific themes in mind, she had a desire to “defend the bisexual community” against what she perceived as negative stereotypes. For this reason, the character of Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) was allowed to state she was straight in the first episode. This was to “represent female friendships that [were] not sexualized,” as well as to counter the “gay panic cliché that bisexual people sexualize everyone.”

This was rare and sympathetic handling for such a character. Awareness of the unique challenges of bisexual representation allowed Bo to be a genuinely complex heroine, instead of just a problematic stereotype. She was carefully crafted to be sex positive, while being defined by her relationships, instead of her sexuality. She was specifically designed to be a good person; such positive representation for bisexual people is important. Research has shown that biphobia, monosexism, and erasure and marginalization are major stressors for bisexual people. They “have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders, compared to heterosexuals, lesbians and gays.”

But while the lead character was undoubtedly important, Lost Girl did not rely on Bo alone for its bisexual representation. By its final season, the show had a majority queer cast, many of whom were bisexual. Possibly the best example was the flip of an iconic season one villain, Vex, into a bisexual male ally. It not only snagged actor Paul Amos a Canadian Screen Award nomination for his portrayal, but it also gave the show its first main bisexual male character. Female characters tend to have much greater bisexual representation than male characters. Lost Girl was no exception to this stereotype, so the bisexual reveal of Vex was a great improvement. Even better was that the show allowed Vex a happy ending with his love interest during the series finale.

But the show possessed other weaknesses in bisexual representation. There was a failure to cast many actors of color, as well as to avoid the death trope. Lead actor Anna Silk has Turkish-Cyprian-British heritage. But the show had a poor record maintaining its characters of color. While the series killed its straight characters at about twice the rate of its queer characters (which is especially interesting given the preponderance of LGBTQ characters killed on television), it did not spare one of its main bisexual characters from a particularly egregious ending.

With all its strengths and weaknesses, Lost Girl was a defining property for bisexual representation on television. It provided a huge boost in both the quantity and quality of bisexual characters on-screen. It expanded significantly on the ground broken by its two predecessors, Sanctuary and Torchwood, and helped pave the way for the now many more leading bisexual characters found on television series such as Black Sails, Orange Is the New Black, The 100, and more. It remains on the short list of shows that provide happy endings to its queer couples; a short list of shows that even have queer couples in its main cast. It was the first television show I knew of with a heroic lead character in a same-sex relationship, and the first show with a majority queer and majority female main cast on mainstream television. May there be many more to follow.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Friendship, Fandom, and Female Agency in Lost Girl
How Love Triangles Perpetuate Misogyny
The Problem with LGBT Representation in True Blood and Lost Girl

Laura LaVertu is a writer, caretaker, and TV trope analyzer in the southeastern United States, advocating for diversity in film and on television.