Long Duck Dong

I have often heard / read about how we need to educate people about being bisexual and showing them how we think, feel and express ourselves.... and using media such as tv and movies, will serve to educate them.....

out in the public eye, being bisexual, being proud, being visible, being on tv and in movies, can be as confusing as hell, to other people, and the reason for that, is that bisexuals work by a set of rules that is as fluid as some bisexuals sexuality and one of the biggest problems is trying to convince people that what they are seeing is what we are doing but what they call it is wrong, what we call it is right.....

" monogamy is wrong " is a common catch phrase from people regardless of sexuality, and " that is proven by nature as much of the animal kingdom is not monogamous "..... and that is true and correct.... but much of the animal kingdom work on the principal of survival, not going to dating sites.... and within lion prides and wolf packs, its only the * top dog * that gets a leg over, something that is often ignored by people that talk about monogamy in the animal kingdom, something that I find quite amusing...... its like having cheese and crackers without the crackers....

that leads people to the understanding that no bisexual on tv can be in a relationship with a partner and have it work.... cos thats a big NO NO in tv land.... you have to have drama and issues.... and oh baby, bisexuals are a very good *toy* for tv execs

part of the conception that people have about bisexuals is that bisexuals can not be committed to a person or faithful..... the issue that some bisexual face, is conveying to people that a bisexual can be committed to a person and faithful to a person, but that the commitment and faithfulness only applies on some levels, not others, and therefore a bisexual is happily committed and faithful to one person and not the other ten people that they have slept with in the last year......

in movies and tv shows, its so hard to convey that type of thinking, as its more often a long drawn out period of talking between partners...and in the world of tv where a day can pass in 5 minutes, its often easier just to portray the bisexual as in and out of beds faster than a shopaholic goes in and out of shops with a gold visa.... then telling people that we can and are committed to our partners and we worked out a understanding with our partners over the last couple of months ( 7 minutes in tv terms and 23 minutes of yelling, screaming, door slamming, talking to the hot neighbor, passionate sympathy sex, then back to the partner for a kiss and make up scene... until next episode )

the issue is that many people already have a understanding of having extra partners, they call it fucking around / sleeping around, and that creates issues for bisexuals as its not a nice thing to be told that you are fucking around on your partner, but it is confusing for other people when we use the understanding that we are not fucking around on our partners, we are committed and faithful to our partners while we are having sex with other people......

the trouble that can arise, is that peoples views are often very different when they are looking in the mirror and then looking out the window.... and while they can see issues with others behievour, they may well not see any issues with their own and so we often see the * its not my fault I had sex with other people * statement about themselves v's the * that person is just a bed jumping freak * about others....

there is no simple and easy way to portray bisexuality in tv and movies, without making bisexuals look like they are just going from bed to bed to bed.... tho it seems to be ok for heterosexual people to do that a lot on some of the programs I have watched over the years.... once such program in NZ is called shortland street, a program based around a med clinic.... and one of my friends told me that they can not name a character in that series ( excluding underage people ) that has not either cheated on or slept with at lest two other characters in the series....

interestingly enuf there was a lesbian couple, faithful, committed and monogamous, until one female came out as bisexual, and within two weeks of the show, she had cheated on her partner with 2 other females, shagged a male doctor and was hitting on a male hospital executive..... a few of my bisexual friends wrote rather angry letters about the portrayal of a bisexual on the show, to the studio and the way it portrayed bisexuals as bed bunnies.... and promptly got ignored.....

it raised the issue within my group of LGBT friends as how the hell do you protray bisexuals in the media ( tv and movies ) without them looking like they will shag anything that moves and even some things that don't...... and it appeared that the easier way was to portray a bisexual person with two partners, one of each sex....... the studio refused to go for that as it was too much of a unbelievable storyline ( inside info )...... WTF ???????????

so we come to the issue of portraying bisexuality in tv and movies is not going to be as easy as we may like to think...as we can not accurately capture the issues of coming out to partners and long term talking and compromising, so we are left with the bed hopping image of the bisexual that is confused and constantly horny......

so we have the issue of people looking at bisexuals on tv and in movies and saying " see, bisexuals can not commit to their partners, they will constantly sleep around with other people, and we are saying, no they can committed to their partners, they are just having sex with other people...... some bisexuals call it bisexual monogamy and no they are not politicians, some call it open compromise in a relationship and some call it a working bisexual relationship....... bisexuals like me, call it TV and wonder why we watch it.......

so how do we not confuse people about bisexuality on tv and in the movies ? I have no bloody idea.... but I know a few 1000 people that will complain about how any bisexual is portrayed.... and it kinda makes me wonder why we use the media to portray something that may well do us a disservice anyway by enforcing the idea in peoples heads that we can not be committed and faithful ( be it bisexual monogamy or monogamy, or a compromised and working open relationship etc ) and that we are nothing but bed hopping people, instead of people that enjoy the beds of other people of either gender and the bed of our own partner.....