The message to my gay hookup profile often begins with “I’m inexperienced but very curious. I’m married with no sex at home. Discretion is important. Can’t host.”
You can read between the lines that he has been watching far too much gay porn and probably hasn’t ever touched another penis.
But I admire the courage required to advance his curiosity. I welcome him to experience a sexual perspective, share a conversation about insecurities and fantasies, acknowledge that he is not alone on his sexual quest, and remind him that we were all sexually inexperienced at some time!
Stereotyping Bisexuals
However, it seems my attitude is not universal. My married playmates tell me how often they can be over-looked by mainstream gay men in preference for “proper” gay men who “know what they’re doing and what they want“. It repeats that old cliché about bisexuals sitting on the sexual fence, indecisive about which side they belong. Inexperience and sexual indecisiveness, it seems, are still not easily tolerated by many older gay men.
Also, there is still a notion that bisexuals will have sex with anything that moves. This wide freedom of choice that bisexuals have can cause envy in a gay man and prick his self-image of being at the top of the sexual food chain. Indeed, some bi-men, once comfortable with non-marital sex, are more promiscuous than many gay men want to admit.
Sometimes, just in sheer numbers and frequency, the married men doing the beats outnumber the gays.
Bisexual Married Men Exist
For a husband to have sex with a man is a big deal. It’s forbidden fruit, and beyond society’s rules for acceptable behaviour. The inner conflict between physical needs and the courage needed to go through with a face-to-face meeting sees many gay hosts experiencing a “no show“, even after confirming emails and texts.
Once that sexual step-too-far has happened, then guilt also happens. The usual scenario sees a sudden silence in the communication before the almost inevitable follow-up text about meeting again. Guilt, it seems, only lasts a few days whereas pleasure is forever sought.
Bisexual married men are often the invisible community, fitting into neither straight nor gay communities. On International Bisexual Day, September 23, let’s celebrate their bravery, enthusiasm, and individuality, and welcome them as brothers, allies, and playmates.
I was drawn to this article, assuming from the title that it would be about how biphobia impacts the lives of bisexual people and what could be done to fight it.
Instead, Peter Benn seems to associate bisexuality with closeted married men looking for hook-ups. Why Benn focusses exclusively on this limited subset of the entire bisexual community is a mystery to me. Could it be that a common stereotype of bisexuals has obliterated recognition of any other member of the bisexual community? I assert that exclusive reference to that stereotype is, in fact, biphobia.
Here is a, by no means definitive, list of some bisexual male activists and celebrities, some of whom have directly aided the LGBTQ+ community:
Alfred C. Kinsey–entomologist and sex researcher whose reports on male and female sexuality shook the foundations of 1950s America. Gays and lesbians of the pre-Stonewall generation have called Kinsey’s work “our Stonewall.”
Stephen Donaldson, aka Donny the Punk–co-founded the first-ever gay student organization in the United States at Columbia University in 1967.
Alan Rockaway co-authored the first successful gay-rights ordinance in Florida. This lead to Anita Bryant forming a national anti-gay campaign against the ordinance, to which Alan Rockaway and others responded with a successful counter-movement.
Dr. David Lourea successfully got the San Francisco Public Health department to acknowledge men who have sex with men in the fight against AIDS, beyond the limits of the gay male community. His work became a national standard for fighting AIDS.
Michael Page created the bisexual flag in 1998, made up of horizontal stripes, red, purple, and blue. These are now used as the bi colors and have even been adopted as “bi lighting” in films to suggest or designate a bisexual character or scene.
Charles M. Blow, journalist, columnist, and author of “Fire Shut Up In My Bones”–his own bisexual coming out story.
More: James Baldwin, Fred Rogers (aka Mr. Rogers of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood”), Marlon Brando, Richard Pryor, Raul Esparza, Billie Joe Armstrong, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Travon Free, Vincent Price, Alan Bates, Farley Granger, Gore Vidal, Alan Cumming, Michael Redgrave, Tyler Blackburn, Jeremy Brett, David Bowie, Paul Bowles, Freddie Mercury, Frank Ocean, Daniel Newman . . . and many, many more . . .
As an older (72) gay man, I’m now finding ALL of my sexual encounters are with married bisexual men. I also live in a country town with probably only a handful of gays within a 50k radius. I must admit though that the sex is great, and once these guys get comfortable in your company the inhibitions drop and they’re not shy about showing real passion. After the 3rd or 4th visit real conversation begins and friendship develops. Bisexual men don’t age discriminate the way gay men do and they’re not so hooked up on the body image that still pervades the gay scene, it’s OK if the six-pack is on holiday. There’s also a lot more bisexual men around than anyone realises, especially in the mining community that I live in.