Two Headed Girl
Episode 34 artwork
Episode 34 · June 6, 2022 · 00:46:35

34. Bi Erasure and Representation (Re-Release)

This weekJoin editor Quinn Rose and Mattie as they discuss the controversies around bi representation and erasure in the media up until 2020.
Apple Podcasts

Show notes

In this episode, special guest Quinn Rose and Mattie discuss bisexual representation and erasure in various television series and  movies. Thank you again for supporting Two Headed Girl! 

Men Can Be Bisexual Too!


Show Notes: 

Transcript

Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakes

MattieWelcome to Opposite Sides of the Couch. In this episode, special guest Quinn Rose and I are going to talk about bi-representation and erasure in the media. Hey, Quinn.

QuinnHello. How are you?

MattieI'm good. I am very excited about this.

QuinnMe too. This is something that I talk about a lot in personal conversations and not something I talk a lot about on podcasts, so this should be fun.

MattieYeah, it was a very last-minute choice, but ended up being a good one.

QuinnYeah.

MattieIs there a particular media and or form of media? I only put movies and TV shows.

QuinnI mostly watch TV shows. So I think I mostly have examples from TV shows and then also a couple from musicals because that's who I am as a person.

MattieRight. Yes. Is there anyone you want to start with? One that you have particularly strong feelings either positively or negatively about?

Quinnwhat if we started with Buffy because I know we both love Buffy that is a great that's a great idea the bisexuality representation in Buffy is um complicated I would say I was gonna say non-existent well that's what it's okay I so I like really identify with the bisexual Willow in Buffy but that's kind of a falsehood because they actually don't let her be bisexual and they

it's a like a plot it's like a textbook example of bisexual erasure but like in my personal experience of the show I like see her as deeply bisexual so it still resonates with me but that

Mattiereally is my own projection onto her I I was just gonna say it's I feel like well yeah it is by erasure but how how exactly do you view it that way then do you just like ignore what the characters

Quinnare saying when she's just like hey i'm gay now well okay let me also preface all these conversations with a brief disclaimer which is lots of real people in the world don't like labels are sexually fluid um think that maybe they are straight and then later find out they're gay or vice versa at one point think they're bisexual and actually realize they're gay or straight or any of these things and all those things are totally fine and normal yes agreed comma however um

but media like did not represent bisexuality as a real thing that existed i should say mainstream media um for decades and so instead of having like a character allowed to be bisexual it was like oh I'm gay now or I don't believe in labels and all these different ways to avoid saying the word bisexual you can almost play a drinking game with like what what's a line in which the character should have used the word bisexual and chose not to instead and you'll get very ill um but but yeah

but Willow and Buffy is like a deep example of this because um in the first half of the show she um exclusively dates men and has like a really long-term meaningful relationship uh with a male character and then in the second half of the show develops this like amazing very meaningful relationship with a woman and she says that she's gay and she they don't talk about it a ton really like which is a whole other thing but um a couple points she's like i'm gay now um

and it's not like that's not an experience that real people have but just like it's not that she like casually dated men and then fell in love with a woman for real like she had like a very long term like really meaningful relationship with a man and the the sort of tossing aside of that to say like oh she's gay now just makes so much less sense to me than her identifying as bisexual

Mattie100 yes and it's definitely just because when was this like 2001 and just we didn't had a hard enough time getting uh willow being gay on the air let alone bisexual yep like i don't even know if that crossed his mind but i feel like it probably was just way too difficult like he was like i can't explain this concept i just want her to be able to date

Quinnwhoever she wants yeah which i think is the other reason why i like in my mind think of her as bisexual because I feel like if the show was made today they probably would say that um but it was like I mean that Willow and Tara had the first didn't they have like the first kiss between two women like on tv yeah I mean it was a really big deal at the time yeah so I I yeah I guess I agree

MattieI don't know I came here with opinions I know well when I when I watched the show I was like when I watched that season I was like 11 and it's not like I was out or understood my sexuality at all so I just kind of went with it you know what I mean I was just like yeah I guess that's fine and didn't really question what the media was feeding me until I was older because I guess I

Quinnwas like that and you know credit where credit's due like as we've said it was really groundbreaking for the time um but it definitely is i think of it as kind of a textbook example about of bisexual erasure um in like one of those really key ways that it's done which is saying like i'm gay now it's one or the other and we flip the switch yeah there's no in between

Mattiei i can't think of any bisexual representation that existed positively in media until i was like graduating from high school or going into college like maybe like 2008 so yeah i don't

Quinnlike all the examples i have that are on my like good list are within the last couple years yeah same I'm not sure I remember like the first time I actually like read a book or saw a movie that

Mattiehad a real bisexual character I was 14 or 15 so it was like 2004 um and I was reading a book called A Great and Terrible Beauty in high school and there was um a bi character in that so I should mention that like we have a significant age gap so okay significant air quotes here

Quinnum yeah I I'm currently 23 and I I just turned 30 so the media was a little different you were

Mattiewatching um children's cartoons while I was reading uh adult books let's put it that way

QuinnI will say okay yeah our age difference is not that actually significant but for in the case of like bisexual media representation it probably is because I think that like over the course of those seven years was definitely sort of a huge turning point yeah um in how bisexual people are represented

Mattiein media so yeah that makes sense and none of them were represented well until currently so

Quinnno i'm trying i think i honestly think maybe the first time i saw a bisexual character and this is again another example of it being done terribly is maybe maureen in rent oh yeah because yeah so Maureen is another one where they kind of like imply that she was straight and now she's gay even though she's sort of like visually shown as being bisexual in at least the movie which is what

I saw first as a kid or like preteen or whatever so that's very interesting yeah and she's also just like textbook like evil bisexual stereotype just cheating on people and is not a very good person and all of these not great things but yeah she's definitely my she's definitely the first

Mattieperson that I can remember seeing right now and she really pushes forward the like I'm gonna cheat on you or I have a boyfriend and a girlfriend at the same time and oof yeah that's not a good like it's there but it's definitely not a good one can't ever decide can't ever be satisfied the i feel like for me it feels a little chronological the next one have you ever seen bones i have not so there's a character in bones called angela and that this was in like 2004

so after buvy um after way after rent um and kind of before any positive things i saw in the media But she dated, was in a super serious relationship with a man, kind of like Willow, a lot like Willow. And then they broke up and then went into a super serious relationship with a woman. But it was someone she had experimented with in college. So then when she got back together with the guys she had been in a serious relationship with,

they kind of just completely erased it from her characterization. so it's like a brief like tiny bit of hope and then they were like oh no I was just experimenting

Quinnwith someone that I dated in college yeah there's also another early one for me was Jack Harkness in um Doctor Who oh shit yeah who like is just presented as someone who will absolutely sleep with anyone but like in a fun way aliens robots he was not stigmatized for it which was at least to step up i don't think they ever use the word bisexual or pansexual to describe him at least i haven't seen i haven't watched talk to him in a few years i don't know but um so still definitely

some tropes of like uh sexual promiscuity but at least like they weren't mad at him for it

Mattieright he was like accepted and it was it was like a a really positive way but also kind of really

Quinnsilly yeah which i think probably has a lot to do with him being a man as well it's like yeah he's he's allowed to be sexually promiscuous and that's like great um which to be clear it is um if that if that's what makes you happy but uh yeah women don't generally get that they have to choose one

Mattieor the other yeah are there any so we were talking earlier are there any positive representations of

Quinnmale bisexual characters that you have the only one that i could think of was daryl from crazy ex-girlfriend same and i actually okay i have not seen all crazy ex-girlfriend which is a point of contention in Mattie and i's friendship definitely yes but i am like extremely familiar with the song getting by which is daryl coming out um and it's such a fun celebratory anthem of bisexuality and it's such a positive representation of especially bisexual men

who are it's like two sides of the same coin like bisexual women are shown as like like oh they're just sluts or they just want attention or they're going to pick a side eventually and like bisexual men are like they're just gay yep the the one line in the song why

Mattiedon't you just go gay all the way but that's not it because bi is legit no and especially because he was married for what like 15 years or something like that and has a daughter and then meets white Josh and comes out as bi like in his 40s I want to say. So that's also cool that he comes out and realizes his sexuality later in life and all the people around him are still really cool with it. Yeah which is really great. I think that's what made me really happy

about it I was like you can realize your sexuality whenever absolutely and of course this is an

Quinnexample from like what like three years ago like yeah the good ones are very recent ah yeah like

Mattie2016 I think so but like going on other kind of good representation and some similar stuff there's

Quinnsome characters like um Petra Solano from Jane the Virgin um is a character who not only realizes that she's bisexual but actually uses that word to describe herself which is very cool to see since it's like not something that we saw for decades um similar with Kat Edison in the bold type like very similar kind of thing and with Kat like she uh realizes that she's attracted to women and like dates a woman comes out as bisexual and then like has different relationships of varying seriousness with men and women throughout the course of the show so far which is very cool

to sort of see to see representation that's not like someone quote-unquote picking a side but just being like happy to date people of multiple genders and it not causing a problem in their

Mattierelationships I I have not seen either of those shows but I've heard good things so I'm going to

Quinntake your word for it I like both of those shows a lot I will say if anyone's watched the bold type and they have they're mad about the most recent season slash cat's most recent relationship i'm right there with you but i'm not going to get into that right now this is these are also like really recent um examples too right yep yep yep i think jane the virgin ended in 2018 i think um and the bold type is going on right now so like these are all within the last couple years

Mattiecrazy ex-girlfriend and jane the virgin actually used to air back to back so oh that's cute yeah

QuinnTo just be angry again for a second, we talked about some characters who experience bisexual erasure through sort of the way they're presented by the show or the way they talk about themselves. But I think even more infuriating when that is when shows actually discuss bisexuality, but they completely dismiss it.

A classic example of this is I only ever watched like one season of The L Word.

MattieOh, yeah.

QuinnI remember like in the first season of the L Word that I actually watched there's a character who identifies as bisexual and her friends are horrible to her about it. They're so dismissive of her. but yeah but I just remember being like not too shocked because I knew that it was from like 2004 and media representation of bisexuality was just terrible um but even for a show that is about primarily lesbians um and was this groundbreaking show about representing queer people like

even they were so biphobic apparently uh her name was Alice yes okay so whoever knows the L word

Mattiesalas i i watched a lot of that in my first year of college but it was kind of in the background

Quinnso yeah and then um a very similar kind of thing happened on glee oh my god which has like a hundred problems but also was like super groundbreaking in its depiction of queer youth but there is a specific episode that makes me want to break something in which blaine played by darren chris i know too much about glee but blaine played by darren chris um questions his sexuality he had identified as gay and then he was like maybe i'm bisexual and kurt literally kurt is so angry because he likes blaine but he lashes out so destructively and is like bisexuality is just

what gay men say when they're too scared to admit that they're gay or something like that like he is just so aggressively biphobic to and obviously he's in the wrong but the show doesn't even like present him as like obviously being in the wrong here they're like well you know his feelings are hurt and he said a hurtful thing but they don't actually like take the time to address that as like a very harmful stereotype that's not true they just kind of move past it and pretend it

Mattiewasn't that big of a deal oh glee is so there's so many things wrong with glee yeah and on the

Quinnother hand they have the character of britney pierce who is like this really cool bisexual character um now that i think of it britney is probably like uh somewhat of a counterpart to a jack harkness type where she also is kind of a cliche of like um a bisexual person who like sleeps with a lot of people but i it's not presented negatively by the show um and she's like a really beloved character um and like grows to understand her sexuality and like being

attracted to multiple genders so that's pretty cool that glee did some things right sometimes

Mattiedidn't she end up wait is that the britney that ended up marrying santana yeah okay because i've seen like maybe 20 glee episodes all out of order so i've seen the first three seasons and the episode where santana and brinny get married yep yep that's the one i saw so i was like are we talking about the same character but yes okay cool that was my first actual um positive like i guess yeah positive i wanted to say lesbian relationship but i guess positive bisexual

character in a relationship that I saw in media actually that might be true for me too like the character didn't hate themselves for being bi you know yeah yeah that's a really important thing

Quinnis that like she was like super happy to be bi and to be like to just let her sexuality be what

Mattieit was right it wasn't like I'm grappling with this I can't be this which is often the portrayal like the storyline for characters just realizing they're gay too but yeah and that was not i mean it wasn't super long ago but it was when i was still in high school so like

Quinnmid-2000s right gleam is happening in like 2011 i want to say now i have to google it because i was in high school when it was happening oh shoot really yeah it was 2009 to 2015 and so the stuff with Britney being bisexual would have been in like 2011 2012 which is pretty early

Mattiefor this kind of thing yeah seriously because so far the only other good one uh good examples that we have are from the past like five years so yeah so you know 2011 oh and I would be remiss also if

QuinnI didn't shout out Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn Nine-Nine yes who I think is like a super important uh bisexual character because she uses the word bisexual she is like representing like a really important bisexual character in the show and the actress stephanie beatrice is also bisexual and like had a lot of input in her character coming out and representing herself in this way which

Mattiei think is really important there is there's so many good things about rosa diaz like that character there's like everyone accepts her she doesn't have to like explain her sexuality to anyone or like she doesn't have to defend it to anyone like defend her sexuality to anyone she

Quinncan just be who she is and the show treats her really well and doesn't treat her any differently after she comes out she has she continues to have relationships and they're treated the same way they were before the show and they allow her coming out to be something that's very in character because if you haven't seen the show the character of rosa diaz like her whole thing is she's incredibly mysterious and she doesn't want anything anyone to know anything about her yeah so it's totally in character that she wouldn't tell some people that she works with

about her sexuality um especially like in sort of her early parts of it and they only find out when she's in a relationship with a woman um and she finally tells them and it's they they like make they have a lot of humor about it that is done well and not like at her expense or at the expense of queer people especially since it's a comedy yeah exactly like so they've managed to get some good comedy fodder out of it without making her bisexuality the punchline um which i think is also

Mattiea really important form of representation it um it reminds me a lot of callie from gray's anatomy me because I was actually thinking about how they both have to come out like Rosa and Kelly both come out to their parents as adults and have to Rosa's parents don't accept it right away right

Quinnor her one of her parents does yeah I think that I if I remember correctly one of her parents takes a long time to come back around but I believe she does eventually repair her relationship with

Mattiethem which is you know really nice and that happens um in Grey's Anatomy 2 Callie is there's a lot of problems with Grey's Anatomy let's let's be real it's like it's like another uh it's like an adult medical version of Glee um so Callie dates and marries a man George and then he then they get a divorce and break up and then he dies geez because everyone dies in gray's anatomy and

then she uh starts dating a woman who is in love with her but she doesn't love and then she falls in love with another woman because gray's anatomy and this person is like i don't first of all you're bisexual so i'm worried you're gonna cheat on me and second of all i you're like a baby queer like you just came out and you're you know in your late 20s and I don't want to have to teach you how to be in a gay relationship so there's a lot of a lot of bad things around that

it's a very problematic and eventually they also no one dies but eventually they also get divorced too so wow well that was sad yeah it it was handled really poorly but very similar in the way that Stephanie Beatriz had a lot of input in her character so did if I could remember her name so did the actress who played Callie Sarah Ramirez Sarah Ramirez

is also plays Callie and is also bisexual and had a lot of input in how her character would be treated once she came out as bi which was not handled the best um but the the coming out story that they did with her parents her um dad ended up accepting she only had one parent and her dad ended up except accepting her right away and that that was at least one positive part where no one

Quinndied or got divorced so that is good yeah yeah that is a nice thing to see among everything else

MattieAnd it's nice to see that there are actors who are actually bisexual and want that to be part of their character. Because I don't think Shonda Rhimes would have included it had Sarah Ramirez not suggested it.

QuinnYeah, it is really cool to see queer actors speaking out on behalf of their characters and working to make sure that they are fairly represented.

MattieNow, if only we could get that far with trans characters. oh if only cis people could stop buying trans characters please please yes a quick a quick

Quinnnote about bisexual actors that i think about a lot is um i'm a fan of the tv and musical theater actor andy mantis um who is a bisexual man and is married to a man actually the director michael arden they're a very cute couple but he says that he i'm not sure if this is still true because this might have been a couple years ago but he's like i've never played a character who isn't gay um and he's like it's you know i love to play gay characters and to represent gay men but i'm

bisexual and i'm automatically typecast as gay um because bisexual men are like often assumed to be gay um and especially because he's married a man he's like pigeonholed into that role and he's pigeonholed into that type and he's like this and he's like yeah it's not that I have a problem with playing gay characters and it's you know better than in my opinion better than straight men playing these characters but why is it that I never get to play a bisexual character or that

I'm not considered for straight characters the way that I am for gay characters well just like

Mattiein real life when uh when someone sees like for instance when I was in a relationship with a guy they were like well now are you straight and then when I started dating um when I started dating my my best friend who was a girl they were like oh well well now you're gay right it's like no it doesn't have to like it doesn't switch just because of who I'm dating I feel like they do

Quinnthat in media a lot too just you know flipping that light switch up and down yeah no gray area sexuality is just one or the other I there was an article going around and I haven't read the whole article yet but the headline is science suggests some men really are bisexual wow no kidding and i just who wrote this we need to put that in the show notes because that sounds

Mattieamazing anyway the oh what about have you seen steven universe i haven't i don't even know i mean there's no bisexual characters that i can even name everyone in that it's just queer like it's just a happy perfect universe of queer aliens that are made of gems and they are all allowed to be whatever sexuality they want to be it's like a queer utopia oh my god wait the

Quinnless wholesome version of that is the politician which is for some reason also a world in which everyone is i'm not sure they've ever used a specific sexuality term but everyone seems to be just like on the queer spectrum somewhere and it's like a mystery who's gonna hook up with who next because like it could be anyone um that's kind of how I felt watching the first season I was like oh they're dating now okay anyway um it's much less wholesome than steven universe

Mattiethough yeah it's I was looking for general examples of like a specific character and it's just like basically everyone dates whoever they want to be with so I feel like almost all the characters in that way are are pansexual because it doesn't the label doesn't matter they are also aliens so so i don't know how how much you can how much you can credit that they have they have different sexuality terms you know on their planet yeah well they they have sex by dancing so

Quinnoh that's fun yeah a lot festive

Mattiethe the last show that i have is winona earp which is also a show of contention between as because you haven't seen it yet even though you should wait okay i've seen half of it so so waverly um the main character's sister is bi yeah yeah she starts out dating uh the high school quarterback and then realizes that he is a complete asshole and in a scene where the police

chief Nicole Haught gets covered in beer from a tap that sprays in a very like cheesy kind of porno way almost realizes that she is uh has feelings for the uh police chief. Tale as old as time. Yeah but I don't think it's like a wet t-shirt contest fantasy in which she realizes that she is in love with her um but i don't really think she ever says she's bisexual like in in all of the notes and articles i've seen written about the show they call her bisexual but

in and and the actress um who plays her um whose name i can't pronounce but the first name is dominique and the last name is french um she is also bisexual but i don't think in the show as far as i'm aware she never states that she is so she's just like yeah i'm gay now unfortunately

Quinnokay it's i find it very interesting that that's the canon of the show but then literature about the show lists her as bisexual yeah that's a very interesting discrepancy it's and it's really weird

Mattiebecause the the fans are very passionate about the show like super passionate so you think they'd want something maybe you know what it was almost canceled it's coming back maybe in this new season they will rectify that situation that'd be cool we'll see yeah i'll catch up and i'll watch it so in in now i have movies so okay i can literally never remember movies but tell me what examples you have and i'll see if i know any of them oh no so this is bad um wow okay so so we've had what

like three positive examples um i think we've had four four four and a half so so glee crazy ex-girlfriend yeah wait oh wait oh we've had like five or six okay wait

Quinnglee had one good and one bad we've got crazy ex-girlfriend jane the virgin the bold type brooklyn 99 kind of steven universe and like half gray's anatomy some good some bad yeah

Mattieso like like five and a half yeah somewhere around there so when we decided to record about this topic uh this afternoon i was like let me google some bisexual movies because all i can remember is tv shows and what popped up besides rent was just a list of any movie in which a female female lead kisses another female actor they consider that a bisexual movie when i was also

Quinnlooking at lists of bisexual tv characters the examples they would give are like well she you know only ever dates men in the show and never uses the word bisexual but she kissed a woman in this one scene or she like referred to like having sex with a woman at one point and i'm like that's

Mattiethat's not really how that works yeah they like they'll kiss the character will kiss a woman one time and they'll be like yep now now it's listed as bi um specifically uh jennifer's body and cruel intentions popped up on the top of my list have you seen either of those i have not uh we did a whole episode of opposite side the catch on jennifer's body so if you want to hear about all that weird sexuality that happens you should go listen to that one uh same with cruel intentions

it's got sarah michelle geller in it um and ryan philippe and it's very early 2000s and uh she practices she teaches another girl to kiss by practicing kissing with her and they categorize that in the top 20 bisexual movies to watch so all right yeah and rent okay also brokeback mountain but i don't think anyone's bisexual in that i have not seen it

i have not either i thought i thought it was just about gay cowboys yeah i don't know i don't i

Quinni'm skeptical of that listing based on the other listings that we've seen thus far maybe one of the characters does say that he's bisexual but considering the year it was released i highly

Mattiedoubt that all right so the 10 best bisexual movies you should have seen by now you geez you would know if this is true or not uh cabaret well uh yes actually wait yes

Quinnin a weird way um no yeah cabaret actually does have like a fully bisexual character who has relationships with men and women in the movie slash musical so yeah i wouldn't necessarily call it positive representation but he's like a good you're like supposed to like him so that's good at least oh and it's a guy too yeah that's kind of there are some good things about the representation in cabaret um yeah i wouldn't like it's not the first thing i would

Mattiename but it is actually in there there's this movie from 1997 called chasing amy and uh the the summary is thusly uh the main character is a lesbian comic book artist who falls in love with ben affleck uh and the plot explores slut shaming and friendship and how it is easier to identify as gay than as bisexual and that is listed as a positive bi movie that you should have seen by now

Quinni haven't seen chasing amy but i have very strong doubts about this because this is saying the blurb that i'm seeing is a male comic artist falls in love with a lesbian and it's like well that's that's just you having a problem dude that doesn't make her bisexual maybe she actually is in the movie and that's a thing but

Mattieoh have you seen book smart i have they also put that on this list but i can't remember the character of ryan the skater girl that's interesting i'm not sure i'm not sure if she self-identifies as bisexual she's a very minor character but uh the main character amy has a crush on her and she i guess at that house party kisses a boy and kisses a girl so yeah she um

Quinnshe's very queer coded like she like dresses how you would stereotypically imagine like a gay

Mattieteenage girl to dress basically um and it has a fade a side cut yep you know classic so you can be like yes the second this character comes on the screen they are clearly some type of queer um yeah i don't think they ever say it but it's not like sexuality is negatively expressed in book smart i would say like completely the opposite so that might actually be one that

Quinnis correct on this list the only one yeah i think book smart is pretty good about that kind of stuff and they do have like i mean like one of the leads is um a lesbian teenager um who's trying to get with Ryan but yeah so there definitely is a lot of good representation in the movie and I'm yeah as far as the best as I remember like Ryan never they never like explicitly confirmed that Ryan is actually attracted to women at all um but I think you're supposed to think that and like

Mattiewalk away from the movie with that so okay yeah but I mean I I would give that one and like a nine out of ten for effort at least yeah that's fair enough i was gonna say there there's no list of any any of these movies that aren't just like a girl kisses a girl a guy kisses a guy and now

Quinnwe're gonna call it um bisexual yeah the only examples i can think of that are more explicit about like sexuality like with bisexuality um or just general sexual fluidity or like also not great examples like for example the rocky horror picture show yeah is it's a whole is a genre unto itself but i wouldn't describe as positive representation and then and then there's

something like this kind of come into my head canon again but there's there's stuff like scott

Mattiepilgrim versus the world yes i was how did we not with yes how did we not yeah that's a very good

Quinnone so this is one of my favorite movies and uh the whole thing is that she has seven evil exes and one of her exes is a woman um unfortunately she does dismiss it in the movie and she says like oh i was just feeling a little bi-curious um but then the response the response by her ex is like perfect and she's like well i'm feeling a little bi-furious but it's just really funny

Mattieanyway it's a weird movie but i love it scott pilgrim is a great movie i also i also like how ramona corrects um scott all the time when he says uh like ex-boyfriends she's like no exes

Quinnso they like half and half did it right yeah and it's and i mean like it's totally fine that this woman experimented in college and like decided it wasn't for her that's fine but you know it's not exactly like our bisexual queen or anything yeah no but it is like a fun inclusion and i do like the way that she's very insistent on gender inclusive language because because of the way that that's set up even though she i guess identifies as heterosexual um she still considers this woman like one of her exes alongside on the same level as all of the men that she's

dated which is a kind of a cool inclusion and a subtle thing that they did there yeah it's not complete erasure yeah that's that's what we're looking for here just just a little erasure

Mattiejust just some breadcrumbs thrown our way there um i was scrolling through this very long list of movies and of course at the end is the most recent and made it to bohemian rhapsody um where the guy from uh mr robot plays freddie mercury and obviously that's a biography of him so you know freddie mercury was bisexual yeah it's so annoying like he faces bi erasure

Quinnin the movie and i'm like you can't give this man anything we can't have anything

Mattiei yeah this is why we can't have nice things movies are 100 the reason we can't have nice things you know what at least tv shows have made a lot of progress that is true we're doing

Quinnpretty good on tv shows and especially as you might notice by sort of a pattern here is like tv shows that are led by women and have queer actors in these roles to depict queer characters uh that's pretty cool i'm definitely seeing a pattern there and so good job um keep keep doing that and also keep doing better and better because there's obviously still a lot more to improve on and but yeah if movies could catch up that'd be nice is brooklyn 99 written by it is it not

written by a man no it's a mike sure show so it is led by a man but but also like having a bisexual woman stephanie beatrice i think was like very influential in having a bisexual character so that's what i was alluding to and sort of trying to like sum up what all these shows have in common there's kind of a couple of through lines there of like what seems to be getting us a little bit better bisexual representation at least and of course for most of these bisexual women oh i have

Mattieone last thing that i totally just found uh because now i went to i went to just characters that are bisexual have you ever seen bob's burgers that's one of my head canons actually that's a lot of people's head canons that he is bisexual yeah i've only seen a little bit of

Quinnbob's burgers but i read about this that he's like he seems to also be attracted to men and

Mattieis just like okay yeah so he's married he has a wife named linda and they have three kids um and he makes burgers that's bob's burgers um but there's a few episodes but like most notably a thanksgiving episode where this um guy at the deli counter thinks that bob is hitting on him and bob is like i'm straight i think i mean i'm mostly straight and then there's like other episodes where there will be gay male characters and he he kind of flirts with them like he's very

open to exploring it even though he's married and that's like one very solid male representation of bisexuality that there's no erasure he's actually like open to exploring it in his

Quinnlike 30s so that's kind of cool yeah very cool and very cool to have

Mattiemale bisexuality represented but of course he never explicitly says the word so neither does

Quinnany of the characters yeah maybe one day isn't bob's burger still going on maybe they'll get

Mattiethere yeah i i feel like everything even even all the positive representations there's just this little thing like it'll be like it's positive but they don't say the word or it tries to be positive

Quinnbut uh i don't know yeah the whole i don't like labels sort of movement of the early 2000s is really took over everything big old eraser big eraser we're getting there just one character at a time one creator at a time maybe one day everything

Mattiewill be a queer utopia like steven universe we can only hope that would be nice that was also

Quinnand we haven't talked about we haven't really gotten into this at all but it's also worth noting that i think every single character we've mentioned um in this entire episode has been cis yeah that's true so obviously still a lot of room for improvement i mean again they can't even get trans actors to play trans characters so this is true again except for on the politician but I have never seen that should I watch it now um okay so I love the politician it is trash but

it's like my trash and I think it's very captivating and also like everyone is queer um and they actually uh Theo Germain who started work in progress oh shoot yeah is one of the

Mattieleaves in the politician in work in progress doesn't the the main character uh because she starts dating a trans man doesn't technically she identify as bisexual i haven't actually watched work in progress i've seen it but i don't think she ever said so i don't think she ever says it the main character's name is abby and she is uh i want to say an old lesbian

but she's not old she's like in her 40s and she starts dating this young trans guy named chris and i don't think that she ever explicitly says um she identifies as a queer dyke so she never says i'm bisexual but like when her when her friend asks her um there's an episode where her friend asks her if she is straight now and she's like no shut up i identify as queer so i guess that's positive yeah there's some interesting stuff going on there i i'm okay

with them using queer you know as long as they're not like bisexual people don't exist yeah the bar is on the floor and the bar is no no erasure and you don't have to use the word as

Quinnlong as you accept it as long as you don't look into the camera and say we hate bisexual people

Mattiethen you know we can work with you pretty much i think i think there's been a progress at least

Quinnin the past five years so that's something yes we can cling on to this there is definitely progress being made and you know it's really exciting to see shows that are being made that have new characters that are bisexual from the onset or who like clearly their arcs were written from the very beginning for them to be coming out as bisexual in the first season and then also like sometimes they decide characters are going to be bisexual like three seasons in then it's like

Mattiesurprise queer and that's really fun too yeah I I really hope that it continues in this trend we just need more like kick-ass female showrunners I think is the moral of the story that would

Quinnprobably help seems like based on the evidence yeah can I can I lead my concluding thought in this to a text I got one time yes so my friend and I were both big fans of Jane the Virgin and a couple years ago she texted me have you watched the latest episode yet and I said no and she said oh well there's going to be something there that you will like no spoilers though and I wrote back is this something that someone is bisexual because I'm just basing that on our brand and she was like

Mattieyes it is exactly that that is amazing I don't I don't know that I have any final thoughts I think I think hoping hoping for the future is the best the best of god do you do you want to tell people where they can find you on the internet if they don't already know from all the amazing

Quinnthings that you do with my spouse uh the best place to find me is on twitter at aspiring robot fm if you want to follow any of my podcasts I make podcasts about art and theater and they're

Mattiein my bio there so that's probably the best place well thank you for recording this very impromptu Opposite Sides of the Couch with me, Quinn. I appreciate it.

QuinnThank you so much for having me on and allowing me to pontificate about subjects that I think about a lot. It was really fun.

34. Bi Erasure and Representation (Re-Release) 0:00 / 00:46:35