I read this article a couple weeks ago and was thinking about it again. To summarize it, it's about a man who is bisexual in a heterosexual relationship with a child. He felt a deep depression because he felt like he was hiding the fact that he's bisexual and then eventually came out to everyone and feels like this makes him emotionally more healthy and a better father.
My first thought was that this is pretty ridiculous. If a married man in a heterosexual relationship announced to me that he's bisexual, unless it was relevant to the conversation we were having, I would wonder if he's going to start having sex with men. This has got to sound really ironic coming from a gay man but I really feel like, why do we need to know who he's interested in having sex with?
I think the essential difference with gay people is that our identity as gay is something we have whether we like it or not. Part of this has to do with prejudice but a lot of it is just that a person's relationship status and dateability is relevant to society as a whole. We like to put people in these categories and gay people do it too.
For a bisexual person in a heterosexual relationship, there's no need to identify as bisexual unless that identity is somehow integral to your self-image. Even if someone wants to ally himself to the gay rights movement, it's not really necessary to be gay or bisexual.
I suppose the closest parallel is a celibate gay man or lesbian. Someone who isn't in a relationship and doesn't want one. If this person announced his/her sexuality although it wasn't really relevant, for some reason I would find it less strange than a bisexual man married to a woman announcing his sexuality. I suppose this has to do with everyone assuming the bisexual man is straight and his having a desire to tell everyone that he's not.
I actually don't think the person in question needs to keep his sexuality a secret, far from it. I just wonder why he feels like it's so important for everyone to know and why it caused him to go in a deep depression. The cynical part of me wants to call him a drama queen/attention whore and criticize his need to seek self-validation through others but I'm trying to get past that. I'm not one of those gay people who denies bisexuality, I actually think it's more common than exclusive homosexuality.
Anyway here's the article but I didn't post it here because my post is pretty lengthy without even adding the article.
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/10/why_im_an_out_bisexual_dad_partner/
My first thought was that this is pretty ridiculous. If a married man in a heterosexual relationship announced to me that he's bisexual, unless it was relevant to the conversation we were having, I would wonder if he's going to start having sex with men. This has got to sound really ironic coming from a gay man but I really feel like, why do we need to know who he's interested in having sex with?
I think the essential difference with gay people is that our identity as gay is something we have whether we like it or not. Part of this has to do with prejudice but a lot of it is just that a person's relationship status and dateability is relevant to society as a whole. We like to put people in these categories and gay people do it too.
For a bisexual person in a heterosexual relationship, there's no need to identify as bisexual unless that identity is somehow integral to your self-image. Even if someone wants to ally himself to the gay rights movement, it's not really necessary to be gay or bisexual.
I suppose the closest parallel is a celibate gay man or lesbian. Someone who isn't in a relationship and doesn't want one. If this person announced his/her sexuality although it wasn't really relevant, for some reason I would find it less strange than a bisexual man married to a woman announcing his sexuality. I suppose this has to do with everyone assuming the bisexual man is straight and his having a desire to tell everyone that he's not.
I actually don't think the person in question needs to keep his sexuality a secret, far from it. I just wonder why he feels like it's so important for everyone to know and why it caused him to go in a deep depression. The cynical part of me wants to call him a drama queen/attention whore and criticize his need to seek self-validation through others but I'm trying to get past that. I'm not one of those gay people who denies bisexuality, I actually think it's more common than exclusive homosexuality.
Anyway here's the article but I didn't post it here because my post is pretty lengthy without even adding the article.
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/10/why_im_an_out_bisexual_dad_partner/
) that their parents (of whatever gender) love each other. They don't need to understand their parents' specific sexual preferences until they're ready for "the talk" anyway.
