Bisexuals in Literature

This post was inspired by reading Libba Bray's novel Beauty Queens, which is awesome and hilarious and the good kind of feminism, even if it does have diversity issues.  Like the fact that the only characters with distinct personalities are the white ones; the supporting cast the Black Girl, the Indian Girl (who become besties based on the fact they are both not white, which is actually played straight rather well), the Tomboyish Lesbian, the Transgender Girl, the Deaf Girl, etc.  Whereas the white characters that the story spends a (admittedly slight) majority of the time with include the Friendless Intellectual, the Psychopathic Perfectionist, the Wild Girl, and the Dumb Blond With A Heart Of Gold.  Y'know, actual personality types instead of just Issues.

But today's rant is about the Bisexual Girl, who in Beauty Queens doubles as the Deaf Girl.

What happens in the book is that a plane full of beauty pageant queens crashes on a deserted island (think Lord of the Flies with girls).  At one point, the Lesbian is wandering through the jungle, when she rescues the Deaf Bisexual Girl from being eaten by a snake, and falls in love.  Before she has any inkling that this girl might not be straight. 

Problems so far:

1.  The cardinal rule of being gay is DON'T FALL IN LOVE WITH A STRAIGHT PERSON.  For us, the question "Are they gay?"  has to come before "Do I like them?"  Granted, this might just be a me-thing, but it always irks me when I read a book where a girl falls in love with a girl before she has reason to thinks he might not be straight.  It just doesn't work like that.  To put it simply, heterosexuality is a real turn-off.

2.  If I were wandering through the jungle and ran across someone being eaten by a snake and had to rescue them, what are the chances we would have compatible sexualities?  If it were me, it would turn out to be a gay man.  Seriously.

Anyway, the Lesbian falls for the Bisexual Deaf Girl, who, as she is also a dancer, incites some oddly homoerotic moments with the Lesbian, who draws a fantasy comic with her as a superhero rescuing her love, when the BDG walks in on her, sees the comic, and they make out after only a brief:  "Are you gay?"  "Are you?"

3.  I'm not going to knock the coincidence.  The entire premise of the book is ridiculous, and it only gets wackier from their, with government conspiracies and insane third-world dictators.  But since BDG is established as bi, she really should have realized that asking the Lesbian to dance with her is rather flirtatious.  And since the Lesbian is sort of dykish tomboyish, BDG ought to have suspected her of not being straight, even if the Lesbian could not ping on her because you can't tell with bi girls.

There are about two paragraphs dedicated to the fact that the Deaf Girl is bi. And when hot male pirates show up on the island, she doesn't seem to get the slightest bit of enjoyment from the sight of all that man-candy.  Sure, she's dating the token Lesbian, but she can still look, can't she?

4.  Here we get into the problems extant in the wider literature.  YA authors who are big on diversity will throw in a token bi character to date their token gay character, so they can be super-extra representative.  The problems arise when bi characters are simply treated as gay characters.  Exhibit A, Alex Sanchez's masterpiece of the 90's, Rainbow Boys.  The Token Bi here actually dumps his girlfriend to be with the gay main character.  Bisexual, sure.  Bisexual training wheels maybe.  A later book mentions him grinning at the sight of a naked girl, but that's about all we get.

Exhibit B:  David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy, and if you ever want to gag on a rainbow made of pure sugar, read that book.  Anyway, the bi guy there serves absolutely no function with regards to the plot, and has a backstory of making out with the main character and then claiming he was taken advantage of and really likes girls.  This is supposed to be in a fantastical super-tolerant queer utopia.  He can't be like "Oh, I'm bi, I guess that's okay"?

Exhibit C:  Brent Hartinger's Geography Club.  This one is a girl.  Who is dating a lesbian.  I believe in later books she crushes on a girl.  But she keeps referencing the fact that she is bi, and talks about hot guys with her gay bestie.

The root of the problem, I hypothesize, is that it is difficult to realistically portray a character who is attracted to both guys and girls without making them a slut.  A character gets only one designated love interest per story, after all, and a love triangle would be tricky because resolving it would make it seem like the author were favoring one orientation over another.

Solutions?

1.  Spend time talking about the bisexual character's emotions and development and coming out.  Bisexuals never come out!  Why is that?  Is it somehow not necessary?  Are they not a "real" queer unless they are dating a member of the same gender?  Is it because bisexual has the word "sex" in it?  I don't know.  But think about your heterosexual characters, and how they react to characters of the opposite gender who are not their designated love interest.  There can be sexual tension without a romantic subplot.

2.  A bi girl can date a guy, and still be active in queer rights stuff.  Trust me, I know people personally.  They don't lose their gay if they start dating someone of the opposite gender.  In fact, in brings up interesting plot points.  How does the boyfriend feel?  Is he weirded out, or chill?

3.  Heck, you could have two bisexuals of any gender combination date each other.  That would be an interesting relationship dynamic.

4.  Back to Beauty Queens:  When I saw the two token queers were going to hook up, I groaned and came up with an alternative subplot involving a token bi and a token lesbian.  Suppose it is a bitchy lipstick lesbian.  In fact, she might be the Psychotic Perfectionist.  Then, there's also a bi girl, one of the quiet ones who silently hates the lesbian's guts.  *Gasp!*  No token queer solidarity/romance?  Unthinkable!  If this were to happen, I would not even mind if the bi girl were crushing on a straight girl, as long as she eventually got over her.  Maybe hooked up with one of the hot pirates.  And then the lesbian can date some chick in the epilogue after she becomes a nice person, to prove that homosexual relationships are okay too. 

Seriously, not all gays like each other.  You can't put a pair of us on a deserted island and expect us to automatically mate, any more than you could put a heterosexual guy and girl on an island and expect them to.

(On the plus side, they don't hookup ever after; they break up amicably and the bi girl is dating a guy in the epilogue, while the lesbian is married.  So it ended up not being too bad.)

Dragons Are Ponies For Boys

I just watched about a quarter of "How to Train Your Dragon."  Unfortunately, I made the mistake of reading the book first.  I did keep my expectations prety low, but I had hoped that I would at least be able to recognize the story.  I was quite disappointed, because the book showed the book as nasty, selfish creatures that had to be tamed by brute force, as opposed the the love-at-first-sight telepathic bond, and I had hoped that Dreamworks would be able to work with that; that they would like the gruesome and unromanticized view of dragons instead of the ponies.  Alas, it was not to be.

No, seriously.  Ponies.  Dragons have been receiving the same sort of treatment for a long time.  They are that beautiful creature who will carry you around and do anything for you because he loves you and you have a telepathic bond. 

The funny thing about the dragonrider subgenre is that it is propogated almost solely by women.  Yet most of the protagonists are male.  It is as though girls are not expected to like dragons, even though the number of female writers in the subgenre begs to differ.  Men, on the other hand, write more about dragonslaying than dragonriding.

What does this say about the sexes?  Girls are more interested in having relationships, boys are more interested in killing things.  So what else is new? 

Girls like big scaly flying monsters is new.  Girls don't just want oddly proportioned pastel equines.  Girls like cool as much as cute.  Why is this so hard?  Why does this have to be disguised so much that McCaffery's weyrs are exclusively male except for the token chick, Goodman's Eona even has to disguise as a boy to become a dragon-whatever (okay, I haven't actually read that one.  You know how I feel about Crossdressing Epics).  In Eona's case, anyway, it seems like it should be the other way around.

Apparently, this concept is quite hard to grasp.  Well, I guess I'll add "female dragonrider" to my list of ideas for stories I may or may not ever write. 

The Crossdressing Epic

This issue annoys me so much I can't sleep until I rant about it.

It all started with Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan, which I am currently reading because I feel obligated too, and because I might get money for writing a review of it.  If you don't know, it is about an alternate history where WWI is fought with giant steampunk mechas and genetically engineered mutant creatures.  It is a really cool setup, and it is a shame that it is ruined by completely awful protagonists.

To be fair, the boy protagonist is not so bad, and by the time he is standing on top of a running mecha while being shot at, trying to cut loose a signal flare using his dead father's sword...yeah, he's cool.  The girl is the one I want to punch in the face.

The problem with crossdressing epics is that, rather than providing a unique and intriguing view of gender roles, they fall far too easily into the trap of relying on gender stereotypes.  Second, every sentence devoted to the girl worrying about someone discovering she is a girl, is a sentence in which nothing happens.  I don't care if she is supposed to be a strong female protagonist, and a role model proving that girls can do stuff (if they dress like boys), I want to go back to the flaming sword mecha fight.

The girls who follow this path are all luckily tall, skinny, and flat-chested, but none are actually lesbians (or trans, for that matter).  Because lesbians did not exist before the 60's, and certainly none of them tried crossdressing.  I am not saying that the heroines of crossdressing epics should necessarily be gay; I'm just saying that it seems to never even have been considered.

Furthermore, CE's act all progressive and feministy, but again, why is being a boy the only option?  Why can't she wear skirts and be married and be a devious manipulator, the power behind the throne?  Or a spy?  Or a badass housewife?  Because people want to read a typical boy's adventure story, but be feministy and include a female protagonist who is not a princess that needs to be rescued.  Or they are too lazy to come up with an original plot. 

This is another problem of society marches on, and literature stays stuck in a rut, blindly following the patterns of novels from before and ignoring the plots of real life.  Sexism does still exist today; a woman in a typically male profession will face it, leading to complications more interesting and relevant than trying to avoid being seen naked.  At least Westerfeld does have historical context.  Though considering girls have a lower body mass, you'd think they would be more in demand on bioengineered airships...

Which brings us back to my original complaint of wanting to punch that particular protagonist in the face.  Her only defining character trait is being a girl.  Otherwise, she behaves just like your average dopey farmboy protagonist (I have no idea if she actually comes from a farm or not).  Westerfeld tries to compensate by assuring the audience that she is in fact a very good flyer.  However, it comes off as insecurity in writing a female protagonist.  She just has to be really super good at what she does.  You know, to prove the sexes are equal and all.

I did track down a quote from Discworld that might help potential writers of CE's:  "in an age before unisex fashions, trousers meant 'man' and skirts meant 'woman'. Trousers plus high-pitched voice meant 'young man'. People didn't expect anything else, and saw what they expected to see."

Which makes complete sense; if a girl is doing something so unthinkable, why is she so worried someone will think it?  She's tall, skinny, and flat-chested, so what's to worry about?  Get back to the plot already!