My doggie is a Circumstantial Bisexual.

No. It’s not the name of some song written by Tori Amos. Lucy – short for Lucifer – is my recently-turned-one-year-old bitch. I got her and her sister, Beezy – short for Beelzebub – last year from a friend who volunteers with Embark. Lucy was on heat all of April and May and that’s when I got to see the most amazing acrobatic skills I’ve ever known a dog to have. She would vault herself over my 6 feet high gate and go in search of lovers. Beezy, sadly lacking the same skills, would sit by the gate, enjoying only voyeuristic thrills through the 2 inches between the bottom of the gate and the ground.

Now Lucy is no longer on heat. She still goes over the gate, but none of her lovers are hanging around anymore. So, she comes back sooner than she used to. And for about five minutes everyday, she humps Beezy.

A circumstantial bisexual, according to J.R.Little, is primarily heterosexual, but will choose same sex partners only in situations where they have no access to other-sex partners, such as when in jail, in the military, or in a gender-segregated school.

Poor Lucy na?

Now, I’ve always thought/believed that bisexuals are people who are just confused and experimenting. And here in Sri Lanka, I’ve met a surprising number of them. They quite confidently share that they are bisexual. Not gay, not lesbian, but bisexual.

So I thought, what the hell, I must be wrong. There can’t be that many confused, deluded, in-denial people. Maybe there is something to this whole bisexual thing. So I turned to my trusted friend Google. Turns out there’s THIRTEEN kinds of bisexuality!

I was stunned at how many boxes there are for us to tick, to define ourselves.

I am also confused. Confused at why we label ourselves and then say we don’t like the label. Why we climb into a box and then say we don’t like the space.

I went to this film festival yesterday – part of the Colombo Pride 2010. We were shown a Sinhalese film called “Akasa Kusum”. The tagline was ‘Flowers of the Sky”. That alone should tell you what the film was like – the fact that the tagline is a translation of the title. But, for various reasons, I enjoyed it. Superb subtitles.

Akasa Kusum is about an aging actress – Sandhya Rani – reminded of her days of glory by a much younger actress – Shalika – currently enjoying her days of glory. And as Sandhya Rani finds herself suddenly thrust, once again, into the limelight, she is confronted by her past – her daughter, Priya, who she had abandoned years ago. Now Priya is a ‘karaoke girl’. That’s what Sri Lankans seem to call sex workers. That’s the main plot. One of the many sub-plots was Priya’s lesbian relationship with Bunty, a fellow ‘karaoke girl’.

The film was all about the stereotypes. I’d even go so far as to say it was a film celebrating stereotypes. Each and every character and even what happens to them all – the aging actress, the young actress involved in an adulterous relationship, the karaoke girl, the karaoke girl’s butch girlfriend, the karaoke girl contracting HIV and then – in my opinion the best and most dangerous stereotype of all – the karaoke girl dying of AIDS.

At the end of the film there was a question and answer session. The director of the film and the girl who played Bunty were present to answer the audience’s questions.

Of the many questions that were asked and somewhat answered that night, these are the ones that I found interesting.

Question No. 1:

A woman from the audience stood up to ask why Bunty was portrayed as butch. “She was a lesbian, but did she have to be the stereotypical butch?”

The woman who asked this was gay, had short hair, was of stocky built and wore what I would describe as ‘menswear’ – a collared shirt and man-trousers.

Question No. 2:

Another young man asked the director why gay people needed to be portrayed in such a stereotypical manner – Bunty was a sex worker, she smoked etc. etc.

He too is gay. He loves listening to Cher and Madonna. He’s camp like you wouldn’t believe. And proud of it!

My issue – they both were complaining about stereotypical portrayals of gay people by the media, yet they missed how stereotypical they were!

That sounds harsh. Let me explain.

Lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual – LGBT. Sometimes it’s LGBTQ. Q stands for Questioning. They don’t feel accepted in society and rightly so. We live in a world that doesn’t allow you to celebrate who you are. Rather, it makes you apologise for you everyday. Especially if you have the temerity to be anything other than what society considers ‘normal’. Don’t you just hate that word?

Anyway, so they get together and form communities – support groups for each other. They campaign. For their rights. India saw light only last year, when they decriminalized homosexuality, deciding that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was in violation of the fundamental rights to life, liberty and equality. Perhaps Sri Lanka will see it soon.

Somehow, in the midst of all this banding-together-for-the-cause, we have ‘gay music’ like Cher and Madonna (especially her Vogue, I’m told), ‘gay hobbies’ like figure skating , ‘gay clothes’ – and frankly, to me, all of that sounds, well, stereotypical!

Gay people don’t all like the same music or dress exceptionally well, not all of them are artistic and they don’t all flop their hands about while talking. Just like all straight people are so different from each other.

LGBTQ – I’m questioning. Why do they have to be one of those letters? Why do they have to be an acronym?

To the many questions asked that evening, the director’s answer was more or less the same. “My only aim was to portray human relationships in this movie – not gay or straight, not sexual or spiritual – but just relationships between people.”

This was the Colombo Pride 2010 Film Festival. Naturally, people seemed put out that he didn’t explore the gay relationship, that he perpetuated the myth that HIV positive people HAVE TO die – and all the while he kept replying that the movie wasn’t about any of those issues.

Fair enough, I thought.

It’s like saying oh look, women are so empowered now, and then fighting for reservations in parliament.

Both the young man and the woman were absolutely right. There was no need why those characters had to be portrayed the way they had been – stereotypically. We all have our subtleties, we all have our quirks and traits that give us our individuality. But obviously there are people contributing to these stereotypes which is why they exist.

The world is filled with stereotypes. Even people who are one of a kind belong to the slightly exclusive group of ‘one-of-a-kind’ people. Now, once you accept that, you can move on with your life. Who really cares what bracket you fit into. The only time you need to fit into a bracket is when you fill out forms. And the only reason that form, or what is says or doesn’t say on that form, is important, is because you’re giving it that importance.

So what can we do about it? How do we eliminate stereotypes? CAN we eliminate them?

Why do I need to be LGBTQ? Why can’t I just be lesbian? Why can’t I just be gay? Why can’t I just be bisexual? There are thirteen flavours to choose from.

~ by grassrooted on July 8, 2010.