#12: Reclaiming Bisexual Celebrities…Except Anne Heche

“A bisexual is a person who reaches down the front of somebody’s pants and is satisfied with whatever they find.”– Dana Carvey as The Church Lady, Saturday Night Live.

The Gay Book of Days: An Evocatively Illustrated Who’s Who of Who Is, Was, May Have Been, Probably Was, and Almost Certainly Seems to Have Been Gay is not only on sale for 45 cents at Amazon, but is a kind of gay history lesson, recounting sexual affairs of famous folks from Shakespeare to Ma Rainey to whomever the hell Henri de Montherlant is. The problem is that a lot of the people he is outing as gay are actually bisexual. Whoops! Don’t tell Oprah or you’ll end up like that James Frey guy.

“‘We must identify the obvious, reclaim our writers, poets, painters and activists,’ say bisexual authors Loraine Hutchins and Lani Kaahumanu, who list Anais Nin, Colette, Frida Kahlo, Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, Langston Hughes, W. Somerset Maugham, and Tallulah Bankhead among those who have loved both men and women” (Marjorie Garber, Vice Versa)

Other bisexuals who are commonly mistaken or purposefully misconstrued as card-carrying homos and heteros are: Sappho (yes, the Greek poster-dyke), Kurt Cobain, James Dean, Ani DiFranco (more on this to come), Eleanor Roosevelt, Alexander the Great, Tchaikovsky, Michael Stipe, Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, Andy Dick (while we’re on the “Dicks”), Herman Melville (Moby Dick. What?), Eve Ensler, Judy Garland, Georgia O’Keeffe (who was Frida’s lover for a time), Marlon Brando, Cary Grant, Billie Holiday, Angelina Jolie (obvs), Janis Joplin, David Bowie (#4) Jack Kerouac, Kristanna Loken (from Terminator 3 and the one who burned Shane’s house down in season 4 of The L Word), Madonna, Elton John, Amanda Palmer (from the Dresden Dolls), Cole Porter, Anthony Rapp (Rent), Virginia Woolf, Patti Smith, Mick Jagger and on and on. To see a more complete list of bi celebs, go here.

Bis love to correct people about celebrities’ sexual proclivities, not only to provide some cultural visibility to the switch-hitters but because we need role models too. Like any minority group that is discriminated against, we need champions that can inspire us and make us feel smart at dinner parties. Which is why, dear lesbians, I’m sorry but Ani DiFranco is OURS. You can have Melissa Etheridge and Elton John (who used to identify as bi – to justify his wearing of purple fuzzy top hats?) but Shakespeare is totally our pinch-hitter. A rose bi any other name would NOT smell as sweet.

Of course, one reason that reclaiming bisexual celebrities is problematic is because it polarizes groups in arguments over sexual politics – pitting us versus them and making polite conversation into a kind of custody battle. We here at SBL are not out to further create rifts among alternate sexualities or genders, but we are pretty happy about Amanda Palmer playing for both teams. (call us!) The second reason it’s problematic is because then we also have to claim celebrities we don’t really like much at all, like Anne Heche , who proclaimed herself to be the second coming, or Tom Cruise or Tila Tequila (#3). So, while we promote Lindsay Lohan’s recent lezification, we’re not entirely sure what to do about some of the unpleasant bi products that have occurred during the most recent bout of bisexual chic, which started around the time that Madonna kissed Britney Spears at the VMA awards. Until Google (#2) comes up with a solution for that, consider Bai Ling an unfortunate, but necessary benchwarmer, for our all-inclusive team.

#10: Asses

Nipples, yawn. Thighs, so last year. We as a culture have grown tired of the same body parts airbrushed and repackaged back to us magazine after countless magazine. America is in need of a new body part to fetishize, and the mainstream is finally hopping on the right caboose, to unveil the wonders of a body part that bisexuals have been adoring for years: The Ass.

“The qualities that make the ass ‘beautiful’ and ‘well-formed’ are not fixed, as sexual aesthetics of the buttocks vary considerably from culture to culture, from one period of fashion to another” says Wikipedia. And as Salon.com and Gisele Bundchen have taught us – The Ass is the new Crack (#1).

It’s no great secret that bisexuals love them some ass. Let’s take a look at the obvious, shall we? While other erogenous parts are hopelessly gendered, the ass remains neutral, and the qualities that make it arousing can be applied to anyone with hind quarters. And, aside from having the second highest concentration of nerve endings (the first being the genitals, obvs.), the asshole is also the equal opportunity orifice; it evens the playing field of sexual conquest and exploits the heteronormative dichotomy of penetrator/penetratee.

“The derriere isn’t a body part as much as an embodiment of personality,” claims the June issue of Elle magazine in its six-page spread devoted to the visible posterior. Of course, they were trying to hock their new butt-hottening regimen, which includes creams, waxing, tanning and massages that “facilitate lymphatic drainage, causing the skin to plump, making dimpling less noticeable.” Nothing turns me on like talk of lymphatic drainage.

Despite Elle’s general ass-hattery, they do have a point. The term “ass” can be applied to many situations and characteristics of someone’s personality. A short list: a “tight ass” (stingy) “pain in the ass” (annoying), “hard ass” (difficult), “haul ass” (urgency), “kick one’s ass” or “open a can of whoop ass” (to beat to a pulp), “get some ass” (sex) or “asshole” (jerk). If you extend the slang terms of ass more broadly, you can create a whole lexical stew of meaning and association – caboose, rump, tail, booty, backside, anal, tush, and my favorite, bottom, which connotes everything from Shakespeare to sexual proclivities.

Let’s explore this tunnel a little further (zing!). The verb to spank is the only one specifically meant for physical discipline of a specific part of the body. The ass is THE target for punishment, as a child’s reprimand yes, but more widely as a form of sexual pleasure. To be spanked adds a psychological component to pleasure and few masochists are wont to turn down a good paddling, as it provides some much needed humiliation, and also sexual healing.

Lastly, you didn’t think you’d get away without a reference to the bis (or should I say bi-peds?) of the animal kingdom (#5), did you? In addition to allowing primates the ability to sit upright without difficulty, the ass plays a necessary role for female baboons in attracting their mates. They have red buttocks that “blush” in order to signal their scandalous intentions, which brings new meaning to the term booty call.