There is this term that you may be familiar with: “bi wife energy.” Ostensibly, it refers to straight men with bi female partners, men who are just so cool and queer savvy on account of their relationship. I think the implication is that bi women are too choosy to settle for some regular old loser (lol) or that the kind of man who is up for dating a bi woman must automatically be queer affirming and open-minded (double lol).
I have never liked the term, both because it feels like it puts a lot of pressure on bi women to “choose well” (if I date losers does that mean I’m not really bi?) but also because, well, statistically speaking, bi women are more likely to be abused by male partners than straight women are, so I’m simply not convinced that the male partners of bi women are actually worth celebrating.
But. As the subject of this email has already let you know, what I actually want to talk about today is bi husband energy. Is that a thing? Why does no one talk about it? Why aren’t people making up cutesy little songs and memes about the straight wives of bi men, you know? There are two recent news stories that have led my brain here, one about how Leonard Bernstein’s wife knew about his bisexuality and another about how Jason Mraz’s ex-wife helped him accept himself as bi.
These are very different stories, and very different bi husband energies (at least as far as I can figure from the minimal writeups). Bernstein’s wife is presented as a long suffering cuckquean* who quietly put up with her husband’s infidelity; while Mraz’s ex gets to be the sort of magical straight lady who helps a bi man not just open but fully walk through the great rainbow door. Or, I mean, that’s my assumption, anyway. We don’t get to hear from these women — Bernstein’s wife has been dead more than forty years — we just get these brief comments about them that I’m projecting a lot on to.
But then, maybe that is the bi husband energy in and of itself. Straight men get to derive queer adjacency from their bi female partners; straight women are simply portrayed as put upon victims or manic pixies helping men realize their dreams. None of this is about bisexuality, not actually — if anything, it’s an exercise in how we present women as either helping to fulfill men’s destinies or being thwarted by them — but it’s still fascinating, in a world where bi men are so frequently shunted to the background, to see what we talk about when we talk about their wives.
* Google it
PS This PinkNews piece about bisexuality was very obviously written by AI and the really sad thing is it’s not much worse than the stuff we see real humans write on the topic
Bi Husband Energy...Bi Wife Energy...ugh. Adjectives or labels can be helpful signposts at times. I want most people to know I identify as bi, but other labels veer off into distraction, baggage and misinformation. Even as I identify as a bi man, there are SO many assumptions people make. One can only feign surprise as these other labels distort the reality to absurdity. I REALLY love being bi, and I'm happy to explain how that manifests for myself, but more often, assumptions are made. Some of these very specific labels need to be tossed into the bin.
It's a fraught topic and my experiences as an ex bi husband are doubly so.