Bisexual women beware!

It's just gonna be a grab bag today.

Okay so we all sorta knew that when I ambitiously started this as a daily newsletter that there were gonna be … better days and worse days … shall we say, and today, I think, is a worse day. Just been dealing with some stuff and as a result there are no brilliant essays springing fully formed from my head. But there are a few snippets jostling around in there that will hopefully form something that feels worth reading. (I’m sure I’ll be back in full force next week.)

First up:

I have said multiple times that studies routinely show that bi people, and bi women in particular, have absolutely abysmal health. Well, now there’s a new study saying that! According to a team at the Columbia University School of Nursing, bi women are more than twice as likely as straight women to have unhealthy hearts (insert obligatory joke about our increased opportunities for failed romances, I guess). The study also found that bi women are more likely to live in poverty and delay necessary healthcare because of said poverty, and also have a harder time finding healthcare providers (maybe because of the biphobia in the medical system? I’m just spitballing here). I didn’t pay to read the article, but syndicated version of the press release that I did read has the study’s team basically saying, “Hey this is probably because bi women are just stressed!” which… is fine, I guess. I dunno. Sometimes I wish these studies would go beyond the generic “minority stress theory” explanation and actually dig into the specific biphobia of it all, like… if bi women are particularly impacted compared to other sexual minorities (who presumably also deal with lots of stress) then maybe there’s… something else going on? Like — and I’m just spitballing here — the fact that bi women are more likely to be mothers and less likely to have access to supportive communities? Just seems like additional details worth mentioning when we’re talking about why people might be more likely to live in poverty and less likely to have access to doctors (like, do bi women even feel comfortable going to LGBTQ community clinics that we’re supposedly welcome at? I wouldn’t! Seems worth mentioning!).

Wow, that paragraph was long.

Anyway: less fine? The fact that Times Now, the site that republished the aforementioned press release about a cardiovascular health study, chose to pair it with a headline that begins “Bisexual women beware!” Like… what? What? What is even going on, you guys?

Secondly:

Apparently Alison Brie “came out” this week and a bunch of news pubs are all abuzz about it because their writers have nothing better to do with their time? I put came out in scare quotes not because I don’t think Brie is bi but because, ugh, well —

The general gist of what happened is that Alison Brie and husband Dave Franco were doing one of those BuzzFeed videos where celebrities read tweets about themselves because, you know, everyone’s out of ideas and why not, it’s content. One of the tweets was from some random person who declared that they’re bisexual so that they can have a threesome with Brie and Franco; Brie high fived Franco and declared that she, too, is bisexual for that reason as well.

I want to pause here for a second and unpack that statement for a second. Is Alison Brie saying she’s bisexual so that she can have a threesome with Alison Brie and Dave Franco? Is she saying she’s bisexual so that she can have a threesome with her husband and some random person on Twitter, gender unknown, and if so how would her being bisexual assist her in having a threesome with that person if they’re a man (also is Dave bisexual and if so is he down to have a threesome with this bi dude)?

I think my favorite read on this one is the one where Alison Brie wants to invite her husband to participate in her own personal clone bone, but sadly I’m pretty sure that Brie just assumed anyone tweeting about wanting to threesome her and her husband must necessarily be a lady and high fived her husband over the thought of them unicorn hunting together. That, honestly, is my least favorite read, just because… ugh. It feels very Pick Me of Brie to make that joke, and just very exhausting generally, this conflation of bi female sexuality and threesomes. (A part of me is really hoping that the tweeter was a dude who wants to daisy chain with Brie and Franco, that’ll learn everyone for making assumptions about bisexuals who tweet about threesomes.)

Anyway, now I can’t get this image out of my head.

Would you?

So, that’s it for today! Bisexuals: shitty health, constant threesomes. There are worse ways to live I guess.

(I promise I’ll write something smarter next week.)