As a general rule, the threesome is a fundamentally queer sex act. Certainly, there are exceptions: the most heterosexual threesome is probably the “not gay” MMF where two men simultaneously fuck the same woman while studiously avoiding all intimate contact with one another — the kind of MMF threesome you see in a lot of porn created for straight men — but even that is, at the very least, aggressively homosocial, you know, in the way that super straight men who bond with one another by watching porn together are, uh, kind of gay.
(You could theoretically also have a hetero MFF where a straight dude is banging two straight ladies who aren’t interested in one another sexually, but those setups seem to always require the ladies touching each other’s boobs or maybe kissing or whatever at some point, which feels at least performatively queer even if it’s not queer at heart.)
On the other end of the spectrum you have the hyper queer threesomes that for some reason rarely get mentioned: the MMMs, the FFFs, the NBNBNBs, and so on and so forth. If you don’t know gay men who’ve walked down the three-forked path then I would offer than you don’t know many gay men (or at least aren’t particularly close to the ones you do know), and I mean… if you’ve been on Lex for long enough then you've gotta be aware that unicorn hunting isn’t just the purview of cis M/F couples.
Anyway. I digress.
Threesomes are, at heart, a queer sex act, and yet there is one specific type of queer person who is especially associated with them. Truly, if a threesome enters the conversation, it’s likely going to be bi women who are on everyone’s minds: bi women, who supposedly can’t be satisfied unless we’re enjoying partners of multiple genders at the same time; bi women, whose sapphism is always seen as an extension of our (presumed hetero) male partners. The threesome kind of neatly sums up what people assume that being a bi woman is about; and thus bi women are — for better and for worse — inextricably tied to the threesome.
I find it interesting that there’s a gendered aspect to this connection between bisexuals and threesomes: why is it, exactly, that bi men, that bi non-binary people, aren’t as immediately linked to the threeway? I started thinking about the first scenario over the weekend, and my suspicion is that bi men aren’t burdened with the same threesome baggage for two reasons: 1) everyone thinks bi men are actually gay, and therefore wouldn’t actually be interested in a female partner if a male partner were there as well, but also 2) people don’t think that women would get off on watching two men fuck each other (which, well, hello, slash fiction authors everywhere would like to disagree). Add in the trepidation many straight women have about dating bi men in the first place and, well: Two men fucking each other in front of and in addition to a woman just violates social norms in a way that two women fucking each other in front of and in addition to a man does not. The bi MMF threesome, therefore, is erased from the cultural conversation.
[I should note here that there’s one place where this is not true: in pornography, anyone talking about a “bisexual threesome” is specifically talking about an MMF where the dudes fuck both each other and a lady; in pornography, “bisexual” is specifically used to highlight porn that features men who bang both dudes and chicks. This isn’t due to any kind of progressive politic however, it’s purely because in pornography all women are assumed to be bisexual and therefore it doesn’t bear mentioning.
I should also note that I suspect the reason that no one really talks about bi non-binary folk and threesomes is because most people forget that bi non-binary folk exist. 😬]
I recognize that my casual dismissal of Alison Brie and Dave Franco as “unicorn hunters,” touched a nerve for some people, and I wanted to come back to that, because this shit, it is complicated. I was, I can admit, being overly flip because I was exhausted and trying to meet my self-imposed publication schedule. But at the same time: I did feel uncomfortable with the joke, I did feel uncomfortable with the spectacle of a bi woman suggesting the entirety of her queerness is about sharing female partners with her husband and then high fiving him, because it aligned so aggressively with this cultural trope that I have a fraught relationship with.
I’ve written before about my past experiences with threesomes, the bulk of which happened in the context of an abusive relationship, which, yes, colors things for me. But it’s not simply my own specific trauma that makes things fraught for me. It is — as I mentioned above — that threesomes are so aggressively bound up in discussions of bi womanhood. It is the fact that bi women are uniquely targeted for threesome pickups in a way that people of other orientations are not. It is the fact that many M/F couples (and often just the M pretending to have his F on board) do approach bi women, even bi women who explicitly say they are not interested in threesomes, with the expectation that bisexuality equals sexual availability.
Do I think all M/F couples who are interested in thirds are necessarily creeps? Of course not — and plenty of bi women, both single and partnered, clearly are interested in MFF threesomes and I wish them well. Life is short, you should do the things that bring you joy. There are plenty of things that I enjoy in my sex life that other people would find, shall we say, problematic, and who gives a shit because I’m consensually doing stuff that gets me and the people I want to fuck off and that is are right.
But one can enjoy a thing and still recognize that it is a delicate subject, that it is easily misconstrued, that there are legitimate reasons to tread carefully when discussing it in public. And I think that that may be where I land on the issue of bi women and threesomes: that whatever Brie’s personal stance on threesomes, she maybe should have taken a beat before making that joke. And yes that is absolutely unfair.
Because, look, it frustrates me that we don’t talk about the many and varied forms of threeway — not just the bi male MMF threeways, but the threeways where everyone is the same gender, the threeways utterly divorced from hetero gender politics, the threeways that are queer in ways that even I can’t imagine, hell even an MFF threeway but in this case both the ladies have strap-ons and they’re doing an Eiffel Tower over the dude — because bi women who happen to enjoy banging it out with a dude and a lady, even in a way that aligns with the porny straight male fantasy, shouldn’t have to feel any shame about that. It should just be one more option in a sea of options, a thing you can check off if you want to (or not), and not have it be that big a deal.
And I guess what I’m saying here is: threeways? They’re fine. Truly, a pretty good way to spend an evening provided you’ve managed to find a group of people who’ve got mutually great chemistry together (which is itself kind of a feat if you ask me). But they can never really be just another sex act for me because of the way that they are fused with this shallow understanding of my identity, because I’ve spent my adult life being treated as a threesome procurement service, because I know in my heart it’s one of the first things that comes to people’s minds when they hear that I am bi.
It’s a no-win situation: if you don’t want threesomes, you’re doomed to be harassed for them. If you do want threesomes, you’re doomed to be looked at with suspicion and pegged as a creep. That is why it is so hard for me to not feel fatigued at the mere mention of threesomes. That is why, when it comes to bi women and threesomes, I would often just… prefer not to have the conversation.
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I can definitely understand that you've had a particular experience with the concept of threesomes that contributes to your view, and bi women in general are unfairly associated with threesomes. But I still think being uncomfortable with Alison Brie's joke and suggesting she should have thought before making the joke is playing into respectability politics.
Particularly with the mention of MMM threesomes and gay men, I'd argue that gay men are negatively affected by the stereotype of being sexually promiscuous and having too many partners. I think it would be wrong for a monogamous gay man living a more traditional lifestyle to say that other gay men shouldn't openly talk and joke about the types of sex they'd like - even if those jokes could be fodder for stereotypes about gay men in general that could have a negative effect on the monogamous gay man.
Not to say those situations are the exact same, but just using that as an example since I've seen that argument play out before. I don't see why we should expect bi women to avoid a joke like Alison Brie's, but we shouldn't expect others to avoid similar jokes even when they might be contributing to negative stereotypes about their communities. Tbh I can think of a way that someone of any sexuality (even a straight man) expressing interest in a threesome with a similar joke could be spun as reinforcing negative stereotypes that could harm others in the same group.
We should really target the people who are acting predatory towards bi women rather than targeting a bi woman for making openly sexual remarks even if they conform to a stereotype.
It's not just bi women that get propositioned for threesomes though - it's all queer femmes. Lesbians complain about seeing and even matching with MF couples (who are sometimes sneaky about the fact they're a couple) on dating apps despite indicating only an interest in women. Widespread enough that I've been assumed to have a boyfriend/husband and be a unicorn hunter just for being out as bi and flirting with women at a club.