I'm a bi stereotype, and I'm okay.

"Bad" bisexuals on TV.

Okay, so: is anyone else watching The Afterparty on Apple TV+? It’s a fun little mystery show currently in its second season, I think I’m liking the second season more than I liked the first (possibly because I can’t stand Dave Franco and even though he was the first season murder victim he was still in the show *a lot* in various flashbacks?). I ask because I’m about to do a light spoiler for The Afterparty season 2, and while I don’t think it matters that much, I don’t want people to yell at me. So consider yourself warned.

Alright then, anyone who is going to be pissy about spoilers is gone, so let’s continue.

About halfway through the second season of The Afterparty (at least I think it’s halfway through? I’m not sure how many episodes there are going to be), it’s casually revealed that two of the female characters are bisexual. I say “casually” here because that’s how it felt to me: there’s a scene of them kissing, and while it’s a surprise insomuch as they’ve been keeping their entanglement a secret, the show doesn’t seem to think that their queerness, specifically, is a a shock. It’s possible I missed it, but I don’t recall any “Wait I thought you were straight!”s or “So does this mean you’re a lesbian now?”s. The idea of these two female characters being into each other as well as men doesn’t seem to blow anyone’s mind, it just exists within the universe.

Which isn’t to say that there’s no drama: the sapphic subplot of The Afterparty isn’t revealed until halfway through the series because it’s an illicit affair. Without going into too many spoilery details, one half of the couple is cheating on her male partner, a male partner the other half happens to be close to. As I watched the revelation unfold onscreen, my initial thought was simply “Ah! A torrid love triangle with a bisexual twist!”

It was only much later — like days later? — that I realized that The Afterparty was invoking one of the prime Bisexual Stereotypes™️: that of the bisexual who cheats.

I’ve been trying to think through how I feel about this, because — well on the one hand I feel like I’m legally obligated to object to it? Ugh, one more media representation of bi girls as inherently unfaithful, ugh, one more TV show people can point to to say the stereotypes are true.

Except on the other hand, uh, I don’t feel that way, not really. Like, yeah, I get that “cheating bi girl” is a nasty stereotype. But for me, personally, the way it all unfolds in The Afterparty feels justified and relatable and, well, human.

At no point does The Afterparty suggest that bisexuality had anything to do with infidelity. (I mean, at least not so far — the season isn’t over yet so who knows.) What unfolds onscreen is more a story of a neglected woman who falls for another woman; a sapphic romance that blooms in the shadow of an unfulfilling hetero one. You could, I think, imagine the same story with monosexuals; and the fact that everyone is so chill about the bisexuality made me feel largely fine about it.

Because, like — okay the thing about bisexuals and cheating is that I don’t like when people insist to me that bisexuality necessitates cheating, that attraction to multiple genders inherently implies some bottomless appetite for a buffet of genital diversity. But I don’t know that we’re best served by countering that with some insistence that bisexuals never cheat, that we’re just good and pure and always trustworthy, because, uh, that’s just not true.

And I think what I’m getting at here is that The Afterparty doesn’t root its story of bisexual infidelity in any tired tropes. There’s no sense that this woman stepped out on her partner because she just had a desperate hunger for pussy; there’s no insinuation that she was a ticking time bomb just waiting to be triggered by the closest WLW. What we’re given, instead, is the story of a neglected woman who finds herself drawn to someone in her orbit who gives her attention — someone who happens to be a woman, yes, but whatever, no big deal. The cheating and the bisexuality are parallel elements in the story, existing alongside each other without causing or being caused by one another.

Does that make sense?

Interesting story, interesting TV, it’s all built on drama. Squeaky clean bisexual rep, the kind that might buck stereotypes by showing us as upstanding citizens who have never done anything wrong? It’s boring. I don’t mind seeing “bad” bisexuals onscreen. I just want their badness to stem from their humanity rather than their bisexuality.