Let’s begin with a disclaimer:
Cynthia Nixon never asked to be a bi activist.
About twenty years ago, Nixon — who up until that point had only been attracted to men — fell in love with a nice butch lady, left her longtime partner, and eventually got married to said butch lady. And because she was, you know, one of the Sex and the City ladies, this quickly made headlines in all the tabloids, most of which framed the story as “Cynthia Nixon: Lesbian!”
As a young bisexual, I was fairly irritated by all of this. It seemed obvious to me that while it was possible that Nixon had been a deeply closeted lesbian before meeting her wife, it was more likely that she was a latent bisexual.
Not that she was framing it that way: in 2012, Nixon gave an interview with the New York Times where she famously described herself as being gay by choice, an inflammatory statement that pissed off a lot of queers and led the actress to justify her phrasing in a subsequent interview with The Daily Beast, in which she copped to avoiding the B word because “nobody likes the bisexuals.” When she ran for New York State governor in 2018, she still seemed to be owning the lesbian label — and, I mean, I get it, she’s married to a woman and seems enmeshed in lesbian social circles so why not — inspiring Slate to run a piece about how her sexual identity is “more nuanced” than bisexuality.
[Just going to take a beat here for anyone else who finds themselves scratching their heads at the idea that bisexuality somehow lacks nuance; I read through the piece and it mostly seems like the writer has some fixed idea of what A Bisexual™️ is and thinks that choosing to ID as a lesbian out of affiliation and expedience is “nuanced”? I am all for bi lesbians and think Nixon has a right to ID as a lesbian if she wants to, but I dunno, I was not impressed with the piece.]
Anyway.
I’m giving you this whole backstory because it feels worth acknowledging that Nixon has been, for the most part, a hesitant bisexual at best. A technical bisexual, a lesbian-identified woman with a history of bisexual attraction. Certainly not someone politically bisexual or interested in forming a bisexual community. Which, let’s be clear, is her right.
And because of this — well, given how hesitant Nixon herself has been about claiming, about aligning with, bisexuality, can we really be all that surprised that when And Just Like That decided to rework Nixon’s character to appeal to all those fans who can’t distinguish between Miranda Hobbes and Cynthia Nixon, to give Miranda a queer journey that eerily mimicked that of Cynthia’s real life, that the storyline was, uh, kind of biphobic?
It didn’t have to be this way. “Miranda goes gay” was a great opportunity, not just to pander to the queer Miranda fans of the world, but also to make up for the messy biphobia of Sex and the City.
And yet.
Instead of Miranda realizing her attractions extend beyond just men and having her mind opened up by her butch bisexual* non-binary paramour we get this very weird arc where Miranda gets dumped by Che, has a freakout about her identity, and then apparently decides she’s exclusively interested in femme cis women, which is even more of a hard left turn than “Miranda is queer now.” Through all of this, Miranda pretty pointedly refuses to call herself bisexual — despite having a threesome with a cis dude and a non-binary person, which seems pretty bi to me — and honestly I think I would have been fine with that if it hadn’t been for the reconciliation scene she has with her ex-husband Steve in the final episode of season 2 of And Just Like That.
Miranda, hurt after a friend (correctly) points out that she likes to throw her exes in the trash, goes to Coney Island to seek out her ex-husband, the father of her son, at his new bar. They make amends, she apologizes for being kind of shitty, and then he says, “You’re not going to go straight again?” And she says, “No.”
And that is the line that did me in, friends.
I would like to believe that in 2023 television writers would understand that a bisexual person dating a straight person is not that bi person “going straight,” that dating straight people is a part of the bi experience. Barring the person who does a queer make out sesh out of curiosity only to realize it’s not for them, it is fundamentally impossible to “go straight” after coming out as queer, because queerness, because bisexuality, is fundamentally in opposition to straightness.
That very line, and the fact that Miranda just tacitly accepts its logic, absolutely infuriated me. Like, really? That’s what we get? No one saw any problem with that framing?
But, you know, again, it’s not Cynthia Nixon’s fault. I don’t think. She never took on the mantle of bi warrior or anything. She’s just a lady who fell for another lady and agreed to let her personal life become the basis of a plot twist for the character she’s most immediately associated with. What was she supposed to do, ask the writers to actively work to portray bisexuality with nuance and sensitivity?
I mean, sure, this is a show that paid Kim Cattrall** a presumably ungodly sum of money to literally phone in a cameo. But it’s not like Nixon had the ability to push for respectful representation of bisexuals.
I don’t think.
* Che is never called bisexual but they kind of obviously are; granted I could see them IDing as queer instead but it feels a bit like splitting hairs
** Best thing about the SATC universe hands down
The writer of that Slate article, Christina Cauterucci, is definitely biphobic. I had to unsubscribe from their “queer” podcast because I was so tired of her biphobia.
I have been hate watching the show, and I honestly just haven't been able to go back after the audibook narrator cat poop situation. >.> You hit the nail on the head for me.