Please just let us be chill.

When every disclosure is headline news.

I’ve mentioned this before, but: if you want to depress yourself, a great way to do that is by setting up a Google alert for terms like “bisexual” and “bisexuality.” The stories that come through are mostly dreck; dumb explainers about bi vs pan or advice columns about dating a bisexual and, of course, the inevitable rush of bi celebrity news stories, which are usually coming out stories, and which will quickly flood your inbox if you let them (turn on daily digest, people).

Right now I’m getting a lot of headlines about Susan Sarandon having come out during an appearance on Fallon. Or really, “come out,” because… well you can watch the (incredibly brief!) video here, or just read a transcript below:

SARANDON: My little creatures all passed away. I can’t talk about it because I still get upset. It was about a year ago.

I was feeling sad and… I said, “I can’t get another dog. I just can’t,” you know? And [my son] said, “Well, then get cats.” And I’m bi, so…

FALLON: So you mean you like dogs and cats?

SARANDON: I’m fluid, I’m very fluid where animals are concerned.

When Sarandon first says, “I’m bi,” it’s in this very offhand way, like she assumes that everyone knows this and she’s just bringing it up for context. And, I mean, she’s got good reason to think that, given that she’s publicly spoken about being attracted to multiple genders before. It’s Fallon who seems uncomfortable with the disclosure, who assumes it must be a joke about liking both cats and dogs — which it is, sort of, but in the way that I might joke about how being Jewish means I love to quibble. I’m still Jewish in spite of the joke; indeed the joke only works because I am actually Jewish.

And then, of course, all these low rent publications pick up the “news” item and run with it and it fills up my inbox and — it’s really exhausting, honestly, this feeling that one cannot acknowledge one’s identity without it becoming a big deal, that one cannot simply nod to one’s experiences and attractions without it being a Coming Out™️. Which — I mean honestly the whole framing of “coming out” is just kinda bizarre these days; if you are openly bi in your private life but not constantly shouting it from the rooftops are you actually “closeted”? If it’s a part of your life, but you only mention it when it comes up in conversation, is that mention a “coming out” or just a casual disclosure, the way one might disclose, say, that their parents are scientists?

(Consider this my official coming out as The Daughter of Two Scientists™️.)

I guess what I’m saying is that it feels, sometimes, like no matter how chill we might be about our sexual desires and identities, the world at large refuses to match our tone. And I can’t shake the feeling that part of it is rooted in the ugly belief that bisexuality itself is a plea for attention, which means that even the most low key mention of one’s bi identity is heard as a scream for people to look this way. If she didn’t want her bisexuality to be a headline, she wouldn’t have made an offhand mention of it on Fallon, right? I mean really when you think about it, it’s all on her for making the joke in the first place.

I get tired sometimes (often) with this idea that bisexual liberation revolves around famous bi people, around normalizing bisexuality by, I dunno, reminding people that Susan Sarandon is bi. While I may be shallow enough to hope that I’m one day famous enough to be on Bi.org’s list of Famous Bi People, I have to admit that I don’t actually feel like Bisexual Representation™️ gets us anywhere, because it feels too rooted in this idea that you can understand bisexuality by knowing individual bisexuals, rather than that bisexuality is “valid” simply because it exists.

And when I see something like the response to the Sarandon moment — I mean, there you have it, right? She’s as chill and casual about her sexuality as anyone could possibly be — the end goal for all of us, I should think! — and yet it’s swooped up as a moment, as something that must be commented on. I don’t think there’s any critical mass of out celebrities that’s ever going to fix that, because I think the very conviction that out bi celebrities matter is part of the problem. Which is to say: of course bi celebrities should be comfortable being openly bi, because every bi person should, and when people feel that they can’t be honest about who they are, that’s a sign of a problem. But this belief that bi celebrities inherently matter, that every casual mention of bisexuality is a major news story — it feels like it gets us further and further away from the actual desired end point, which is a world where none of this matters because we’re all free to sleep with and date as many or as few people as we wish, from as many or as few genders as appeal to us.

Watching that clip, I just feel bad for Susan Sarandon, who can’t even make a silly joke about her fluidity in relationships with both animals and humans without having her identity interrogated, without having it be a big deal. And I feel bad for me, and you too, because I know this is exactly the kind of moment that makes it harder to feel comfortable in our skin, that makes it harder to just relax and be, and not feel like everything has to be such a big deal.

Also? Fuck Jimmy Fallon.

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