For the past few days — ever since Lil Nas X tweeted about possibly being “a little bisexual,” to a largely positive response — I’ve been thinking about the “good” bisexual coming outs, the ones that seem to only spark joy and no disdain. Lil Nas X got one, as did Tessa Thompson, and of course Pansexual Icon™️ Janelle Monáe (please don’t quibble with me about bi v pan, for our purposes here, she counts). Jameela Jamil… did not.
It is, perhaps, unfair to compare Jameela Jamil’s disastrous queer coming out to that of other bisexuals who got more enthusiastic receptions, but I think that Jamil’s face plant is pretty illustrative. If you’re not familiar with the story (perhaps because you have better things to do that remember the ins and outs of various C listers comings out), it roughly went like this: Jamil was announced as a judge on the voguing competition show Legendary. A bunch of people were unhappy about this, pointing out that Jamil — a British TV presenter turned actress best known for playing Tahani Al-Jamil on The Good Place — had no clear connection to ball culture, and seemed to be taking a slot from someone who’d benefit far more from the opportunity. Jamil, in turn, came out as bisexual. Jeers ensued.
The response to Jamil’s coming out was obviously exacerbated by the fact that it came across as a deflection: Jamil, rightly called out for being a cis woman with no apparently connection drag or balls, brought up her bisexuality as proof that she had claim here, despite the fact that bi cis women are not the first people one thinks when it comes to voguing (well, unless your only context for voguing is Madonna). She did the very thing that everyone is always accusing bisexuals (and specifically bi cis women) of doing: using one’s bisexuality to justify taking up space where one doesn’t belong.
But a part of me wonders if it really was the timing, if it really was just the Legendary gig, that led to Jamil having a disastrous coming out. A part of me thinks that Jameela Jamil was always destined to be booed when coming out as bi, always destined to be mocked and made fun of, largely because Jameela Jamil is, well, an attention-seeking woman who comes across as very straight. There’s very little about Jamil’s public image that suggests that she’s invested in queer culture, and there’s a lot about Jamil’s public image that suggests that she’s… kind of annoying. She was never going to be the girl a lot of queers wanted on their team, you know?
Lil Nas X and Janelle Monáe, on the other hand, are extremely queer (Tessa Thompson we’re going to get to in a second). In the case of Lil Nas X (who, notably, only copped to being “a little” bisexual), the tweet had the cadence of a mostly gay man who’s thinking about having a box lunch (a read that was reinforced by this post that Lil Nas X quickly retweeted) — the kind of bisexual man whose bisexuality is almost read as a hyper gayness insomuch as it upends the expectations of how men are “supposed” to be with women. And with Janelle Monáe — I mean, at this point her whole vibe is very “what if Prince was a she/they non-binary person with pansexual attractions,” which is kind of a wet dream for Prince fans who hated that he was a straight Jehovah’s Witness. Plus her entire coming out was fused with speculation about her and Tessa Thompson being an item, which —
Let’s talk about Tessa Thompson for a second, shall we? The fascinating thing to me about the largely positive response to Thompson’s bisexuality is it feels entirely a response to an image that’s been externally created for her. What do you actually know about Tessa Thompson’s personal life? Approximately nothing: she’s an incredibly private person, as is her right. But when she came out as bi, people rejoiced because it helped fuel their fantasies that she and Monáe were an item (despite both of them denying that that was the case); then later there was that creep shit where people saw some paparazzi photos and came to the conclusion that Thompson was in a triad with Rita Ora and Taika Waititi (which, even if true… mind your business). Thompson gets to be a beloved bisexual icon in part because she is a blank slate that people project their fantasies on to. One has to wonder whether she’d be as adored if she were more open about her actual life.
Anyway. I think one of the reasons why I’m so intrigued by public response to these announcements of bisexuality is because, well, it seems easy for someone to look at the response to Lil Nas X saying he’s a little bi and declare that biphobia is over, that the bisexuals have nothing to complain about because, hey, everyone still loves Lil Nas X even if he is bi. If a bisexual is getting a bad response it’s probably because they, like Jamil, are a bad person who just isn’t doing bisexuality right.
But it feels like such a trap, you know? Because if the “correct” choices are to either be a hyper queer icon or a tabula rasa for others to project their fantasies on to, that’s not really leaving much space for bisexuals to be human. It is carving out a narrow lane of respectability that we can be funneled into; it is offering up a select handful of “correct” ways to be bisexual that conveniently allow folks to dismiss charges of biphobia on account of the fact that, you know, they love these good bisexuals over here.
You could drive yourself mad thinking about this, thinking about the “correct” way to come out, to maximize public support for your bisexuality, to “do it right.” I’m not interested in that, though. To be honest, the more I think about this stuff, the more convinced I am that individual comings out (and especially celebrity ones), while useful to the individual bisexual insomuch much as coming out makes them feel seen, simply are not the path to collective liberation. They are simply too fraught, too loaded with weight and judgement, too easily segmented into “good” and “bad” to actually result in, you know, sexual freedom for all.
Bi freedom isn’t measured in whether people are happy or sad that Lil Nas X might want to eat pussy. It’s not measured in whether you think Jameela Jamil sucks or is good. It’s measured in whether bi people, as a collective whole, are getting the access to safety, to resources, to healthcare that we need. And as far as those goals go, well — all these celebrity comings out are kind of a sideshow.
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