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Shiri Eisner on Re-Imagining Bisexual Masculinity
1.9k Plays3 years ago
Follow Shiri Eisner on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShiriEisner
Buy Shiri's book: https://bookshop.org/books/bi-notes-for-a-bisexual-revolution/9781580054744
Follow Jacob Engelberg on Twitter: https://twitter.com/criticalprvrsn
We are THRILLED to have author, activist, and true bi-con Shiri Eisner on Two Bi Guys for a special 2-part episode! Shiri is the author of "BI: NOTES FOR A BISEXUAL REVOLUTION", a must-read for bisexual people and anyone looking to understand contemporary bi politics. And we are excited to welcome back Jacob Engelberg, who has studied Shiri's work in the course of his own research, as our guest-host!
In this episode, we discussed how and why Shiri wrote her book, why the rigid structure of masculinity harms men and how bisexuality offers men an opportunity to reimagine masculinity, why bi visibility is the bare minimum and does not equal acceptance, the ubiquitous and often-invisible bi-phobia in our society -- and television's frequent avoidance of bi-phobia when representing bisexuality, and what kind of bi representation Shiri would like to see on TV (more "messy bisexuals" please!).
Stay tuned for part 2 when we discuss the politics of Israel/Palestine (where Shiri currently lives) and how bisexuality can inform our understanding of oppression, marginalization, and erasure.
Two Bi Guys is produced and edited by Rob Cohen
Created by Rob Cohen and Alex Boyd
Logo art by Kaitlin Weinman
Music by Ross Mintzer
We are supported by The Gotham (formerly IFP)
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Special Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
🎵
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Two Bye Guys. My name is Jacob Engelberg. And I'm Rob Cohen, and thank you, Jacob, for guest hosting this episode. It's so nice to have you. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Shiri Eisner's Impact on Bisexual Activism
00:00:27
Speaker
It's a real pleasure, and it's especially a pleasure to be asked to guest host with you this episode, because
00:00:36
Speaker
We have a very special guest who will be known to many of your listeners, I'm sure. And that is Shiri Eisner. Yes. Well, you are the natural choice to host this one because while I've read her book and love her book, Notes on a Biarevolution,
00:00:53
Speaker
you brought her up multiple times in your interview last year on Two Bye Guys. And so I know you're very familiar with her work and especially now she's doing more TV and film criticism sort of in your lane. So you did very much better than I would have done with this one. So thank you.
00:01:14
Speaker
No, with Shiri's work, it's really the work that got me into thinking about this stuff and wanting to actually take stuff about bisexuality into the academic work that I was doing. But also, I think,
00:01:33
Speaker
for a lot of people that have come across her book, it really kind of galvanizes us into thinking about politics through our bisexuality and bisexuality through our politics as well in a way that can feel just quite
00:01:54
Speaker
It feels like a game changer the first time you encounter it, and I think both of us had a similar experience with that. So just to explain to people who Shuri is, Shuri Eisner is most well-known for her book that Rob mentioned. It's called By Notes for a Bisexual Revolution, and it came out in 2013. Shuri is a writer and activist. She's based in Tel Aviv in Israel, Palestine.
00:02:22
Speaker
and her book has been incredibly kind of formative for a lot of bi people and she kind of explains in our interview her rationale behind the book and what I think she's really successful at doing
00:02:39
Speaker
is to do both a history of bisexual activism and bisexual identity, but also to draw almost a kind of map as to what a politics that is informed by bisexuality might look like.
Personal Reflections on Bisexuality and Politics
00:02:58
Speaker
And that's the kind of part of her work that I find
00:03:02
Speaker
I find most exciting. How about you, Rob? What was your experience of the book? What did you take from it the first time you read it? Well, it's funny because I didn't realize it came out in 2013, but it makes so much sense because I was born in 1985 and I remember
00:03:22
Speaker
Being about to hit my 30th birthday. So it was 2014 probably and I was like shit. I have to Address this I have these thoughts and things I've been repressing and like I don't want to turn 30 and still be Repressing it so that was the time when I started like doing research online and really thinking about this and I think a little bit later starting to explore stuff and so that was when I read her book and I
00:03:51
Speaker
And I think that something that was so powerful about it for me was that it was connecting it to politics and to like radical progressive things that I was leaning towards already. But I think that really helped me to embrace it and to come out because
00:04:10
Speaker
it wasn't just about me. Like in a way, if it was just about me, it was harder. But if it was sort of connected to something bigger, then I felt, and it connected me to this community, that it felt like something I could join and be part of. And I didn't necessarily have to like,
00:04:31
Speaker
blaze a trail all by myself. So I think that's when I read it, that's what it helped do for me. And I don't know that I even realized that it was a new book then, that the timing was so perfect, because it was so helpful for me at that time.
00:04:48
Speaker
And I think what you're talking about speaks to the experience of lots of bi people that we don't necessarily become aware, if we become aware at all, that there is such thing as a bi community, that there is such a thing as bi politics, bisexual history.
00:05:07
Speaker
And we need these resources to lay it out because it's not that apparent in our day-to-day lives. And so many of us stay closeted throughout our lives.
00:05:22
Speaker
And a lot of that I think is around the fear of not having a sense of belonging, of not having a sense of community.
Interconnected Politics and Bisexual Solidarity
00:05:30
Speaker
But the political stuff I think really relates to that because what Shiri is kind of advocating for in her book is a
00:05:40
Speaker
version of politics that's based on community and solidarity in ways that kind of individualized politics of kind of everyone spending for themselves that we get today in what might be broadly like discussed as neoliberalism
00:06:01
Speaker
that's all about kind of fending for yourself. But what Shiri's book is so focused on is about solidarity between people. And lots of people who've thought through bisexuality in terms of politics have talked about
00:06:19
Speaker
how bisexuality and its position in either in the middle of things or beyond a binary category actually has a really nice vantage point from which to see the connections between things that people think are separate.
00:06:35
Speaker
And I think that that really informs the kind of radical politics of the book, which she clarifies at the beginning of the book. The radical is a scary word to lots of people, but literally what it means is like at the root. And she's talking about kind of tackling these problems at the root and knowing that we can
00:06:59
Speaker
that we can make political change that isn't about us fitting into some pre-established structure but changing that structure itself.
00:07:09
Speaker
It's so interesting that everything you said makes total sense. I won't reiterate it, but I've been thinking all that. But it is true. I never really connected with gay and lesbian stories. I mean, I connected a little bit with parts of it, but I didn't feel like a deep connection to the history of it or the stories people would tell. And same with trans identities and gender fluidity. It didn't feel like me.
00:07:34
Speaker
However, when I read her book and some others and saw that Bai is its own thing and I had that foundation, then I could sort of make the connections and see where the similarities were in the crossover. And I think her book, which has those chapters like Bai and Trans and other things,
00:07:54
Speaker
really helps you see how solidarity is possible and why it is sort of fundamental and so important. And that once you have your own identity, you know, known and established, you really can bridge those gaps and really create a queer, solid movement. Absolutely, absolutely. And I think one of the kind of main takeaways from Shuri's book is
00:08:23
Speaker
a kind of desire to break down all kinds of binary structures and just because the one that we're most familiar with is the sexuality binary doesn't mean that that's the only one we need to care about. It's actually one among many binaries that exist socially and our familiarity with how inadequate that binary is can really inspire us to tackle the other ones as well.
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, Sherry was a brilliant interviewee, easy to talk to. I think we were both a little starstruck. Would you agree?
00:09:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and also like I'm trying this guest host thing and I'm not going to attend every single guest interview. But I was like, how can I not be Cheery Eister? She's going to be on this. Like I have to go. So so even though you Jacob took the lead and drove the interview, I had to be a little bit of a fanboy in the background and I attended the interview.
00:09:28
Speaker
chimed in a little and yes I was I was quite a bit star-struck but but she was cheery was so nice and down to earth and great you know the the stars are just like us I'd say that there was a fanboy in the background and the foreground if we sound a bit sycophantic apologies in advance but her work means a lot to us guys
00:09:55
Speaker
Well, without further ado, I think we should let everybody hear this interview we had with
Shiri Eisner's Book: Inspiration and Writing Journey
00:10:03
Speaker
Sharu. We had so much to talk about. We're actually going to be spurting it across two episodes. So today you're going to hear the first half where we talk
00:10:14
Speaker
kind of specifically about those political ideas. And we also talk about television, which is very interesting. My area is film, which is definitely not divorced from TV studies these days. But I think Shiri answers a lot of the questions that Rob had for me that I couldn't answer the first time around, which was like the kind of stuff that
00:10:38
Speaker
should maybe be being made right now, what we're lacking. So without further ado, we've got politics, we've got TV. Here's our interview with Shiri Eisner. So today I have the pleasure of interviewing someone who is
00:11:02
Speaker
such a big name in bisexuality in general, but anyone who has endeavoured to kind of think critically about bisexuality in the past eight years, think about what bisexual politics might mean
00:11:20
Speaker
Think about the connections between bisexuality and leftism will have come into contact with the work of Shiri Eisner. So it is such a pleasure to introduce you today. And welcome to Two Bye Guys. Thank you. I'm really glad to be here. So let's start off just by asking you what your pronouns are and how you identify.
00:11:49
Speaker
I'm bisexual and genderqueer. I generally use she-her and also accept they-them. Great. Thank you.
00:12:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the book that you're known for is By Notes for a Bisexual Revolution, which came out in 2013 with Seal Press. And I'm sure many of our listeners will have read your book or encountered it in some way, but I'm sure there will also be many who haven't. So I was wondering if you could maybe give us a sense of what the book is about, what inspired it, and
00:12:29
Speaker
And yeah, what your journey with it has been like since it came out. So basically, this book is the book that I was always looking to read when I was just starting to get more knowledge and reading about bisexuality. I mean, there is a lot of really, really good bisexual writing, but it's kind of hard to come by.
00:12:59
Speaker
a lot of it is academic. Activist anthologies from the 90s, you know, there are a few of those but
00:13:11
Speaker
I didn't feel that I could have one place where the whole theory and politics would be presented in a way that is both radical, intersectional, and cohesive. Because he would get a lot of radical perspectives, of course, in some of the anthologies. But it was isolated. None of them was making a...
00:13:41
Speaker
full comprehensive argument so like i don't know it it was like three years or two years i was going around telling everyone that i had a book in my head and one day i was gonna write it
00:13:58
Speaker
after a while there was one day where sorry there was one week when I talked to three people it was my girlfriend at the time a friend and my therapist and all three said okay you need to write it so basically the book is about the way I view
00:14:19
Speaker
bisexual politics, um, bisexual oppression and bisexual liberation. I really wanted it to be both intersectional and radical in the way that would like, you know, connect both of these ends, which don't meet often enough, which I think is so weird because they're so complimentary.
00:14:44
Speaker
And, you know, I always wanted to read a book that had like, you know, a section of bisexuality and feminism, bisexuality and race, bisexuality and transness and, you know, all of those things. So, like, I went ahead and did it.
00:15:01
Speaker
And it was a successful endeavor, I think. Thank you. Because now we have this book, which is a brilliant guide and a starting point for people who are interested in learning about these histories, these ways of thinking. And I know certainly for me, when I came across this, that kind of convinced me to research, even further, look into some of those texts that you're citing.
00:15:31
Speaker
but also know what to work towards in terms of bisexual politics today. I'm wondering, Rob, for you, when did you encounter the book and what was your experience with it?
00:15:46
Speaker
I mean, there was a point in my journey where I started to actually acknowledge my feelings of maybe being bisexual. And I then started reading everything I could find and everything I could get my hands on. And I read a ton. And a couple of things just made everything kind of make sense and made me realize, oh, this isn't just about I have same-sex attractions.
00:16:16
Speaker
about my politics and my identity and like how I see the world in a worldview. And it was your book that really helped me see that. Thank you. And I'm also I'm also so inspired that you were just like, I wanted to read a book like this. So I wrote it. I mean, that's essentially this podcast is like, I wanted to listen to stories of by men and like hear more about this and I couldn't find it. So so Alex and I were like, OK, let's just do it.
00:16:45
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's also really important politically that we create our own texts and we write our own stories and put words to our life experience.
Challenging Traditional Masculinity through Bisexuality
00:17:01
Speaker
For sure. And you mentioned, Rob, the kind of desire for by guys to kind of engage with that kind of specific experience. And the interesting thing about your book is it's some of the most kind of compelling ideas on male bisexuality that I've heard, which manages to
00:17:25
Speaker
it manages to explore it without falling into some of the essentially misogynistic trappings that that can sometimes fall into. And the thing that I like that you talk about is the kind of dominant idea of masculinity is associated with singularity in oneness. And the thing about bisexuality is it's an affirmation of a kind of multiplicity.
00:17:55
Speaker
a potential for multiplicity. And there is something in that where we can perhaps rethink modes of masculinity. So I basically just wanted to give you an opportunity to explore those ideas a little bit more with us to think what a bisexual masculinity might look like and its relation to feminism and the feminist project more broadly.
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of the times, or maybe less so recently, but a lot of the times writing about bi men and discourse about bi men were focusing on, you know, comparisons to bi women.
00:18:46
Speaker
like comparisons to bi women's visibility. A lot of the time there would be like a sort of an accusation between the lines like why are bi women leading the movement? Where all the bi men
00:19:04
Speaker
with the insinuation that bi women were silencing the men. I have been seeing less of that recently, I'm glad to say, which is very nice. Thinking about men and bisexuality. I think bisexuality gives men a really great opportunity to step aside from masculinity as a dominant structure.
00:19:34
Speaker
Like it gives a way to reevaluate the construction of what masculinity is and the requirements of society for men. And that just opens up a lot of options.
00:19:50
Speaker
Because I feel men are often trapped in very rigid structures. Society kind of locks them in. And of course, all of these rigid structures are meant to qualify men to their role as oppressors. But that also very much harms men. It requires them to mutilate a lot
00:20:21
Speaker
emotional parts of themselves and behavioral parts of themselves in order to, you know, to fit the role. And I think, you know, it's not just that bisexuality is outside dominant masculinity. It's also the fact that bi people in general
00:20:47
Speaker
can often experience what it's like to be at the bottom of the hierarchy, for example, in LGBT communities or what it's like to be erased from culture. And I think that opens up also a lot of opportunity for solidarity with other groups and for a broader political understanding. Absolutely. And I think it's something that is very different to the kind of
00:21:15
Speaker
the kind of politics that is like, by men can be just as masculine as straight men. Or the kind of stuff that's like, you spoke about those kind of accusations about kind of by women leading the movement. Another one tends to be wire by women accepted and by men not. And you make a very kind of clear point in
00:21:43
Speaker
in your book that because something is palatable to patriarchy, a very specific kind of image of female bisexuality is palatable to patriarchy, that is not acceptance. And to have that kind of understanding that actually engaging with a kind of feminist critique makes for a more holistic understanding of the bigger picture, I think is so important.
00:22:11
Speaker
Yeah and I think that's also like part of the opportunity to step aside from dominant masculinity is you know to be in solidarity with bi women and with bi trans and non-binary people because like you said it's it's not actually acceptance the you know the heightened visibility of bi women in the media hinges on fetishization
00:22:36
Speaker
and which causes real world consequences in the form of sexual violence, which statistically 75% of bi women have survived. So I think it gives an opportunity to look at all of these intersections and to make the connections
00:22:59
Speaker
Absolutely.
Bisexual Representation in Media
00:23:00
Speaker
And I think having attention to those intersections is what makes your work so crucial today, because it's not trying to separate bisexuality out from those things. It's seeing things through bisexuality, but seeing the way that intersects with other forms of identity, but also social power in the real world, which is something that is part of a
00:23:28
Speaker
left this tradition of thinking through identity, not as some abstract thing that has no effect on the world, but something that's incredibly important in terms of how we experience the world, how vulnerable we are in the world, how much power we have in the world.
00:23:55
Speaker
So I'm wondering about the visibility thing that we touched upon. I know that you've been doing some research into bisexuality in television and I'm sure a lot of those questions around bisexuality and representation come up there.
00:24:13
Speaker
And I wanted to ask you, just as a kind of starting point, how you kind of set out to approach questions of visibility and representation, because it's something, they're words that we hear a lot about, but people can use them in different ways to mean different things. So what do those terms mean to you, kind of bisexual visibility, bisexual representation?
00:24:41
Speaker
It's complicated actually because I think the concept of bisexual visibility is definitely not enough. I mean, it is literally the bare minimum and the fact that it's such a buzzword and such a, you know,
00:24:59
Speaker
long time request demand from the bi community to the media to just show us, to just acknowledge that we exist.
00:25:17
Speaker
is just we deserve so much more than that. I think about myself before I started thinking about this more seriously. I used to see bi-representation in the media and get so excited that it was bisexual that I didn't even notice how negative direct presentation was.
00:25:47
Speaker
Like, oh my god, there's a person who's bi. They're represented really, really horribly, but oh my god, they showed it. Yeah, so the concept of visibility is very limiting, but also the concept of, quote unquote, accurate representation.
00:26:13
Speaker
which I think a lot of the time is the euphemism for respectability. Jacob, you wrote about that and yeah, it was really weird. Reading your article was like reading the introduction chapter to my thesis, which I wrote. I think it would make sense because you kind of sparked my interest in this stuff though.
00:26:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's about the assumption that there is an objective and unified reality to all bi people that we all share the same characteristics and the same behavior and that behavior has to be respectable.
00:26:59
Speaker
And representing that is the only kind of acceptable by representation. And I think that kind of view really centers non-bi people because it focuses on the question, what will people think about us? And not, where can we see ourselves?
00:27:29
Speaker
I don't see myself in respectable bi characters. I don't see myself in many bi characters actually that I've seen. But the few I have, it's often been the villains or the weirdos or those on the margins. And there's a thing where
00:27:55
Speaker
We always have to read ourselves into the margins. It's a very, I think it's a very quintessential by experience that like we have to read into things in order to find ourselves in a way that, you know, and it's an experience that repeats itself throughout our lives. We have to like forge our own path
00:28:18
Speaker
I think in that sense, it's kind of an insight that it gives us the difficulty in seeing bisexuality in cultural products kind of can give us an insight into the kind of falsity of the claim for representing sexuality in the first place as well. The idea that any sexuality could be represented is
00:28:48
Speaker
is something that I think is a flawed premise as well. And the other thing that I was thinking about is the kind of, in these conversations around visibility and representation, often
00:29:04
Speaker
I 100% get the kind of rush that I definitely felt growing up and can still feel today when a character calls themselves by in something. But at the same time, as someone with a background in film studies,
00:29:21
Speaker
I think that is such a kind of limiting way to think about what sexuality is on screen, if it's down to a character saying a word. The kind of early queer film theorists were like invested in some really straight films, but what they loved was reading them against the grain, seeing in this villain something that they felt inside of them.
00:29:50
Speaker
reading this glance between two characters in a perverse kind of way. And I feel like there's actually, even though that is kind of the product of kind of social marginalization, there can be a great pleasure in that kind of reading against the grain that we can do as queer people. And that's not necessarily something that I want to let go of.
00:30:13
Speaker
Yeah, nor should we. But I mean, given broad culture of a sexual erasure, I don't think we're going to have much problem with sticking to it. But I actually like the characters say the word bisexual. It's only been happening over the past five or six years.
00:30:40
Speaker
And that's amazing. A few years back, it was Grey's Anatomy, the first time that a character said I'm bisexual in a prime time television series without saying I'm not first or watering it down later.
00:31:01
Speaker
And that has its limitations. I don't think that should be the extent of our hopes and demands from media. But it makes me happy. I think it's a good thing to be able to speak the unspoken and the unspeakable.
00:31:25
Speaker
Well, yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. I was just going to say, and I understand, too, that that's the bare minimum in representation, to have bi characters that exist. And we deserve so much more. But it's even been so hard to do that, the Grey's Anatomy thing. I can't imagine how hard it was, because I worked at Law and Order SVU on NBC. And when I was first starting there and I was not out,
00:31:53
Speaker
There was a character who was married to a woman with kids and he would go out at night secretly to have gay sex. And like that character was gay. There was never even a discussion in the writer's room. Could he be bi? He was just gay. So even just that bare minimum is like from for a network primetime thing is difficult, but hopefully getting a little better.
00:32:20
Speaker
Yeah, and I think a lot of media, especially TV shows, are only now beginning to try and find the language with which to represent bisexuality.
00:32:34
Speaker
Because, and I mean represent even like, you know, down to the, you know, cinematography and construction of how it's represented because so many years bisexuality has been impossible or incomprehensible.
00:32:58
Speaker
within media texts. A thought that I had while I was writing the introduction to my thesis was that the general rule for representing bisexuality was that it had to comply with Plato's three unities, the unity of time, the unity of place, and the unity of plot.
00:33:21
Speaker
It's like a person can't be bisexual if they're not, you know, involved with people of quote unquote both genders because it's always so reductive at the same time in the same place and within the same narrative arc.
00:33:43
Speaker
And I think we're starting to see some representation that complicates that a little bit and makes bisexuality comprehendable even outside of those three unities, which is, you know, it's great. I really hope they continue to do that and that we see a lot of good things.
TV's Potential for Bisexual Storytelling
00:34:07
Speaker
And thinking about those kind of constraints that can be on by representation, I pulled out a quote from Maria Sanfilippo, who is a bisexual film and TV scholar. And for her, television is a format that maybe offers ways of telling bisexuality in a more complex fashion. So the quote from her that I want to share is,
00:34:35
Speaker
The narrative open-endedness and expanded timeframe that characterise serial television drama offer a particularly promising site for mounting long-range and multifaceted explorations into bisexual characters, identities and experiences. Do you agree with Filippo there, Shiri, the longer serial structure of television
00:35:02
Speaker
can kind of open up possibilities for more complex stories that are more suited to bisexuality? I think it opens more opportunities for the viewers to read it as bisexual. I mean, I'm not sure I would give a lot of media the credit of intentionally leaving it open-ended and, you know,
00:35:31
Speaker
open to interpretation and multiplicity. I think that would be, you know, it's a spectatorship, like it's a practice that we engage in while reading the text actively and often against the grain. And there are so many examples
00:35:57
Speaker
for that, the quintessential example is Willow from Buffy. We can definitely read her as bisexual, but it wasn't intended to be like that by the text. I do think the format of television series can give more room to that kind of reading, but that reading is ours and we get the credit for that.
00:36:25
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't necessarily see that as kind of less valuable or I have a real kind of affinity with the idea of spectators creating meaning. And I think the kind of flip side of that can sometimes be a very narrow set of expectations for representations that don't allow people to engage with
00:36:52
Speaker
film or television in a more creative way that we don't need someone to tell us, yes, you can call this character I. We can just, we can just feel these things. We can, we can read into, and in a similar way that people don't tend to watch films made before the 90s, if I'm looking for like queer representation, there is so much that
00:37:17
Speaker
to unpack. And even in the early decades of cinema in the early 1900s, I mean, there's a lot there that lends itself to these questions, but it involves approaching them a little bit differently as well. Yeah, definitely. What series have you been looking at in particular? And are there any series that you wish more people had seen?
00:37:44
Speaker
Okay, those are two very different answers. I've actually been watching a lot of series with explicit bio-presentation lately.
00:38:02
Speaker
I just finished watching Hacks. Me too. It's a comedy show by HBO focusing on a young comedy writer who starts working with an aging stand-up comedian. The character of the writer is bisexual and she's savage.
00:38:29
Speaker
Which is great. She also stands monosexist. And that's the first time I've heard that on television. That was exciting. I also watched trigonometry.
00:38:47
Speaker
which is a series I think produced by the BBC maybe it was it was something from the UK anyway about a triad focuses on young woman who comes to live with a young couple
00:39:04
Speaker
and they found a love and former relationship which was a very very promising premise but I found it kind of disappointing in terms of I've actually been thinking about this a lot and maybe I'll write about it someday
00:39:22
Speaker
about how the convention for representation of bisexual triads is that it can never work, that it's impossible, that it has to be undone in every second that it's represented, which bothers me. I also watched Feel Good.
00:39:52
Speaker
which is a show by Mae Martin who's also starring it. There are two seasons. The first actually kind of like is kind of about bisexuality without ever acknowledging that.
00:40:11
Speaker
And in the second season, they say bisexual twice in one episode or in two. And I was like, oh my God, that's unprecedented. Maybe they were reading your tweets after the first season. And likely I watched both of them in one go.
00:40:34
Speaker
But yeah, I think, you know, I have a lot of thoughts about these texts and they're kind of complex because every representation has its limitations. And, you know, and like, I think, you know, I have never in my life seen, you know, three whole series. Was that three or four that I just talked about? It was three.
00:41:04
Speaker
Okay, so I also recently started watching the bisexual. I'm only at the second episode now, so I'm not sure yet what I think about it. But I have been seeing a really strong tendency to depoliticize bisexuality.
00:41:28
Speaker
within those representations. And so, I think representing named explicit bisexuality has opened a lot of possibilities and it definitely is a new thing that I'm happy to see, but also we always have to maintain our critical lens and practice
00:41:54
Speaker
So we don't, you know, we should always ask for what we deserve and not, you know, just live with the scraps. And I think right now it's kind of like scraps. I want, you know, I want richness. Can I ask what is that related to what you mean by the these shows depoliticizing bisexuality? Like what what would it really look like to have a politicized version of behind this in TV?
00:42:25
Speaker
is a really good question. Whatever you tell me, I'll work on it in my town. Can you two be my technical advisors for my series? I'm just curious, what makes you say that about those shows that they're depoliticizing it? I'm not exactly sure. By depoliticizing, I mean, I felt they were trying to
00:42:52
Speaker
disconnect bisexuality from social context. For example, most of those shows featured bisexuality without acknowledging the existence of biphobia, which completely detaches bisexual experience from the very concept of what it means.
00:43:18
Speaker
And that is a very, very common trope in the media. I have never seen biphobia represented as biphobia. Bisexuality either comes just as a disembodied notion of
00:43:37
Speaker
human sexuality or whatever, or disconnected from oppression and social implications, or a biphobia is represented as truth. So you've got characters saying really, really terribly biphobic things. And the way they're represented is, oh, wow, that is so true. They are really calling this person out.
00:44:07
Speaker
So like these shows, I don't think we're doing the, you know, biphobia as truth thing, but they were definitely,
Authentic Portrayals of Bisexual Struggles
00:44:18
Speaker
you know, representing bisexuality only as, you know, a form of attraction and not as an experience in the world.
00:44:34
Speaker
That makes so much sense because I see all these shows like the conflicts for the bi person usually come from the fact that they're dating a man and a woman at the same time, right? And for me, most of the conflicts in my experience as a bi person are people throwing biphobia at me or internalized homophobia. And you're right, that's not where the conflict usually comes from on these shows.
00:44:58
Speaker
Yeah, or, you know, there is a lot of internal conflict that we experience as well, but that is, you know, also affected and often constructed by what society teaches us about, you know, what's possible or impossible for us.
00:45:15
Speaker
Yeah, totally. And, you know, characters are never shown dealing with that. It's just like, oh, I just love people, you know, as if it has no, you know, it's not rooted in lived experience. Right, as if it's easy to get to that point. Like, I know people that say that. Yeah, I love all people. But like, it takes some work to get there and get through some biphobia.
00:45:44
Speaker
Yeah, and what obstacles do you come up against if you want to live like that? That's an important question as well. Yeah. My memory of it is not great, but around a year ago I discovered a British TV show from 2001 called
00:46:07
Speaker
Bob and Rose and it's not the best TV show ever but the whole premise of it is a gay identified man kind of falls for his female friend and this kind of leads to an identity crisis of sorts. And it was just very interesting to look at as something from
00:46:32
Speaker
what feels like a different time in terms of sexual politics than today, but that does kind of engage critically somewhat with biphobia within the gay community, but also the necessity of kind of queer community spaces for anyone who's queer. So yeah, that was just a find of mine that I wanted to mention.
00:47:00
Speaker
I mean, Rob, do you have any kind of TV moments that kind of meant a lot to you in terms of bisexuality?
00:47:09
Speaker
It's funny like the hearing the word buy for the first time on network TV really like I didn't expect it to affect me the way that it did but it was on Brooklyn Nine-Nine a few years ago which is even more complicated because it's a show about policing that's kind of could be problematic because all the cops are the heroes which they're now dealing with on the current season which is also interesting but
00:47:35
Speaker
But when Rosa came out and said I'm bisexual, I started crying like I didn't expect it. She said the word. I couldn't believe it. And I thought they did a pretty good job with that storyline as far as a network sitcom can do. It felt pretty real. But yeah, like like I also know what you mean about, you know, reading stuff into
00:48:01
Speaker
things that are not explicit or like connecting with those characters. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, although I also loved the hacks representation too because
00:48:13
Speaker
It was part of the story, but it wasn't where all the conflicts came from. But it just made so much sense to me that a character like that, especially with her kind of progressive attitudes and radical politics, like with her comedy and the mission she had, I identified with her a lot. And so it made sense. And I also liked that she wasn't perfect. And there were things she did that I was like, oh, fuck, don't do that. That's messy.
00:48:42
Speaker
Yeah, I really enjoy the new trope of the messy bisexual. I think, you know, it's very human. It's very humanizing. And it allows us to acknowledge that we're not always palatable.
00:48:58
Speaker
But we still deserve recognition, liberation, compassion, to be seen as human. And also what I liked about HACS was
00:49:16
Speaker
the fact that the main character was both bisexual and humanized and her bisexuality played part in her arc because that's not something I've really seen so far. Usually in recent years, bi-character's bisexuality is matched with their level of
00:49:42
Speaker
moral character. It's like if they're a villain, you better believe you will see a lot of bisexuality there and it will be very prominently displayed as part of their villainy. If the character is morally gray,
00:50:01
Speaker
Likewise, they're going to show you their bisexuality to tell you that they can't necessarily be trusted. And if the character is humanized and represented as someone of a protagonist or a positive character, necessarily their bisexuality doesn't matter.
00:50:24
Speaker
They're bisexual, but we're not going to see that because it's only part of their personality and it doesn't have to be the center of their lives. It's not part of their lives at all the way you're showing it.
00:50:40
Speaker
And what I liked about Hacks was that it totally did something different there. Her bisexuality was absolutely part of the plot. Things happened directly related to that, and she was humanized at the same time. That was great.
00:51:04
Speaker
It was part of it, but it wasn't like, will she end up with a man or a woman? That wasn't the story, but it was still built in. I still want to see specifically bisexual stories, because a lot of the time people say that they want to see normalized bisexual characters, characters whose bisexuality isn't the focus of the plot.
00:51:31
Speaker
They're just basing this argument on a very erroneous presumption because the convention for the representation of gay and trans people was indeed to focus the plot on the tragedy of their existence, the tragedy of their homosexuality or transness.
00:51:57
Speaker
pathologization, villainization, through direct storytelling of their sexuality and gender. But bisexuality was never represented through that convention. We have never seen stories that focused on the tragedy of bisexuality
00:52:20
Speaker
because bisexuality was never perceived as a cohesive inherent quality the way that homosexuality or transness are perceived.
00:52:31
Speaker
Bisexuality has always been perceived as transient, ephemeral, vague, not really existing except for time, place, narrative arc. So I do definitely want to see specifically bisexual stories about being a bisexual person in the world.
Bisexuality and Stereotypes in Media
00:52:56
Speaker
and how that specifically plays out in many ways. I think the bisexual probably does that, but I'm not far enough to really know there. I think the bisexual does it. I liked it in that it felt very real and like it was her experience or something, some version of her experience. So it didn't encompass every bye. It was like one bye experience, but it felt very real and authentic.
00:53:25
Speaker
to her and I think I agree with like we can do both things at the same time like we can normalize by people and bisexuality and also tell stories about the struggles of of coming to terms with that or coming out or whatever and like so many people who listen to this podcast have written into us about
00:53:45
Speaker
by men who are married to women is a big demographic on this show. And a lot of them have come out to their wives after they got married or are not out to their wives or it was an issue before and now it's not. And that's what I'm writing pilot about that. Those are the kind of stories I think we haven't seen and we can normalize and humanize those characters while at the same time showing that struggle.
00:54:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Also, I wanted to mention a series that I would want more people to watch. It's Penny Dreadfall. Do you know it? I've heard of it, but I haven't seen it.
00:54:28
Speaker
Oh my god, you really have to. And I'm talking about the first series because there was a second Penny Dreadful City of Angels, which was not at all the same.
00:54:44
Speaker
Though its representation of bisexuality, I am amused and disappointed and delighted to say remain the same bisexuality as a marker of evil.
00:55:00
Speaker
The first series, Penny Dreadfall, it's gothic horror in the best way possible. It is so well written and so well acted. Also very, very white, I should say.
00:55:16
Speaker
but, you know, but very Victorian in its, you know, both in its setting and its aesthetics. There is so much bisexuality both explicit and to read into. And I do love that it's a marker of evil within that show. It's, you know, it's a marker of
00:55:45
Speaker
you know, all the demonic powers lurking to, you know, to go and destroy humanity. I just, I fucking love it. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I want to destroy the world.
00:56:06
Speaker
I think that's kind of a very central argument for your work is not to deny those bad stereotypes in inverted commas, but to see in those the threat that we can pose the status quo. Yeah, it's so powerful. I want to have that power.
00:56:29
Speaker
We do have that power. That's why we're being cast as those villainous, demonic, destructive beings. And yeah, that is amazing. It makes me happy.
Conclusion and Teaser for Next Interview Part
00:56:51
Speaker
So that was the first half of our interview with Shiri Eisner. But worry not, there is plenty more to come in our next episode where we will be touching on some slightly different subjects. We will be talking more about identity and how that intersects with politics. Shiri, Rob and I are all Jewish people and we go into
00:57:21
Speaker
basically how our Jewishness and our bisexuality might interact with one another, how they have historically in our lives and how they might inform our politics. And we get a particularly interesting insight into Shiri's work as an anti-Zionist activist living in the state of Israel, which is fascinating and something that I
00:57:47
Speaker
that we don't often hear about. So please do tune in next time for the second half of our interview with Shuri Eisner. I'll see you then. Two Bye Guys is edited and produced by me, Rob Cohen, and it was created by me and Alex Boyd. Our music is by Ross Mincer. Our logo art is by Caitlin Wineman, and we are supported by The Gotham, formerly IFP. Thanks for listening to Two Bye Guys.