Bi Media: October 2005

Captain Jack Comes Back
For those of you whose lives would not be complete without him, Captain Jack will return to Doctor Who according to The Mirror (August 17th 2005). Pity they couldn’t decide whether he’s gay or bi though…

“… Davies said he had no qualms about making Jack – who starred in five episodes of the revamped show – the Timelord’s first openly gay companion.

“He said: ‘It wasn’t me sort of dying to get a bisexual character on screen. Yes, I’m a gay writer, but I was thinking: Jack’s from the 51st century so of course he’s going to go out with men and women. To get hung up on it is almost too sad for words, frankly.’ ”

Princess Margaret
The Scottish Daily Record (August 19th 2005) reported Princess Margaret being portrayed as a
bisexual, drug taking nymphomaniac in a new TV drama. “In one scene, Margaret, played by Lucy Cohu, is seen in a lingering kiss with a female friend. In another, she performs a sex act on her then husband-to-be, Anthony Armstrong-Jones.”

Is it me, or does anyone else find the idea of the royal family as bi poster children slightly disturbing?

Kinsey – The Musical!
We’ve had the book and the film… Now it’s the musical, with some slightly inspired casting as was reported in the Daily News (New York) (August 20th 2005).

“Making his Off-Broadway debut this week will be Christopher Corts, who has interrupted his studies at an evangelical seminary to play a bisexual boy toy in “Dr. Sex,” a musical comedy about Alfred Kinsey.”

BCN in the Metro
Metro ran an article (September 14th 2005) called ‘Ready for a bi-try?’, after the phrase coined by Sophie Theobald’s in Biche. Although the article seemed to be more concerned about lesbians getting used, it cited the Freudian theory that “…everyone is bisexual but we’re brought up to conform in society.”

To our editor’s delight, BCN got a mention in the “Useful links/websites” section at the end of the article – apparently our usual rate of web hits quadrupled.

Higher Rates of Self Harm among Bisexual Women
As reported in the Law & Health Weekly (August 20th 2005), scientists at the University of Melbourne undertook a study to compare the mental health status of early adult and mid-life women.

“Younger, mainly heterosexual, bisexual, and lesbian women had poorer mental health outcomes than exclusively heterosexual women on all outcome measures except anxiety in lesbian women, even after adjusting for age, region, and education. Mid-age mainly heterosexual women had poorer mental health on all outcomes except for medically diagnosed anxiety. Bisexual women had significantly higher odds of self-harm than exclusively heterosexual women,” reported scientists.”

Bi Men Still Don’t Exist
The Guardian (29th August 2005) ran a piece on biology and homosexuality (which was a slightly different version of a piece from the Boston Globe on August 14th), repeating recent research claims that bi men don’t exist.

Quite clearly they ran it then, fearing a deluge of letters as a result of a Disgruntled Letter Writing 101 session at BiCon if it had been published a few days previously…

Bi’s Bash Back in the Pink Paper
In the wake of the research declaring that bi men do not exist, the Pink Paper ran some vox pops (July 21st 2005) – the majority of which were somewhat biphobic, saying bisexuals were “undecided-if-you-are-gay”, “greedy” and that “…it’s true that bisexuality doesn’t exist”.

However, there were anonymous rebuttal letters a fortnight later and by the 1st September edition, Sarah Beth’s pro-bi slating of the vox pops made it to be the Star Letter and there was also an interview piece with Marcus Morgan talking about Bisexual Underground.

Cat