Invisible Bi Characters

Please check out the What This Is About page and, if you have a suggestion for a character to be added, the Guide to Submissions and Asks. We do on occasion use to the word queer. If you'd like to know why, read here. Other tags of note: discussion for all long discussions and hostility for discussions that turn hostile. These tags are not currently in use, but are relevant to older posts. Who We Are: Moderator - Casandra Moderator Emeritus - Heather, who created, modded and maintained this blog alone for the early part of its existence. She left the blog in April 2015, having laid the ground work for the community. Contact: invisible.bi.characters@gmail dot com

[bi-characters]

Fat Tony

Character: Fat Tony

Appears in: The Simpsons

Commonly Interpreted as: Straight

But Really: Fat Tony was married and had a son, his wife was ‘whacked by nature causes’.

In the episode 'Donnie Fatso’ Homer goes undercover in the mob to take down Fat Tony. He gets close to Fat Tony almost immediately, Tony clearly cherishes 'Nicky’s’ friendship.The kind of heterosexual male friendship the Greeks wrote of, in Tony’s words. And at the end of the episode he says “I would have giving you anything, in the strip club of my heart you held the key to the champagne room, I loved you!”

With many thanks to the anon who wrote this up.

[bi-characters]

how do we make requests?

Hi!

Thank you for asking. Just email them to me in a format that makes clear who part is the character name are, and which part is show/novel/movie name (this might seem like a weird request, but it’s not always always clear (Example John Watson, Sherlock Holmes).

But! I would encourage you to see if you want to write down your thoughts. Even if they’re not long or you’d like me to edit them, that’s okay. Write ups are always much more likely to see the like of day than an ask.

Also, if possible, it also helps if you do a quick search to check the character hasn’t been done recently. I don’t do dueling banjo style back and forths, but if there’s an update to a running character, I do updates.

[bi-characters]

Character: Audrey Jensen Appears in: Scream TV Series Commonly Interpreted as: Lesbian But Really: Audrey is seen in two relationships, both with females, and as having one crush on another. She also turns down the one male who shows romantic interest in her. She’s also played by an out and proud lesbian. Given these facts, one might mistake her for a lesbian.

However, that would miss a big part of her characterization. From one of the very first times we see her, Audrey denies being gay. While she never actually says bisexual, she doesn’t have a problem with bi-curious. In fact, her and her best friend joke with each other that they’re a crime fighting team called “Bi-Curious and the Virgin.“Since we never get confirmation that she’s unattracted to all males and only attracted to females, since she calls herself bi, it’s unfair to define her as a lesbian.

Conclusion: keep calling her bi. As of the last time we see her, that is her label for herself.

With many thanks to the anon who submitted this.

[bi-characters]

Character: Pops Maellard

Appears in: Regular Show

Commonly interpreted as: Straight

But Really: In "fun run", a short made during one of the show's seasons, a lady gives pops a rag to wipe himself with and he looks back at her, smells it, and then wipes his face with it (it seemed lightly romantic to me) in quite a few episodes Pops seems to be close to Benson, the park's manager (in an episode where Benson "explodes",  Pops freaks out and starts wailing;

They are seen next to each other in later seasons, and at the end of "Spacey Mcspacetree" both come in with Pops holding a tray with a tea kettle and some cups, implying they were going to spend some time together) however, he could be pan, as in an episode of "terror tales" (Halloween specials) Pops is kissed by (what I can assume) is a non-binary being, and he becomes happy and claps a little. 

With many thanks to redwolftrash for the submission.

[bi-characters]

Let characters (and people) be gay without needing to be "gold star". I'm so tired of the insistence that every character who ever in their lives had an opposite gender relationship MUST be bi. Gay people fight with compulsory heterosexuality, internalized homophobia, fear of a homophobic society, and the closet. They frequently have opposite gender relationships. That doesn't mean they're bi or that their sexuality was "fluid". They were gay all along. It's okay to interpret characters as gay.

I take your point. You, I’m afraid, our missing ours.

Any character (we do not discuss real people’s lives here) who explicitly states they are any sexuality other than bisexual, are not included in this blog, and characters whose sexuality is explicitly stated at some point after a post is made has their post updated to reflect this, or removed.

Anytime a member has submitted an explicitly non-bisexual character (at the time of writing) and I have posted it, I have removed it.

The difference between what you think our blog does, and what it actually does, is this: we treat bisexuality as the default, just as most of the world treats heterosexuality as the default, and much of fandom views fiction through ‘slash goggles’.

Our point isn’t to deny other sexualities exist -- or that it can take people time to figure out how they identify. It is to highlight bisexual invisibility and erasure in media, and encourage inclusive representation.

[bi-characters]

Character: Elio Perlman

Appears in: Call Me by Your Name

Commonly interpreted as: Gay

But Really: The character Elio Perlman of the book/film "Call Me by Your Name" is commonly interpreted as gay due to the story focusing on his attraction to and relationship with another man, but he also has sexual encounters throughout the story with a girl who lives in the neighborhood.

With many thanks to luca-guadagnino for this submission.

[bi-characters]

Treating bisexuality respectfully: Jane the Virgin

It can be done. Bustle has an article detailing a recent episode (spoiler tag) where Adam reveals himself to be bisexual.

Many of the trope-y questions about bisexuality are asked , and thus directly addressed by not just the show, but the Adam himself. Further, while Jane is initially thrown by Adam’s revelation, the other characters aren’t.

Character: Adam Alvaro

Appears in: Jane the Virgin

Commonly Interpreted as: Canon Bisexual

Write up: Bustle article on the subject

[bi-characters]

Nothing to see here: bisexual invisibility

Twitter is being criticised for failing to show any photos under the bisexual hashtag.

Some are calling it bi-erasure, as photo results for “lesbian” and “gay” still exist.

Users are pointing out that when you search #bisexual, a message appears on the photos tab stating: “The term you entered did not bring up any results.”

Twitter says there was no “erasure” and that there was an “error with the system that has been resolved”.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/41868972/twitter-criticised-for-erasing-bisexual-photos

Comments I’ve seen on the topic:

Person A: Do we need to have a word for bisexual with less emphasis on the “sexual”? 

Person B: I don’t think we should have to change our language, but #bi is also affected, and terms like #intersex or #sexuality, which also include ‘sex’, haven’t been affected. 

I don’t think this blog is necessarily the best place for a conversation on language, as we (the blog and community at large) discuss language alot, and usually defensively. I will say that I am disappointed, but not surprised, to discover that it wasn’t the ‘sexual’ that got filtered, it was the ‘bi’.

I’m not putting this up to make anyone sad or angry. But it a reminder that, even now, as people are becoming woke to many QUILTBAG issues and experiences, the subtle, insidious and apparently tenacious siege against the bisexual identity still continues.

Upon reflection, I am both sad and angry.

My apologies for the late post. It’s a drop in the pond, but whispers become battle cries. Bisexuality is the default.

[bi-characters]

Update: It gets worse or sadder or -- I don’t -- I can’t. Twitter has explained how ‘bisexual’ and ‘bi’, as opposed to words like ‘sexuality’ got erased:

One of the signals we use to identify sensitive media is a list of terms that frequently appear alongside adult content. Many of these words on the list are not inherently explicit, which is why they must be used alongside other signals to determine if content is sensitive.

For this part, I don’t entirely blame twitter; they admit that ‘the list was out of date, had not been maintained and incorrectly included terms that are primarily used in non-sensitive contexts’ and I’m instinctively not sure that last part is entirely true. No group of data on the internet is vaster than porn, and the cultural image of bisexuality is so hypersexualized that it’s easy to see how it might, quite validly, wind up on a list of words that, when combined with other words, might add up to porn.

By the way: I am not anti-porn. I am sufficiently well-versed in the subject to be well aware of the commonality of, at best, bluntly cartoonish descriptions of the sex acts they depict, and that bisexuals are far from the only group to have their identities reduced to the worst possible and least accurate tropes.

Of course twitter could and should have done and better job. I’m reasonably certain they will roll out a fix in short order. (And of course porn could and should find a way to be respectful of marginalized identities.)

But they’re both symptoms of a larger problem: outside of our own community, the bisexual identity is so misunderstood that tropes about it are titillating rather than baffling, and companies looking to avoid ‘adult content’ in the spaces are probably going to legitimately require a team of people to play word jenga to figure out when it’s a marker of adult content, and when it’s name of valid and marginalized identity.

And when I say ‘outside of our community’, I recognize that there are so many bisexuals (I was one, for a very long time) to not realize there is a community, to not that bisexuality is real and valid, to see what they feel effaced so much for so long that they’re effectively gaslit into believing what they know to be true simply isn’t possible.

So: twitter will fix it’s problem (probably soon). Porn won’t (not anytime soon).

And we continue to face a world that effaces us; every time we say, in anyway, that we exist, that our identities our valid, that we’re not a trope or a lie, it is an arrow in the edifice of ‘pick a side’, depraved bisexuals, and ‘unicorns’.

[bi-characters]

Nothing to see here: bisexual invisibility

Twitter is being criticised for failing to show any photos under the bisexual hashtag.

Some are calling it bi-erasure, as photo results for "lesbian" and "gay" still exist.

Users are pointing out that when you search #bisexual, a message appears on the photos tab stating: "The term you entered did not bring up any results."

Twitter says there was no "erasure" and that there was an "error with the system that has been resolved".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/41868972/twitter-criticised-for-erasing-bisexual-photos

Comments I’ve seen on the topic:

Person A: Do we need to have a word for bisexual with less emphasis on the "sexual"? 

Person B: I don't think we should have to change our language, but #bi is also affected, and terms like #intersex or #sexuality, which also include 'sex', haven't been affected. 

I don’t think this blog is necessarily the best place for a conversation on language, as we (the blog and community at large) discuss language alot, and usually defensively. I will say that I am disappointed, but not surprised, to discover that it wasn’t the ‘sexual’ that got filtered, it was the ‘bi’.

I’m not putting this up to make anyone sad or angry. But it a reminder that, even now, as people are becoming woke to many QUILTBAG issues and experiences, the subtle, insidious and apparently tenacious siege against the bisexual identity still continues.

Upon reflection, I am both sad and angry.

My apologies for the late post. It’s a drop in the pond, but whispers become battle cries. Bisexuality is the default.

[bi-characters]

Character: Tomoko Kuroki

Appears in: Watamote

Commonly Interpreted as: Straight/Desperate

But Really: Tomoko always shows curiosity/interest on girls. Sometimes it is because she is curious about how to behave as a girl, sometimes it comes out just as a sexual interest, sometimes it is both. There’s even an entire chapter about Tomoko trying out with girls. Tomoko gets confused and misinterpret other female characters’ actions as they having a crush on her, and she has a questionable relationship with her senpai, Megumi (who thinks Tomoko is cute), and her best friend, Yuu (the character who most “ suffers ” with Tomoko’s sexual advances). 

Later the manga becomes way more yuri, there’s a girl called Ucchi who obviously has a crush on Tomoko and Yuri Tamura has questionable feelings about her best friend. With how the manga became, there’s no doubt that Tomoko is bi.

With many thanks to super-emoghost for their submission.

[bi-characters]

Character: Andy Bernard

From: The Office

Commonly Thought As: Straight

But Really: Andy’s always made comments about men in the show (one thing I can think of was him calling Jim up and telling him he was horny) but I think the biggest example of Andy’s sexuality was in season 6 episode 1, Michael spreads rumors about everyone in the office, including one that Andy is gay. Andy admits that this is the second time this rumor has happened (the first in college), and he doubts his sexuality. He goes to Oscar, the only out gay man in the office, for advice, and when Oscar asks if he’s attracted to men, Andy says, no, but follows it up with:

“But let me give you a scenario. I’m at a beach cabana. Brad Pitt comes up and tries to kiss me. I would definitely resist at first, but if he was persistent, I would probably give in a little bit, depending on how persistent he was…”

When Oscar expresses confusion at the scenario, Andy says it’s just his fantasy (and then tries to cover up the fact he said it was a fantasy). He later admits to Jim that he’s not sure if he’s straight or not, and that he’s confused. By the end of the episode, Michael admits he made up most of the rumors and that only one is real, prompting Andy to ask if the rumor about him being gay is real.

Andy has had multiple attractions toward women, but also made sure other people - mostly men, like Jim - knew about it. While I believe he is attracted to women (such as Erin, one of his long time girlfriends in the show), I think Andy had internalized biphobia. The character was very concerned with what people thought of him, and wanted to be accepted. The fact that Andy admitted he wasn’t sure and that he relied on Michael and Oscar to tell him what his sexuality was leads me to believe he was bi but not ready to admit it to himself.

With many thanks to starklinqs for the write up.

[bi-characters]

Character name: Tom Ripley

Appears in: The Talented Mr. Ripley (film)

Seen as: Gay or Bisexual

But really: An initial case of mistaken identity allows Tom Ripley, a working-class young man, to make the acquaintance of Dickie Greenleaf, a wealthy young scion who lives a life of pleasure and amusement in Italy. 

Tom quickly becomes infatuated with Dickie, never wanting to leave his side and obsessively studying his tastes, style and mannerisms. He at one point confesses to Dickie that “it’s one big love affair”–“it” referring to his relationship to Dickie and his immersion in Dickie’s high-class, big-spender lifestyle; and he proposes that he and Dickie live together just the two of them, trying to get Dickie to admit that he too is in love with Tom the way Tom is in love with him. Tom’s infatuation also manifests itself as a desire to be Dickie, and in fact circumstances come to pass that give Tom his wish, and allow him to assume Dickie’s identity. 

Near the film’s end, Tom falls for another man, Peter, whom he takes on a cruise with him. There is mutual romantic attraction between the two, and they share a bed (as well as a lot of intensely-meaningful eye contact and knowing smiles). Tom seems to be deeply in love; however, when he realizes that his connection to Peter could be the factor that gets him caught for his crimes (he’s killed two people and assumed one of their identities by this point, among other things), he feels compelled to kill his would-be lover in order to protect his secrets. 

Meanwhile, Tom has a quasi-romantic relationship with Dickie’s former girlfriend, Marge, and kisses another woman, Meredith Logue. 

The story is set in the 50’s, so rather than stated outright, the story’s queer content is heavily coded. Due to Tom’s sociopathic nature and the fact that at his core he cares about no one but himself, it’s hard to determine how much of his romantic attractions to people are real, or coldly-calculated performances on his part, or just extensions of his immense love for himself. Thus, it’s hard to characterize him sexually. He may be gay, bi, or, quite possibly, ace; on the basis of behavior alone, however, he is bi. 

Tom Ripley is an example of the depraved bisexual trope.

With many thanks to RT for this write up.

[bi-characters]

Character name: Reaver Appears in: The Fable game series (Fable 2 and 3) Seen as: Interpreted as straight

But really:

Reaver, in Fable 2, is introduced to the player as the Hero of Skill and the unofficial ruler of Bloodstone.

He is a gruesome person, who would kill anyone and their family, if he had to, which becomes apparent when you first meet him, as he fatally shoots an innocent photographer for forgetting to tell him, that his picture would take 3 months to be developed.

Other than that and his hedonism, not much about him is revealed in the story of the game, but in Reaver’s diary, he mentions having countless sexual affairs and multiple lovers at the same time by name: Ursula, Penelope and Andrew.

In Fable 3 Reavers sexual impropriety and psychopathic tendencies become even more apparent, especially during the quest Reaver’s Wheel of Misfortune, as he makes you and your companion fight different enemies in an arena in front of his party guests.

One thing his butler Hatch mentioned during the beginning was that his master often abused Hatch to rid him of his vulgarity.

I’d like to mention that, while Reaver is a canon bisexual character, he is also quite the psychopathic villain and his sexuality is mainly used to put emphasis on his hedonism and amorality.

Amongst the npc’s of the 3rd game you can also find bisexual regular citizens, farmers, workers and royalty. However in the 2nd game of the franchise, the only bi npc’s are on the knothole island and also possess traits such as promiscuity and vulgarity.

With many thanks to dietrichhering for this write-up.

[bi-characters]

Anna Karenina Double Post

Character name: Countess Lidia Ivanovna Appears in: Anna Karenina (novel) Seen as: Canonically bi!

Countess Lidia Ivanovna is a Petersburg aristocrat and member of several important circles in the society of that city. She is depicted as very religious, shallow, romantic, impractical and generally tiresome. Interestingly, she is also overtly shown to be bisexual: 

“[She] had long given up being in love with her husband, but from that time she had never given up being in love with someone. She was in love with several people at once, both men and women…She was in love with all the new princes and princesses who married into the imperial family…" 

This "love” is not merely a turn of phrase for a platonic feeling of admiration, but actual romantic attraction, as the rest of the passage describing the Countess’ passions makes very clear. For the record, the tone of the text gives the impression that she isn’t conflicted about her same-sex attractions, but rather views all her attractions similarly. A highly religious woman in a conservative society in the mid-19th century, no less!

Character name: Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin Appears in: Anna Karenina (novel) Seen as: Straight

Karenin’s relationship with the novel’s eponymous character, his wife Anna, is one of the central foci of the work. There are, however, curiously enough, little references that Karenin might be attracted to men as well. During a ceremony when he is presented with a medal to honor his public service, Karenin finds himself, uncontrollably it seems, noticing the bodies of the men around him: 

“‘And how strong they all are, how sound physically,’ thought Alexey Alexandrovitch, looking at the powerfully-built gentleman… 'Truly it is said that all the world is evil,’ he thought, with another sidelong glance at the calves of the gentleman of the bedchamber." 

Three pages later Karenin again thinks about the "gentlemen of the bedchamber, with their fine calves,” and it is said, “there passed before his mind a whole series of these mettlesome, vigorous, self-confident men, who always and everywhere drew his inquisitive attention in spite of himself." 

Karenin is a very straight-laced person who tries to exercise control over himself and his thoughts at all time, which means he often struggles with repression when his unconsciousness succeeds at times in bubbling up thoughts and emotions despite his best efforts to deny them. This seems like one of those times. 

I’d say Karenin’s at least bi-curious. 

With many thanks to RT for this write up.

[bi-characters]

Character: Duncan

Appears in: The Way Way Back

Commonly interpreted as: Straight

But Really: In the film "The Way Way Back" Duncan is commonly interpreted as straight due to his storyline of a relationship with a girl, but one could also interpret his hero worship of Owen as having a crush on him.

With many thanks to luca-guadagnino for this submission. 

[bi-characters]

Winston Smith

Appears in: 1984 (novel)

Commonly interpreted as: Straight

But really: Winston has a passionate romance with a female coworker, Julia. He also has a deep connection to another, male, coworker, O'Brien, whom he trusts and, it could be said, loves, far more even than Julia.

Winston sees O'Brien as the sole person who truly understands him and knows him, and for that Winston has a deep bond with O'Brien that surpasses any other. No matter the tortures O'Brien inflicts on Winston, Winston will always love him. It’s not a physical or romantic connection, but it goes far beyond any friendship or feeling of brotherhood.

The novel contrasts the unshakeable reality of this particular bond with the ultimately frail alliance (though this latter is rooted in physical and romantic intimacy) between Winston and Julia. 

Winston is bi.

With many thanks to RT for this write up.

[bi-characters]

Character: Susan Ivanova

Appears in: Babylon 5

Commonly interpreted as: Straight

But Really: Ivanova is a canon bisexual. Although she has a long and intense romantic involvement with Marcus Cole, she similarly has a deeply intimate friendship with Talia Winters.

Talia’s storyline ultimately concludes, ending their relationship, through no fault of either character. Much later, in a sacred ceremony where she must confide a secret she’s never shared before, Ivanova reveals, “I think I loved Talia”.

Marcus’ storyline similarly ends without resolution, leading Ivanova to confide to a mutual friend that in retrospect, she wished she’d consummated their relationship. 

Ivanova is bi/pan.