How many "ex-gay" victims and survivors are bisexual? (Image) wikimedia.com/Fg68at/Peterson Toscano
Pretty much everyone in the BLGT community has heard of it, and most of us would like to pretend it doesn’t exist. For some it’s a joke, for others it represents a deeply painful experience they have actually lived through. It’s the “ex-gay” industry. And despite our living in one of the most democratic countries in the world, there are still plenty of people who are against equality for BLGT people; and these “ex-gay” industries are multimillion dollar businesses. Many are run by some sort of faith group, others claim to be based on science; still others are run by individual people. Very often it’s families seeking to “cure” a loved one of same-sex attractions that encourage people to go to these programs; other times it’s BLGT people who honestly think that there is something horribly wrong with them that they need to fix. The techniques of the “therapy” seem to mostly center on “praying the gay away” and doing “gender specific activities”, which, as we’ve seen, are very often unsuccessful.
A question I’ve heard asked time and time again is: how do bisexuals figure into this whole “ex-gay” business? You almost never hear about bisexuality in regard to the “conversion” process. It’s all about being gay and going to straight. The“ex-gay” industry mostly acts like bisexuality doesn’t even exist (unfortunately not too different from the rest of society), and mostly talks about “gays and lesbians”. Every once in a while when bisexuality is brought up, it’s often used by both sides to bolster their arguments of “gay people can change” vs. “they can’t change”. I’ve also seen bisexuality mentioned one time when someone was writing about how they thought that some of the “success stories” presented by “ex-gay” organizations were actually bisexuals who just were not acting on their same-sex attractions. I had hoped this would be elaborated on, but that turned out to be the only thing mentioned about bisexuals.
How would paying attention to bisexuals change the face of the “ex-gay” industry? For starters, it would be interesting to know just how many of the people who go into these industries to seek help because they’ve been convinced that there is something wrong with them are actually bisexual. Perhaps if someone is bisexual but leans more toward same-sex attractions, they can classify themselves as gay and think they need reparative therapy. Also, if someone feels they have somehow “cured” themselves, could they just be bisexual but not acting on their same sex side (which as any closeted bisexual can tell you, is still horrible)? Are any of the examples of people that supposedly went from” gay to straight” that are touted by these organizations really bisexual?
We don’t know for sure about any of these questions, because bisexuality and bisexuals are pretty much ignored in this industry by both the straight and the gay communities. It would be very interesting if somehow a study could be done to determine some idea of the number of bisexuals that are involved in these “ex-gay” programs, how they influence the “success” rate, and how the programs affect their sexuality and sense of self. What would this mean for the BLGT community, and for the “ex-gay” industry? Most importantly, what would it mean for the bisexual community?
About MariaM
I think the “Ex-Gay” movement doesn’t register bisexuals because for them to recognize us would undo their very reason for being, not to mention their entire philosophy.
I think the article misses mentioning one important aspect of bisexuality & the ex-gay industry: the loathing and mistrust that a good number of gays and gay allies direct at bis because of the fear that the very existence, validity and acknowledgement of bisexuality and the fluid reality of sexuality actually feeds or justifies the ex-gay industry.
Some ex-gay industry ‘professionals’ (and, yes, I use that word lightly) actually do hold up ‘the Bisexual’ and the studies and proof of the fluid nature of human sexuality as a way to say things like ‘see you *can* change your sexuality; you *can* choose… those bisexuals do it all the time.’
Of course that is a misunderstanding of the nature of the fluidity of sexuality and the spectrum of sexual desires and expression… but it is a prevelant misunderstanding. If bis are to be effective in helping to counter the ex-gay movement and to make sure our LGT brothers and sisters do not use human sexual fluidity against us or to posit us as ‘part of the problem and not the solution’ — we need to tackle this myth about our natures repeatedly in relation to ex-gay therapies etc. We need to say that our ability to love people of both/all genders is not an issue of capricious choice or the ability to alter ourselves at will or with just a good bit of prayer and effort, but a hard-wired fact of our beings. We are hard-wired to be fluid, and that is not an oxymoron.
Until that becomes widely understood then we run the risk of being mis-used by the ex-gay industry to bolster their destructive and hateful agenda.