Today I want to discuss the bi-sexual phrase ‘it’s about the person’, which is what such people tend to say when they are explaining to what they think are the uninitiated that they fall in love with or are attracted to someone based on personality or characteristics other than biological sex. I want to discuss it in order to analyze the inherent homophobia behind this message.
I am generally more concerned with lesbophobia here at WWS, but since this statement seems pretty equal-opportunity in its misrepresentation of the homosexual experience, I may as well point it out from that perspective. The implication of course in the above statement is that for us homos, it is somehow *not* about the person.
So what do they think it is about then, for us? Genitals, I guess. We’re in love with a set of genitals, the person doesn’t matter! Lesbians, for example, don’t bother to even differentiate between individual women. As long as you possess a real vulva, we are good to go. Gay men – same thing. They love dicks and that’s all she wrote.
Yeah, this is pretty homophobic. Think about it; it means we don’t experience real love, because you can’t have a real relationship with someone’s genitals. What they are saying is that they have evolved so much that they are truly experiencing romantic relationships on a level that can only be reached by a highly developed cerebral cortex, while us primitive homos, held back by our outdated attachment to physical biology, are existing on a completely different (lower) plane. Maybe they didn’t mean to say that (although I can assure you that some did), but that is the logical conclusion to that statement.
It’s also ridiculous and untrue. Of course for us it’s also about the person. We have all sorts of preferences based around looks, personality, interests, politics, conversation, drinking and drugs habits, dress, attitude, and so on. Not every Lesbian is suited to me and I am not suited to every Lesbian.
While it’s true that everyone I am sexually attracted to has the common denominator of being female, there is no reason to assume that is, for me, a person’s only measure of appeal. It’s not. There are loads of women I am not attracted to, for a variety of reasons. I don’t like makeup. I do like intelligence and humour. I don’t like women who make nasty comments about other women’s bodies. I do like women who drink beer (but not in a harrowing, are-we-going-to-be-able-to-go-back-there way). The list is endless, really. I simply have one more standard than bisexuals; I love women. I am a passionate person and couldn’t be satisfied by anything less.
I find this dynamic very revealing in terms of who is the privileged class. Lesbian and gay people hear this phrase from bisexuals at regular intervals, sometimes accompanied by a knowing, pitying, or otherwise superior facial expression. Straights, particularly straight men, have hardly ever had anyone say this to them. This is because hets, while technically able to claim they are being discriminated against in the very same way as we are by this sentence, are the dominant culture and everyone knows they have a laundry list of criteria when selecting a mate.
So in conclusion, bisexuals, the next time you are about to say this to a Lesbian or gay person, please do us all a favour: lean over and extract your head from your own butt. Thanks!
