Bisexual Romance

[ysabetwordsmith]

Here is a thoughtful post about bisexual romance.

The about labeling romance based on sex/gender instead of orientation raises another issue that I've been exploring recently: cross-orientation relationships. There's almost no discussion of it, and that causes problems. Cross-orientation relationships can happen when someone with a wider span hooks up with someone of a narrower span, like bi/gay or bi/straight. It can also happen when someone falls in love with a person of incompatible orientation, but they don't want to give up the relationship, so they try to retune it into something both of them can live with. Frex, if a lesbian falls in love with a straight woman, they may not be compatible sexually but might be able to adapt into a queerplatonic relationship. Ace with anyone sexual is another example.  

I think my favorite cross-orientation relationship right now is Socket and Fortressa.  Socket is a lesbian.  Fortressa was previously involved with men but decided to abandon the whole love/sex thing -- and I don't think she's just celibate, I think she somehow hit her sexuality with a wrench until it crumpled into a motionless lump.  It certainly isn't the same shape it was,  and she doesn't respond to men the same way anymore.  So.  They started off with Socket in love with Fortressa, who had sworn off love, so Socket didn't say anything about it and set about becoming friends instead.  That has actually worked pretty well, except that now the cat is out of the bag and they have to deal with that realization.

I think that, if people don't even realize this is an option then they miss out on a lot of opportunities, and if they stumble into it by chance, it can cause tension because the patterns don't match exactly. Just as a M/F relationship requires accommodation of the sex/gender difference, orientation differences can take some adaptation too. That's hard if you don't know what the heck you're doing.

This especially comes up with bi folks, because while the inclination toward bisexuality is common, the number of people actually identifying as bi is a lot smaller. Many bi folks join up with someone(s) who is gay or straight. And some of the problems in bi erasure come precisely from that lack of awareness about cross-orientation relationships; without it, people have a nasty habit of thinking that being with someone of the opposite sex makes you straight, or the same sex makes you gay. It's a case where labeling can make things clearer: "No, I'm not gay. I'm a bisexual man in a cross-orientation relationship with a gay man."

The question of combinations is another one.  A majority of bi romance is written as MFF or FMM.  In effect that merges bi and poly romance.  This is a problem because many bi people are not poly, and many poly people are not bi, although there is a fair amount of overlap.  

I have some characters who are both bi and poly.  I have some poly families.  I actually have more poly families than people may notice, because not all of them are tied together entirely by sex, and I count poly based on strong, lasting relationships rather than just fucking -- it's about who moves through life as a social unit.  So if you mapped out the lines there would be some sex, some romance, some queerplatonic, etc. within a poly family, and that actually seems to be the norm based on poly families I have known.  Not all of them are a blob of everyone-sexing-everyone.

Plenty of my bi characters are in exclusive relationships, though.  Stan and Lawrence, Danso and Noah, they're in stable binary relationships.  So as usual, I'm doing my "tell ALL the stories" thing.

Comments

Thoughts

[shiori_makiba]

Hmmm . . . . chewy.

I like the term "cross-orientation." It's simple, pretty self-explanatory, and doesn't ignore the two (or more) people involved in a relationship's actual orientation by focusing on their gender and/or sex.

The 'Ohana polyfamily is cross-orientation considering that none of them have the same sexual orientation with Lakeisha lesbian, Pedro ace, Martin demi, Nat bi, and Sammy pan.

I'm still not positive about their romantic orientations. Martin seems to be biromantic . . .

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I like the term "cross-orientation." It's simple, pretty self-explanatory, and doesn't ignore the two (or more) people involved in a relationship's actual orientation by focusing on their gender and/or sex.<<

Yay! Glad I could help.

>> The 'Ohana polyfamily is cross-orientation considering that none of them have the same sexual orientation with Lakeisha lesbian, Pedro ace, Martin demi, Nat bi, and Sammy pan. <<

Wow. That's a really cool combination.

>>I'm still not positive about their romantic orientations. Martin seems to be biromantic . . .<<

I have noticed that people often have the narrowest bandwidth for sex, but it can be wider for romantic and sensual aspects.

[siliconshaman]

I'd always viewed Ilyana as only a little bit bi, as much as she's interested at all. While Blaze was emphatically lesbian and very so.. and that's not even considering the kink axis on that graph.

Thing is, if people want a relationship to work, they will find a way, somehow.

Okay...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>I'd always viewed Ilyana as only a little bit bi,<<

The term for that is heteroflexible. Someone who is primarily straight, but may be interested in one or a few specific same-sex partners or activities.

>> as much as she's interested at all. <<

Possibly also graysexual then.

>>While Blaze was emphatically lesbian and very so.. <<

That fits.

>>and that's not even considering the kink axis on that graph. <<

See, things like this are why I describe my sexuality as a tesseract. It won't fit in a one-dimensional graph ... or even a three-dimensional one, and it confuses people.

>> Thing is, if people want a relationship to work, they will find a way, somehow. <<

This matches my observations.

[moonvoice]

Actually, cross-orientation is way more helpful than just 'queerplatonic.' And by your definition, I'd be in a cross-orientation relationship and have been for over 10 years. These days I just label myself as panromantic and pansexual, but because my partner is straight and we are not sexually compatible, it's still cross-orientation for the both of us. Being polyamorous helps a great deal with that, but we couldn't really be written as 'GMF' (genderqueer = G) or anything like that because I'm not with any of his partner/s and I'm happy about that / don't want to be.

I know some other people who are cross-orientation. I know two polyamory set ups where two people identify as poly, and one identifies as monogamous, and the monogamous person only has a relationship with one in the set up. That's another thing that's not often written about a great deal, but it happens, and as my sphere of poly people expands, I'm seeing it more and more often. (I've seen it go toxic, as well, but I've also seen it be healthy for over five years and counting).

And you're right, if people don't realise it's an option, they miss out on a great deal. To be honest, Glen and I thought that we'd have to break up and move on eventually, because society dictated we should (tbh, he did break up with me, to come to terms with where he was at, for a couple of years). We still feel a great deal of stigma about it, especially because people erase my sexuality when they see us together or hear we live together, which means he has multiple partners, and I have to work really hard just to find one person who might believe that I'm not actually straight, and not actually sleeping with Glen, and actually looking for an enriched relationship network.

But anyway, I really liked this post, as you can tell from my super rambling comment. *blush* Cross-orientation relationships should be a thing. A thing that everyone learns and embraces, as a term, even if it's not for them lifestyle wise.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Actually, cross-orientation is way more helpful than just 'queerplatonic.' <<

Yay! I'm glad I could help. I guess I didn't realize how much of a need there is, until I started paying attention to it and now other folks are chiming in. I've always known it was there.

>> And by your definition, I'd be in a cross-orientation relationship and have been for over 10 years. <<

Cool!

>>These days I just label myself as panromantic and pansexual, but because my partner is straight and we are not sexually compatible, it's still cross-orientation for the both of us. Being polyamorous helps a great deal with that, but we couldn't really be written as 'GMF' (genderqueer = G) or anything like that because I'm not with any of his partner/s and I'm happy about that / don't want to be.<<

Yeah, it makes sense.

>>I know some other people who are cross-orientation. I know two polyamory set ups where two people identify as poly, and one identifies as monogamous, and the monogamous person only has a relationship with one in the set up. That's another thing that's not often written about a great deal, but it happens, and as my sphere of poly people expands, I'm seeing it more and more often. (I've seen it go toxic, as well, but I've also seen it be healthy for over five years and counting). <<

Poly is a wonderful solution for people who want to be together, but aren't sexually compatible, if they are flexible enough to incorporate other folks. Not everyone is, of course, but some are.

>>And you're right, if people don't realise it's an option, they miss out on a great deal. To be honest, Glen and I thought that we'd have to break up and move on eventually, because society dictated we should (tbh, he did break up with me, to come to terms with where he was at, for a couple of years).<<

Society is an ass.

>> We still feel a great deal of stigma about it, especially because people erase my sexuality when they see us together or hear we live together, which means he has multiple partners, and I have to work really hard just to find one person who might believe that I'm not actually straight, and not actually sleeping with Glen, and actually looking for an enriched relationship network. <<

>_< Erasure sucks. Obviously if you're attracted to more than the opposite sex, you're not het! I hope you find that expansion you're looking for.

>>But anyway, I really liked this post, as you can tell from my super rambling comment. *blush* Cross-orientation relationships should be a thing. A thing that everyone learns and embraces, as a term, even if it's not for them lifestyle wise.<<

Fishbowl is tomorrow, feel free to ask me for more cross-orientation relationships. Off the top of my head I have Stan (bi) and Lawrence (gay), Danso (gay) and Noah (bi), Socket (lesbian) and Fortessa (definitely not lesbian, kind of hard to describe now). Possibly Victor (straight transman) and Igor (straight cisman) although I've been calling them queerplatonic. Or you could prompt for somebody new.

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder if we're not going to have a bunch of people in their 30s or later come out as some flavor of asexual, as the concept becomes better known - much in the same way that there were a wave of married people in the 80s and 90s come out as gay or lesbian. There's a lot of power in societal pressure to be the expected thing, and I suspect there are a lot of ace people in relationships with sexuals because getting into a relationship is What You Do. Hearing that they're not screwed up for not being into sexytimes, that there's a word and a community and a different set of expectations will be very powerful. (Your mention of Fortressa made me think about this; I don't know her as a character, but is it possible that she's some flavor of ace, and she didn't so much beat her sexuality into unrecognizability as she stopped forcing herself to perform heterosexuality?)

[p_cocincinus]

Whoops, that's my comment; I didn't realize it had logged me out until I hit post.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I really like the way you work to make sure that the people in your stories are made up of a lot of individual traits, and just because they have one trait doesn't mean they necessarily have another (or just because someone they're associated with has one trait doesn't mean they do).

I'm an ace lesbian, married to a non-ace straight man. This has caused its share of interesting conversations, but it works for us, and it's nice to see other ace/non-ace combinations.

[paantha.livejournal.com]

>>So as usual, I'm doing my "tell ALL the stories" thing.

And this is why we love you. <3

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

And this is why we love you. <3

Indeed.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

*nods* I know a bi-poly person who is married to a straight-mono person... the mono part doesn't seem to bother them, but they do complain, occasionally bitterly, about the erasure factor. Because they are in a het relationship, they get erased *by the QUILTBAG community*, who sometimes aren't as much about the "B" (or, dammit, the "T") factor as perhaps they ought to be. Othering == less than optimal.

[lb-lee.livejournal.com]

Hubby's bi and mono; I'm gay and currently have two partners. (Though I don't consider it an orientation for me; I can do one partner, two tops, and ABSOLUTELY NO MORE. Obviously I am <3-amorous.)

Mac jokes about being gay, and I think in part it's a 'gay as doing, rather than being,' thing. Unless pushed, I just ID queer since with the whole mixed-orientation nature of the system, calling myself gay would be... well, only two of the eight of us ARE gay, so that hardly seems fair or accurate.

--Rogan

[cissa.livejournal.com]

I really value this. it is more real for me than the binary tropes.