Yep, We’ve Lost Patience: Biphobia and MTV’s Faking It
It seems that over the weekend the bi community lost its final shred of patience with Faking It, the show on MTV that started with the galling premise of straight girls pretending to be lesbians then grew into something better. (Granted, the bar there was pretty low.) The show has made strides in having one of the leads come out as an actual lesbian and in developing a very well written intersex character….. however, it has also been a cespool of unchallenged biphobia since the beginning.
Well this weekend bisexual journalist Eliel Cruz publicly hit his limit and has created a petition asking the creative team behind Faking It to put an end to the gross biphobia.
And we support that 100%.
On the surface, Faking It seems to have nothing to do with books, but I see Faking It/MTV running headlong into the same tropes, stereotypes, and problems that I see in literature. I don’t think that is a coincidence. In fact, I think it tells us a lot about the dismissive way that bisexuals (especially teen bisexuals) are treated in our society. Even if you don’t particularly care about Faking It, there is such a lack of meaningful bisexual representation in media that it’s about time shows that perpetuate biphobia face some consequences.
This petition raises a lot of damn good questions. The creative team behind Faking It has done great work with the intersex community and reaped the rewards with a well written character who generates enormous amounts of good PR. They have worked with intersex activists and media watchdog groups like GLAAD to get the portrayal right.
Sooooo where are the bisexual consultants? Where is the interaction with bi community? Clearly the folks behind Faking It know how to do successful community engagement with a marginalized queer identity group that is poorly understood by the wider culture. So why are they not doing that with bisexuality? Do they really think bisexual representation is easy peasy? GLAAD just dropped a report this week that pointed out that bisexual characters are few and very thinly written as stereotypes when they do exist. But Faking It acts like this isn’t a problem worth any of their time and effort.
To my knowledge, no one on the creative team of Faking It (writing, directing, producing) is themselves bisexual. So where are these people getting their information about bisexuality? Where are they getting their information about how other members of the LGBTQ community should treat bisexuals? Do they understand what it does to bisexual people who are on the receiving end of biphobic treatment from other LGTQ people? And are they getting that information from anyone qualified to provide it?
Getting that perspective from gay and lesbian (ie monosexual queers) doesn’t cut it. There is a perception among straight people that non-bisexual members of the LGBTQ community know and/or understand bisexuality. However any bisexual can tell you just how wrong that is. We get just as much biphobia and harassment from gay men and lesbians as we do from straight people.
Unfortunately the character of Shane is a walking example of this phenomena, as the primary peddler of the most biphobic remarks. Faking It has written a gay character who is routinely dismissive, cruel, and contemptuous of bisexuality. I guess it’s realistic, because I’ve certainly met gay men who say these kinds of things. But is the world really needing more gay guys who constantly criticize, police, and pick on people? The Faking It staff make Shane’s biphobia seem normal and acceptable because none of the other characters substantially call him out on it.
I’m glad that Faking It has introduced a new bisexual character in Wade, but that really doesn’t make up for the no-labels weirdness that surrounds Amy. There seems to be a pathological fear on Faking It of actually saying the word bisexual, even though the show uses words like gay, lesbian, and intersex all the time.
Can we please stop the weird trend of bisexuality being unsayable? It’s a word, it isn’t going to kill you. Promise.
At some point, we just need to say enough is enough. The producers of Faking It were publicly called out on their biphobia over a year ago and promised to do better. There was one nice scene this season challenging bi erasure, but it was immediately followed by characters demonstrating more biphobia. Bisexual people have hit our limit. A show all about fluid sexuality that refuses to acknowledge bisexuality in it’s lead characters while constantly taking rude cheapshots at bi people? We’re done here.
Eliel tried to raise some of these concerns on twitter today and the response of one of the actors was to unfollow him. Classy.
So yeah, sign the petition please. Bisexual people deserve better than this, especially teens that are the primary demographic of this show. We should be showing them thoughtful bisexual characters, not teaching them that it is fine to treat bi people like crap.
