I started the discussion this afternoon with a reference to my post from last year on bisexual role models and the lack thereof.
I think what struck me most about this conversation was the variety of reasons people gave for why they looked up to some of their role models. There were people we admired for their work who just happened to be bi (or feature on Wikipedia’s list of bisexual people, which we did acknowledge was slightly problematic in terms of self-identification). There were people in the public eye who were simply themselves, no fuss, and we admired them for that. There were also celebrities and public figures who were very visibly bi who we weren’t sure counted as role models. People certainly didn’t feel that role models had to be celebrities or public figures – we had community volunteers, friends, teachers and family members declared awesomely bi too. And some of us admired those bisexuals who had the option to hide and pass as straight and chose not to.
Probably non-exhaustive list of the awesomely bisexual role models we came up with (Note that not all of these are self-identified bisexuals. Some are based on rumour, some on behaviour, some on Wikipedia. Tread carefully.):
Bowie
Alan Cumming
Prince
Frida Kahlo
@robynochs
Alex Gaskarth from All Time Low
Virginia Woolf
Simone de Beauvoir
Alexander Morris of @BisexualityDoc fame
Isadora Duncan
Grace Jones
Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Hepburn
Greta Garbo
Marlene Dietrich
@suegeorge
@who_the_heck
@santaevita
@ShiriEisner
@applewriter
Ani Difranco
Sophie B Hawkins
@evanrachelwood
@margaretcho
Anna Paquin
Patrick Harvie
@carolynUK
@BecciJohansson
Lady Gaga
Freddie Mercury
Birgitta Stenberg
David Allen Green
Alice Walker (Here she is on Desert Island Discs, if you’re in the UK or have a UK proxy.)
Amanda Palmer
Tom Robinson
I’m going to leave you with one final thought on today. Today for me was about stories. Fictional stories and real-life stories. It is vitally important that we have lots of different stories about people like us. Here is an amazing talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on the danger of the single story. Watch it.
ETA
Some more names to be added to the role models list:
Edward Lord
Daniel Kawczynski
Kate Millett
@jenyockney
@megbarkerpsych
@XTaffi
@laurenbbeach
Surya Monro
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