Does A Robert Pattinson Poster Make You Straight?

By Siobhan Ball

August 11, 2021

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Photo credit: Pexels/cottonbro

In a piece of biphobia right from the archives of the British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph opened its new "Parent's Confessions" column with an anonymous screed in which the writer accused his teenage daughter of only pretending to be a bisexual in exchange for woke clout from her friends.

Bigstock/Krakenimages.com

Honestly, it's like traveling through time. Who doesn't remember being accused of only pretending to be bisexual for edgy popularity back in their teens? You'd think they'd have learned after the glam rock of the '70s faded away, and young people brazenly continued being bisexual that it was an actual sexuality rather than a fashion trend, and yet: 2021, and we have this relic of a letter in The Telegraph.

But it's OK! Because you see, the letter writer would have no problem with her being bisexual if she actually was! Except, she's not, and he knows this because she had a poster of Robert Pattinson on her wall during her teens. Everybody knows you can't be bisexual and attracted to boys! Except, of course, the vast majority of us actually are. Not to mention, as many Twitterites were quick to point out, a poster of Robert Pattinson is basically a signed confession of bisexuality in a young woman.

Close up photo of Robert Pattinsons face as he gazes out of frame
Bigstock/Denis Makarenko

I don't know why exactly straight girls were mostly Team Jacob or why the bisexuals all sat firmly on Pattinson's side, but it's clear we have a type.

The letter writer then went on to confirm his complete lack of understanding of bisexuality with the bizarre statement that "for snowflake Gen Z, it's trendy to be gender-ambiguous." Weirdly, he went so far into the wrong territory that he almost came back around into right; bisexual did originally refer to intersex traits — in plants. 

And while it was actually oddly affirming for my non-binary (but unaware of the existence of non-binary genders) teenage self to discover that "bisexuality" got its name because of invert theory and also to learn that we all had bi-gender or in between gendered brains, somehow, I doubt that's what he was getting at. Unless he really is a time traveler from the beginning of the 20th century. Or maybe he just thinks his daughter's a plant.

He followed up on his spectacular failure to understand the nature of bisexuality with a lengthy rant about his daughter's political opinions, which he bemoans as "rigidly held" (while he, of course, is a paragon of open-minded flexibility), throwing in as many conservative buzzwords like "virtue signaling" and "canceled" as possible. According to him, his daughter's bisexuality is not actually an important part of her identity but just the latest piece of "woke" cosplaying she does, like caring about climate change and supporting Black Lives Matter and everything else she says and does that he disagrees with.

Clearly, in the letter writer's head, she doesn't actually believe in or care about these things. She, like all young people over the years, is only doing any of this to rebel and shock her long-suffering parents. Parents that are, according to this eminent correspondent, completely unshockable because oh they were just so very wild and interesting, with their "acid house" and "punk rock." The idea that his daughter might actually be a person with her own ideas, feelings, and interests that don't revolve around him is apparently unthinkable.

If he finds it "exhausting" talking to her, we can only imagine how she feels. Fortunately, she's 18, so chances are she won't have to put up with it for very much longer. Because as bi Twitter will tell you, bisexuals with parents like this tend to move out at the first opportunity — and they very rarely call their parents after that.

Probably he'll put that down to the woke left as well, anything to avoid a little bit of introspection.

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