Happy Pride season! This month, we hope you’re celebrating your best bi selves — and we have an exciting line-up of pop news to join the party. From a bi-specific dating show (finally) to our very own happily-ever-after and insider film goss. But there are also bicons speaking out on the intersectional challenges that come with biphobia, from erasure in straight-presenting relationships to the ways masculinity and race shape bi visibility, helping you feel seen. As we know, Pride isn’t just about the glitter and the parades: it’s also rooted in protest — and it has never been more important to advocate for our right to live authentically.
Rapper Gets Real about the Intersectional Challenges of Bisexuality
US rapper Isaiah Rashad, 35 — who recently released a new album, It’s Been Awful — has spoken about the challenges he’s faced since coming out as a bi, black man. He told online music platform, Pigeons & Planes, that he’s always going to be labelled as “the black bi rapper” now. “And it doesn’t come with any of the perks I thought it would come with,” he added. “There are no Frank Ocean perks.”
@pigsandplans Isaiah Rashad (@zaywop) and Dominic Fike talk sobriety, sexuality, and the pressure that comes with being in the spotlight. Isaiah Rashad's album 'IT'S BEEN AWFUL' is out now, featuring Dominic Fike on the song "CAMERAS." 🎥 via @Top Dawg Ent _ #pigeonsandplanes #isaiahrashad #dominicfike #sobriety #sexuality ♬ original sound – Pigeons & Planes
Rashad was outed in 2022, after a private video was leaked without his consent, and has since struggled with addiction to drugs and alcohol. He told The Breakfast Club podcast, “At some point in time, I accepted that they don’t make a manual for being a bisexual black dude.”
But, he says that those challenges have also helped him to better understand himself and build more authentic relationships with friends and family who have supported him through it. The ripple effect from embracing authenticity in one part of your life is real!
The Monster Metaphor for Living Outside of the Box
KPop Demon Hunters writer Hannah McMechan has spoken about her journey of self-discovery around her bisexuality during the making of the film. “When I started the project, I had no idea that I was queer”, she told People, “Then we went into the pandemic, and everyone was soul-searching and realising things about themselves.”
“I was so afraid of telling anyone in my life, which ironically is very accurate to the movie,” said McMechan, who grew up in a religious household and struggled to come out to her parents. “I was having this journey with my sexuality and not wanting to tell anyone and feeling ashamed of it.”
She points to parallels with the character Rumi’s confrontation with her adoptive mother, Celine, near the end of the film, where she asks her to accept her true identity, as part human, part demon. Um. Could this be more bi-coded?!
Reality TV has a Biphobia Problem
Recently, Julia Vogl from Married at First Sight Australia spoke about how her bisexuality was weaponised during the filming of the show — and she isn’t the only one to come out regarding the harmful side of bi representation on reality TV. Leslie Hannah Belle, a pansexual contestant on Season 3 of Love Island USA (2021), recently spoke about how she wasn’t allowed to date women on the show.
“When I tried to pull a girl for a chat, they pulled me mid-chat and personally asked me to focus on the men. They used my clips of me making out with girls, though. And they’ve allowed it for other seasons,” she claimed. “It didn’t fit the role they had carved out for me in the show.”
Speaking of queer reality TV, we’re SO excited for the second series of BBC’s I Kissed A Girl this summer, hosted by Dani Minogue — let’s hope that bi experiences are included with the nuance (as they were in Season 1) that we truly need.
Cult Cartoon has a Bi Glow-Up for Pride!
The Cartoon Network recently shared fan art of the beloved blue cat, Gumball Watterson (of The Amazing World of Gumball), decked out in a bi flag coloured sweater — who appeared to have his very own bi coming out or is a stunning ally — in celebration of Pride month.
The caption of the post read, “Love is beautiful. Now, more than ever, our LGBTQ+ family deserves to be seen, celebrated, and protected. We’re better and braver because of you. Happy Pride!” Obsessed.
Bi Cupid has Way More Fun…
Korea has announced its very first bisexual dating show, Stand Bi Me, which is coming out this summer on streaming platform Wavve — from the creators behind the gay dating series, His Man. The format allows contestants to explore attraction beyond gender, with the tagline “Love, in every possible way”, and we are so here for it.
Tove Lo is Bored of the Pressure to Prove Herself (and so are we)
Swedish singer Tove Lo, who is married to producer Charlie Twaddle, recently shared her frustrations around how people continue to question her bisexuality in an interview on Harriet Rose’s podcast By The Way.
“I’ve been married to a man for nine years but I still feel like I very much identify as a bi or pansexual woman. I feel like that really matters to me, that I make that known as part of me,” she said. “It’s not so dramatic, so then when someone comes at me and aggressively wants me to explain my sexuality or like ‘Well, how can you be comfortably with a man for so long?’ I’m like, ‘Well, now we’re getting real personal here.’ When someone is coming at me with a negative energy around it, it bothers me a little bit. I’m like it’s still who I am.”
This highlights a common experience of erasure for bi people in straight-presenting relationships and the pressure to prove yourself, but your sexuality stands true, no matter who your partner is.
Bi Book Adaptation News
Actress and long-time LGBTQ ally, Anna Kendrick, has just been announced to be directing the Netflix film adaptation of the book The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. It follows a journalist who interviews an older Hollywood actress and reveals what really happened in her seven marriages. Trust us: it is way more bi than the title suggests…
The author, Taylor Jenkins Reid, also spoke candidly about her bisexuality in an interview with Time magazine last year, and will be an executive producer on the film: we cannot wait. Stay tuned for a release date.
Congrats to Cardi B!
Absolute bicon, Cardi B scooped the most-streamed female rap project on Spotify in May, with 60 million streams of her second studio album AM I THE DRAMA?, which came out last autumn. Her debut album, 2018’s Invasion of Privacy, is still the most-streamed rap album by a female artist of all time.
