The Cutprice Guignol

Tree shaping is a method of managing the growth patterns of trees to create a specific shape from a sapling that’s still growing – by coaxing the growth of the tree to follow a certain pattern via frames or wires or something of the like, the growth of the tree can be shaped. From the day they sprout out of the earth as saplings, they are nudged and guided and prodded to take on a certain shape, to serve a specific purpose in the context of whatever they’re needed for, whether that’s a bride or a seat or part of the structure of a building. It’s actually rather fascinating and the results are enormously cool – see?

And that might seem a strange thing to bring up during Pride Month, but I promise I’ll make it relevant. I’ve been pondering, this particular Pride Month, on being bisexual, as I do occasionally – I’ve been out for the better part of a decade now, and it’s one of those parts of me that feels utterly, almost drudgingly normal. I’m attracted to people across the gender spectrum, and I have been as long as I can remember. It is what it is, you know?

Because I’ve been in a relationship with a man for the past few years, because the majority of the world sees me as straight at a glance, it’s not like my attraction to women has much bearing on how the outside world perceives me. I’m conferred certain privileges being in a straight-presenting relationship that people who are in same-sex relationships don’t, and I’m not blind to that fact.

But I was chatting, recently, with a dear friend of mine about sexuality – I reeled off the above paragraph, more or less, remarking that being bisexual didn’t have much of a functional impact on my life now – when she pointed out all the times that we’ve talked about being closeted and growing up as women who loved women. And that, while being bisexual might not have an active impact on my life now, it’s shaped who I am – or, rather, the culture that surrounded me at the time when I first figured out my sexuality has left an impact on me that I can’t deny.

And she’s right. I came of age in the early noughties, and, while the acceptance of LGBTQ people had taken great strides forward in the previous ten years or so, it felt like the entire world was cloaked in this inescapable heteronormativity. It wasn’t that you couldn’t be gay – of course, we’d rather you kept it to not-like-the-other-gays style homosexuality if we must at all, but still – but rather that straightness was still presented as the default option. When I first became aware of my attraction to women, it seemed as though that part of me was at odds with the world around me, incongruous in a way I couldn’t really reconcile. I was lucky enough to be raised by a family who were accepting of LGBTQ people, but that didn’t undo what the rest of the world around me was telling me. The few times I saw women being open about their attraction to other women, it was usually framed as a joke, or a warning, or the pre-cursor to something terrible happening to them, whether in real life or in fiction.

And so, for a while, I did the only sensible thing I could think of: I left that part of myself untouched. I crafted a version of myself around this Thing that I couldn’t let people see, managing every detail of the way I talked, moved, interacted with others to create this protective barrier around what I didn’t want them to know – until it became second nature, until that version of myself felt like the only one that had ever existed. There were moments where it would punch through, the truth, and I would have to scrabble to stuff it back down again, certain that a level of scrutiny was being aimed at me whether it truly was or not.

By the time that I sort-of come to terms with my sexuality and desire to be with women, I had gone to such efforts to shape myself around this terror of being discovered that my relationship with that fact had been irrevocably tainted by it. Like the trees growing along wire frames, I was stuck in this particular shape of shame and resentment about this aspect of myself that isn’t something that can be undone just because I don’t carry the same fear I once did about it.

Whether I care to admit it or not, I’ve been shaped by it, by a culture that saw women loving women as shameful or fake or predatory. These structures around same-sex desire and attraction were made for purpose, to shape queer people into a more palatable version of themselves more able to fit into a heteronormative society, and, when they’ve guided your growth for years, it’s near-impossible not to find yourself adhering to them long after you think you’ve been snipped clean of them.

Of course, I’ve tried to nudge a few branches into a better spot – even now, I still find myself having these gut reactions of shame or doubt or denial when my attraction to women comes up, but I’m doing what I can to put that right. I’m not sure I’ll ever really know what it would have looked like for me I hadn’t been guided into those shapes in the first place. I’d be really interested to know if this is something other same-sex-attracted people who grew up in this era felt; let me know in the comments below!

If you’d like to read more of my writing on sexuality, take a gander at the links below, and please consider supporting me on Patreon!

Hot Bisexuals, the Safety of Sexiness, and the Fetishization of Queer Women

Through a Glee, Darkly: Transphobia, Biphobia, and the LGBT Community 

Bisexuality on Television 

What I Wish I’d Known About Sex as a Bisexual Woman

In and Out of the Closet: Bisexuality and Me

TV’s problem with the word “bisexual”

Inhumanity, Bisexuality, and American Horror Story: Hotel

Greey, Lying, or Slutty: Straight-Passing and Bi-Erasure