Bisexual Erasure Strikes Again in All-New X-Men #40
Brian Michael Bendis’ All-New X-Men #40 hits shelves tomorrow with a big change to one of the original X-Men characters. Warning Spoilers to follow.
In the issue, regular jokester Bobby Drake aka Iceman, is confronted by telepath Jean Grey after Drake makes a comment about the “hotness” of a female character Magik. Grey, reading his mind, outs Bobby as a gay. Bobby initially disagrees, citing the fact that his older self (time travel stuff) has dated numerous women. He asserts to Jean that maybe he’s bisexual to which Jean says nope, he’s “fully gay.” You can read the exchange on the left.
So I’ve been sitting on this because I want to read All-New X-Men #40 myself first before going on record. But having seen the panels I need to at least say this: Bendis, I really respect your work but you messed this up. Please consider listening to actual bisexual people when you do this sort of thing. Because we are going to have a different perspective on this than you will. I’m not saying that Bobby needs to be bi (though lord knows, we need another bi hero). I’m not saying that Bobby should identify in any particular way. I’m saying that the way the scene was written dismisses the existence of bisexual people. And Bobby deserves to have the chance to define his own sexual orientation rather than having a narrator stand-in tell him how he should or shouldn’t identify.
Evan at Bisexual Books summed it up nicely:
Saying everyone is bi erases us. It invalidates bisexual identity and gives room for people to feel it’s perfectly ok for them to smack their own labels on us rather than allowing us to self identify. This is exactly what young Jean does to young Bobby in this exchange.
Maybe the writer doesn’t want us to interpret Jean’s voice as the narrator’s, though her being a telepath complicates this. Maybe he is showing the limitations of her teenage vocabulary and understanding of human sexuality (they just pulled her out of the 60s). But it is hard for me to read the scene any other way.
(and thank you to herecomesthewomanwithoutfear aka Emma Houxbois for turning my Living Eraser from Dimension Z comment into an awesome jpg. FYI the Living Eraser is a comics meta joke dating back to the silver age).
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I’m wondering: are you losing sight of the writer’s role here. His job is not to make sure that your experience, or the experience of a person of any particular orientation or background is accurately or even appropriately reflected. It’s to accurately reflect the characters.
I think this was pretty spot-on. While I haven’t read the issue, I read this panel as Bobby trying to rationalize what Jean said or stay in the closet in some limited way (to the extent he can with a telepath), and Jean was trying to soften the sharp edge with which she confronted him.
If she delegitimized bisexuality, that may be unfortunate, but this was a human conversation, and my initial impression is that Bendis nailed it. Well-rounded characters don’t always reflect every prevailing opinion (nor should they).
Thanks for the thought-provoking piece.
Thank you for writing. I want to respond to your statement that “If she delegitimized bisexuality, that may be unfortunate, but this was a human conversation”. Jean isn’t just anybody. She is a psychic. She “knows” what Bobby is really feeling. She’s acting as an omniscient voice in this conversation. And the exact words she uses are the standard retort that basically every bisexual person hears pretty much every time they come out. It would be one thing if Jean says that and Bobby contests it in some way. But instead he HUGS her.
The authorial intent is not to delegitimize bisexuals. The conversation exists within the narrative. But Jean isn’t just anyone. And the words she uses are the standard dismissal we hear all the time and it goes unchallenged by anyone in the book.
Imagine if your sentence was “If he delegitimized women’s experiences, that may be unfortunate, but this was a human conversation, and my initial impression is that Bendis nailed it.” — and if every woman you knew was saying “no this is not ok”?
I think you’d listen to us.
I think you’d say “oh, maybe there’s something I missed here…”