PicoBlog

A month ago, a friend (the brilliant bi author Rachel Krantz) texted me urging me to write a think piece about Miranda Hobbes’s bisexuality.

“Please!” she said. “The world needs it and I don’t have it in me.”

“Do I have to?” I replied. 

Culturally we’ve run the topic of Miranda’s sexuality into the ground—most of us are still recovering from 2022’s Che Twitter discourse. But And Just Like That’s Season 2 has wrapped, and even though it’s Bi Visibility Week, I still haven’t seen any recent memes or op-eds lead us to progressive conversations about bisexuality.

Unfortunately, I do have to.

What are my qualifications? I wrote a book on the topic, but mostly I’ve just spent years talking about bisexuality on the internet. Annoyingly this actually does matter, because it turns out the internet is where most conversations about bisexuality take place. Bisexuals wind up online because, while gay bars are quite literally under attack and lesbian bars are (also literally) facing extinction, bisexual bars never really existed to begin with. Queer bars have historically served as pivotal community gathering points, so a lack of bi bars is the physical form of bi erasure: The people making up the largest percentage of the LGBTQ+ community remain isolated to the point that we wouldn’t even register on a heat map. And that’s just the ones who drink.

Knowing this emphasis on physicality and sense of place, perhaps it makes sense that Miranda, a character whose entire existence has been tethered to her surroundings, a character who brunches by the park one day and sleeps on couches the next, a character who has always understood New York itself as a character in her own story, has never been able to comprehend her own sexual fluidity. Maybe the only way And Just Like That-era Miranda could make sense of herself would be to stumble upon a bisexual gathering point in the physical world, but that’s extremely unlikely—the few of those that actually do exist are far too experimental to align with this show’s audiences, and besides, they cater more toward Brady’s age group.

In recounting Miranda’s history, there’s plenty of evidence that she’s queer: In SATC’s first season, Miranda’s boss mistakes her for a lesbian and sets her up with a woman named Syd; in the second season, Miranda casually says that she was a “major lesbian” in elementary school due one “Wendy Kirsten.” But, while she has dated men for the overwhelming majority of her character’s tenure, she doesn’t name herself as “bisexual” out loud. In fact, for the most part, it seems the characters forget bisexuality exists—in the finale, Steve asks if Miranda is going to “flip it around and go straight again,” saying he “can’t handle that roller coaster.”

This lack of the word “bisexual” is precisely what concerns me. (So you know exactly how much weight to place on my concern, let it be known that I’m the type of person who used to make social justice infographics and has been described by several redditors as “the problem with the left.”) But when people who are explicitly bisexual don’t name themselves as such, they contribute to the entire bi+ community’s erasure. (It goes without saying that in the real world, none of us should ever claim to be an authority on someone else’s sexuality, but lest we forget: Miranda is not a human person. She is words on a page read aloud by former New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon.)

Let’s bi-sect the evidence (sorry):

Exhibit A: In And Just Like That episode 6, Miranda calls herself gay. This would be fine if it didn’t mean she was neglecting to honor the 20-year, often fulfilling relationship she had with Steve (that she’s still entrenched in, by the way). Sure—in some cases, monosexual gay people have been culturally gaslit into heteronormative relationships, but in Miranda’s case, that’s not what’s happening and we know it.

Exhibit B: Being attracted to someone with two first names is definitively bi culture (Wendy Kristin, my DMs are open).

I wish I could say the SATC franchise hasn’t hurt me with its lack of representation, but I can’t. I’ve known I was bi my whole life but didn’t come out until 2019, and an episode from 2000 played a key role in that delat. The episode, called “Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl,” is the show’s most cited instance of biphobia, featuring a scene where Carrie reacts to a recent night out with a bisexual man. At the post-date goss session, she explains to Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha that she doesn’t think bisexuality is real—specifically, she sees it as “a layover on the way to gay town.” Miranda herself responds to that with “Isn’t that right next to Ricky Martinville?” and a few minutes later says, “It’s not hot! It’s greedy! It’s double-dipping!” 

Though I’ve overcome the impact of those comments and learned to reclaim my own identity (I literally titled my book after one of those stereotypes), I still find it ironic that this scene takes place in reference to a nameless character, as opposed to Miranda. It’s not that being bullied makes for my ideal bi representation, but watching one of the show’s protagonists reckon with those comments still would’ve been better than nothing—at least it would’ve made this identity feel real.  

The guiding storytelling principle of “show don’t tell” doesn’t work when portraying bisexuality, pansexuality, or any fluid identities. If we’re just showing someone hook up with a man and then a woman, we’re implying that bisexuality is a behavior. As a result, the validity of one’s bisexuality becomes tied to one’s personal history. And though we can make that claim about the fictional Miranda Hobbes, it gets much messier in real life.

All that is to say: Happy Bi Visibility Day! If you’re gay the same way Miranda is gay, I have some news for you:

ncG1vNJzZmiilaOys7vUrGWsrZKowaKvymeaqKVfpXypsdGeqmasmJp6tbTIp55mmZKkwrV5zKKpmqaUlg%3D%3D