[LINK] "How Male Bisexuality Got Cool"

[rfmcdonald]

Several Facebook friends have pointed their readers towards an article in The Daily Beast Rachel Kramer Bussel's "How Male Bisexuality Got Cool". The article explores the line, apparently thinner than one would think, between homosexuality and homosociality.

The term “man crush”—which, like bromance, connotes a male relationship that resides somewhere between platonic and romantic—is already this year’s official media catchphrase. “Rams GM Devaney Has a Man Crush on Eugene Monroe” gossips manlier-than-thou NFLGridironGab.com. “Warren Buffett’s Chinese Man Crush” titters the headline on a Business Insider profile of CEO Wang Chuan-Fu. And while it’s not all that surprising to find Newsday’s music critic proclaiming his “man-crush renewed” after a Seal concert, it’s less expected in a Boston Globe story about President Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy, or in an AOL News piece about the King of Saudi Arabia.

It’s an emerging version of male bisexuality that’s more pose than sincere. The celebrities who engage in it take pains to make it clear they’re straight—half-ironically goofing around, often as a blatant grab for attention. But the fact that they’re even taking it that far is something new. Take Jimmy Kimmel’s 2008 YouTube sensation “I’m Fucking Ben Affleck,” created in response to his then-girlfriend Sarah Silverman’s “I’m Fucking Matt Damon” video. Five years ago, few male celebrities went there, and the ones who did were often already branded as outsiders, like Michael Stipe. Now, the most mainstream of leading men clamor to act bi for the camera.