Most, if not all of us, are familiar with Sex and the City, a show famous for showcasing the vicarious life of 4 single women in Manhattan. These women were sexually liberated and believed that they were equal to men. In one episode, it was even said to be “an exchange of power”. However, when the protagonist, Carrie, starts to date a man whom she really likes, she’s really distraught to find out that he identifies as bisexual. Which for a woman that celebrates sexuality, in her personal life and her career, seems odd.
Carrie seems to have a lot of trouble being comfortable with his bisexuality and whether or not that affects his masculinity. She claims that those that identified as bisexual ended up settling down with partners of their same sex, however, if they were to settle with someone of the opposite sex, it wouldn’t make them heterosexual either. “A layover on the way to Gay Town” is the way that she presented this argument to her girlfriends.
Bisexuality can be interpreted as a spectrum of attraction for all genders and non-binary folks, as opposed to the stereotypical 50/50 attraction for both men and women.
Carrie dismissed this as the reality of many people and instead worried about what it meant for men and women as genders. She wondered if gender would become obsolete among the future generations if it meant that bisexuality was an exchange of roles between men and women. If identifying as bisexual wasn’t as real as identifying as straight or gay, was anything else in the realm of sexuality real?
However, Carrie never directly points out that taking charge of her sexuality the way that men do, negatively affects her femininity, but rather intensifies it. There seems to be a harsh double standard that is portrayed between all of the various identities that none of the characters specifically calls out. The only time there is a defense for bisexuality was when Samantha tells the other women that labels are unnecessary, because it doesn’t affect what they had shared before she knew about his sexuality.
While the 4 women sat and engaged in the topic of bi-erasure, it became obvious that although the show was mostly indicative of women and how far they have come with their sexualities, it was still very problematic in the way that it wasn’t inclusive of other sexualities but instead stereotyped them when the opportunity presented itself.
