Here’s a recap of the firestorm of bisexual news which began on 23 March, when the New York Times Magazine ran a big cover story on bisexuality: “The Scientific Quest to Prove Bisexuality Exists“, and in particular, male bisexuality.

The title alone infers that there is doubt. Once again the burden is on bisexuals to prove their existence in the face of those who doubt us. Researchers and other truthers seem to be comfortable with women being bisexual. But men? It’s not possible.

I know in five or ten years we’ll all look back at his silliness and laugh, but right now this “debate” is hurtful, frustrating, and ignorant.

I’m not sure why these researchers went to all the trouble, considering they could have just asked me, or any number of self-identified bisexual men. Ironically, bisexuals comprise the LARGEST group of all the LGBTs.

But the impetus behind this story is that bisexual men are not honest or trustworthy. We’re not truthful. We are, in fact, liars about what we REALLY want, and who we REALLY are: gays in denial.

Millions of people acknowledging their ability to create emotional and physical connections with both sexes – often with great risk to family, job security, and even physical harm – is irrelevant: a guy in a lab coat hooking up electrodes (why is it always electrodes!?) to male genitalia and then measuring responses when showing them porn – now that’s Truth. That’s solid. That’s something we can run a cover story about. Oh yeah, they also measured pupil dilations. Much more important than human experience.

Humans are not trustworthy: scientific gadgets are – especially electrodes – are.

Hey NYT Mag: I’m not lying. I’ve been happily married to a woman for 20 years. I love her, and especially love our scintillating sex life together. We are sexually adventurous, experimental, daring. Which is why, once I’d come to terms with a life-long struggle to understand my strange desire for men which would periodically but consistently creep into my unsuspecting psyche throughout my life, I came out to her about being bisexual. That was 5 years ago. We are still married – and even more happily so than before I came out.

Like many bisexuals I have a preference. Mine is for women. I love women, and really enjoy being with men too. Try as I may, I cannot for the life of me understand what is so strange, so improbable, so utterly life-altering for others to accept this simple, obvious, natural inclination.

If truth be told (and it is), I cannot understand how people cannot have at least a little attraction for the same (or other) sex. If anything, the guys in lab coats corroborated this belief with their findings.

As soon as the NYT cover story was released, Slate published a piece by Mark Joseph Stern entitled, “Is Bisexual Identity a Useful Fiction?” I found the article to be unbelievably biphobic, with statements like: “Is bisexuality even an identity, in the way that homosexuality is?” Who the fuck is this guy?

He refers to bisexuality as a “movement”. Is heterosexuality a movement? Bisexuality is sexual orientation – believe it or not Mr. Stern. I am not united with my fellow bisexuals like environmentalists or those fighting for access to education. I am a human being looking for recognition and acceptance with others who identify as I do.

I read a great Open Letter response to Stern by Sarah, Ellie, and Evan from Bisexual Books. The Huffington Post then had a live dialogue about the Slate piece. The guests brought up a number of things they disliked about the piece, but none of them was strong enough in their condemnation of it.

The week then ended on a bit of a down note, as British swimmer Tom Daly changed his identification from that of bisexual, to gay. The NYT began the year with a story on Daly’s coming out as bisexual, claiming it was “Igniting LGBT Debate” about whether or not bisexuality exists. So now a number of smug biphobes like Andrew Sullivan, who predicted in the article that Daly would eventually see the light of his true homosexual nature, are smiling with an “I told you so” grin.

In the four years that I’ve been working with bisexuals, running support groups, counselling, meeting socially, I have come across many who have skipped from sexual orientation to orientation. Try as they may, both men and women eventually must give up their straight or gay identities when, after the passage of time (I’ll grant Tom Daly some of that, as he is till young with plenty of time to change his mind) they realized it just did not fit.

Many of us ride the dizzying merry-go-round of trying to lock down or sexual orientation until we are so sick of it we just get off. One person I met first came out to his family as gay; then he came out as trans a few years later. And now, after successfully transitioning, he has realized he’s actually bisexual.

I’m sure there are scientists fantasizing about what his genitals would look like, relishing the thought of hooking up electrodes to whatever is down there in search of Truth. But there’s no need. Suffice it to say that he is comfortable with who is he – despite societal pressures to be otherwise. And that’s all that counts.