Every genre has its rare characters, although Fantasy seems to have more than its share, with leprechauns, unicorns, will-o-the-wisps, and many more elusive entities populating the pages of this magical genre.
But there’s one character that’s far more rare than it should be – bisexual characters.
Let me say that I totally accept that bisexuality exists, and it always irks me when folks say that bisexuals are just gay men (or lesbian women) who just haven’t fully committed to their homosexuality yet. I’ve known many happy and well adjusted bi folks. And hey, the way I figure it – if I ask them to accept my truth that I’m a gay man, then I have to accept theirs, too.
So here are my questions today. Why are there so few bisexual characters in speculative fiction? Should we be doing more to include them? And what are some of your favorite works that do have bi characters, where they’ve been written well?
In my 2011 novel Black as Snow, the hero Sebastian Black is a bisexual clairvoyant who also happens to be the “…next species of Man.” I wrote him as pan-sexual, because I believe in the future there will be fewer labels and parameters around human sexuality.