If you want to sit in on a class presentation on the research related to bisexuality please listen to this podcast! Vanessa is a MicroMasters student (part of the Centre for Applied Neuroscience MicroDegree in Psychological Neuroscience) supervised by me, Mandy Wintink. This week’s seminar class was on Sex and Gender and Vanessa’s topic was “Bisexuality” and she presents on the topic according to the guiding questions that provoked the research (see below). The other voices you can hear are that of the other MicroDegree students.

Vanessa chose to do bisexuality because it is often considered a hidden sexuality because those who are bisexual are often seen as heterosexual if they are in a monogamous opposite-sex relationship or gay if they are in a same-sex relationship, neither of which can feel complete for someone who is bisexual. Through her research, Vanessa discovered that bisexual erasure is prevalent and so is bisexuality as well. In fact, some statistics show that bisexuality is the majority of the LGTB2QS community.

Word of wise: You may want to slow this episode down to .75 speed because Vanessa and her brain present very fast…

Vanessa, who recently came out as Polyamorous, is questioning whether identifying a sexual orientation is enough to really capture all the nuances of romantic relationships. So we discuss… and that obviously brings up a discussion about gay versus bisexual and gender and labels in general.

My friend and colleague, Vanessa, recently came out as polyamorous. She’s been living this philosophy for a long time but I was not privy to it, mostly because she had been keeping her professional life separate from her polyamorous life. But she’s been provoked (by our Cosmic Consultant, Cylla — see Cosmic Consultation episode) to let these two worlds collide. So over breakfast in Costa Rica (we were there for work actually!) I open up my phone to record and solicit her into a conversation, which might be one of many. In the process we talk about how this started for Vanessa, how it exists now, and how this relates to sexual orientation.

I love sharing this conversation with others because we both think it’s an opportunity for anyone, whether in monogamous relationships or not, to open their mind to, even if just as a way of developing acceptance and appreciation for such a philosophy. Some people might even be considering it for themselves. In any case, have a listen and see what you think!

We are all over the map in our conversation. We spent a great deal of time talking about poop, which I’m actually not ashamed of. I think we should talk about EVERYTHING as a culture, poop included. And this isn't even about baby poop. Just plain old regular adult poop. And the anxiety that provokes it! But that’s not all we talk about it. We started talking this conversation with a focus on authenticity in our writing and other projects and we actually do come back to that. I think the conclusion was that we write for ourselves... and maybe others care about it too.