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bisexuality, bisexuals, fluid sexuality, good and evil, LGBT, morals, Sexuality, writers, writing
I was browsing WordPress blogs this morning when I came across one that had a link to an article on AfterElton.com that discussed how vampires are often depicted as bisexual, and that is not a good thing.
The article, written by Brent Hartinger, pointed out that when vampires are bisexual, particularly on TV and in movies, is usually represents how evil the creature is. In other words, the vampire is so amoral and deprived, it also has sexual perversions, if one considers bisexuality or even homosexuality to be so.
Click here for article on vampire sex by TrueBlood.net
For example, the Cullen clan in the Twilight saga are morally good and heroic, and they are also all heterosexual. But look at True Blood. The villain Russell Edgington is gay and has a boyfriend in season 3 – until Eric kills him. Eric is seen as morally ambiguous throughout the whole series, and becomes sexually ambiguous when he needs to do evil, such as killing Talbot to avenge his Viking family’s murders. Also, Bill was the good vampire for most of the series, and was depicted as heterosexual – with the exception of a scene with shape shifter Sam Merlotte, which disappointingly turned out to be a dream.
Here’s a quote from Hartinger’s op-ed to sum it all up:
Suddenly vampires have stopped being bisexual. The more “good” they are, the less morally dubious, the straighter they’ve become. It’s an almost perfect correlation!
Reading this article shook me. In my book, The Dark Proposal, I have my vampires as bisexual, living in a free-love existence. I never once thought that by giving them fluid sexuality, I was showing how depraved they were. Yes, my vampires are the evil kind, and not the sweet and sensitive ones. But I never once thought that by allowing to be more sexually ambiguous, they were representing their moral sense.
Honestly, I was influenced Anne Rice, who’s vampires are bisexual. But I also didn’t do that just because Anne Rice herself did. My justification of creating bisexual vampires came from how I would think it would be for a vampire, once it realizes it is no longer human and is living apart from humanity. I would think by living in a different world, human rules no longer apply, especially when you realize you have supernatural skills and have found your own key to immortality. Vampires don’t answer to humans, so why should they follow their rules?
In that situation, I would really believe fluid sexuality would be the norm. The reluctance or fear to want to kiss and touch someone of the same gender would be gone. There will be no judgment if one decides to have a same-sex encounter or even experiences homosexual love. After all, they are superior to humans – that is the attitude my vampires have.
I never looked at vampire sexuality as representative of their morals. I always looked it at as part of the sexy side of being a vampire – that no one, male or female, can resist you, and you are open to anyone who interests you, gender be damned. You have no sexual hang-ups, you are true to yourself and don’t care what others think – mainly because you are separate from humans and you look down at them anyway.
But this article has me thinking, especially how I write my two follow-ups to The Dark Proposal. The ideas I had won’t change drastically now, but I will be more aware that some people are not pleased with vampires having fluid sexuality. The LGBT community has been demonized enough, and I certainly don’t want to give readers the impression that I am part of the demonizing crowd. I stand by my reasons for making my vampires bisexual, but I see there are other angles to examine.
Megan Cashman 
Very thought-provoking post, Megan.
Thanks. I’m sure others agree with me, but given how the LGBT community is viewed by bigots, it is a sensitive issue.
Personally, I’m not a vampire story fan, but i don’t think depictions are universal in any character’s case. With your stories you have an opportunity to break the mold, so to speak, and write it the way you want it. There are as many opinions as there are people, and readers, so if you don’t want your stories to fit someone else’s moral definition, which is so archaic and ridiculous anyway, than don’t write it so it does. It’s your story. If it was a personal experience you wouldn’t change it to fit someone else’s ideas, so it doesn’t make sense to do it in stories.
In my “Horses” series I was once accused of showing my “English” and dressage riders and horses as superior to those in the “western” groups. I never thought of that once while writing, but made an effort to go back and add little things to show different points of view and ways of doing things, with no uppity attitude (which I didn’t think was there in the first place; just interpreted that way by a western rider who didn’t know anything “English).
While it’s disturbing and somewhat helpful to find these “definitions” it is never written in stone, and the world…she is a-changin’. It might be slow, but humankind, as the term itself implies, will no longer be an oxymoron some day.
Really interesting post, Megan. It’s something for all writers to think about, even if we don’t tell vampire stories. That is, what message are we sending by depicting characters the way we do?
Using a “perverse” sexuality to depict someones morality is very typical in literature, film, etc. Less well known but almost as common as representing evil with dark skinned characters. For a vampire example, it would have been well known to Victorians that Dracula was evil simply because Stoker described Dracula as having hairy palms; a common indicator that he masturbated. This was considered morally perverse by the uptight victorians a class to which Stoker belonged. It’s nothing new, but you’ll want to take it into careful consideration as you write. Perhaps, make your most evil and vile character uniquely straight amongst his/her more fluid friends?
Too bad I already made it clear that fluid sexuality is the norm among vampires in my book. I could try with some of the minor characters who will be more developed in the sequels. That’s a thought.
Excellent idea! You’ll have to share when you publish ’cause your book sounds very interesting. Just another thought, if a fluid sexuality is presented as the norm for everyone, not just vampires you could avoid the whole “evil creatures have evil sex” thing.
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I honestly never gave a thought to tying sexual orientation to the overall morality of a character. To me they were two separate issues, not one being derived from the other.
So did I, until I read that article.
It’s interesting that True Blood is supposed to be a metaphor for gay rights, yet as the article points out, it tend to go along with the stereotypes of sexual orientation and morality.
I have to say that when people take what should be entertainment and try to turn it into a vehicle for giving me some deep social message it just gets my back up. And the whole issue of gay rights should be given a healthy dose of “It’s no one else’s business what anyone does in the bedroom.” Personally I don’t care who is sleeping with who and I don’t understand why anyone would feel as if they have the right or the obligation to try to dictate sexual orientation to people. I watch that show because I like the whole vampire concept. Some of the characters are gay, some are straight. Whoopee. From what I can tell, there are a lot of moral lines crossed from pretty much every character there, so if the creators intended to send me a message about good vs evil and tied it to sexual orientation, well, I guess I missed that email. And anyway, everyone in the world is a mixed bag of both good and bad, except maybe Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama, so why try to boll a person’s character down to gay=bad, straight =good? That’s kindergarten level thinking.
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