Pop Culture’s Uneasy Relationship With Bisexual Men
Bisexual male characters often appear in pop culture as a complication rather than a complete person. Their attraction to more than one gender may be treated as a shocking reveal, a temporary phase, a punchline, or evidence that another character has misunderstood the situation. Even when a story names bisexuality directly, it can still frame the character’s identity as unstable, secretive, or narratively inconvenient.
This pattern matters because entertainment helps shape the language people use for real lives. A teenager watching a streaming drama, a university student scrolling through fan edits, or a parent trying to understand their son may absorb the message that bisexual men are confused, untrustworthy, hypersexual, or destined to choose a “real” relationship. Better storytelling cannot fix biphobia by itself, but it can challenge the limited scripts that make those assumptions feel normal.
The narrow script behind the joke
Popular storytelling has long preferred bisexual male characters when their sexuality creates tension for someone else. The character may flirt with a man to provoke a girlfriend, sleep with a man before returning to women, or keep his attractions hidden until the plot needs a dramatic confession. His bisexuality becomes a source of suspense, betrayal, or erotic intrigue rather than one aspect of his personality.
This is connected to a larger cultural suspicion that bisexuality is indecision. Straight characters may be allowed to experiment without having their entire identity questioned, while bisexual men are often expected to provide proof. A relationship with a woman is interpreted as evidence that they are straight; a relationship with a man is interpreted as evidence that they are gay. The identity itself disappears behind the current partner.
Comedy can make this especially difficult to recognise. A bisexual male character is sometimes written as predatory, greedy, or incapable of commitment, with the joke resting on the idea that he wants everyone. Those stereotypes erase the ordinary reality of bisexual people, whose relationships can be monogamous, committed, casual, complicated, or entirely private, just like anyone else’s.
When desire becomes a plot device
A common television pattern is the “bisexual awakening” that ends as soon as the character settles into a heterosexual romance. Earlier same-gender attraction may be left unexplained, rewritten as experimentation, or treated as a temporary detour. The audience is invited to celebrate the heterosexual pairing while forgetting that the character’s previous desires were part of the story too.
Another pattern places bisexual men in villainous roles. The charming manipulator uses sexuality as camouflage, the corrupt politician has secret affairs, or the dangerous seducer crosses boundaries with everyone. Villains can certainly be bisexual, but when queer male characters are repeatedly associated with deception and excess, the representation becomes cumulative. Viewers may start to connect bisexuality with dishonesty before they have encountered many ordinary bisexual characters at all.
The “secret bisexual” storyline also deserves care. Coming out narratives can be powerful, particularly when they show family conflict, religious pressure, racism, or fear of violence. Yet secrecy should not be the only route to depth. A character can be openly bisexual and still face meaningful questions about love, masculinity, class, friendship, ageing, or work. His story does not need a revelation scene to justify his existence.
Masculinity, desire and Australian screens
Australian culture carries its own pressures around male sexuality. Ideas about mateship, sporting toughness, drinking culture, and emotional restraint can make bisexual men feel as though they must constantly manage how they are perceived. A man in a Sydney drama might worry about being read differently at work; a young person in regional Queensland might have fewer visible queer role models; someone in Melbourne may find community while still encountering prejudice in family or professional life.
Local screen culture can either reinforce or question those expectations. Australian television has room for frank, socially grounded storytelling through public broadcasters and services such as ABC iview and SBS On Demand, while commercial networks and streaming platforms often chase easily recognisable genres. The local market is smaller than Hollywood’s, so a bisexual character may be asked to carry an entire issue rather than simply exist within an ensemble.
The legal landscape also shapes what these stories mean. Marriage equality became law in Australia in 2017, but legal recognition has not removed biphobia from homes, schools, workplaces, health services, or online spaces. Federal protections under the Sex Discrimination Act sit alongside different state and territory frameworks, meaning people’s experiences can vary depending on where they live. Pop culture should reflect that complexity instead of presenting acceptance as a problem Australia has already solved.
What audiences learn from absence
When bisexual men are missing from a genre, that absence sends a message too. A romantic comedy may include a lesbian best friend and a gay male colleague but no bisexual man who is simply dating, working, or complaining about his family. A crime series may show queer victims and villains while rarely giving a bisexual man an interior life. Repetition teaches viewers which identities are considered believable.
Useful questions for reading a storyline include:
- Is the character’s bisexuality named, or only implied through suggestive behaviour?
- Does he have desires and relationships that are not used to shock another character?
- Are his mistakes treated as personal choices rather than proof of a whole identity?
- Does the story allow him friendship, humour, tenderness, and ordinary ambitions?
- Who gets to interpret his sexuality, and whose perspective is treated as credible?
These questions are not demands for perfect characters. Bisexual men can be selfish, jealous, dishonest, awkward, or harmful, just as other characters can. The issue is whether the story gives them the same range of humanity. A flawed bisexual man should not automatically become evidence that bisexuality itself is unstable or dangerous.
Representation also needs to account for intersectionality. A bisexual man who is Indigenous, disabled, Muslim, Asian Australian, trans, working class, or living with mental illness may experience visibility and risk differently. The social justice perspective in this reflection on privilege is useful here because it encourages audiences to notice how identity, power, and access overlap rather than treating “queer representation” as a single category.
Writing men with whole lives
A well-developed bisexual male character does not need to be endlessly confident or politically articulate. He might still be working out what language feels right, or he might have known for years and be exhausted by explaining it. The essential difference is that uncertainty belongs to the character’s circumstances, not to the writer’s refusal to recognise bisexuality as real.
Writers can show this through small choices. A man can refer to an ex-boyfriend and a current girlfriend without the scene becoming an announcement. His friends can know he is bisexual without turning every conversation into a debate. A family member can make a clumsy comment, and the story can show the emotional aftermath rather than using the remark as a disposable joke.
Romance plots also benefit from resisting the idea that bisexuality threatens monogamy. Fidelity is a behaviour and an agreement, not a consequence of being attracted to one gender. A bisexual man can want a committed relationship, open relationship, casual sex, or no relationship at all. His preferences should emerge from character and circumstance, not from a stereotype about having an unlimited appetite.
Casting and production choices matter as well. Queer consultants, bisexual writers, sensitivity readers, and performers with relevant lived experience can identify lazy assumptions before they reach the screen. They cannot guarantee a perfect result, but they can widen the creative vocabulary. The goal is not to make every character educational; it is to stop relying on the same narrow shortcut.
Better stories require better habits
Audiences have influence, even when individual viewers cannot control what a platform commissions. The way people discuss a character affects which interpretations gain attention. Calling a bisexual man “confused” because he dates a woman, or “secretly gay” because he dates a man, repeats the exact erasure that a story may be trying to examine.
A healthier media habit is to separate criticism of a character’s actions from judgment of his identity. If a character cheats, criticise the cheating. If he lies, discuss the lie. If he behaves coercively, name the harm. There is no need to use bisexuality as a shortcut for moral explanation. This distinction is especially important in online fandoms, where memes and headcanons can turn stereotypes into apparently harmless communal language.
Practical ways to watch and discuss these characters include:
- Notice whether the story gives him a life outside sexual access to other people.
- Challenge claims that a heterosexual relationship disproves bisexuality.
- Support Australian queer creators and productions that include varied identities.
- Look for reviews and interviews by bisexual viewers rather than relying on one reading.
- Recommend stories where bisexual men are present without being treated as a twist.
Personal reflection can also help viewers identify why certain representations feel uncomfortable. Anxiety may make uncertainty in a storyline feel threatening, but that discomfort does not need to be projected onto a bisexual character. The advice in rethinking anxiety offers a useful reminder that difficult feelings can be examined without allowing them to dictate an interpretation.
Pop culture’s treatment of bisexual male characters is improving in some places, but progress is uneven. A single beloved character cannot compensate for decades of jokes, disappearances, and villain roles. What makes a difference is consistency: more bisexual men in Australian and international stories, more varied plots, and fewer demands that they prove which attraction is genuine.
The practical takeaway is simple: judge the character by what he does, recognise bisexuality as a stable possibility rather than a narrative puzzle, and support stories that let bisexual men be as ordinary, complicated, funny, loving, and flawed as everyone else.
