Star Trek's Bisexuality Problem

As a bisexual man, I take notice when a bisexual character appears on film or TV. Bisexual characters are still uncommon, male ones particularly. It's something I've looked at in other articles lately, and there has been some positive bi-representation in recent years, but it's still a rarity. When a bisexual person appears on our screens, more often than not, their sexuality is presented as an indication that there's something wrong with them. Bi characters are more often than not villains, creeps and weirdos, in sf media especially. Frank N. Furter is, although a pop culture icon, a corrupting alien force. Sharon Stone plays a cruel, manipulative bisexual in Basic Instinct. Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy's relationship is portrayed as positive, but they're still a pair of murderous villains. On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow progressed from straight relationships to exclusive lesbianism, but only her evil vampire parallel universe counterpart was bi (of course, prime Willow went evil for a bit as well, so I guess she was just bi enough).

One of the worse culprits, though, is Star Trek. While we might be getting a major bisexual character on Strange New Worlds (although my thoughts on that aren't wholly positive), and we have a brief moment between Seven and Raffi on Picard, the few bisexual characters we see in the franchise are almost wholly villainous. In fact, they're almost all from the Mirror Universe.

The Mirror Universe, of course, is a version of the Trek universe were everything is wrong. It's a Trekkie Bizarro World – instead of the Federation, there's the Terran Empire, and later, humans are slaves to a Klingon-Cardassian alliance. Virtually everyone there is at best cruel, selfish and violent, and at worst outright evil. And, of course, about five hundred times more likely to be bi.

We never saw it on The Original Series, of course, since it was the sixties and they wouldn't have got away with that then, but from Deep Space Nine? Everyone in the Mirror Universe wants to get their end away with everyone. It's mostly the women, of course, because hot lesbians, right? (Although there was a brief moment between Mirror Garak and Mirror Worf...) On DS9, Mirror Universe women are almost exclusively bi. The biggest villain there is the Intendant, the Mirror version of Major Kira, who's a preening, camp, sexually voracious and manipulative despot. She tries it on with virtually everyone, and that includes her prime universe self. Leeta, Jadzia, Ezri... they're all sex-obsessed, none-too-choosy about the gender of their conquests. And they all dress in black leather and wear dark make-up, because they have to be kinky bisexuals too. If there's one thing more often portrayed as creepy than bisexuality, it's fetishism.

We don't see much of it on Enterprise, where everyone is simply sexually aggressive but in a mostly hetero way, but come Discovery, it's back to leather-clad bisexual horndogs. The Emperor Georgiou is just as preening and vampish as the Intendant, having had a relationship with Mirror Burnham and screwed most of her underlings by insinuation. She's definitely had it away with Mirror Stamets, which is interesting, since his prime universe counterpart is gay. Prime Stamets is just as horrified by this as you'd normally expect a straight character to be. While it's good to see that homosexuality and bisexuality aren't just viewed as basically the same, as they often are, it's still the case that bi is implicitly wrong. Anyway, it would have been much funnier if Mirror Stamets had just been straight.

Of course, it's possible that prime Georgiou is also bi – we have no information on her sexuality on the series. The Emperor pretty much confirms that everyone is bi in the Mirror Universe, though. It's a relentless shorthand for weirdness, predatory sexuality or full-on villainy. What Star Trek – and so much sf – really needs is more positive portrayals of bisexuality, and that doesn't mean just making existing characters suddenly bi.