Transcript | Ep. 65: How to Be ‘The Bisexual’
[Sting]
[Clip from The Bisexual]
Gabe: Do you think that maybe you’re a bisexual?
Leila: I don’t like that word.
Gabe: Why?
Leila: When I hear bisexual, I think lame slut. It’s tacky. It’s gauche. It makes you seem disingenuous, like your genitals have no allegiance, you know? Like you have no criteria for people, like you have an open door policy. It’s not a nice thing to be. It’s not a cool thing to be and it makes my fucking skin crawl.
Gabe: All I’m asking, is that you proceed with caution.
[Theme]
Caroline: Hey y’all, and welcome to Unladylike, the show that finds out what happens when women break the rules. I’m Caroline.
Cristen: I’m Cristen. And you just heard a clip of Iranian-American filmmaker, actor and writer Desiree Akhavan in her Hulu show, The Bisexual. It centers around her character, Leila, who is in her early 30s, has exclusively dated women and is having a very hard time coming to terms with the fact that she’s also attracted to men.
[Clip from The Bisexual]
Character: Does anyone know an actual bisexual?
Leila: I’m pretty sure bisexuality is a myth created by ad executives to sell flavored vodka
Caroline: Ha! Leila’s dismissiveness here is a fictionalized version of Desiree’s real-life journey of confronting her own internalized biphobia and coming to terms with her sexuality.
Cristen: And her show The Bisexual is just one way that Desiree is now using her own experiences to flip the script on female sexuality and desire on screen.
Desiree: It was such a shock when I first started having sex, I was like, Oh this is behind the curtain. But then also like oh there's so much shame around this. Like, I really don't understand why this thing that literally brings life to the world is something we're so afraid to have an honest discussion about.
Cristen: So today, we're having a very honest discussion with Desiree about fitting in, coming out, and getting over the lies pop culture tells us about what sex and romance should look like.
Caroline: It’s all to find out: How do you fall in love with your own sexuality, especially when you’re not supposed to?
[STING]
Cristen: What kind of girl were you raised to be?
Desiree: Obedient. For sure. I was definitely raised to be you know a traditional Iranian daughter. I remember one time, I was 10 or 11, I like we were talking to a teacher about what I was going to do that night, and I was like, You know that my mother will lay out my clothes, and I will wear them the next day, and she was like, Why don't you pick your own clothes? And I was like, It's simply just not done. Mother likes a pinafore. She had a very you know old fashioned French schoolgirl aesthetic, and I was to follow it by a T but — to a T. Also that's another thing I picked up from immigrant parents is like getting colloquialisms a little bit wrong. Like “money is not in a bush” OK. I said "pomena-cranate" for a good 23 years until my friends were like, You know that's not how you say it.
Caroline: Desiree was born and raised in the suburbs just north of New York City. Her parents and older brother settled there after leaving Tehran in the wake of the Iranian Revolution.
Cristen: In elementary school, she started writing plays and even created a sketch comedy show for recess called Friday Night Live. It was Desiree’s way of keeping herself company since she wasn’t so great at making unscripted friends.
Desiree: My parents’ mentality was similar to people who were a generation older than they were and so was their aesthetic. So I related far more to my friends’ parents than to them and their parents’ gripes. Like I remember I spent like every birthday party in the kitchen helping your mom like ice a cake and be like, Well how do you find it like to compromise your graduate degree and not pursue that by having had like Adrien at such a young age? Like well I mean I was just kind of a loser, and that was far more accessible, talking to your mom about her choices than trying to like, get the pinata.
Caroline: By the time Desiree went to high school with her brother in the Bronx, she felt even more clueless about how to fit in.
Desiree: And we commuted for about like an hour and a half each way. And all of our classmates lived in Manhattan, so we were super isolated. But my brother you know he did sports and he was really went to the kind of school where like doing well academically it was like a real so had a real social currency. I mean it was also a normal school like so, so did being hot and rich so all those things give you social currency. I did not have any of them. I wasn't like out there having sex or doing drugs. I was like ugly, overweight and friendless.
Caroline: Desiree isn’t being self-deprecating, either. OK, well maybe a little bit … But Cristen, when she was in high school, there was no Facebook or Instagram, but there were these briefly trendy attractiveness-rating websites like hot or not dot com.
Cristen: YES. I remember those!
Caroline: Well, it was through one of those hot-or-not-style sites that Desiree’s classmates rated her as the ugliest girl in school.
Cristen: Caroline, I would’ve died. Like, I knew I wasn’t popular or dateable but to see it statistically proven on the internet? Nope.
Caroline: Same. And combined with her already feeling socially and geographically isolated from her peers, it’s not terribly surprising that Desiree lived vicariously through the teens she saw on screen.
Desiree: So I spent a lot of my time learning what what friendship was, what being American was, and what sex was and power was through the characters I saw on like, Saved by the Bell and Brady Bunch and Family Matters.
Cristen: I'm - I'm relating really hard to this because I was homeschooled second through eighth grade, and I - similarly -
Desiree: So does that mean that ninth grade, eighth grade you - you entered high school?
Cristen: Ninth grade, I went to high school. Like at first I felt like I adjusted really well, but when it came down to actually like interacting and figuring out how to maintain friendships and also like what to do with like my horniness or just like dumb boys, the movies quickly proved to be very unhelpful. I never had my makeover moment, you know.
Desiree: Oh, totally. Oh, I'm still waiting.
Cristen: Yeah so Caroline, all three of us — you, me and Desiree — are millennials. We were starting high school in very late 90s, early 2000s ... when, I would argue, teen pop culture was peak heteronormative horny … you’ve got Britney Spears, boy bands, Dawson’s Creek, and soooo many high school rom coms
Caroline: Agree … and true to rom com rules, attractiveness and sex were dictated by the dudes, and desire was pretty much off-limits for teen leading ladies
Desiree: The movies told us lies, they fed us these lies of girls being super chaste and reluctant and kind of unaware of their own like bodies and hotness like, Oh who me? Oh, these just grew overnight. Like very Jessica Rabbit nonchalant, like I was so fucking aware of my body and my desire and everything I wanted. And how about like I was raging, I felt like I had like - like Angelina-Jolie-style Gia like in my pants and the body of like Jack Black. It was like, what do we do between the juxtaposition of these two? Like. There was just so much desire. I felt like too much and none of the films I watch. Nothing I saw reflected that it was always. Well also like also the shows are also like male protagonists. I'll never forget the first episode of Saved by the Bell where Zack Morris pulls out this humongous life-sized cardboard cutout of Kelly Kapowski that he craved this girl so badly and she was so awesome that she - he had like a cardboard cut out of her and he was like, I’ma fuck this this year.
Cristen: I'm going to call her up on my giant telephone.
Desiree: Exactly. It was always — I think I related a lot to the dudes, I related a lot to the guys trying to get laid to like how they just couldn't keep it in their pants.
Caroline: I think that's why as an adult I really appreciate Tina Belcher on Bob’s Burgers.
Desiree: Oh my God Tina Belcher is the best character for that very - I really, really, really relate to Tina. That sweetness that desire to like kill you with kindness juxtaposed to like insane horniness, that is Tina to me, and I really I think she's yeah she's the character that most embodies what I was going through.
[Clip from Bob’s Burgers]
Gene: What kind of a maniac wakes up an hour early to write erotic fan fiction?
Tina: Me.
Louise: Are there any shows or movies left in the world that you haven’t perved up?
Tina: No, that’s why I’ve started writing erotic friend fiction using people at school and zombies.
Gene: Oh, do the janitor and the vice-principal. I think they’d have beautiful children.
Tina: I did and they don’t.
Caroline: As you were in this like high school Tina Belcher sort of life, what were your ideas around like romance and sex that - were you just getting them from TV or were you trying to come up with some ideas of your own?
Desiree: I definitely got them from television. I think there is this idea that you know. A guy would see you and sweep you off your feet and also that that would be like indestructible and quite pure like. I think there's a myth of romantic love that love lifts you up where you belong - I was very shocked was not the truth of it. I mean I've been in love a lot fast in the past 15 years, and it's - it's not what I what I swallowed as a teenager or that the myth that I came of age in.
Caroline: That is the truth, and so much of that romantic love in the movies happens through some sort of magical makeover — preferably timed with a high school dance of some sort — for this hunky dude to instantly fall in love with you
Cristen: Cue: a suddenly sexy Rachel Leigh Cook circa 1999 being presented to a slack-jawed Freddie Prinze Jr. in She’s All That
[Clip from She’s All That]
Lainey’s friend: Gentlemen, May I present the new, not improved, but different Lainey Boggs.
[‘Kiss Me’ Song]
Desiree: Rachel Leigh Cook was quite petite. All those girls were quite petite. I'm a - I'm a taller woman. You know I'm 5’10”, 5’11”, and I really was sold in these films that like women should be physically vulnerable and tiny and adorable. Like every film is like, Oh she's so teeny tiny and delicate and lovely and like I just want to like take care of her, and that was something that was reflected a lot by the men in my life. I think there was something like being a strong-looking person was a boner killer, and that it was vulnerability that it was like petiteness that was so attractive and that's something that I saw on a lot of films too. Like she's so vulnerable I just want to take care of her. But the - the main thing that watching so much television and not learning anything about intimacy from it was kind of brainwash me. Like I remember when I lost my virginity, I was like oh that's it.
Cristen: Right?
Desiree: Yeah. I was so surprised.
Cristen: God. I really, really thought I would change my relationship and just like.....
Desiree: Exactly. Or that you'll exchange something so sacred, or sometimes it is sacred, but then also sometimes it's funny and weird. Sometimes sex is with someone you don't love and it's fantastic. Sometimes it's about like physical dominance. Sometimes it's about making someone laugh. Like I just think there are so many different kinds of intimacy in so many different kinds of fucking, and like there was no other conversation to be had. Or if - or if we do it's in the frame - it's in the vein of like how to please your man. So like I grew up very nervous, like what, will I know how to please my man? And it took a very long time for me to ask myself like, well fuck that. Am I enjoying myself?
Cristen: So, this reminds me of something I’ve heard you’ve kinda say in other interviews - that maybe if a guy swept you off your feet in high school or if you’d morphed into some kind of “hot girl” like the Rachel Leigh Cooks of the world for example, it could have altered your sexual journey of figuring out what you want, who you’re attracted to etc.
Desiree: I don't know. That was definitely something I was very ashamed of, and like I hadn't said out loud, like if I had been treated differently, if I had been like a hot commodity to men maybe I wouldn't have allowed myself to go here. But I also think that's one of those things that is neither here nor there because desire doesn't really come from - isn't a manifestation of the way you're treated. I think it's just like it pushed me into one direction. But that direction was there for me.
Cristen: When we come back, Desiree comes clean about being bisexual.
Caroline: But first, heartbreak leads to a nose job?
Cristen: Stick around.
[Midroll ad break 1]
Desiree: Coming out was painful and isolating and scary, and this like self-hate of like I don't belong to any group. Like I'm not even gay enough.
Caroline: We’re back with filmmaker Desiree Akhavan.
Desiree: Like it's not like I grew up with this huge secret, like I knew I was attracted to women, but also I was attracted to dudes and I my first love was a guy, so I definitely had that in the back of my head, like you don't even belong here.
Cristen: OK Caroline, I think it’s worth sharing a snapshot of bisexuality today because in the US, the population of self-identified bisexuals has actually tripled over the past decade, and that upswing is largely driven by women — specifically women of color — identifying as bi.
Caroline: But here’s the twist: Bisexual people are far less likely to be publicly out than folks who identify as gay or lesbian. Which takes us back to Desiree
Cristen: Yes. When we last left her, she was struggling through high school and trying to figure out sex and romance, mostly by watching movies and TV.
Caroline: But all the rom coms in the world couldn’t prepare Desiree for what she calls her first romantic trainwreck. And even though they didn’t know all the details, Desiree’s parents could tell something was wrong.
Cristen: So they offered their own version of a magical makeover.
Desiree: They were desperate to make me happy. I mean every parent is, and like Persian parents are super vocal and loving. My parents kind of forced me into a nose job around that time. So that was their way of fixing it. But to be fair Iran is the nose job capital of the world, and it's a rite of passage, and it's one that both my parents experienced and one sort of just like well you're of age and it's time, and I'd be like I really do not want to do this, and they're like trust us and shut up.
Cristen: OK, we have to ask a follow up question to that. So how old were you and why. Why do you say that you were sort of forced into it? Did you see no problem with the nose that you had?
Desiree: No it was ugly. To be fair. I was not hot. OK. So I did this when I was 19. I had just had my heart broken for the first time by a girl and I couldn't tell my parents, so I was home and heartbroken and lying. But I think they knew. Like I introduced them to them as my special friend, but it was shameful and we shut up. But I was super heartbroken. But at 16 I wrote an article for the high school newspaper about why I would never get a nose job. Like it was something I was very passionately against and had really vocalized in a tangible way, and every year they brought it up and every year I was like I - I'm super offended. No thanks. And then this time at 19 I was I was just desperate for anything. I was like OK yeah sure let's do that, let's - let's get a lobotomy let's do - I mean what do you think? I'll put myself in your hands.
Cristen: And how did it go? Did you feel any different once you had a new, new nose?
Desiree: I felt - no of course not. I felt closer to my parents. I felt like weirdly like I put my faith in, in the two people who made me. And when I couldn't make a decision about what I needed, I let them make it. .I think I would be OK with my old nose. Changing it didn't make me feel attractive or better. I think the face I have is fine now.
Desiree: It's something I talk about because I never want to feel shame about it. Like I definitely it was a secret for five years. And then my first short film was about it and. I think I just never wanted it to be a secret that someone else had power over me for like oh I can because I never felt like the kind of person who would get plastic surgery.
Caroline: So no, rhinoplasty didn’t instantly solve all of Desiree’s romantic woes — no Freddie Prinze or Princess Jrs suddenly came a-calling. But, she was on the brink of experiencing an inside-out sort of makeover
Cristen: Right, because speaking of keeping secrets, Desiree still hadn't come out to her family at this point
Desiree: I just knew that I couldn't live worrying about what my parents wanted from me or about making them ashamed of me. Like they have put their luxuries, their needs on the backburner forever just to give me every single opportunity and a sense of entitlement that would allow me to even be gay. Like it's not - It's not lost on me that the fact that I'm able to be a bisexual woman is 100 percent due to the entitlement my parents gave me. To their credit I feel entitled to be like, I want something I'll take it. And that's a very Western concept. And also I think what helped for us, which isn't advice I'm giving anyone. Don't do this. But the fact that my work is so personal and so much about sexuality. My parents were so supportive of me pursuing this work. then the fact that my work started getting attention and featured a lot of frank discussion of sexuality that helped them transition. I think they were able to associate it with something positive in my life whereas they thought it was going to be this huge Achilles heel in this second-class-citizen lifestyle. They were like, oh actually this is kind of a superpower.
Caroline: So did you feel better after you came out?
Desiree: Fuck no. Fuck no. I felt like a piece of shit for like years. Like a real piece of shit. Nah coming out is like people like you love the most in the world looking in the eye and being like why are you doing this to me. It's so painful. If you are coming out to people who don't want that for you. And it's 100 percent a credit to my parents about how that transformed. I feel like they had a real choice, which was like I could disown my kid and not have a relationship with them or I could choose to change, because they're not changing. So they changed, and we're in a great place, they’re leading the acceptance parade.
Cristen: Well how how long did it take to kind of get to that point where it felt your relationship kind of grew from it where you moved you all moved through the discomfort?
Desiree: It took time, it took like pain an awful like - like a fucking cryfest it in a museum. You know like it took like meetings in neutral spaces like a Pain Quotidien or MoMA without like you're like, well we can't have a huge knockout fight in the public space. And then of course you do. It’s like great. All right let's try again next week. It takes a lot of discomfort. But like that's the thing about a lot of big things in life though or things that matter. It can be fucking unpleasant for years at a time. And it's. I think a lot of relationships and also like professional navigation is enduring some discomfort.
Cristen: When we come back, Desiree turns that discomfort into her show, The Bisexual.
Caroline: Plus, a very important PSA on queefing!
Cristen: Honk if you’re excited!
Caroline: Stay tuned!
[Midroll ad break 2]
[Clip from Appropriate Behavior]
Character: May I help you?
Shirin: Um, I’m looking for the grownup underwear of a woman in charge of her sexuality and not afraid of change?
Cristen: We’re back with Desiree Akhavan, and that’s a clip from her 2015 debut feature film, Appropriate Behavior, which she co-wrote, directed and starred in.
Caroline: Her character Shirin might sound familiar: She’s the daughter of Iranian immigrants who is kind of a hot mess and hasn’t come out to her family as bi.
Cristen: Yeah. Desiree got tons of praise for Appropriate Behavior, and the headlines put her sexuality front and center … like “bisexual director Desiree Akhavan” or “bisexual Iranian-American filmaker Desiree Akhavan” … or perhaps the most reductive label ... “the bisexual Lena Dunham, Desiree Akhavan.”
Caroline: Desiree realized that being described over and over again as the bisexual made her feel some type of way
Desiree: Well it's interesting because it's become antiquated in the past few years. At first it was just invisible and like you were gay or you were straight. It felt like a constant like, I don't know, like a little bit of an Achilles heel or like a half-assed homosexual. But I also felt disingenuous saying anything else. But at the same time now I feel like people in their 20s are - or even people who are my age but who haven't been in serious relationship with women yet, or same-sex relationships, like think that bisexual is excluding gender-queer and trans folk, and I don't see it that way. But now there seems to be a real like antiquated idea of the bisexual. Which is what's funny that when I finally made the show the word itself became obsolete, which is just kind of my luck.
Cristen: It seems like though, it's - it's like bisexual can't catch a break.
Desiree: I know.
Cristen: Because there is initially you know the whole the idea of like gay, straight or lying, and then you know exactly what you're saying of now we almost like fast forwarded through - like we recognize that bisexual erasure was happening but by the time that recognition happened, queer became sort of reclaimed and more of the go-to terminology for millennials, yes, but even more so I think with Gen Z, and I wonder why you think that is like. And do you think that it is a useful term?
Desiree: It's - I blame Anne Heche. I really do.
[Clip from the Oprah Winfrey Show]
Oprah: How did you meet Ellen
Ann: Oh, I saw Ellen across a crowded room. I was not gay before I met her. I never thought
About it. I never...
Oprah: That confuses me.
Ann: You know what, nobody could have been more confused than me. But it was very clear from the second I saw her that this was something more powerful than anything I could’ve controlled.
Desiree: I really just think that Anne Heche came out the perfect time for us to like we're like, OK Ellen's out, maybe I can wrap my brain around it. I don't know. I mean whatever it like she's kind of a masculine woman. All right great. Like I'm still on the fence. Oh but - but she's in love with that pretty white girl. OK. Like I can I can see what they are. And then that pretty white girl fucking broke her heart and then dated men, and you're like, Fuck that that bitch. Fuck that bitch, she can't be trusted, and that's that's why bisexual is really taboo as a word, and we had to come up with a brand new one like pansexual or gender queer - or gender-queer means something different, I'm sorry I meant to say queer. It's interesting, though, like I'll meet women who've never been - just like hooked up with other women here. Sorry I'm - I'm being, I'm passing judgment, I don't mean to consciously pass judgment, but women who have not been in same-sex relationships who are like, I'm queer, I don't like that term bisexual, it's so, I don't like labels, and I want to say like, You know what, I like labels because I had to fight for this one. Like I have a very strong visceral reaction to that. I'm being an ass. I'm going to get shit for this. I'm sorry. I feel like I already need to apologize. But also I want to say like only love for the kids who are making a new way for themselves now. Like there’s a different relationship to gender than there was when I was growing up, and if I like I I get it and I get why there needs to I get why that generation wants a lack of label and a lack of definition that they're living a much more queer life. It's a different - It's a different story. I think just sometimes I get a little possessive over or defensive over this title and the fact that people judge it in the way that they do. I think it's an unspoken judgment.
Cristen: Do you think it's possible for bisexuality to kind of lose the baggage at any point?
Desiree: It's just a matter of semantics, and I don't think the word is gonna get better. Like I don't think we're gonna reclaim that word. I think all of us to just be like I'm pansexual. I guess that's what I'm thinking. Yeah. I don't think I think it might be too late, but it's who cares. It's a word. Like people are cool with the behavior.
Cristen: Well so OK. We want to dive more into the bisexual, the show now available on Hulu to binge. The elevator pitch was what if a lesbian did the worst thing in the world a lesbian could do and became interested in men. So why examine bisexuality through a lesbian lens, and kind of what did you want to convey in that?
Desiree: To me that was the way to sink my teeth into it into the shame and doing it from a gay perspective as opposed to the narrative of a straight person who finds themselves with all the baggage that you get with your first gay relationship. I thought this was a flip on that and also from a very queer point of view, which was something I hadn't seen on screen before. And also it felt like the ultimate taboo that you could do from that perspective. Like not that I think bisexual is the ultimate taboo. I just think that from the perspective of a woman who's been in a very serious long-term relationship for all of her adult life with another woman to then do this would open up a really weird can of worms dramatically. Of like OK, so what are the conversations we have after that. What's the sense of betrayal specifically, like you have one sense of betrayal when you fall in love with another person or when you fuck another person after you leave your ex of 10 years. But then like what if that other person is a different gender and so much of your commonality was built around the fact that you were both gay.
[Clip from The Bisexual]
Sadie: Can I ask how long you’ve been fucking that guy?
Leila: We’re not seeing each other anymore.
Sadie: Was it just sex or did you like him?
Leila: It wasn’t just sex.
Sadie: You know it’s funny. I blame myself for not being able to satisfy you. How long have you fancied men? Why didn’t you tell me?
Leila: Because it didn’t matter. I was in love with you. It wasn’t relevant.
Sadie: It’s relevant
Cristen: So Desiree. There’s a scene where Leila first attempts — emphasis on attempts — to have sex with a cisgender dude. Who, side note, is really fucking hot. Like objectively, he’s just a really hot dude. So yeah I was wondering if you could if you could describe that scene and sort of the feels that it encompasses.
Desiree: So I just really wanted to see a woman in her 30s have to maneuver around a penis for the first time and like that sheer terror that you most girls experience as teenagers as a grown woman who's like has sexual agency and knows what's up and knows her body and then suddenly is like thrown for a curve ball.
[Clip from The Bisexual]
Character: Ow
Leila: Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, I’m not really sure how to do it with my hands, but I’m just gonna go ahead and use my mouth
Character: No no it’s OK you don’t have to do that
Leila: No, no, it’s cool. I’m gonna go ahead and stick it in my mouth
Character: I think we should have a breather
Cristen: It's I think very relatable scene.
Desiree: I just think a lot of the joy of making a sex comedy is that kind of shit, like what's just absurd about loving and fucking in life.
Cristen: Yes. Yes there's a terrific I say to. I've never said this phrase before but there's a terrific queefing scene in the bisexual in episode three, and we did read that you were especially pumped to include this episode to include queefing. Do we need more queefs onscreen? I mean I'm half joking, half serious though because queefing like, come on.
Desiree: Yeah I think it goes back to that conversation about sex on screen and how it doesn't reflect sex as I know it to be in life and how I don't think it's enough of a dramatic vehicle either. Like I think there's so many missed opportunities to get into the nitty gritty of the way people have sex, and that to me felt like such a missed opportunity to show the way. So in that sequence it opens episode three, and it's showing the difference between in the same house. So Leila rents a room from this straight Irish guy and who's a professor and sleeping with one of his students, and she starts sleeping with one of his friends who is a straight guy, a cis guy. And it's a montage juxtaposing between Gabe the roommate and his his 20-something-year-old lover
[Clip from The Bisexual]
[Queef sound]
Gabe’s girlfriend: That was my vagina. Not a fart.
Gabe: OK
Desiree: and Leila and this guy she's sleeping with
[Clip from The Bisexual]
[Queef sound]
[laughter]
Desiree: They both respond to it really differently. And I just wanted to have a queef on screen I wanted to show that as a vehicle for like OK, they have different relationships to their bodies and also different relationships to like to weirdness, to like you know not being suave all the time.
Caroline: And learning to deal with queefs as part of that.
Cristen: It's got to come out.
Desiree: Yeah I kind of like I know it's banal and silly and stupid and like fart adjacent, but I think like fart-adjacent shit is telling.
Caroline: Yeah. I just I'm thinking of one particular experience where, yes there was a queef, but then it was like the most epic queef because I got up to walk down the hall, and it continued, it just — I was like filled like a hot air balloon. I don't know how my body was able to handle that much air inside of it in places where it shouldn't be.
Desiree: But we because in some positions that's what happens. It just is a matter of positioning, and you never know. I mean it's always a surprise to me, and you’re just suddenly like, whoa I can't control that.
Cristen: We talked a lot obviously about bisexuality and your experience with coming out and processing all of that. Do you have any advice for listeners who also are are bi and don't might feel uncomfortable with that. What would your advice be?
Desiree: It's the same advice I give to to people who tell me like, What's your advice for becoming a director. And it's to enable yourself. That's the thing, is like to have the sense of entitlement or the sense of ownership to be like. I'm going to blindly have faith in my own taste and my own instincts and my own opinions and create the space for myself. Create that space for yourself and don't wait for someone else to make it OK. Do it yourself. If you wait for that you might be waiting a long time. And if I had waited for that I never would have made shit.
Cristen: And make shit she did! If you’re interested, The Bisexual is available on Hulu now.
But Carolne, she also directed the Sundance Award-winning film The Miseducation of Cameron Post about a gay conversion camp, and we didnt even talk about it.
Caroline: We didn’t even have time to get into it! Tell us YOUR thoughts: What movies or TV shows shaped your ideas about sex and romance growing up? Did Desiree’s experiences with bisexuality resonate with you? How do you feel about the word ‘bisexual’? We’d love to hear from you. Let us know on social @unladylikemedia.
Cristen: You can also email us at hello@unladylike.co or comment on the episode thread in our Facebook group.
Caroline: Head on over to our website, unladylike.co, to find this episode’s sources. While you’re there, sign up for our newsletter to get good-news updates about women in the world every Wednesday.
Cristen: And, we’ve got an exciting announcement for you! In our eternal efforts to make Unladylike inclusive, we now have a transcript of this week’s episode available at unladylike.co. Plus, we’ll be doing more transcriptions in the future. Just head over to unladylike.co, click on this episode, and you’ll see a link to the transcript.
Caroline: Unladylike is produced by Nora Ritchie and Sam Lee. Abigail Keel is our senior producer. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing, sound design, and additional music is by Casey Holford. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Daisy Rosario. Special thanks to Brendan and the Stitcher LA studio for their help.
Cristen: We are your hosts, Cristen Conger
Caroline: And Caroline Ervin. Next week June Diane Raphael tells us what we should take on when it comes to politics … and friendships.
June: I don't know who has time to fucking eat lunch at a restaurant with people but I don't. And I am like you know everyone is always I like want to grab lunch. Like no I don't. I don't have time to have lunch. You know. And so now I'm very comfortable just like not taking on lunch. I'm not eating lunch with people. It's not anything I can do.
Caroline: Make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike so you don’t miss our episodes.. Find us on Stitcher, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Cristen: And remember, got a problem?
Caroline: Get unladylike.
[Blooper]
Desiree: I remember the first time I went downtown — I mean if you’re catching my drift right — to
Caroline: You’re not talking about commuting
Desiree: The first time I went downtown I was like Oh God this is really gonna separate the men from the boys, like the tourists from the locals. And I remember I went downtown, and it was like coming home. I was like, I’ve come home.
[Stitcher sting]
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