Bethany W Pope
As many of you already know, Kate Pryde finally came out of the closet this Wednesday, in the phenomenal 12th issue of Marauders. This was an event that was forty years in the making (writers have been hinting at her bisexuality since her inception) and the execution (though long delayed) was masterful. The celebration of her resurrection was peppered with the heavy-handed subtext that has formed the corpus of her queerness. She had a mini-moment with Rachel (who her creator, Chris Claremont, has long described as Kitty’s soulmate) and a full-body tackle with Magik before all of that subtext exploded into Text with that beautiful kiss.
Loads of people are going to complain that Kate’s first kiss as an Out woman wasn’t with one of the two ladies she’s spent the last few decades flirting with, but that’s often how it goes in real life. When you’re first Out, you’re filled with an odd mixture of supreme confidence (I’m finally ME! Look out, World) and crippling vulnerability (ohmygod, what if my loved ones can’t accept who I am?!?) so it makes perfect sense that the person you’d practice your new confidence on wouldn’t be anyone who actually matters to you. Kate liked her tattoo artist. She was very cute. They’d just shared a very intimate experience (any time fluids are exchanged, it’s intimate— even if one of those fluids is ink) and (most importantly) Kate was under no obligation to ever see this person again if it went badly. The tattoo artist was basically the perfect person for Kate to test and confirm her new understanding of her sexuality with.
Unlike Bobby’s unfortunate coming-out experience, Kate’s was natural, beautiful, and not damaging to anyone involved.
And speaking of Bobby, his relationship with Kate has suddenly sprung into a new focus, since they were both struggling with the same thing. It’s true that Kate is bisexual (she’s had as much on-page attraction to men as she’s had to women — never forgetting that many of those seemingly ‘straight’ relationships were deeply problematic, but more on that later) and therefore she’s only been hiding part of her sexuality and not the whole thing, but since it is impossible for a person to have a successful relationship with anyone if they are spending all of their energy lying to themselves, their previous fake-straight relationship histories were very similar. As a bisexual nonbinary person, I can tell you that none of my relationships (straight-presenting or otherwise) worked at all until I had finally accepted who and what I am. The idea that bisexuals have it easier because they can just ‘choose’ to be in straight relationships is bullshit. A bisexual person is never in a straight relationship. Because we’re not fucking straight. If we’re wasting our lives pretending to be straight (even if we’re AFAB people who date exclusively men) our relationships will crumble from the inside out, every time, no matter how much we love the straight people we are with.
I’m not saying that bisexual people always wind up in same-sex or same-sex-presenting relationships — though that’s what often happens in TV and movies. Bi-erasure is a massive problem, in part because it’s easier for (bad) writers to simply declare that the bi person was secretly gay or a lesbian the whole time. Or worse, they’re depicted as ‘faking it’ (in either direction) for attention. I’m an AFAB nonbinary bisexual person who is married to a cis (not 100% straight) guy. I’ve had girlfriends. Those relationships failed because I had internalized an incredible amount of guilt (I didn’t want to like women, but I couldn’t help it, and I didn’t have enough of what I thought of as ‘willpower’ to stop) and at the same time, my ‘straight’ relationship kept imploding because I felt like I was lying to my partner all the time, even though I’d never cheated on him. Accepting my sexuality allowed me to be fully invested in my relationship for the first time in my life.
Kate’s history with men has always been a little problematic. She tends to fall for guys who are inappropriately older (a legal adult, when she was 13; a 30-something spy when she was 17) or else who are, for various reasons, unable to fully commit to her (see: Bobby and Starlord). Her attraction to men is genuine, but she’s spent a lot of time and energy sabotaging it — because she wasn’t ready or able to give her whole self.
Sometimes, it takes a traumatic event to make you face the truth of yourself. For me, that event was rape. For Kate, it was her death — and her struggle to return to life. There’s a reason that her reaction to seeing Rachel for the first time at her ‘Welcome Home’ party packed such an incredible punch. It’s true that Magik gave her an unsubtle full-body hug, but as Claremont said, Rachel is (possibly) Kate’s one true love. The child in me, who saw her flirtations with that time-lost redhead, and who longed for what it seemed like Kate would never have, saw that look and wept at its significance.
Here’s to secrets, too long kept, and promises (finally, finally) fulfilled.