I have just had another futile conversation with my mother. Out of the blue she told me I was unhappy because I didn't have a real family. I might as well say at once that not everyone reading this will be sympathetic to my point of view. You see, I'm bisexual. I am also non-monogamous, but I have to be very careful to keep those two statements in different sentences, because so many people think that they mean the same thing. That is why I can't be totally sure what it is about my lifestyle that my mother disapproves of.

Since coming out to her nearly a year ago I've had such a wide range of responses, starting with "your boyfriend will give you AIDS", even though we use condoms, and as an activist I have probably been exposed to more safer sex information than most straight people. At one point she concluded that there must be fewer bisexuals now because they would all have given it up because of AIDS. Oddly enough I haven't heard any more of this argument since I pointed out that logically I ought to become a lesbian then! Later on I was told off for using my real name in an interview with the Guardian because it might "implicate" her at work (she is a primary school teacher). I feel that it is my name as well, and in any case I live over a hundred miles away, so no-one would connect her with-it unless she showed them.

If she were less muddled I might have less difficulty with the things we disagree on. if she thinks that having more than one lover is wrong, I can at least understand that, it isn't an unusual position after all. But she also sticks firmly to her belief that it must be a symptom of my unhappiness, caused by my sexuality. I know I'm not unhappy, but my word doesn't count for anything. She feels that to love or be loved by more than one person must equal no real love at all, even though she has three children. She often takes this further and casts doubts on my lovers' feeling for me, suggesting that I am "deluding myself".

Every time I phone I face these insinuations, and every- thing that is wrong with my life is subtly blamed on my sexuality, or "lifestyle", as she prefers to call it. It means that all the work I do producing magazines and newsletters, organising conferences, working on phonelines is seen as a waste of time. At first she tried to run down the content of what I was doing, saying it obviously wasn't a real magazine or whatever. Once when I tried to impress her with the bank balance for the conference she tried to imply that I would run off with the money. After the Guardian article, when she could no longer deny me some degree of success, she decided that I was wasting my obvious talents - not that she had ever found them so obvious before. She tells me that by writing only about sexuality I have lost all chance of becoming a real writer, even though she hasn't read the magazine and has no idea what I write about (it covers quite a wide range). I don't think she realises how hurtful it all is.

The reason I wanted to write here about these problems is that I think a lot of even more enlightened parents would have sympathy with my mother. We all comfort ourselves at times that things are not worse, but some parents, and some parents of gay children can fall into this trap too easily. So what- ever their child is, something else has to be labelled as "worse". After all at least he/she isn't HIV positive or a transvestite, or worse still a transsexual. At least he has a regular partner, a regular job, and she has been known to wear a skirt. They could almost look normal if you squint a bit. And at least I'm not like those terrible parents who would throw their child out of the house. I still love them, whatever they may have done.

This is the kind of representation which dominates the supposedly friendly media. It has helped a lot of very unhappy parents come to terms with their children's sexuality, and I believe it has only caused more confusion for parents of people like me. Parents of totally gay children often say their child was born that way, and so avoid "blame" for bringing them up "wrong". This excuse doesn't work for bisexuals. After all, as a mother of a friend so charmingly put it "if you can be normal why don't you just try harder?" But if our sexuality isn't "wrong" in the first place then we shouldn't need an excuse. I am not bisexual because I can't help it. I'm bisexual, at least in part, because sex is good, and sex, and love, with men and women is even better.

The media has also given us a stereotypical view of how children should come out. But when I came out to my mother it was not a soap-opera scene of tears and recriminations and eventual making up. I was bloody angry with her, as I suspect a lot of children are, for bringing me up with such a limiting view of the world, for not understanding the life I had never told her about in so many words. I was angry because she'd been so dense about my hints (I know it's possible to misunderstand "girlfriend", but "ex-girlfriend"?). It wasn't the ideal situation - I was on the phone and I ended up hanging up. The next time she phoned she acted as if it had never happened.

I suppose the problem for me in a way is that my mother is not a particularly homophobic person. If she was I would feel justified in not speaking to her. She's never told me I'll go to hell or accused me of abusing children. After much tedious lecturing from me she's given up her comments about AIDS. She still helps me out financially, even though I'm 26. She's still speaking to me - and so I feel obliged to go on speaking to her, and giving her the facts she doesn't want to hear. I wonder how long we expect this to go on for. The only message she seems to have really taken in is that she mustn't reject me, and so she ends every argument with "we do still love you", as if that makes everything else she has said all right. At this point I have a lot of sympathy for a friend who refuses to come out to his mother, in case, he says, she says "Of course we still love you. In spite of everything you are our son."

Last updated 4th March 2000