Trumpeting against biphobia
Last Thursday’s episode was a dramatic one for several of Walford’s queer residents, but one moment stood out. The story of EastEnders fan favourite star-crossed sapphics, Eve and Suki (#SukEve) took an upsetting turn with Suki in hospital after she tried to leave her violent husband to run away with Eve, while Ben and Callum (#Ballum) are still coming to terms with the tragic death of Lola, the mother of Ben’s daughter. So far, so soapy. The other gays – Felix Baker and Bernadette Taylor – have had a quiet time lately, but what about noted bisexual Sonia Fowler?
Sonia, who has been played by Natalie Cassidy since 1993, has previously dated both men and women. It’s been five years since the end of her most recent and long-term relationship with a woman and in that time there has been ever-increasing queer representation on the show. Sonia has dated a couple of men in the last few years which is perfectly reasonable behaviour for a bisexual woman who continues to be bisexual. With changing writers and short memories in soapland – not to mention the fact that back here in reality a recent study has found that 7% of people (everyone, not just LGBTQIA+ people) changed sexual identity over a six year period – I’d been wondering how Sonia was identifying these days.
That was cleared up on Friday when she was benignly outed at a dinner party. Keanu Taylor (the aforementioned Bernadette’s brother, an ally) mentioned Sonia’s ex-girlfriend, and her current partner Reiss assumed he meant girlfriend in a platonic way. Sonia, the bicon that she is, casually came out – “I’m bisexual, I thought you knew that” – and went right back to her takeaway.
Reiss, nervous and socially awkward, responds with, “Cool cool cool… Blokes don’t get that option though, do they, to dip in and dip out? Not that I’d want to.”
To which Sonia, unsmiling, immediately replies, “That’s very biphobic.”
Unfortunately for Reiss, he doesn’t stop there and Sonia ends up leaving the table (a boundary-setting queen!) when he compares her identity with a ‘gap year’.
It sounds counterintuitive, but seeing biphobia happen and be named as such on prime time television felt empowering. “That’s very biphobic.” A sentence many of us have wished we could just straight up say to people in our lives, even loved ones, who make ignorant comments. I know that I’ve felt a bit lost at certain moments when the weight of trying to explain why a comment is hurtful feels too much and the word “homophobia” isn’t quite right, even though I know it’s the word people will understand.
As recently as last summer, Cassidy herself used the dreaded c-word: “Sonia’s sexuality is complicated. People come up to me and say: ‘Oh, you’re not a lesbian any more.’ But the truth is that Sonia can fall for anyone, man or woman.”
Too often in television, a character’s obvious bisexuality is couched in “complicated” or other obfuscating words. In real life people can and do identify however they like, but many of us use the word bisexual. To those of us lucky enough to be bisexual, Sonia’s queerness sounds far from complicated. It’s the easiest thing ever. It’s got a name and everything! To hear her make that clear on national television was a breath of fresh air.
The Phase 