Was John Lennon Bisexual? | Page 24 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Sorry to necro this thread, but I just have to say as a bisexual person myself, the term “gay leanings” drives me up a wall and I’m highly resentful of it.  Sexual orientation in general is way more fluid than people think, for starters.  Let me clarify: Bisexual people do actually exist.  When one of us is in a relationship with a person of the same sex, we are not gay, we are still bisexual.  When one of us is in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex, we are still bi, we do not become straight because of who we’re partnered with.  Our partnership does not dictate our sexual orientation.  I’m a bisexual woman and when I’m with a man, I’m not straight.  I still find women attractive.  Same goes for if I’m with a woman.  I’m not a lesbian, and I still find men attractive.  

ANYWAY back on topic:  The John having “gay leanings” rumor does fascinate me, and what fascinates me most is when people speculate about him and Paul.  Now, as much as I find it grating that people write fanfiction shipping actual, living people (I take no issue with the shipping of fictional characters, mind you, it just seems disrespectful when the shipping involves real people who may stumble upon the stories online and feel creeped out by strangers shipping them with people who are no longer living and with whom they shared years of their life – I hope Paul, or John’s kids, haven’t found “McLennon” slash, lol), I can *kind of* see why people simply speculate about John and Paul.  It mostly has to do with the homophobic idea that two men can’t possibly be close and intimate with one another without being TOTALLY GHEY! 

So here’s my take just on J+P alone – it’s just my two cents and overpriced at that.  I wouldn’t even attempt to speculate on the dynamic between John and Brian Epstein because that dynamic is even harder to observe.  If anything did happen, I’d be mostly concerned about the power imbalance between Brian and John more than whether or not they had any kind of relationship beyond professional, but Brian was reportedly very lonely and probably craved for a normal and stable relationship he knew he may never have.  John was captivating and interesting and I could SEE Epstein becoming infatuated with him.  But at any rate, John and Paul had a really unique relationship and almost spoke their own language with each other, which anyone who’s ever been in a really close relationship of any kind (platonic or romantic) may have noticed happening in their own relationship.  For example, my husband and I have words and phrases we use with each other, and even some hand gestures, that if other people witnessed, wouldn’t be understood.  We didn’t sit down and orchestrate our “language,” but it manifested incrementally over years of bonding.  One observable example is that John and Paul did this weird spider-hand gesture thing with each other for years (which can be observed in some of the earlier interviews they did as a group with the press), and often when you listen to session tapes their speech to each other isn’t linear and cohesive, but they always “get” what the other one is telling them.  It was a relationship, and it was complicated and intense.  Even their significant others, friends, and colleagues made comments on how intertwined they were over the years.  It didn’t necessarily have to be sexual, but I would argue it was a KIND of romance (and some people have even affectionately called it a bromance).

The two themselves even talked about their partnership and the breakup and aftermath of it like people speak of the life and death of a marriage.  My opinion and observation about closeness and relationships is that it’s not impossible for two people of the same sex who lean towards preferring partners of the opposite sex to become very close and develop an intense bond like that of Lennon-McCartney.  It’s not as if the two men were bastions of marital fidelity, either.  They had dalliances with other women while in committed relationships, so it’s not out of the boundary of possibility that John may have had dalliances with men as well.  He may have even had a crush on Paul, at least during some of their time together, and why the hell is that completely out of the realm of possibility to some people?  Maybe it blew over and he got over it, or maybe he was in love with his partner and never had the nerve to do anything about it?  It’s not impossible, and I’m not sure why the possibility of such a thing existing offends people so badly on the Internet.  They were extremely important to each other their entire time of knowing one another, particularly in their formative, coming-of-age years, were forced to live in a bubble together during Beatlemania, and continued to be important to each other later on, even when they had a rift for some time, and even if they didn’t quite get back to the level of closeness they had pre-1970’s because of the trauma that relationship endured. 

Anywho, I will never say never to Lennon being bisexual, but I could be BI-ased (sorry, I know that’s a terrible pun, but I couldn’t resist) because I’m fortunate enough to be alive in an era where being bi is generally accepted.  If you think about it, in their time, the consensus was even more pointed towards the mentality that you not only must “pick a side” in terms of your sexual orientation, but also that if you WERE gay, you’d better well keep it a secret because it could ruin your life and jeopardize your safety (and the Beatles’ own safety was already in jeopardy as we all know) if people were to know, or at least if you were to openly admit and own it.  I can see John, knowing what we do conclusively know about him, being not only a highly intelligent person, but a bit of an iconoclast, being bisexual and aware of the fact that he liked women AND men, but feeling insecure about it because of society’s attitudes, and also knowing he couldn’t exactly go around telling everyone given the potential consequences.  Had he come of age today, he may well have been out and openly had relationship with both genders as many celebrities are today.  Human sexuality is way more fluid and flexible than we knew back then.  It could also explain Lennon’s extreme defensiveness when he was accused of sexual dalliances with men, knowing this about himself and maybe not accepting it, or at least feeling a lot of insecurity about it, because it was still such a taboo.  He even admits in a recorded interview just before his death that the Bob Wooler incident was sparked not just by drunkenness but his own insecurity about the issue itself.