Margaret Cho on pansexual superheroes, TV throuples, and sex toy cleaning tips

MC: I think that it’s an unusual setup on something like HGTV, but it’s not that unusual in the wild. If you ever go on an alternative dating app, there are apps specifically for throuples. I’ve been in a few—quite a few, actually. I don’t find them as successful as a quartet, because with throuples, you have the potential for really intense triangulation. That’s just the natural impetus when there’s an odd number, is that you’re going to have people ganging up on other people. It’s strange, but it seems to be inevitable. But when you have a quartet, there is an equanimity. If it’s two couples, then there’s a sort of an agreement that happens. I think it’s more long-lasting. It’s also much more suburban and easily closeted, because nobody questions two couples on vacation. It’s very pervertible. Like a convertible, but a pervertible.Something that I found in my experience as polyamorous person—not so much anymore, but in my younger days—[is that] you do have to have a lot of energy to do all of that. You need a lot of iron supplements, or maybe wheatgrass. Take your vitamins if you’re going to be engaging in a polyamorous relationship—or more than one! But I do love the fact that you have a throuple on this house hunting show! It’s not like when shows like Donahue or Ricki Lake would have shows about “unusual arrangements.”AVC: Totally. MC: They would have these people on, and the whole thing would be about the relationship. But this was actually a very practical show about, “We need to figure out how we’re going to fit our family—which is basically a blended family—into a house.”AVC: When you see depictions of polyamory on TV, you often see the two women-one man throuple, which on the one hand seems to me, as a bisexual woman, like living the dream. But on the other hand, I wonder if it reinforces the stereotype of bisexual women where, like, you put a quarter in and a threesome comes out. You know what I mean?MC: That somehow it’s performative homosexuality for the male’s pleasure. And it really isn’t like that—although also, on those dating apps, everybody is looking for a “unicorn,” which is a slightly younger bisexual woman who will not be threatened by the alpha female in the relationship, but will be there to pleasure everyone. And I think that that’s a myth, too. I don’t think that there are that many unicorns in the wild. I think that it’s actually this au pair fantasy, a nanny fantasy come to life. I don’t know very many [arrangements like that], despite being in alternative sexual communities for my entire adult life. But I do think that polyamory is something that is becoming more mainstream. I think people are realizing the finite nature of monogamy, and as they always do, they look to the queer community for what to do. That’s always what’s happened. And so again, for me, polyamory is always centered within queerness. Just the practicality of it, I guess. Or the nature of it. You’re thinking differently, so you’re going to live differently.

MC: I love it, because you’re seeing the progression of their lives. I love the institution of . I want to see them grow up more. I want to see them with different haircuts and stuff. It’s really, really important to me. And I’m really glad that there’s a different approach. The old L Word had lots of differing views on trans women and trans men, and now we’ve got to approach that in a different way. I think that we have to grow up as a community, and I embrace it. I’m so excited about it. AVC: It seems things are forever changing in the queer community space. MC: Yes. Because we have to be adaptable to the way that we grow up and the way that we change, and to welcome that change. Because for so many years, the queer community was operating at a limited capacity because of AIDS. We had a huge number, almost an entire generation, of people gone. And so it’s about this generation growing up without elders. There’s a lot that is missing that we need to make up for. And we’re doing that through social media, through young queer influencers, through young queer activism. So I think that we’re really getting a hand from younger people, which I think is really important.

AVC: This scene has been described as a good summation of pansexuality. Would you agree?MC: Yeah! It’s very matter of fact. It’s just, whatever I feel like, and it’s okay. It’s almost that arbitrary of a decision: Red or white? It depends on what I’m having that day. It depends on what I’m feeling, and that’s true with sex too. That’s it. I just want the bigger bottle of wine—white wine, red wine, whatever!