I’ve never met a bisexual person’. No, you’ve never met an out bisexual person.
‘I swear every girl is bisexual’. No, and you’re invalidating bisexuality by generalising it to all girls because apparently it’s a ‘norm’ that all girls fancy other girls.
‘You’re not really LGBTQ+ though, you’re just into girls sometimes’. No, I’m bisexual.
These are just some of the things I’ve heard about bisexuality around me as a bisexual person, before actually being ‘out’ yet. To say bisexuality is largely misunderstood in society would be an understatement. To say I entirely understand bisexuality myself would be a lie. All I do know is...I’m bisexual, we do exist and there’s no changing that.
To start, let’s take the second statement. It’s true that sexuality is a spectrum and everyone has their place on it, but to assume that bisexuality is applicable to all girls firstly excludes other identities, like people who identify as male or non-binary (who are rarely included in the bisexual umbrella), but also assumes liking both genders is a ‘phase’. A phase that is typical to the experience of womanhood.
The final statement, alluding to not ‘really’ being part of the LGBTQ+ community (despite the fact I am quite literally the ‘B’ in the abbreviation) is something known as ‘bisexual erasure’
The tendency to ignore, remove and falsify the existence of bisexuality in the news media, the film industry, academia and other sections of life. The erasure of bisexuality by heterosexual people and those in the LGBTQ+ community stems from a plethora of things, like the belief that bisexuality is a phase or we’re unable to choose between heterosexuality and homosexuality. Some of those in the community go as far to say being bi is a cop-out of real gayness, because I can go my whole life only being with the opposite sex and still identify as bisexual. While this is an important discussion, it is one that frankly requires a lot more research and one I will touch on in a later piece.
In the US, the majority of adults in the LGBTQ+ community identify as bisexual, at 54.6%, but are less likely to be out.
Is that because we don’t feel ‘gay’ enough? Can ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ even be quantified into an amount? Why does society restrict our sexuality to one or the other? Why are we made to feel our identity must be packed into a neat box, branded with a label and tucked away? As a whole, we’re either accepted or we’re not. We’re either the norm or the outsider. For many people, including me, it is much easier to ignore the ‘gay’ side of us and act as hetero as possible, for as long as possible.
Or, are we not out because there is no bisexual visibility to admire and gain confidence from?
I actively have to search for bisexual representation before it can exist in the repertoire of media I consume, whereas for straight people, specifically cis straight people, representation appears on the screen without a second thought. If you’re from a marginalised and underrepresented group you can probably agree that growing up, to see yourself in the public sphere was rather unlikely.
For the longest time the only bisexual representation I was exposed to was ‘Dayanara Diaz’, (played by the incredible Dascha Polanco) and ‘Lorna’ on Orange is the New Black (you probably could have guessed I was queer watching that show religiously throughout my teenage-hood) and Alison DiLaurentis from Pretty Little Liars. Currently there are more shows portraying bisexual characters but a few years ago when I began to come to terms with my sexuality, any hope at a bi-storyline was sparse.
Being a bisexual woman (wow, that feels weird to put out in the world) means any mention of bisexuality especially among cis heterosexual men is often met with over-sexualisation of wlw (women loving women). It’s bad enough that bisexual people are imagined as hyper-sexual, greedy and promiscuous, but the fact that our sexuality is anything more than a ‘girl-crush’ is rarely taken into account. Acceptance of our sexuality is rarely taken seriously. It’s titling for men when women express their attraction for women. No wonder it took me so long to accept being bi when the world around made me think it wasn't my real sexuality, but just a thought in the back of my head. On the flip side, bisexual men are often seen as a threat to heterosexuals, stemming from toxic masculinity whereby the combination of being male and liking men is ‘too gay’, and as well all know, being ‘gay’ is continually connoted with insult.
Meg-John Baker, the author of “Life isn’t Binary: On Being Both, Beyond and In-Between”, coins this as ‘the heterosexual matrix’.
Essentially, we’re socialised to assume people are either men or women and straight or gay. The in-between isn’t just a grey area but transparent - it doesn’t exist. Further still, we’re conditioned to swallow the idea that men and straight people are inherently superior to women and queer people, says Baker. This is why we have the social construct of ‘coming out’. One needs to express openly to the world what their sexuality is but only if their sexuality is not the ‘norm’. While I've seen comical TikTok’s and memes of people ‘coming out’ as straight, it sadly doesn’t have the same effect. It doesn’t have the social shame, the stigma and the years, for me anyway, of internalised homophobia.
This social construct of coming out, which ironically I’m doing now, in a way further
oppresses queer people into thinking we have to validate our sexuality but telling the world… “this is what I am and who I’m attracted to. Yes,it is not the social standard but it’s who I am”. This is because, as Baker explains, in many areas of life men are seen as the norm and women as something different to that. As ‘gayness’ is often associated with femininity, straightness is measured against femininity and gayness. As you can probably guess, everything that fits in this umbrella of ‘straight’ is viewed as normal, everything else is, well, not.
Feeling abnormal for something so personal and individual to me (who I’m attracted to) is something I’ve dealt with for a while. Paired with my internalised homophobia, which manifested through denying that I am somewhat attracted to women or thinking (and I must admit, at times, hoping) this is a phase, is something I’ve never heard people talk about. Yet, I know most (if not all) bisexual people can relate.
I often have an icky feeling when I speak about my bisexuality, like it’s something to feel ashamed of. I now recognise this gross feeling of shame as internalised homophobia - not that I would ever be homophobic to anyone, but to hate that little part of myself was something I accepted. This, luckily, didn’t manifest into hating other queer people (I couldn’t even imagine having the smallest dislike based purely on their sexuality) but it did make it harder to accept that I am attracted to both genders. This, I’ve now reocgnised, is why ‘Pride’ is such an important and life-changing feeling, event and word for those in the LGBTQ+ community.
We’re forced by society to think we need to be ashamed of who we are. We’re conditioned to think queerness is next to otherness, which is next to strangeness (hence the etymology of the word ‘queer’, initially defined as weird/strange).
To reject any of that socialisation, to unlearn shame and to accept pride is something so euphoric for queer people, including myself. It truly is an incredible feeling to be able to finally say…
...I’m proud.
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