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What do bisexuals want anyway?
Bisexuals want everyone to remember that they exist.
They'd like people to be accepting of their sexuality, and they'd like the myths and stereotypes associated with it to go away. But primarily, they want to people to say 'straight, gay, lesbian and bisexual', and recognise them all as things a person could be. They're not going to quibble with that list growing longer, with asexuals, pansexuals and sapiosexuals joining it, or even with it being referred to as the Whole Sort Of General Sexuality Mish Mash, as long as it's recognised that some people fancy both men and women, and this is OK.
This shouldn't be hard. And I really do believe that when it finally happens, most bisexual activists will fold up their purple banners, put their knitting away and join their queer colleagues in the portfolio of causes that affect bisexuals as part of a wider group: heteronormativity in society, equal marriage rights, recognition of non-traditional family structures, safer sex. Awareness of bisexuality is the issue that affects bisexuals as bisexuals, and yet otherwise intelligent, clueful people fail at it time after time.
Bisexuals are one of those groups - dyslexics are another - which are often so invisible that one of the main forms of discrimination against them is a scepticism about whether they exist at all. This is not a problem gay people have faced much, which may explain why they often find it hard to understand. Lesbians in Victorian times were ignored relative to gay men, certainly (although the story the Queen Victoria herself didn't believe they existed and so left them out of the Labouchère amendment is a myth), but recently the problem has not been that nobody thought homosexuality existed. Certainly they thought it should be illegal, they thought people could be cured of it and they thought it stopped people being fit to be around children. Some people still think all of those things, and that's a prejudice that must be fought. But the cry of: 'we're here! We're queer! Get used to it,' has always been one of taking a sexuality people were in no doubt existed, and putting it very much in their faces.
Not so with bisexuality. If people think about bisexuality at all, they tend to think of it as an experiment, a transitional phase some people pass through on the way to being gay. Or (as someone said to me at BiFest) it's a lie to themselves and those around them, because they don't want to accept their 'true' sexuality. No men are truly bisexual, and women only flirt with it to get men into bed. Or it's the sexuality of someone out-of-control and indiscriminate. But mostly, it's simply forgotten as an option.
One real problem is that it's very hard for many bisexuals to be visibly bisexual. Bisexuals in long-term monogamous relationships (and I know many) pass through society unnoticed. Polyamorous bisexuals get noticed, as do men who cheat on their wives with gay lovers, and that means that even people who accept that bisexuality exists think of it in terms of sleeping around, often furtively. Admit you're bisexual, and otherwise sane and lovely people will immediately think you want to sleep with (a) them and (b) their partner. If you're female and they're male, they will try to set this up so long as they can watch. I wish I were joking, but I've seen it happen too many times.
None of this would matter much if we lived in a society where sexuality was a matter of free individual choice; where, if you had a sexual preference shared by no other person on the planet, so long as it was consensual that was accepted as a perfectly valid way to be. We don't, though. It's just about accepted that a teenager coming to terms with their sexuality may be gay, even if it's the sort of thing you try to keep from the grandparents, who 'wouldn't understand and need to be protected from any sudden shocks'. But a bisexual teenager will usually find that, while they may have some leeway to 'experiment', they're soon going to have to choose between the two options, or be labelled as 'indecisive' or 'confused'. This is why the common complaint from people like Stonewall that 'but surely when we say "gay" you realise that includes bisexuals' doesn't wash. Gay boys aren't supposed to fancy girls, and young lesbians aren't supposed to fancy boys. Young bisexuals may fancy both, and there's nothing wrong or odd about that.
The same is true of older bisexuals, of course. I think it's especially damaging for people just discovering their sexual identity to have 'bisexual' effectively censored from their lexicon like a sexuality Newspeak, but things aren't so very much better for adults. This is why bi space - somewhere where the vast majority of people are openly bi or bi-friendly - is so valuable. It's also rare; it only generally happens at explicitly bi events. I don't want to make claims that are too bold here. I know several people - bi and otherwise - find many bi spaces unsettling, and often perceive them, rightly or wrongly, as being highly sexually charged. But I've also seen many people, who've spent their entire life around people who will either disbelieve or judge them if they say they're bisexual, come into a space where it's just accepted, and find that they can suddenly relax and be themselves for the first time ever. It's a beautiful thing to behold, and to have someone describe first-hand to you, and it's one of the things that keeps me in bi activism year after year.
Lest my vision look too rose-tinted, I fully accept that there's a lot that could be better about what for want of a better term I'll call the 'UK bi community' (I'm sure bisexuality exists; I'm less sure about the UK bi community, and I've been a central part of it for over five years, so I should know). It could be a lot more diverse; it's very white and middle-class, and small enough that a lot of people in it know each other, which looks cliqueish even if it isn't. It runs a certain type of event - workshops, discos, pub meets, the odd sauna - and not everyone wants to go to those. But if it didn't exist, a lot of people who've been helped by it would be a bit lonelier, a bit less certain of their sexuality.
So please, try to remember that bisexuals exist. I would, for example, take it as a personal favour if you're at the LGBT London Pride Parade on Saturday, if you wouldn't sing Making Your Mind Up to the London Bisexuals walking group. Worryingly, this has got worse in recent years - there was one solitary person doing it in 2006, and several groups last year. More generally, don't assume that because you've only known someone to have a partner of a particular gender, they can't possibly be bisexual. In fact, training yourself out of assuming a person's sexuality at all is a good thing.
I realise among my immediate Dreamwidth reading circle I'm probably preaching to the choir here (although I'm interested to know which bits you disagree with). I'm experimenting with writing for a more general audience on this journal; even if no one who doesn't know me ever reads this, I'm trying on a different tone? voice? for size. Think of it as an experiment; it's a phase I'll probably grow out of soon.
Note: I ... am not bisexual, but I've been a bi activist and helped run most of the bi events in London for the past five years. I'm reasonably confident that I know whereof I speak, but if ten actual bisexuals rely to this post to point out that I'm talking rubbish, listen to them, not me. ;-)
They'd like people to be accepting of their sexuality, and they'd like the myths and stereotypes associated with it to go away. But primarily, they want to people to say 'straight, gay, lesbian and bisexual', and recognise them all as things a person could be. They're not going to quibble with that list growing longer, with asexuals, pansexuals and sapiosexuals joining it, or even with it being referred to as the Whole Sort Of General Sexuality Mish Mash, as long as it's recognised that some people fancy both men and women, and this is OK.
This shouldn't be hard. And I really do believe that when it finally happens, most bisexual activists will fold up their purple banners, put their knitting away and join their queer colleagues in the portfolio of causes that affect bisexuals as part of a wider group: heteronormativity in society, equal marriage rights, recognition of non-traditional family structures, safer sex. Awareness of bisexuality is the issue that affects bisexuals as bisexuals, and yet otherwise intelligent, clueful people fail at it time after time.
Bisexuals are one of those groups - dyslexics are another - which are often so invisible that one of the main forms of discrimination against them is a scepticism about whether they exist at all. This is not a problem gay people have faced much, which may explain why they often find it hard to understand. Lesbians in Victorian times were ignored relative to gay men, certainly (although the story the Queen Victoria herself didn't believe they existed and so left them out of the Labouchère amendment is a myth), but recently the problem has not been that nobody thought homosexuality existed. Certainly they thought it should be illegal, they thought people could be cured of it and they thought it stopped people being fit to be around children. Some people still think all of those things, and that's a prejudice that must be fought. But the cry of: 'we're here! We're queer! Get used to it,' has always been one of taking a sexuality people were in no doubt existed, and putting it very much in their faces.
Not so with bisexuality. If people think about bisexuality at all, they tend to think of it as an experiment, a transitional phase some people pass through on the way to being gay. Or (as someone said to me at BiFest) it's a lie to themselves and those around them, because they don't want to accept their 'true' sexuality. No men are truly bisexual, and women only flirt with it to get men into bed. Or it's the sexuality of someone out-of-control and indiscriminate. But mostly, it's simply forgotten as an option.
One real problem is that it's very hard for many bisexuals to be visibly bisexual. Bisexuals in long-term monogamous relationships (and I know many) pass through society unnoticed. Polyamorous bisexuals get noticed, as do men who cheat on their wives with gay lovers, and that means that even people who accept that bisexuality exists think of it in terms of sleeping around, often furtively. Admit you're bisexual, and otherwise sane and lovely people will immediately think you want to sleep with (a) them and (b) their partner. If you're female and they're male, they will try to set this up so long as they can watch. I wish I were joking, but I've seen it happen too many times.
None of this would matter much if we lived in a society where sexuality was a matter of free individual choice; where, if you had a sexual preference shared by no other person on the planet, so long as it was consensual that was accepted as a perfectly valid way to be. We don't, though. It's just about accepted that a teenager coming to terms with their sexuality may be gay, even if it's the sort of thing you try to keep from the grandparents, who 'wouldn't understand and need to be protected from any sudden shocks'. But a bisexual teenager will usually find that, while they may have some leeway to 'experiment', they're soon going to have to choose between the two options, or be labelled as 'indecisive' or 'confused'. This is why the common complaint from people like Stonewall that 'but surely when we say "gay" you realise that includes bisexuals' doesn't wash. Gay boys aren't supposed to fancy girls, and young lesbians aren't supposed to fancy boys. Young bisexuals may fancy both, and there's nothing wrong or odd about that.
The same is true of older bisexuals, of course. I think it's especially damaging for people just discovering their sexual identity to have 'bisexual' effectively censored from their lexicon like a sexuality Newspeak, but things aren't so very much better for adults. This is why bi space - somewhere where the vast majority of people are openly bi or bi-friendly - is so valuable. It's also rare; it only generally happens at explicitly bi events. I don't want to make claims that are too bold here. I know several people - bi and otherwise - find many bi spaces unsettling, and often perceive them, rightly or wrongly, as being highly sexually charged. But I've also seen many people, who've spent their entire life around people who will either disbelieve or judge them if they say they're bisexual, come into a space where it's just accepted, and find that they can suddenly relax and be themselves for the first time ever. It's a beautiful thing to behold, and to have someone describe first-hand to you, and it's one of the things that keeps me in bi activism year after year.
Lest my vision look too rose-tinted, I fully accept that there's a lot that could be better about what for want of a better term I'll call the 'UK bi community' (I'm sure bisexuality exists; I'm less sure about the UK bi community, and I've been a central part of it for over five years, so I should know). It could be a lot more diverse; it's very white and middle-class, and small enough that a lot of people in it know each other, which looks cliqueish even if it isn't. It runs a certain type of event - workshops, discos, pub meets, the odd sauna - and not everyone wants to go to those. But if it didn't exist, a lot of people who've been helped by it would be a bit lonelier, a bit less certain of their sexuality.
So please, try to remember that bisexuals exist. I would, for example, take it as a personal favour if you're at the LGBT London Pride Parade on Saturday, if you wouldn't sing Making Your Mind Up to the London Bisexuals walking group. Worryingly, this has got worse in recent years - there was one solitary person doing it in 2006, and several groups last year. More generally, don't assume that because you've only known someone to have a partner of a particular gender, they can't possibly be bisexual. In fact, training yourself out of assuming a person's sexuality at all is a good thing.
I realise among my immediate Dreamwidth reading circle I'm probably preaching to the choir here (although I'm interested to know which bits you disagree with). I'm experimenting with writing for a more general audience on this journal; even if no one who doesn't know me ever reads this, I'm trying on a different tone? voice? for size. Think of it as an experiment; it's a phase I'll probably grow out of soon.
Note: I ... am not bisexual, but I've been a bi activist and helped run most of the bi events in London for the past five years. I'm reasonably confident that I know whereof I speak, but if ten actual bisexuals rely to this post to point out that I'm talking rubbish, listen to them, not me. ;-)
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Thank you for saying things so well. I may well be pointing people in this direction for good words which present us very well.
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And of course there have been times when 'homosexuality' as such wasn't perceived as existing because it was an activity rather than an identity.
Doesn't detract from your main point, of course.
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Bisexuals in long-term monogamous relationships (and I know many) pass through society unnoticed. - is where I fit in, and it's really only been since I started examining my heterosexual relationship over the past year as part of marriage preparation that I've been comfortable thinking of myself as bi.
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Read, read.
Re: Read, read.
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But I've also seen many people, who've spent their entire life around people who will either disbelieve or judge them if they say they're bisexual, come into a space where it's just accepted, and find that they can suddenly relax and be themselves for the first time ever. It's a beautiful thing to behold, and to have someone describe first-hand to you, and it's one of the things that keeps me in bi activism year after year.
because that was me about 3 years ago, when I first went along to Biphoria. And it would have done me a lot of good if I'd come across other bi people/bi information earlier as well as I spent an awful lot of energy angsting over whether this was real, whether I needed to have sex with a woman in order to be sure, whether I was just wanting to be edgy etc. By the time I found Biphoria, I'd worked most of that out but it would have been good to start earlier.