What I love about gender is that it’s not final. It is fluid because it is an ever-expanding exploration. It is fluid because you are allowed to change how you feel about your identity throughout that exploration. Identity is a living, breathing entity that is subject to change. It is not necessarily stagnant or definitive. You may resonate with multiple identities in your lifetime or align with the same ones. All of it is beautiful. In my own journey around identity, I’ve consistently posed this question to myself: how do I celebrate and bravely claim labels without feeling beholden to them?
I identify as bisexual, meaning I’m attracted to more than one gender. There are a lot of misconceptions about bisexuals: we’re greedy, sexually voracious, untrustworthy, unreliable, we get bored, we want to have sex with everyone, we’re exclusive and binary, it’s just a phase and we’ll eventually realize we’re straight (in the case of women) or gay (in the case of men). Then there’s the misconception seen across all identities: you can’t be bisexual unless you’ve actually been with more than one gender.
Which to that last one, I say: identity is not determined or validated by a behavior, but by how you feel.
On top of these stigmas, bisexuality often gets erased. The flippant phrases everyone’s bisexual and it’s just a phase are microaggressions against the bisexual community. Though these statements sound like opposites, they yield a similar result: they make bisexuality feel less important and not worth talking about.
We can’t glaze over the bisexual community, for so many reasons. Over half of the LGBTQIA+ community identify as bisexual. Bisexuals face higher rates of violence, with 61% of bisexual women experiencing rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner (according to a 2010 survey by the NISVS). We can’t ignore the link between the hypersexualization of bisexuals and this kind of violence. The prevalence of biphobia and bi invisibility means a greater risk of poor mental health for bisexuals.
Brushing off bisexuality as just a phase invalidates that person’s experience. For the longest time, whenever someone asked me who my first kiss was, I would tell them that it was with a boy named Ben when I was 13 (a very sloppy, 7 minutes in heaven kiss). But that’s far from the truth. My first kiss was with one of my best (girl)friends when I was 12. But I didn’t count it because “kissing girls doesn’t count”. Well if it didn’t count, then what was that little pulse I was feeling in my brain and in my pants?
I grew up under the belief that you’re supposed to want boys or, ultimately, be doing things for them. When my friends and I would make out in the closet during our middle school sleepovers, we were practicing for the boys. The misogyny that is baked into bisexual stigma is not to be overlooked. It says, no matter what your gender is, if you’re bisexual, it’s just a temporary pit stop on your way to being with a man.
I think it’s important to point out the gravity of bisexual stigma and erasure but let’s also find some LEVITY! Because bisexual people are beautiful, complex, nuanced, important, and VALID. And if you get bored or you have an unreliable moment, it’s because you’re human, not because you’re bisexual.
I want to celebrate my bisexual community and everything you’ve taught me about claiming and expressing this very real and worthy identity. I also want to see you in any confusion or doubt you may feel around it. I’m there with you and I resonate with that too. Those feelings are part of the process and they don’t tarnish or minimize the wholeness of who you are.
I can’t wait to celebrate bisexuality tonight during our sex ed book club meeting. We’ll be meeting virtually tonight at 6:30pm est. Registration is required, so if you plan on joining, please use this link to register. You’re welcome to listen to this podcast and/or this one before we meet but if you don’t have time, no sweat! The idea is just to be together and have the space to say what’s on our minds and hearts around identity, pleasure, sex, and being a complex human.
Hope to see you tonight <3
Sarah