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platy-with-a-pencil · 2 years

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WHERE ARE THE BISEXUALS?

Personal essay submitted to the zine The Femme Voice (2018)

Be it on TV or in daily life, for many years I struggled to find bisexual role models and spaces. Too straight to fit in with the gays, too gay to fit in with the straights. Bisexuals have their own set of struggles which few people outside of the spectrum will bother to understand.

In my early teens, there was a ‘bisexual boom’ in school. It was the first time I thought about labelling myself. Despite the ‘boom’, things were confusing as most people seemed to only want the label on a superficial, verbal level. Eventually, I ended up dating a classmate who I’d fancied for a while. One of my friends, who was throwing a birthday party on the weekend, pulled me aside and said my girlfriend and I couldn’t be together at the party because it’d make people uncomfortable. It upset me a lot, but not as much as when the relationship ended. Since then I discovered that dating boys is a lot simpler as they are an easy catch. Around that time I also realised that when we were gossiping excitedly about dating, my romance stories were simply not welcome if they featured a girl.

Some years later, watching Orange Is The New Black one night, Piper’s reluctance to ever come out to her parents as bisexual irritated me, as her family pressured her to decide ‘which team’ she played for.

It was isolating and frustrating.

Creators are still hesitant to use the word “bisexual”, the sexuality which shall not be named. I had now started university and had access to a lot of academic books on sexuality and despite this topic not being related to my main area of study I’d spend countless hours reading, doing research and compiling media and books which discussed relationships between women. Gay men have the biggest chunk of attention in mainstream media. Lesbians have a lot less in comparison, but still much more than bisexuals. Bi characters are usually portrayed as evil, using their sexuality as a means to achieve their goal. In contrast, they can be given the choice of sacrificing themselves for the greater good. Often, they end up with a man and if in a twist of fate they end up in a same-sex relationship, they are promptly killed. The message these characters are sending is clear: bisexuals don’t deserve a happy ending unless they end up with a man, and by doing so their identity is erased.

When I decided to officially come out to a small group of friends, it went great, except my best friend (who happens to be gay) brushed me off by saying I was only doing it for the attention. Bisexual started to feel like a dirty word and it wasn’t the first time I felt like this. Was I just confused about myself? I started to question whether I really liked women to be different or if it was genuine. Suddenly there were many boxes that I didn’t tick: I hadn’t had sex with a woman, I hadn’t kissed as many girls as I had boys, I didn’t frequent any LGBT+ spaces.

Where were the real bisexuals? I needed them to evaluate whether I dressed appropriately enough to be part of the group.

I signed up to a couple of dating apps only to see several women who openly wrote “no bisexuals” on their profiles. Meanwhile, I joined an LGBT+ society and failed to blend in with the crowd, hearing blatant biphobia from other queer people in that space.

It’s nothing against Bis, you do you, it’s just that they’re a risky gamble.

Speaking to a lesbian friend, she warned me that some LGBT bars were known for barring anyone that didn’t look a certain way from entering. I tried anyway and met more straight girls than I knew what to do with.

So, to tally up the results I had failed miserably in integrating myself with the gays and I hadn’t met any other bisexuals in the process.

In 2018, the infamous Netflix series ‘Insatiable’ airs. Expecting nothing but a weak excuse for a comedy, I was surprised to find an extremely relatable character called Bob Armstrong. Lawyer by day and beauty pageant coach by night, he has a wife he’s ardently in love with, despite his very feminine mannerisms and eye for fashion. Bob eventually receives a confession from another man and in a turn of events the two end up making out, leaving Bob confused: "Bisexuals are like demons or aliens. They don't exist." After experiencing identity and spiritual crisis, Bob decides “If [...] demons were real, maybe bisexuals were too.” Thus I found my life motto. There are positive bi icons out there, they are few, but they deserve recognition. Annalise Keating in How to Get Away With Murder, the lawyer with an unbeatable mind and Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn 99, a stony-faced police officer whose coming out was perfectly handled by the show.

It was becoming clear to me that I am who I am, despite not ticking imaginary boxes of what the Ideal Bisexual is like. The real issue here was something else. There is an agenda trying to silence and bury bisexual identities. To make matters worse, I had taken it on myself.

Recently, I went to a local kink night. I dabbled in BDSM for a couple of years now and in my experience, it’s much more of a safe space than groups with an LGBT stamp on them. I’d be barred at the entrance for not having enough kink gear on, but never for “not looking gay enough.” During the event, I got talking to a cute girl who was new to the local scene. Between drinks, she revealed her bisexuality. There was that immediate spark of excitement. We instantly connected, sharing our stories and struggles related to our identity. Unfortunately, we didn’t exchange numbers, but at least I know bisexuals exist after all.

#bisexuality #bi positivity #bi struggles #personal post

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platy-with-a-pencil · 2 years

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