#I was thinking about it and how I transitioned without what I'd define as gender dysphoria

[satanfemme]

quick census 🐶

[leaves-lilies-and-esther]

Why being against trans rights as a feminist is bull

Generally I fall pretty neatly into line with the radfem line of thinking about things (anti surrogacy, anti sex industry, pro choice, anti beauty industry etc). And I don't think that radical feminists who disagree with me on this are evil or anything, but I do believe that it shouldn't be a priority and that this whole effort will be remembered badly.

"But the bathrooms-"

Letting trans women into female bathrooms does not increase sexual assault. According to Media Matters, "...the fear is baseless- completely unsupported by years of evidence from states that already have non-discrimination laws on the books." To give examples:

Rhode Island reported "no increase in sex crimes due to 2001 law"

Karen Richards of the Vermont Human Rights commission said she is "not aware" of any problems from a 2001 law

Jim O'Neill said he was "unaware of any sexual assault as the result of the CT gender identity or expression law" in Connecticut

If you search "Debunking the Big Myth about Transgender Inclusive Bathrooms" from Media Matters you can see the other twelve state level examples

There's also a very well written article from Time called "Transgender Bathroom: Advocates Say 'Predator' is a Myth" . They detail several locations like New York City and California which protect trans rights without seeing a spike in sexual assaults, the fact that school officials and police departments have not seen a spike either, and that several organizations dedicated to stopping violence against women all agree that bathroom rights aren't a threat.

Moreover, according to Vox's article "Anti-transgender bathroom hysteria, explained"- all of the incidences commonly cited of men dressing up as women or posing as a woman in order to commit sexual assault happened before a non-discrimination bathroom law was passed. Meaning that these laws don't cause sh*t.

But to add onto another point, there's a very good reason why we cannot simply say that women's bathrooms must be defined by sex alone. Which is that we end up exposing transgender or nonbinary youth to extremely avoidable violence instead.

According to an article from Harvard entitled "transgender teens with restricted bathroom access at higher risk of sexual assault", quote, "Transgender and non-binary teens face greater sexual assault in schools that prevent them from using bathrooms or locker rooms consistent with their gender identity." 36% of trans or nonbinary youth with restricted access had been sexually assaulted in the past year. In no world is that an acceptable number. Not only does restricting bathroom access not solve anything for cis women, it actively inflicts male violence on transgender women.

And even in the outlandish world where this wasn't enough of a reason, it also leads to cis women being policed on their appearance and how feminine they present in order to avoid looking trans. In Las Vegas a woman named Jay was kicked out because they mistook her for trans according to Advocate article 'cis woman mistaken as transgender records being berated in bathroom'. Aimee Toms in Danbury was similarly harassed, as was Jessica Rush in Dallas. There's several videos in the Vox article "Women are getting harassed in bathrooms because of anti-transgender hysteria". And guess what? This sort of policing what a cis woman can look like is only going to get worse as people continue to advocate against trans women in bathrooms.

And women's sports-

Any physical advantage that transgender people have in sports goes away several years after medical transition. According to the NBC article "trans women retain athletic edge after a year of hormone therapy"

(1) "For the Olympic, the elite level, I'd say probably two years is more realistic than one year" - namely, trans people have standard hormone levels if they wait two years after medical transition. "After two years, Roberts told NBC News, 'they were fairly equivalent to cisgender women'".

There were some limitations to the Roberts study, but there's also a 2015 Harper study backing this up.

(3) Joanna Harper, a medical physicist in Portland, already ran a study on this. "...found that trans women ran at least 10 percent slower after beginning hormones. And, relatively speaking, they did no better against cisgender female runners than they previously done against cisgender men".

Namely, as long as there's been a medical transition for several years, it's still a totally fair competition.

But laws which ban transgender women from sports have had the incidental effect of allowing for state-sanctioned genital inspections on minors. This sounds fake, right? But in Ohio Republicans have passed a bill which "...has a verification requirement, if someone is 'accused' or 'suspected' of being trans... she must go through evaluations of her external and internal genitalia, testosterone levels and genetic makeup." And believe it or not, they only had one transgender girl who was an athlete in high school. One! This is according to the Ohio Capital Journal's article "GOP passes bill aiming to root out 'suspected' transgender female athletes with genital inspection."

Similarly, Florida has just passed a ban on transgender students in sports in April 2021, with provisions similar to the Ohio law. "A dispute regarding a student's sex shall be resolved by the student's school or institution by requesting that the student provide a health examination... provides for 'routine sports physical examination' of students' reproductive organs, genetic makeup, or testosterone levels." This is according to Changing America, titled "Florida's new ban on transgender students in sports would allow schools to subject minors to genital inspections."

I don't know about you, but as someone who has enjoyed track, swim team, and basketball all through educational institutions- I don't want the government in my pants.

Beyond the creepy implications of the state demanding invasive inspections on literal children, this also goes back to the point I made on bathrooms above- that when we take spaces away trans people, we take spaces away from any woman or girl who society deems as presenting too 'masculine'.

As feminists we can absolutely support trans rights without compromising our integrity. And not only can we, we should.

Edited August 24, 2023: I wanted to add a section about the provisions of these bills for literal genital inspections. I regret that it wasn't in the original, but I remembered these articles earlier and thought that it was important to add here.

The other thing I did later the same day was take out the part referencing women like Caster Semenya competing in the Olympics and being removed because of high testosterone levels. Someone has kindly pointed out that these are intersex women, which the original article I had read referred to as cis. I feel that intersex women in athletics deserve their own discussion, and I haven't (a) read enough on the issue or (b) learned enough about the intersex community as a whole to take part.

[not-poignant]

This is the anon the said 'safe'. Your tags hit me hard, since I'm actually starting a transition but am avoiding hrt. I've been getting pushback on it, and been told I'm not really trans without it. I know what I want to change to feel like myself. Also what I don't want to change. That's probably why 'safe' was my choice. It sucks when you think you should belong, but still feel like you aren't good enough. It helped to hear you have felt the same. I just want to give you a big virtual hug.

Ahhh I have a similar story, anon <333 I'm so sorry you went through it too.

Under a read more because it contains transphobia towards a nonbinary person from a binary trans person. My experiences are from a nonbinary lens, anon, so take the bits that are useful to you and ignore the rest, depending on where you sit on the trans spectrum <333

When I started realising I was transmasc (I'd known I was non-binary for a while) I remember that I talked to a trans man about it, he'd been going through the process for a couple of years at that point and we'd talked about that too at different points.

And I remember mentioning that I'd thought about hormones, but I was still on the fence because I'm nonbinary, not like 'binary trans' (i.e. I'm not going from point A to point B, where you move from AFAB to man or AMAB to woman), and I was talking about wanting they/them pronouns and maybe he/him pronouns at that point.

And he said: 'Oh cool, yeah, hopefully that helps until you decide for sure with testosterone and surgery.' I had this moment of like ??? and he was like 'when you realise and can be brave enough to commit to being a guy, I hope that goes really well for you.'

It was one of the most transphobic things I'd ever heard, not because it was said from a hateful place (it really wasn't, I'm still friends with this guy), but because it came from a friend, I was being very vulnerable during the conversation and it left me feeling like I didn't have a right to consider myself trans at all for about two years after that. It pushed me into this space where I'd been defined by a fellow trans person as a 'coward until I decided to be officially a man.' And then for two years I kept looking for that inside of myself, denying my non-binary-ness in favour of looking for a very clear and decisive 'I'm a man!' moment. It was a horrible period of time, gender-wise. Because being identified exclusively only as a man or a woman is dysphoric to me, so trying to do it to myself was like cutting at myself with an axe.

It's also very much like when gay and lesbian folk would say to me - back when I identified as bisexual - 'get back to me when you pick a side / become a real queer.' There's a real phobic bent among folks who are 'one or the other' (sighs) towards people who are in the liminal with this stuff and that's where they belong. And it hadn't occurred to me that I'd hear a version of that from a fellow trans person. You'd think I'd have learned, right?

He and I are still friends, but I stopped talking to him about all of my experiences as a trans and nonbinary person. It was clear to me, in that moment, he saw me as a much lesser version of an identity he'd embraced and was living. You know, how so many people think of nonbinary transmascs. (It's also frustrating, because trans men also don't need to have hormones or surgery to be trans men, and it makes me furious when people take this attitude with binary trans folk too, but I'm mostly focusing on my own experience here, of the myriad ways we encounter transphobia in the trans community).

I never heard anything quite like that again, but I've had one other trans guy be like 'when you're ready for testosterone, I'll support you' like he was waiting in the wings for me to 'fully make a decision to be 100% a man' which isn't a decision I can make, because I'm not 100% a man, lmao, I'm like 80% of one, and 20% something else, and 0% woman, lmao, which is why I call myself nonbinary transmasc.

I was lucky that through research and listening to voices in nonbinary transmasc spaces and more open-minded trans spaces that I realised that I'd encountered transphobia, and that this specific kind of transphobia is particularly common in the trans community, especially in cases where a trans man or woman has a period of being nonbinary as an experiment to see what transitioning feels like before they fully commit to the surgery and/or hormones and name etc. that they often wanted all along. So they often project this onto other people, because for them being nonbinary was a midway point, or the middle of an evolution. But being nonbinary isn't an experiment for most nonbinary people, it's literally our identity and it always will be. (And any binary trans person reading this, don't ever use this rhetoric with your nonbinary friends, or your fellow binary trans friends who have elected not to use hormones or surgery - it's transphobic.)

These days, I'm proudly trans and proudly part of the trans community, but I'm also aware that there are a lot of binary trans people who will treat me and other trans folk as 'other' because I haven't suffered through the same surgeries or adjustments that they have. That's...their transphobia, and it's not me expressing my identity wrongly, or being 'lesser', it's just straight up transphobia. It belongs to them, not to me. I don't believe we have a unique word for nonbinary transphobia, it all comes under the same umbrella, but that's definitely what it is.

When you start to feel like you don't belong, anon, remind yourself that this is internalised transphobia, not to punish yourself, but to remind yourself that it's not true. Those feelings belong to the people who gave them to you, but they're not innately or inherently true, they actually have nothing to do with how valid you are at every stage of your transition.

You're fully a trans man if you don't take hormones, and you're fully nonbinary if you do. Whatever you need (or don't need) to affirm or express your gender for you, is what you need, and that deserves to be respected and fully validated no matter what, at any time. Whether it's binding or not binding, hormones or not hormones, hormones and then 'not for the next few years' and then hormones again, surgery or not surgery, etc. Whether you're a trans man, woman, nonbinary, agender etc.

People have this idea of what it is to be a 'proper' trans, bi, gay, lesbian person (like the 'gold star lesbian' which is horrendously disgusting as a term and concept), but all you need - literally all you need - re: these things, is to just... know you're these things. That's it. That's how a gay person can know they're gay without having sex. That's how a bi person can know they're bi without sleeping with someone of the same sex. And it's how a trans person knows they're trans without looking perfectly androgynous or perfectly binary trans (depending on what they desire) on the outside. (Don't get me started on fatphobia in androgynous and nonbinary spaces, and the equation of true 'nonbinary androgyny' with thinness, because that's a whole other rant for another day, lol).

I'm sorry you've experienced that pressure to be 'more' of something from society / particular people. I can specifically relate on the hormones front because I actually went quite far into looking into taking T, to the point where my doctor was ready to sign off with an endocrinologist, before I realised that it wasn't the right decision for me. It might be one day, but right now I know I'm transmasc without it, and I'm concerned about some of the side effects with my neuroendocrine tumours. There are other ways I affirm my gender that work great for me. But I did have a moment of knowing that would impact how other people see me, and it's one thing when it comes from all the cis people, but it's another thing when it comes from the trans community as well. :( Thankfully most people are really validating now, use the right pronouns, and I just don't confide nonbinary vulnerabilities with folks who saw being nonbinary as a midpoint of their own evolution/journey, just to be safe, lmao.

Wishing you fortune and strength and much validation, anon <3 You are amazing as you are, whatever you decide to do or not do in the future. :) *hugs*

[fierceawakening]

@notthateither (I think that's your username) I keep meaning to come back to your post on what we agree with and what we don't, and I keep getting distracted by various shiny things. So I'll just say:

Starting off, if you're cool with people transitioning even though you don't understand it and maybe even find it weird or, hell, maybe even a bit scary, then I'm cooler with you than I am with a lot of people. I believe creating the least oppressive world possible involves giving people freedom to make decisions for what we think are bad reasons, so If you're doing that, we're broadly aligned in political terms even if I don't like some of what you believe. (An example for me here? I'm deeply troubled by "I wouldn't have an abortion if my fetus were "normal," but I would if there was evidence of disability." I think that's very, very often going to be influenced by growing up in an ableist society and is rarely going to be about realistic expectations. But a world in which women are forced to carry to term is a more oppressive one than one where they are not, so I cannot stop someone even if I'm 100% certain that is her only reason.)

But as for where our beliefs differ and why, I'd say the core of it is that radical feminism often asserts things about men and/or males (not defining these here although to me they are different; it's not relevant to the point I'm making) are particularly dangerous, threatening, or destructive. I worry that singling out a group of humans and calling them the source of destructiveness is wrongheaded, and in fact the first step on a very long yellow brick road to fascist thinking.

It's not just that I think trans women aren't men, that there's a relevant difference between sex characteristics and social role (though I do indeed think that.)

It's that even if I DID literally see trans women as "males who wish to be women," and this switch as something that people can only sort of do and never manage completely, I still don't see how that's something inherently wrong to want, or that there's something suspicious about people wanting it. It's maybe a little weirder than "I was a stamp collector, but now I want to be a skydiver," but it's that sort of thing. There's nothing inherently untoward about it.

Body modification should be undergone after a great deal of thought. But most humans fly by the seat of their pants a lot, much more than I generally do or generally understand. I used to think it was my job to warn them against this, but... now I don't. People who live high risk, high reward lives are allowed to do so. All that's necessary is that they acknowledge and own the risks they take, and not blame it on other people if those risks are presented to them truthfully and without spin.

(And hell, I'm one of the most cautious, risk averse humans I have ever met, and MY medical-reasons, justified-to-most modifications went wildly wrong. Sometimes stuff really is just life being fucked up and not making sense.)

Why do we have gender? I don't know. I suspect it's a mix of nature and nurture, social factors and vague, difficult to pin down biological ones too. I don't know that I'll ever know for sure.

What I do know is that the oppressive stuff I've seen seems to happen, and really mess people up, when they're demanded to fit into one box and not another. I'm not sure what abolishing gender would mean or would look like, or how we'd make sure we do it justly, but I do know that letting people be is something I can do right here and now, and something I can encourage others to do, and a thing that seems, from the evidence we have, to help most of the time.

Which is why I'm not... well, I'd say why I'm not "gender critical" but it feels very weird to think of myself as not critical of gender when what I mean is the much weaker not sure we should abolish it. So instead of saying why I'm not GC I'll phrase it as "why I'm not a radical feminist."

Fair?

[elfowl-42]

Just accidentally reblogged a "Gender critical" "radfem" post about "Why can't pro-trans people define "what is a woman" without being sexist, why it is so hard to say 'adult human female'." Because I genuinely thought it was a pro-trans take, and had to re-read it, to get what they were actually trying to say. Because yes, to me I am female, I am a woman. I would say that I fit the definition "Adult human female." We disagree so fully on the definitions of words that we would say the exact same things and mean something completely different.

I do not understand what is sexist about saying "A woman is someone who identifies as a woman" It is literally treating all biological sexes the same. It's more inclusive since it includes intersex people. Do they think it's sexist because I'm saying "Anyone can be a woman but only biological males can be men"? Because I don't think that. My definition of a man is "Someone who identifies as a man."

There are women born with penises, and I'm not even talking about people with XY chromosomes who transition, I'm talking about people with XX chromosomes, who have both the phenotype and genotype to look perfectly female, but for whatever reason they have a penis instead of a vagina. They grow up being seen as a girl, facing the same misogyny and social pressures as any other AFAB person in our society. Why would anyone tell them that they aren't a woman that their experience is invalid, that they don't belong to this group, because of a few cubic inches of flesh?

This same person was claiming that the term "Lesbian" is being destroyed by people claiming that lesbians can like people with penises. As far as I know, lesbian is defined as "A woman who is sexually attracted to other women." If the woman from the example above is sexually attracted to women, why would you try to exclude her from the spaces designed to protect and nurture people like her? Do you think she should be forced into male exclusive spaces? Do you really want to throw intersex people under the bus, just to be able to exclude trans women because they haven't been seen as women their whole lives?

I know that I have benefitted from male privilege for most of my life, and still do whenever I decide to go out en masc, since I pass as cis. I mostly likely still benefit from it somewhat when I go out en fem, since I don't pass as female yet. I'm trying my best to stop benefitting from that privilege whenever it is safe to do so. (I'll readily admit to trying to hold onto it when it comes to situations where it's a matter of safety. I hope you won't begrudge me that, I understand if you do, but that does make you an asshole. I wish I could give you that same safety) And it is my responsibility to support the voices of my sisters when I can on issues that don't affect me. To not talk over them, and to raise up their views and voices on abortion, mensuration and mensural products, birth control, the wage gap, and women's rights.

Please don't misconstrue this as me saying "I'm a woman so all lesbians have to be attracted to me." because they don't. Everyone is allowed to not be attracted to other people for any reason. It's not something we can control (or do you say that sexual attraction is a choice now?) If you're not attracted to penises specifically, that's fine, if you're not attracted to me specifically, that's fine. If you're not attracted to trans people specifically, I'd ask you to make sure it's not because of a misconception of us as a threat, or any less of our gender than cis people, but if not, that's perfectly fine. But womanhood is not defined solely by biology. No one is not a lesbian because they're attracted to me, and I'm not not a lesbian because of how I was born. Or do you really want to go back to the misogynistic idea that all a woman is is a vagina, a womb, and a pair of tits?

[butchviking]

“there's no such thing as a trans person who hasn't realised it yet bc you're not trans until u start identifying that way”

lmfao say that to every trans person who used to spend decades and unhappy marriages forcing the wrong thing because they were raised thinking there was no other option. still happens in plenty of countries.

i had no idea ftm was possible as a kid but i knew i should have a flat chest and male parts, male voice and face and reacted uncomfortably to the reverse happening to me. that’s trans without having the word for it.

do you also think someone can’t be gay or bi if they’re raised without knowing the word?

does this help? can u see that first word now? where it says "if"?

see, IF a woman was a person who identifies as a woman, then anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman. this means that if there is a woman, who identifies as a woman, then she is a woman - and if she LATER starts to identify as a man, THEN she would be a man (assuming a man is a person who identifies as a man). but she wasn't a man all along, because she USED to be a person who identifies as a woman - that is, she used to be a woman. you get it? (obviously, i don't agree with these definitions and don't think this makes any sense at all. but this is the logical conclusion of those definitions.)

i don't know how you define transgender. i would call what you were experiencing "dysphoria" - i think of "transgender" as meaning either something identity-based or meaning a person who lives and passes in the opposite gender role to the one they were born into. having dysphoria and being transgender aren't the same thing in my mind, bc i know plenty of dysphoric women who don't identify as trans or have any plans to transition and i know plenty of women who've had dysphoria in the past but no longer do. you can have dysphoria without having the word to call it that, but i don't think that automatically makes a person transgender.

as for sexuality, i believe that's innate and your sexuality is unchanged by what words you call yourself. when i called myself bi i was still a lesbian; if i started calling myself straight i'd still be a lesbian. just like being female and calling yourself male doesn't stop you being female, or vice versa. clearly you think being trans and calling yourself cis doesn't stop you being trans - so i'd invite you to think about how you define trans. do you believe in souls?

[trans-advice]

(sorry this is so long) i’m not sure where to go from here. i’m 25 years old. i’ve been trying to figure out my gender identity for several years now. this all started when i tried binding on a whim (i’m afab) and felt so euphoric, idk how to even describe it in words. from 2017-early 2020 i thought for sure that i was a trans man. i was out online with a different name & he/him pronouns, i wore a binder everyday, i dressed in a masculine way, etc. eventually, i was even able to express the feminine parts of my personality without feeling invalid. there were stretches of time, especially early on, when i’d back out mentally & re-enter the closet & try to live as a woman. but eventually it settled, and for the entirety of 2019 i was fully determined to transition medically & come out to everyone once i was able to move out of my mormon parents’ house. but then i suffered through a sudden major personal tragedy in late 2019, followed by the pandemic in 2020, and basically i dropped the entire trans dream between those two events, in probably like february 2020. i developed agoraphobia as well. on top of all of that, i’m autistic, so all this change has been really hard on my brain. since then, i’ve been on this rollercoaster where for a few weeks i’ll try to live happily as a woman, then cave and live as a man, and so on and so forth. it’s driving me nuts. i finally confided in my therapist about my gender stuff, because it’s really affecting my agoraphobia recovery progress, and she officially diagnosed me with gender dysphoria. she firmly believes i need to accept myself, whoever that is, but i don’t know how. there are real moments when i’m ok being a woman. it can be fun to shop for pretty clothes (though they’re usually stuffed to the back of my closet immediately) & have girl talk with my younger sisters. and it’s hard to imagine myself as an old man. but it’s also hard to imagine myself as a mom rather than a dad. i don’t know. maybe i’m so scared my religious conservative family will abandon me if i transition? and maybe the loss i experienced a couple years ago was so awful i’m scared for it to happen again? or what if i’m not trans but just some sort of androgynous woman with internalized misogyny. help?

I'm not sure about how agoraphobia works. Readers if you have any feedback on agoraphobia please share it!

Yeah, I think it's more like you need a better support network that will accept you if you transition into being a man. Like I think you need to have some preparation for abandonment by your religious conservative family.

Even worse, I would be worried about them giving conversion torture under the labels of "conversion therapy" & "religious apologetics". So in case you're facing that, I'd seek out some pro-lgbtqia+ religious apologetics, not necessarily to deprogram them, but to help fight the gaslighting that comes with anti-lgbtqia+.

You already said that you were very okay with being an androgynous man, so I don't think it's a matter of you somehow being an androgynous woman with self-hatred.

Since we live in a patriarchal misogynist/transmisogynist/transandrophobic society, I would look into trans-affirming feminist information so that you can get a better grip on what misogyny is when people try to gas light you like that.)

As for the enjoying the girl talk, are you sure that's not just enjoying talking with others? Also defining "girliness" can vary from group to group, so I would make sure to look into how that's being defined.

Have you applied for health insurance like Medicaid or Obamacare (affordable care act)? Because you're getting to age 26, so you're going to need your own insurance most likely. Like that would help with preparing to be either abandoned or more independent of your parents.

I'm not sure how much of my transition strategies will apply to your situation & what's available by you. I know in my transition before the pandemic, I basically relied on getting my things organized with a therapist at a therapy office in person because I was not safe from domestic violence when I would talk about my gender issues on the phone. Like I would have to go outside & walk around & find free of charge spaces in order to avoid the people I lived with as much as possible. I had to get a public transit pass in order to get to places without having to be at the mercy of people to drive me.

Good Luck, Peace & Love,

Eve

[pluralprogramming]

I'm in the dress again today. (Ramble below.)

I feel pretty. I sort of wish we had some light makeup I could attempt to use. I like to stand in place and twirl. I really like twirling.

The dress either got stretched in the washer/dryer or we lost enough weight that it's long on us. But it's still comfortable.

Scream told me I looked good in dresses, I looked like I belonged in them. I, uh, I don't know what to make of that. But they said I seemed happier in them, so I should wear them more.

Gender is a complicated thing. Being an introject is a complicated thing. Being a transgender introject who is a different gender than your source is extremely complicated.

I wasn't like this in my past life, I discovered my femininity in this body. I was showering and enjoyed having a larger chest and curved hips.

I've taken Hugo up on his offer to, um, change me.

I feel bad for trans headmates in systems without architects with such abilities. I'm very fortunate, and I think just having this rare opportunity is what made me decide to take him up on it, as well as that, as I dress more femininely, I'm realizing I wish I had the body to match the clothes.

I'd like to have more defined hips and chest and a more feminine face, but the rest I don't care as much about. I'm keeping my height. I will be growing my hair out, maybe enough to braid it...

I don't know how I'll feel as the body transitions in the opposite direction. Talk of top surgery distresses me, but I don't care much about bottom. I don't care if we get hairier or our voice deepens, either.

Um, thank you, to anyone who's said nice things about me and my identity.

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Here's a shortlist of those who realized that I — a cis woman who'd identified as heterosexual for decades of life — was in fact actually bi, long before I realized it myself recently: my sister, all my friends, my boyfriend, and the TikTok algorithm.

On TikTok, the relationship between user and algorithm is uniquely (even sometimes uncannily) intimate. An app which seemingly contains as many multitudes of life experiences and niche communities as there are people in the world, we all start in the lowest common denominator of TikTok. Straight TikTok (as it's popularly dubbed) initially bombards your For You Page with the silly pet videos and viral teen dances that folks who don't use TikTok like to condescendingly reduce it to.

Quickly, though, TikTok begins reading your soul like some sort of divine digital oracle, prying open layers of your being never before known to your own conscious mind. The more you use it, the more tailored its content becomes to your deepest specificities, to the point where you get stuff that's so relatable that it can feel like a personal attack (in the best way) or (more dangerously) even a harmful trigger from lifelong traumas.

For example: I don't know what dark magic (read: privacy violations) immediately clued TikTok into the fact that I was half-Brazilian, but within days of first using it, Straight TikTok gave way to at first Portuguese-speaking then broader Latin TikTok. Feeling oddly seen (being white-passing and mostly American-raised, my Brazilian identity isn't often validated), I was liberal with the likes, knowing that engagement was the surefire way to go deeper down this identity-affirming corner of the social app.

TikTok made lots of assumptions from there, throwing me right down the boundless, beautiful, and oddest multiplicities of Alt TikTok, a counter to Straight TikTok's milquetoast mainstreamness.

Home to a wide spectrum of marginalized groups, I was giving out likes on my FYP like Oprah, smashing that heart button on every type of video: from TikTokers with disabilities, Black and Indigenous creators, political activists, body-stigma-busting fat women, and every glittering shade of the LGBTQ cornucopia. The faves were genuine, but also a way to support and help offset what I knew about the discriminatory biases in TikTok's algorithm.

My diverse range of likes started to get more specific by the minute, though. I wasn't just on general Black TikTok anymore, but Alt Cottagecore Middle-Class Black Girl TikTok (an actual label one creator gave her page's vibes). Then it was Queer Latina Roller Skating Girl TikTok, Women With Non-Hyperactive ADHD TikTok, and then a double whammy of Women Loving Women (WLW) TikTok alternating between beautiful lesbian couples and baby bisexuals.

Looking back at my history of likes, the transition from queer “ally” to “salivating simp” is almost imperceptible.

There was no one precise "aha" moment. I started getting "put a finger down" challenges that wouldn't reveal what you were putting a finger down for until the end. Then, 9-fingers deep (winkwink), I'd be congratulated for being 100% bisexual. Somewhere along the path of getting served multiple WLW Disney cosplays in a single day and even dom lesbian KinkTok roleplay — or whatever the fuck Bisexual Pirate TikTok is — deductive reasoning kind of spoke for itself.

But I will never forget the one video that was such a heat-seeking missile of a targeted attack that I was moved to finally text it to my group chat of WLW friends with a, "Wait, am I bi?" To which the overwhelming consensus was, "Magic 8 Ball says, 'Highly Likely.'"

Serendipitously posted during Pride Month, the video shows a girl shaking her head at the caption above her head, calling out confused and/or closeted queers who say shit like, "I think everyone is a LITTLE bisexual," to the tune of "Closer" by The Chainsmokers. When the lyrics land on the word "you," she points straight at the screen — at me — her finger and inquisitive look piercing my hopelessly bisexual soul like Cupid's goddamn arrow.

Oh no, the voice inside my head said, I have just been mercilessly perceived.

As someone who had, in fact, done feminist studies at a tiny liberal arts college with a gender gap of about 70 percent women, I'd of course dabbled. I've always been quick to bring up the Kinsey scale, to champion a true spectrum of sexuality, and to even declare (on multiple occasions) that I was, "straight, but would totally fuck that girl!"

Oh no, the voice inside my head returned, I've literally just been using extra words to say I was bi.

After consulting the expertise of my WLW friend group (whose mere existence, in retrospect, also should've clued me in on the flashing neon pink, purple, and blue flag of my raging bisexuality), I ran to my boyfriend to inform him of the "news."

"Yeah, baby, I know. We all know," he said kindly.

"How?!" I demanded.

Well for one, he pointed out, every time we came across a video of a hot girl while scrolling TikTok together, I'd without fail watch the whole way through, often more than once, regardless of content. (Apparently, straight girls do not tend to do this?) For another, I always breathlessly pointed out when we'd pass by a woman I found beautiful, often finding a way to send a compliment her way. ("I'm just a flirt!" I used to rationalize with a hand wave, "Obvs, I'm not actually sexually attracted to them!") Then, I guess, there were the TED Talk-like rants I'd subject him to about the thinly veiled queer relationship in Adventure Time between Princess Bubblegum and Marcelyne the Vampire Queen — which the cowards at Cartoon Network forced creators to keep as subtext!

And, well, when you lay it all out like that...

But my TikTok-fueled bisexual awakening might actually speak less to the omnipotence of the app's algorithm, and more to how heteronormativity is truly one helluva drug.

Sure, TikTok bombarded me with the thirst traps of my exact type of domineering masc lady queers, who reduced me to a puddle of drool I could no longer deny. But I also recalled a pivotal moment in college when I briefly questioned my heterosexuality, only to have a lesbian friend roll her eyes and chastise me for being one of those straight girls who leads Actual Queer Women on. I figured she must know better. So I never pursued any of my lady crushes in college, which meant I never experimented much sexually, which made me conclude that I couldn't call myself bisexual if I'd never had actual sex with a woman. I also didn't really enjoy lesbian porn much, though the fact that I'd often find myself fixating on the woman during heterosexual porn should've clued me into that probably coming more from how mainstream lesbian porn is designed for straight men.

The ubiquity of heterormativity, even when unwittingly perpetrated by members of the queer community, is such an effective self-sustaining cycle. Aside from being met with queer-gating (something I've since learned bi folks often experience), I had a hard time identifying my attraction to women as genuine attraction, simply because it felt different to how I was attracted to men.

Heteronormativity is truly one helluva drug.

So much of women's sexuality — of my sexuality — can feel defined by that carnivorous kind of validation you get from men. I met no societal resistance in fully embodying and exploring my desire for men, either (which, to be clear, was and is insatiable slut levels of wanting that peen.) But in retrospect, I wonder how many men I slept with not because I was truly attracted to them, but because I got off on how much they wanted me.

My attraction to women comes with a different texture of eroticism. With women (and bare with a baby bi, here), the attraction feels more shared, more mutual, more tender rather than possessive. It's no less raw or hot or all-consuming, don't get me wrong. But for me at least, it comes more from a place of equality rather than just power play. I love the way women seem to see right through me, to know me, without us really needing to say a word.

I am still, as it turns out, a sexual submissive through-and-through, regardless of what gender my would-be partner is. But, ignorantly and unknowingly, I'd been limiting my concept of who could embody dominant sexual personas to cis men. But when TikTok sent me down that glorious rabbit hole of masc women (who know exactly what they're doing, btw), I realized my attraction was not to men, but a certain type of masculinity. It didn't matter which body or genitalia that presentation came with.

There is something about TikTok that feels particularly suited to these journeys of sexual self-discovery and, in the case of women loving women, I don't think it's just the prescient algorithm. The short-form video format lends itself to lightning bolt-like jolts of soul-bearing nakedness, with the POV camera angles bucking conventions of the male gaze, which entrenches the language of film and TV in heterosexual male desire.

In fairness to me, I'm far from the only one who missed their inner gay for a long time — only to have her pop out like a queer jack-in-the-box throughout a near year-long quarantine that led many of us to join TikTok. There was the baby bi mom, and scores of others who no longer had to publicly perform their heterosexuality during lockdown — only to realize that, hey, maybe I'm not heterosexual at all?

Flooded with video after video affirming my suspicions, reflecting my exact experiences as they happened to others, the change in my sexual identity was so normalized on TikTok that I didn't even feel like I needed to formally "come out." I thought this safe home I'd found to foster my baby bisexuality online would extend into the real world.

But I was in for a rude awakening.

Testing out my bisexuality on other platforms, casually referring to it on Twitter, posting pictures of myself decked out in a rainbow skate outfit (which I bought before realizing I was queer), I received nothing but unquestioning support and validation. Eventually, I realized I should probably let some members of my family know before they learned through one of these posts, though.

Daunted by the idea of trying to tell my Latina Catholic mother and Swiss Army veteran father (who's had a crass running joke about me being a "lesbian" ever since I first declared myself a feminist at age 12), I chose the sibling closest to me. Seeing as how gender studies was one of her majors in college too, I thought it was a shoo-in. I sent an off-handed, joke-y but serious, "btw I'm bi now!" text, believing that's all that would be needed to receive the same nonchalant acceptance I found online.

It was not.

I didn't receive a response for two days. Hurt and panicked by what was potentially my first mild experience of homophobia, I called them out. They responded by insisting we need to have a phone call for such "serious" conversations. As I calmly tried to express my hurt on said call, I was told my text had been enough to make this sibling worry about my mental wellbeing. They said I should be more understanding of why it'd be hard for them to (and I'm paraphrasing) "think you were one way for twenty-eight years" before having to contend with me deciding I was now "something else."

But I wasn't "something else," I tried to explain, voice shaking. I hadn't knowingly been deceiving or hiding this part of me. I'd simply discovered a more appropriate label. But it was like we were speaking different languages. Other family members were more accepting, thankfully. There are many ways I'm exceptionally lucky, my IRL environment as supportive as Baby Bi TikTok. Namely, I'm in a loving relationship with a man who never once mistook any of it as a threat, instead giving me all the space in the world to understand this new facet of my sexuality.

I don't have it all figured out yet. But at least when someone asks if I listen to Girl in Red on social media, I know to answer with a resounding, "Yes," even though I've never listened to a single one of her songs. And for now, that's enough.

[raavenb2619]

Hi, if your still taking ask, I'd like to ask about gender.

I'm amab and I use he/they, I heard about demiboy and it sounded exactly like me, but it didn't feel right. I feel weird identifying as not cis because I don't have dysphoria. I know you don't need dysphoria to be trans. Maybe I'm just gender nonconforming? But I don't feel wholly like a man?

I guess I feel like transness itself isn't a valid option for me because I don't have dysphoria but I feel good when people refer to me as they

So I guess the big question is how do I work through whats left of the internalized transphobia and the transmedicalism that was ingrained in me when I first became active in the community?

So if this is incoherent and rambly

There are a lot of reasons I think making dysphoria a requirement of being trans is a bad idea. 

On a personal note, I don’t want my existence as a trans person to be inherently defined in terms of negative experiences; isn’t the idea of Pride that instead of believing that your existence is inherently negative and bad and shameful, that you can believe it’s something positive, something valuable, something worth being proud of? Being trans is a positive experience for me. I like being trans, and I’m proud to be trans, and I don’t want anyone or anything to take that away from me. 

I’m a trans person who has dysphoria, but if dysphoria was a requirement of being trans, it’s possible that I wouldn’t have realized I was trans until a lot later than I actually did, because dysphoria can be subtle and confusing. Sometimes I’ve been dysphoric about something, and then for no discernible reason, it’s disappeared and doesn’t bother me anymore. Sometimes I’ve been comfortable with something, but then I hear that someone else is dysphoric about something, and then I start being dysphoric about it. There are things that I’ve been dysphoric about for pretty much as long as I can remember, but before I was trans, I had convenient excuses for them. “Oh, everyone’s like that. Oh, that reflexive behavior you’re barely conscious of doesn’t mean anything.” It was only after I realized I was trans that I understood that I was feeling dysphoria. Without that additional context and new perspective, my dysphoria was just...noticed but unnoticed. 

I don’t think gatekeeping is in the interest of the trans community. The idea that a nefarious cis person would pretend to be trans for personal gain is pretty unrealistic. (Like, most cishets are super uncomfortable when someone thinks they might not be straight, let alone not cis.) But if there really are some nefarious cis people who want to pretend to be trans, they could just claim to have dysphoria, so gatekeeping is completely ineffective at stopping the hypothetical cis invaders. On the other hand, gatekeeping dysphoria would probably lead to kicking people out of the community who need support. If you definitely experience dysphoria, but not as much as other people, are you still “trans enough”? If you experienced dysphoria, but you transitioned and took steps to get rid of your dysphoria, are you still “trans enough”? Whoever answers these questions wields enormous power to withhold support from people who likely need it. The whole point of a community is that we’re stronger together than we are apart, so why should we turn on each other? 

I think prioritizing dysphoria could put pressure on trans people to transition in ways that aren’t necessarily comfortable with. Dysphoria can take many different forms, and people have different ways of coping with it. If you and I are dysphoric about the same thing, but I transition a small amount to cope with it, and you transition a large amount to cope with it, that could lead to people saying I’m not “really” trans because I “clearly” don’t have “real” dysphoria, because any “real” trans person with “real” dysphoria would have to transition a larger amount. In that scenario, I have to choose between the transition that manages my dysphoria in a way that’s right for me at the risk of losing my community’s support, and transitioning in a way that I’m “supposed” to so that I can “prove” that I’m “really” trans. I think that’s a terrible position to be in, because transitioning should be about what’s best for you, not for other people. Trans people already have to deal with cis people telling us how we should look and dress and act, so why should we have to deal with trans people telling us that, too? 

Saying that trans people need dysphoria ignores our history instead of learning from it. As I wrote in this post, the term “genderqueer” was originally coined by people who wanted to use the term “transgender” but were excluded at the time because of the dominant narrative that only trans men or trans women who had had (or wanted to have) bottom surgery could call themselves “transgender”. A lot of people who felt distinctly non-cis sought out the trans community but were rejected, and I think that’s really unfortunate. Being rejected by mainstream society is hard, but being rejected by someone you expect to have your back can be even harder. If someone doesn’t feel dysphoria, but they’re still seeking out the trans community, I think there’s probably a really good reason for that, and we should welcome them instead of rejecting them. 

Hope that helps, as always feel free to ask for clarification/any follow up questions. 

[gnostic-heretic]

Hi! I'd love for you to respond to this, but ONLY if you're comfortable! I'm planning on writing a hetalia fanfic with a trans character. I researched a bit, but I feel that my fic could be read as problematic: my trans character (MTF) is introduced as her assigned gender with a different name, only to be uncovered later. She dates pre transition, but get back together. Is this realistic? You've written fic w/ trans characters before, so can you give any tips of advice? Thank you for reading!

hey dear, thank you for reaching out! i’m more than comfortable giving advice but remember that i’m just one trans person, so this does not represent a consensus- i encourage you to reach out to a trans friend to do a sensitivity reading, if you and your friend are comfortable with that! 

i say this because a lot of people would say this scenario of portraying someone pre- and post-transition is a no-no, but i think it’s doable (i’ve done it myself!) if approached in a sensible way. 

and yes i do think it’s possible for a character to date someone, break up for unrelated reasons, transition and then meet that person again and fall in love again. it’s a sweet idea! it’d be lovely to see your character grow and be more content and confident and finally *herself*, and find love as herself :)  plus at least in my experience, a lot of cis partners of trans people do a lot of serious questioning and self exploration when their partner comes out so it can be interesting from the other character’s perspective as well. i’ve seen for example many gfs/wives of trans women realize they’re wlw when they previously never questioned their sexuality. so it can be an interesting journey for both characters to go on and for you as a writer to explore! 

my first bit of advice is to read read and read. read what trans people have to say on the subject of writing- i know there’s more than one post floating around on tumblr with advice for cis people on how to write a trans character. and read the experiences of trans people, how they talk about their own “egg cracking” (if you don’t know, i’d start by searching what “cracking your egg” means- and hint: it’s not always “i played with dolls as a child”), transition and their own past present or their future plans.  and as you read remember that there is no singular standard “trans experience”- transition is not linear, and there’s no such thing as a transition that is “complete” or “incomplete”. some trans people feel really intense dysphoria, others don’t and are mostly fine with the body they have. some trans people want to start hrt asap and to have every medical procedure available, for others, coming out is enough, in many cases they might want to have surgeries, but hormones are the only thing that’s accessible because of the cost of surgeries and long waiting lists. 

keep in mind that everyone experiences gender in their own unique way, so a trans female character doesn’t have to be hyper feminine, and a trans male character doesn’t have to be super masculine to be “good representation”. 

also i’d say to read up on harmful tropes to avoid as well, i’m gonna tell you some just off the top of my head and offer advice on how to handle tricky subjects - portraying trans people especially trans women as violent or predatory/creepy is a big NO (i know this might be obvious to you, but this is also for everyone else reading this out there). there’s nothing wrong with writing negative or morally grey characters but this is a damaging and dehumanizing trope with a long history of being used as propaganda against us. 

- on the same note i’d say to avoid portraying your character as easily offended, overly sensitive, quick to anger etc etc. another (more modern) trope used to mock and ultimately harm trans people is to paint us as “special snowflakes”

 --> a good thing to remember is that anger can be portrayed as righteous, as it is in this situation, and assertive so that would be a good place to start if you have to write about the character being rightfully angry and sad, upset at discrimination she might experience. 

- avoid the dramatic scene in which a character is found out to be trans by undressing them and “revealing” something about their body. also tied to transphobic ideas (trans people “trick” people into thinking they are their gender) and to trans panic defense that legitimizes the murder of trans people. 

 --> a good way to reveal that your character is trans is... simply to make her come out. have a talk! there’s so many possibilities from it being heavy and awkward, to light hearted and heartwarming :) 

- this one is a more complicated thing to handle, because i know some will disagree with me on it... but i’d advise you to steer away or ask for a second opinion/sensitivity reader if you’re gonna write The Sad Mirror Scene TM in which a trans person gazes at their own body in the mirror (or even without the mirror tbh) and points out everything that is “male/female” about it. personally i think it’s bad but in a more subtle way... the focus on our bodies and everything that is considered “wrong” with it can have creepy or outright transphobic implications. also it’s way overdone js 

 --> instead of the long gazing scene i’d mention those things in passing and incorporate them into her daily life, because it is something we live with every day and not just in all-at-once intense dysphoria sessions: maybe she has broad shoulders, so she wears a cute blouse with a lot of ruffles to conceal that a bit; or maybe she’s out and about, on the way to her laser hair removal appointment, and feels awkward about having a bit of shadow (so she treats herself to buying a new concealer on the way home);

 --> also don’t forget about small moments of gender euphoria and trans joy!!! so maybe she gets a new haircut after growing her hair out for a long time, or takes her estrogen for the first time and cries of happiness, or she tries on her fave bra and notices that her breasts have grown a little bit or they feel sore which is a good sign!. etc etc. these are just examples so don’t sweat it :D  but showing the happiness that comes with being trans and not just the sadness of it is really important imo for everyone thinking about writing a trans-centric story 

- in general i’d be careful for anything that implies trans people aren’t “really” the gender they are, or that deep down we’ll always be our assigned gender. sometimes it’s not the outright essentialist statements but the more subtle things that can go undetected to cis people, but we see them. stuff like: the character deadnaming/misgendering themselves (so for example, when she comes out, no “remember deadname?”, or, “i used to be a man”) equating genitals with gender (even as a joke), or making the cis experience out to be universal (that feel when pms, am i right ladies? :) <-- this kind of statement even in good intentioned fun can feel exclusionary and should be perceived as such by your character), body shaming or implying certain non-conforming characteristics (ex: a strong jawline, broad shoulders, narrow hips, small breasts on a woman) are inherently “bad” or inherent to trans people only (plenty of cis women have all of those above listed things). 

 --> i know that dysphoria can make these last things appear to be inherently negative to the person, but you might counterbalance this by making her confident about other aspects of her personality, and making your other characters compliment her and paint her insecurities in a new light. for example she might feel self conscious about her height, but maybe her love interest loves her beautiful, long legs; or maybe more simply unrelated to anything she’s insecure about, she’s smart and hard working, she’s a science genius, she’s the best of her judo class and could kick your ass, she has really nice hair, or really striking eyes, or a very pretty color of very chipped nail polish. details are the key!!! and remember that value and beauty are subjective!!!! 

and last but most important of all... please write your character as HUMAN!! we trans people are just regular people, like anyone else in the world.  we aren’t just defined by transness, we have lives and passions and talents and our own problems completely unrelated to being trans.  so please keep that in mind while writing your gal! and don’t let everything i’ve typed above intimidate you, most of it is obvious stuff and i’m sure you’ll be fine! good luck with your story!

[quicksilverconnoisseur]

I love your genderfluid Will, I feel incredibly close to his character and the way you've written him is simply breathtaking. I'd be so happy to know anything else about him that you'd be willing to share? Any headcanons, stories from his time before meeting Hannibal, his interests and studies in psychology (I have a huge interest in psychology myself) Amazing work on the Quicksilver series, it's one of my favourites on AO3 xx

Ohhhh gosh, thank you – this put such a smile on my face, genuinely aaaaaaaa :D

tbh anon? I love him toooooo :) I try to step back a bit when I’m writing him, but when I’m not…

Answering this wasn’t easy, as I have so many swirling thoughts about him and this series. And, so many of those thoughts are going to come up in the next instalments (now solidly in my schedule to write btw), it’s hard to know what to say without spoiling too many things. Next up, I want the series to take a much wider view of their world, and maybe address some bigger issues too.

BUT TODAY, I think we can talk about Will’s family a little :)

Like in canon, Will grew up poor in Louisiana, but didn’t move from boatyard to boatyard – his childhood was much more settled. His parents split up when he was young but his mom didn't disappear. She moved into a trailer park across town - not just because it was what she could afford but because she felt freer there. When his dad worked away, Will would stay with her, rather than her move into their old family house which Will’s dad just about manages to keep going.

Will has a fairly close but eccentric relationship with both his parents, but particularly with his mom. Too much of an independent spirit for a conventional family, she sees him more as a fully-fledged human being rather than a child and, in some ways, that has suited Will more. It’s Will’s dad who worried about him, and still does, probably because Will reminds him of his mother. Will’s dad still loves her but gave up a long time ago on understanding her. They’re much too different to be able to live together.

She's something of a working-class hippie – by day, she works a check-out in some retail outlet somewhere (a series of them, over the years) and by night, she smokes a lot of pot and reads cards for her neighbours. She says Will has her gift and has tried to teach him the art of tarot. Will doesn’t agree, and calls it an empathy disorder. They’ve had to agree to disagree, on this point. (I hope this throws some light on the mention of Will’s anomalistic psychology class in my recent fic, anon!)

He told her first about being genderfluid, when he was about 14 or 15. He read and thought about it a lot on his own, and only spoke when he was sure how he was comfortable defining himself. Once she'd understood what he was saying – that he didn't want to transition, but wanted a greater range of gender expression – she took him to Walmart and bought Will his first girl's underwear. He's never worn boy’s underwear since.

I, for one, cannot wait to find out what she’s going to make of Hannibal :D

[hellomynameisbisexual]

I've always been bisexual. Even though like many people I was socialized as a heterosexual and feminine person, my first "sexual awakenings" (those first experiencies of admiration, infatuation and sexual excitation) during my childhood happened with women. As I was at the same time conscious about my attraction to boys, my heterosexual socialization made me give little importance to my fascination with women and the feminine.

After several years—and more unperceived "awakenings"—I noticed that maybe I'd be interested in "being" with a woman. At first I didn't try anything, and when I had non-straight crushes I felt intimidated and very buga* for them. When I had boyfriends, they noticed that I also liked women, but we never talked about it in a straightforward manner. Eventually my first non-buga relationships (sexual, sentimental) happened, with both cisgender women and people outside the binary gender spectrum. Only after I had those experiences I told myself that–finally–I could call myself bisexual.

(*Buga is a jargon used by LGBTQIA communities in Mexico to refer to heterosexual people.)

Nowadays I'm suspicious of talking about my bisexuality with other people, since unfortunately biphobia (the hate and discrimination toward bisexual people) is a real phenomenon (1). Because the bisexual identities are a grayscale in contrast to the "black or white" which implies being straight or homosexual, bisexual people can suffer discrimination, prejudice or invisibility from both of these communities.

Biphobia can be manifested through unintended jokes and lack of credibility, or openly as insults. These type of attitudes negatively affect the mental and emotional well-being of bisexual people, especially among younger bisexuals who report more mental issues (anxiety, depression, stress, higher rates of suicide) than both heterosexuals and homosexuals (gays and lesbians) (2).

In many cases, biphobia is a product of a lack of information. Below you can read more about some of the most common questions, myths, and facts about bisexuality.

What exactly is bisexuality?

Bisexuality is a type of sexual orientation. Sexual orientation refers to those towards whom we feel attraction (affective, sexual, emotional). Some sexual orientations examples include: heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality, pansexuality, and more.

The bisexual orientation is defined as having attraction towards more than one gender (3); it is a more fluid and open idea, subject to variations between different people who call themselves bisexual.

Not all people define their bisexuality in an identical way, and not all people attracted towards more than one gender call themselves bisexual.

Is bisexuality only a phase?

No. It's normal that many homosexual people go through a exploration period while they are learning to understand where their attraction lies. However, that doesn't mean bisexuality is always a phase prior to homosexuality (4). For many people, feeling attracted to other people of various genders it is a serious and stable preference (5).

Being bisexual does not always means that an attraction towards more than one gender is divided 50-50 evenly, or even 40-60, in a consistent preference. There are some for whom it is mostly–but not exclusively–attraction to one gender (6). But there are also those for whom attraction changes with time and according to certain contexts (7). This category of fluidity is not expected–at least in the beginning–from monosexual orientations.

These types of false beliefs have been facilitated by scientific research. Many studies on bisexuality have been focused on monosexual perspectives (heterosexual and/or homosexual), skewing the results to misrepresent the experience of bisexual people (8). It has also been wrongly suggested that bisexuality is an incomplete orientation, as if it was only a mere transition to homosexuality (9).

Do bisexual people like it "both ways" because they have an insatiable sexual appetite?

No. Someone’s orientation does not define anyone's sexual appetite. Bisexuality itself doesn't make someone promiscuous, unfaithful or untrustworthy. This myth is a product of monosexism: the belief that people should have only one sole sexual identity and only one type of sexual behaviour towards one gender or defined sex (10).

Monosexism also assumes monogamy is the norm (11). To impose monosexism as a sole social norm applicable to everyone leads (consciously or indirectly) to the belief that another more fluid sexuality can be a threat or an anomaly, and harder to control.

The assumption that bisexuality is an abnormal preference or that bisexual people are without self control can create false narratives that subject this orientation to be hypersexualized; it can make people think that bisexual people "choose" this orientation in order to have more options of where to find potential partners. It is harmful to project sexual fantasies onto bisexual people (or onto any other orientation) without their consent, as if they were only an instrument to satisfy fantasies for others.

In my experience, it’s been very irritating when people assume that being bisexual translates to the equal possibility of being willing to "do it all".

Am I bisexual if I also feel attraction towards transgender or non-binary people?

Generally speaking, yes. Some people think that the prefix "bi" means that bisexuality is the attraction towards only two cis/binary genders ("man" or "woman"). There are indeed those who live their orientation this way, but bisexuality–understood as the attraction to people of more than one gender–can also be extended to people with gender identities way beyond the binary and cis gender spectrum.

With that in mind, it’s also worth noting that not all people who feel attraction to more than one gender call themselves bisexuals for many reasons (stigma, culture, lack of information available, etc.). There are non-monosexual orientations, for example pansexuality (the attraction to people without considering their gender identity), whose definitions can sound very similar to bisexuality (12); in those cases, the decision to call oneself bisexual, pansexual or of any other term is a much more personal question that depends on how we feel and how we define ourselves individually.

Do I stop being bisexual if I start a romantic relationship with someone of the "opposite" gender?

No. This myth is due to the false idea that bisexuality is only an "experimentation" phase before things "get serious" and back to a stable heterosexual relationship (a common case among people socialized as women) (13). It is also possible to be in a monosexual relationship in which each person keeps their distinct sexual orientation.

There are internalized feelings of biphobia common to bisexual people when they decide to start a romantic relationship that can be perceived as monosexual. These feelings often occur similarly to the fear that a partner of monosexual orientation wouldn't understand the bisexuality of the other (14). In other cases, it might be easy for others (family, friends, social circles) to assume that the bisexual people's orientation changes or disappears depending on the current partner (15).

Even though the sexual orientation of anyone can change throughout life, it's much healthier when those decisions are made individually, without biphobic stereotypes and without the pressure of others’ perceptions.

Can I be bisexual if I haven't had sex or a relationship outside the heterosexual spectrum?

Of course! Nobody is obligated to offer "proof" of one's bisexuality. Being conscious that someone's sexual orientation can be bisexual is enough. Our sexual orientation may not be cast in stone for the rest of our lives, so it's completely valid to be going through a phase of exploration or questioning without the need to "make a decision" for the rest of our lives, or to clearly define our orientation within a label.

Non-heterosexual experiences, either sexual, affective or social, often times are facilitated (or repressed) by the context in which we live, by our social or familiar relationships, by the complexity of our tastes and individual necessities, by the access (or lack thereof) to different sexual diversities and cultures, and also by a safe environment, free from harassment, judgment, and marginalization.

It's important to keep in mind that there aren’t always comfortable and safe environments for the open exploration of any non-heterosexual orientation; sometimes there are circumstances in which prioritizing one’s physical and emotional well-being requires keeping oneself in the closet—which is also valid. In any case, whatever the context, not having non-heterosexual experiences with others does not mean that someone’s internal thoughts should be suppressed. I fell into this trap and only called myself bisexual once I had my first non-heterosexual experiences, even though my whole life I have been thinking that.

Clarifying doubts and obtaining sexual information free of bias and stigma can make a critical difference in the quality of life of those marginalized by their sexuality.