#bi lesbian stigma

[bilesbianblog]

Bi-lesbian culture is:

Getting bullied on TikTok trying to get the message out that we belong too. :(

🌈

[tiredyke]

lesbophobia does not invalidate, negate, or take precedence over biphobia. biphobia does not invalidate, negate or take precedence over lesbophobia. both forms of discrimination coexist and deserve to be discussed and taken seriously. neither is more important or more valid than the other. our experiences being different does not mean that they are contradictory, or that the existence of one means the other is erased. stop positioning us at odds with each other. if we can’t have meaningful conversations about how lesbophobia and biphobia both manifest in different ways and how they affect us, we aren’t going to get anywhere.

[boobpancakes]

and i mean it i'm a filthy dirty bisexual and i'm proud of it

[litres-of-cocaine]

okay as much as i agree that groups under the lgbtq+ umbrella are stigmatised by other people in the community please be so fr and stop calling it ‘double discrimination’ you just want to say ‘monosexual privilege’ but are aware people get kind of mad about that

[heartless-aro]

I know that there can be a lot of sex-shaming in Christian communities and I know that probably hits even harder for alloaro Christians, so I just wanted to say to any alloaro Christians out there who need to hear it:

You are wonderful. Your feelings and your identity are a beautiful and natural part of who you are; they are nothing to be ashamed of. You aren’t “bad” or “dirty” for wanting sex, even if you don’t want marriage or a long-term romantic relationship. Your existence is not a sin (how could it be a sin, if God is the one who brought you into existence in the first place?). You belong in Christian communities. You are meant to be happy and to feel whole and to live a life of joy. You are and always will be loved and cherished by God.

[contrappostoes]

yo im a dyke but ur rbs make me think sm more critically of sexual politics and queerness i love bisexuals i jst wanted to lyk ur like a celebrity or a sexy philosopher to me. long live bisexuals from lesbians we love u guys!!

this is so so sweet omg I’m really touched 🥹 love to all lesbians now & forever!!

[regenderate]

i genuinely don’t remember a single moment in which their description of identity was important. maybe when bette was running for mayor? i feel like it was mentioned then. and maybe when pippa was introduced? i think like rosie odonell’s character called herself a dyke? and finley too? i dont remember a moment where it was weird on purpose idk it never felt missing to me

yeah you're right why would characters being lesbians be relevant to a show called the l word

[lafemmemacabre]

What's so funny (not) about that "lesbians trash talking women's boyfriends" shit is that straight and bi women already do that ALL the time and in my experience feel WAY freer to say THE nastiest shit about those men precisely because, as women who do like men, they don't carry the same stigma specific to us that lesbians do and have to watch over our shoulders for constantly.

It's already a meme how girls have to fight for their male crush's life in the girl group chat. I've personally witnessed it, straight girls and a few bi girls being absolutely ruthless to women about their boyfriends to their faces and behind their backs. But sure, when lesbians do it with 1/4 of the malice THAT'S what's truly Evil and WE are the cunts and bitches in this scenario. Ok.

[gatheringbones]

[“Why not identify as bi? That’s a complicated question. For a while, I thought I was simply being biphobic. There’s a lot of that going around in the gay community. Most of us had to struggle so hard to be exclusively homosexual that we resent people who don’t make a similar commitment. A self-identified bisexual is saying, ‘Men and women are of equal impor- tance to me.’ That’s simply not true of me. I’m a Kinsey Five, and when I turn on to a man it’s because he shares some aspect of my sexuality (like S/M or fisting) that turns me on despite his biological sex.

There’s yet another twist. I have eroticized queerness, gayness, homo- sexuality – in men and women. The leatherman and the drag queen are sexy to me, along with the diesel dyke with greased-back hair, and the femme stalking across the bar in her miniskirt and high-heeled shoes. I’m a fag hag.

The gay community’s attitude toward fag hags and dyke daddies has been pretty nasty and unkind. Fag hags are supposed to be frustrated, traditionally feminine, heterosexual women who never have sex with their handsome, slightly effeminate escorts – but desperately want to. Consequently, their nails tend to be long and sharp, and their lipstick runs to the bloodier shades of carmine. And They Drink. Dyke daddies are supposed to be beer-bellied rednecks who hang out at lesbian bars to sexually harass the female patrons. The nicer ones are suckers who get taken for drinks or loans that will never be repaid.

These stereotypes don’t do justice to the complete range of modern faghaggotry and dyke daddydom. Today fag hags and dyke daddies are as likely to be gay themselves as the objects of their admiration.

I call myself a fag hag because sex with men outside the context of the gay community doesn’t interest me at all. In a funny way, when two gay people of opposite sexes make it, it’s still gay sex. No heterosexual couple brings the same experiences and attitudes to bed that we do. These generalizations aren’t perfectly true, but more often than straight sex, gay sex assumes that the use of hands or the mouth is as important as genital-to-genital contact. Penetration is not assumed to be the only goal of a sexual encounter. When penetration does happen, dildos and fingers are as acceptable as (maybe even preferable to) cocks. During gay sex, more often than during straight sex, people think about things like lubrication and ‘fit’. There’s no such thing as ‘foreplay’. There’s good sex, which includes lots of touching, and there’s bad sex, which is nonsensual. Sex roles are more flexible, so nobody is automatically on the top or the bottom. There’s no stigma attached to masturbation, and gay people are much more accepting of porn, fantasies, and fetishes.

And, most importantly, there is no intention to ‘cure’ anybody. I know that a gay man who has sex with me is making an exception and that he’s still gay after we come and clean up. In return I can make an exception for him because I know he isn’t trying to convert me to heterosexuality.

I have no way of knowing how many lesbians and gay men are less than exclusively homosexual. But I do know I’m not the only one. Our actual behaviour (as opposed to the ideology that says homosexuality means being sexual only with members of the same sex) leads me to ask questions about the nature of sexual orientation, how people (especially gay people) define it, and how they choose to let those definitions control and limit their lives.

During one of our interminable discussions in Samois about whether or not to keep the group open to bi women, Gayle Rubin pointed out that a new, movement-oriented definition of lesbianism was in conflict with an older, bar-oriented definition. Membership in the old gay culture consisted of managing to locate a gay bar and making a place for yourself in bar society. Even today, nobody in a bar asks you how long you’ve been celibate with half the human race before they will check your coat and take your order for a drink. But in the movement, people insist on a kind of purity that has little to do with affection, lust, or even political commitment. Gayness becomes a state of sexual grace, like virginity. A fanatical insistence on one hundred percent exclusive, same-sex behaviour often sounds to me like superstitious fear of contamination or pollution. Gayness that has more to do with abhorrence for the other sex than with an appreciation of your own sex degenerates into a rabid and destructive separatism.”]

pat califa, public sex: the culture of radical sex, 1994, 2000

[2amcheese]

I am queer.

Whatever your associations with the word, I am it. I was queer when the little boys called Mary queer at the beginning of The Secret Garden, in that old fashioned way that meant strange, I was queer when I found out the modern definition, I’ve been queer and queer and queer for years and years and years. 

I’m a trans guy. I don’t think I’m a trans man, or a trans boy. I can’t find those words in me, a concrete definition of what a male should be. I’m a trans dude. A trans guy. A concept of casual masculinity that I dress myself in for comfort. I’m tired of labels.

My mom always complains about kids and their labels. I think some labels are fine, when you shed them like a dress when it no longer fits. I don’t like labels that choke you out and force you into their boxes, which are always just too small to be comfortable but not too bad to leave. I think some labels are an abusive relationship. That’s why I’m not a trans boy. Too many expectations to fulfill the role of “boy,” I tried it once and I can’t fit into the box, even though I tried. I tried so hard.

When I look for queers on the internet they’re often separated by label. LESBIAN SPACE. GAY MEN ONLY. WLW DNI. I feel like a floater, hopping from planet to planet, like I was born out of an asteroid in the queer galaxy, never really belonging anywhere. I belong in the galaxy, I can feel that in my bones (which come from stardust) but a planet, a label, eludes me.

I am bisexual, but only in the loosest sense of the word. I don’t know if I find anyone sexually attractive but people of any genders can look good to me. My first crush was a boy and now I’m dating a girl and I don’t know if I have a preference. There are very few bi spaces and even fewer I feel I belong in--I am fundamentally not a bi girl, but have no experience with being a bi boy and all the stigma that comes with being a homo- or bi-sexual male. I feel disconnected from the concept of gender, discovering myself by avoiding feeling bad instead of seeking feeling good. 

My head is complicated. There is anxiety in there and the burden of being labeled as “the smart kid” in first grade. There’s so much in my head I can’t think straight--though my girlfriend likes to say that I can’t do anything straight. I know who I am but not what I am or how to fit in in our dimorphic world. I feel like I’m blindly feeling around for something, trying to map out a path to me by feeling the spikes and cutting my hands and going the other way. That’s less of a metaphor than I wish it was. 

I have found acceptance but not belonging. I have support but no concrete identity. The world wants so badly to categorize me so it can understand me and I don’t know how to explain that I am just me. The thing that is me is not any of these other things you wish it was. I guess my journey is less about finding a label that works, and more about learning to live label-less. I need to learn how to identify as me instead of whatever label they wrap around my neck. For now I think I’ll stick with queer. To quote The Greatest Showman; “I am brave, I am bruised, this is who I’m meant to be. This is me.” 

This is me. Queer. 

[lostryu]

genuine question, why is bi lesbianism so bad? I thought bisexuals and lesbians shared the experience of wlw and nblw attraction, and bi lesbian was for people who were in a questioning phase. Please don’t answer this if it makes you uncomfortable at all, I just actually want to educate myself by listening to lesbians.

I appreciate your politeness, anon, so I'll give you a moment of my time. Let's start with basic definitions and understanding. Lesbianism does not include men in any capacity. It is limited to women and nonbinary identities only. Bisexuality does. It includes attraction to multiple gender identities, women, nonbinary, men, ect. It is why they exist as separate labels in the community in the first place. So while bisexuals and lesbians share the same attraction to women and nonbinary identities, there is a key difference, and that is the exclusion of men in lesbianism.

The bi-lesbian label seeks to redefine lesbian it into being a modifier to imply heavy attraction to women, but inclusive of men. But there is also no need to redefine the lesbian label to be a 'modifier', lesbian exists on it's own. Modifiers like Sapphic already exist and are great to use and are not redundant and lesbophobic, unlike tacking on 'lesbian' to bisexual.

Bi-lesbianism is also harmful as by re-defining lesbian to being inclusive towards men, it has opened floodgates for casual transphobia, lesbophobia, and biphobia.

People will insist trans-men can be lesbians due to their "female body" or "connection to womanhood", or imply trans-women aren't fully women through the same patterns of thought regarding their 'biology'. They especially love to categorize femboys and trans-women as the same (especially pre-op trans-women) when it comes to the sapphic experience as they claim that there is no way to note a difference between the two.

They'll also insist that a real bisexual has to be based on equal percentages of attraction, which is a stigma the bisexual community fought against in the 90s. And I really shouldn't have to explain why it's lesbophobic at this point in the post, honestly.

Also I'd like to note that bi-lesbians like to claim that lesbian is 'technically bisexual' as it includes nonbinary identities. This is false as nonbinary is not a 3rd gender, but it exists outside the binary of male/female and is a spectrum. Declaring nonbinary as a 3rd gender is incredibly enbyphobic as it erases the diverse experience of nonbinary identities.

All in all this is a very introductory explanation of why the label itself is bad, and it's pretty condensed for ease of reading. Thanks for taking the time to listen to lesbians, anon.

[263adder]

The Horny Bisexual Trope

Eleanor Shellstrop, The Good Place

"[In a research paper by The Journal of Sex Research] researchers found that bisexual women, compared to lesbians and heterosexual women, were evaluated as more confused, promiscuous, non-monogamous, neurotic, extraverted, and open to experiences. Bisexuals were also evaluated as less agreeable and less conscientious." Psypost

Lisa Palmer, Santa Clarita Diet

"Though LGBT+ representation in the media has been improving in recent years, it is still rare to see positive portrayals of bi characters on television. Characters are usually assumed to be either gay or straight, depending on which characters they are interested in romantically. Even if a character is portrayed as being attracted to both male and female characters, they rarely identify as bi, instead claiming to “not need labels.”

"Bi characters are typically villains, promiscuous characters, or untrustworthy." Soapboxie

Nick Scratch, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

"A common and inaccurate stereotype is that all bisexual people do not want to be, or cannot be, monogamous. It is inaccurate and harmful to imply that bisexual people are categorically more “promiscuous” than others. People of all sexual orientations can be monogamous for some or all of their lives, or they can choose other types of relationships. This decision is entirely separate from one's sexual orientation." GLAAD Media Reference Guide

Klaus Hargreeves, The Umbrella Academy

"Pansexual people are [also] commonly faced with [this] stigma, fuelled in part by some people's belief that they lead hypersexualized lives. This infers that pansexual people are more likely to cheat and be promiscuous because they are "available to everyone."

"This misconception has led some people to assume that pansexual people are wanting to engage in any and all sexual activities, negating the need for sexual consent." Very Well Health

Irene Adler, Sherlock

"The hypersexualization of the LGBTQ community has taken many forms. Not only are gay men and transgender women framed as sexual predators, but lesbians are objectified and fetishized by straight men, and bisexual and pansexual people are assumed to be constantly sleeping around." The Under Ground

Bisexuality on screen is used to indicate sexual experience and promiscuity. This feeds into the misconception that bisexuality is used as a way to appear more attractive and "bisexual people [are] just attention-seeking nymphomaniacs – or that bisexuality was, in the words of Carrie Bradshaw, “Just a layover on the way to Gay Town.”" Fashion Journal

Margot Tenenbaum, The Royal Tenenbaums

"The way its [bisexuality] been commodified, that was always going to happen… there’s a whole sort of discourse around bisexuality, its exotic… that bohemian angle, it masks the actuality of being a bisexual person even in this day and age." University of Huddersfield

Bisexuality is used to add to the mysteriousness of an already mysterious character. It's not undisclosed for privacy; it's hidden to feed into a "not like other girls / guys" trope.

Willow Rosenberg, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"Bisexuals talk about “coming out twice"—once as gay or lesbian in a heterosexual world when they acknowledge their attraction to their own gender, and then again when they acknowledge their continuing attraction to the opposite sex." Psychology Today

The common depiction of bisexual myths is one of the reasons bisexuals feel they have to come out numerous times or don't come out at all.

"Three in ten bi men (30%) and almost one in ten bi women (8%), say they cannot be open about their sexual orientation with any of their friends, compared to two per cent of gay men and one per cent of lesbians." Stonewall

Not all visibility is good visibility.

[harukavoice]

milgram sexuality hcs!

es: aroace (they are SO uninterested in romance bro does not care)

haruka: aroace (never really understood romance and this contributed to his feelings of isolation but hes trying to come to terms with it)

yuno: bi masc lean (shes not open about it bc of the stigma but she def likes women at least a little)

fuuta: gay (it just fits, hes in denial though. he accepts lgbt but internalized homophobia is like "being gay is okay but ME?? never")

muu: lesbian (she was in love with rei. i dont ship them but she so was)

shidou: straight (sorry kazui shidou shippers i think its cute but hes SO in love with his wife and no one else)

mahiru: aroace (HEAR ME OUT shes in love with the concept of love she doesnt realize its just obsession and idealization)

kazui: gay (im a gay kazui truther. cat just gave us even more fuel to the fire, hes in denial though like heavily)

mikoto: gay (hes so zesty have you SEEN how he dresses)

kotoko: lesbian (shes gay. i dont make the rules shes such a girl kisser)

[sophiainspace]

Young queer folks. I love you. I love how you play with gender and sexuality, how you embrace identities. Your definitions and microlabels have saved my life, maybe literally. Growing up in a world where there was no word for ‘demisexuality’ was a very lonely experience for me. It was when I arrived on tumblr (for fandom!) in my early 40s that I learned a word that would have changed my life at 18-21. And that’s before we start talking about what it was like not to know ‘gay’ was really a thing till I was 17. Or that when I came out as bi in my 20s I got some serious stigma for it (including from friends who told me I was greedy and meant lesbian and should say it). Just to start with.

Things got (a little) better. The queer kids are all right.

So here’s the caveat.

I guess I’ve aged into the ‘queer elder’ space, and I didn’t notice till recently. And I’m okay with it. But I would like younger queer people (who have given me so much) not to victim blame me for the world I grew up in and the queer generational culture I move in. I’d like more younger queer folk to listen and not judge me by their own generation’s standards.

Don’t tell me I should have known the word demisexual in 2011. You were on tumblr then - I was not. I was marching and meeting with my queer groups. Some of whom may have known the word. Many who did not.

Don’t weaponise folks my age for an exclusionist agenda. “You can take the word ‘queer’ out of my cold dead hands,” my friend in his 50s said, when I told him about the revisionist history some kids are associating with the term.

Don’t share misinformation and wrong history about the AIDS era/generation and then tell me I don’t know anything when I try to tell you about what happened to my friends and their friends.

Don’t tell me your generation invented gender diversity/nonconformity when you weren’t there reading Gender Outlaw and Stone Butch Blues and organising the trans group meetings and starting the conversations that shaped the world you live in now. If you weren’t there when my spouse (and many others) trailblazed ‘they/them’ pronouns in the 2000s, you won’t know how they got pushback inside and outside of the queer movement, and how far we’ve - and you’ve - come.

And while we’re here, I’d like you to remember that there *are* queer people among the Gen Xers and yes, even the Boomers. We need to be humble about how much we still have to learn, but we built those foundations that you’re standing on, looking down on us. If you tell me queer folks my age should be quicker to embrace the concept of asexuality, for example, you’re right - but you might not know about the activism some of us are doing among our generation’s queer culture to change mindsets, building on an activist history that we’ve been part of.

You may not know how hard we fought and how far we stumbled so you could pick up the baton and run.

One day, you will.

Be good to the younger generation when you get there. I hope they’re good to you in return.

[toasterbunnicula]

Mass Effect Character Sexualities because I want to project

(Partly headcanon, bi-ased, personal opinion)

Ashley: straight, formerly homophobic until she realized that most of her Normandy crew mates were gay

Garrus: bi energy, its simply unfair to our gay guys for such an amazing and hot character to not go both ways. Ive also seen too much Garrus/Thane/Shepard fanart to see him any other way

Liara: obviously bi, I hc that she was confused when she first encountered homophobia because it simply doesn’t exist in asari culture (closest thing is the asarixasari stigma)

Wrex: for some reason I see him as bi? I have no idea where I got this but I want to see a tough, old warrior casually mentioning being into both men and women and not caring at all about it (even though I think krogan culture probably wouldn’t approve)

Tali: for my sake as a helpless bi simp, I see her as under the umbrella, but doesn’t realize it. Like me before I came out, Tali would say “yeah she’s really pretty and I want to hang out with her and hug her and stare at her but I’m not gay or anything.” You are. You are gay. I think it would be in character for her to completely miss the fact that she’s into girls as well as men

Joker: straight. The kind of straight to make jokes about his friends’ sexualities, but not mean anything by it. He goes to pride every June with his wife EDI (who I will get to)

Jacob: I honestly can’t believe that he was originally intended to be bi, I just can’t see him into men unless I squint. It’s hilarious that they tried to make his male romance more like Brokeback Mountain so it’d be accepted

Miranda: I’ve seen a headcanon on Pinterest about Miranda having internalized homophobia because it doesn’t line up with her view of genetic perfection, something she’s established to be insecure about. I think it would make perfect sense for her character. I think it’s easy to see her as a lesbian practicing het-comp, especially with how awkward her initial flirting with Shepard is, but there are more scenes in her romance that feel authentic than there are that feel performative, so I’m inclined to say she is bi/pan/omni/etc.

Mordin: I’m pretty sure his asexuality is canon. I also think that he’s aromantic as well, but can objectively assess beauty/attractiveness well. For example, his film noir short story in the Citadel DLC involves a hookup with Aria. I personally believe that is him saying “yeah, she’s attractive, and if I were into women, I’d smash”

Zaeed: he gives off straight uncle who would punch a homophobe for you but otherwise doesn’t know how to interact with you after you’ve come out and tries a little too hard to acknowledge your sexuality but it’s definitely well-meaning (think the “anyone could be they!” scene from Brooklyn Nine-Nine)

Grunt: straight and supports his bi parents (Shepard and Garrus/Thane/Tali/Liara), wears rainbows at Pride for them, and regularly headbutts homophobes

Jack: I’m forever salty about them erasing her pansexuality. Also she and Miranda should’ve kissed

Kasumi: also gives off pan energy. She definitely feels like the type to not care about gender at all- as long as they’ve got muscles, that’s all that matters to her

Thane: pan energy

Samara: as established, Samara is bisexual

Legion: ace, non-binary (goes with people using he/him based on its masculine voice, pronouns are they/it)

Kelly: she said so herself, she doesn’t care about race/species or gender, all that matters is the person 💖💛💙

EDI: something about Sentient AI Who People Initially Don’t Trust Until She Gets A Humanoid Body That People Can Better Associate With Her reads to me as a trans allegory. Obviously, she’s not trans, but the vibes are there. Many times, people are suspicious of trans women until they transition and pass more as cis, which is similar to EDI’s story. She learns more about herself after her body changes, and others start to appreciate her more and have an easier time referring to her with she/her pronouns. As for her sexuality, she doesn’t seem to lean any particular way to me. She doesn’t seem like the type who’d use labels, even though it would make sense for her to “categorize” herself. I’d say she’s unlabelled- definitely into men, with her relationship with Joker

James: as much as I wish we could get gay gym bro representation, James is great as he is, being a masculine straight guy who’s best friends are openly gay (Cortez) and bi (Shepard)

Traynor: lesbian (canon), definitely into women who can crush her head under their heel but also has a dominant side herself

Cortez: gay (canon)

Diana: that annoying and popular bi girl you secretly had a crush on but didn’t want to because she was intimidating and popular

[star-anise]

Pulling a piece out of an already massive post to reply to @zenosanalytic :

Most of this is great, but I feel like this overstates the influence and power of exclusionists; they never took over either Feminist or Lesbian groups or turned them en masse against bisexuals and transpeople, at least not in the US(in Britain it's an accurate description from what I've read). They def were still there, TRYING to(they were majorly annoying in the Fair scene), and you'd meet them or lesbian-separatists moving in wider queer circles, but they were pretty consistently losing that fight especially in academic and political queer orgs and, by the 00s, were pretty much irrelevant. They stayed that way until the Conservative movement deliberately revived/coopted them in the 10s.

Because... here's the bit from the original post I think this is talking about:

That process of expelling bi women from lesbian groups with immense prejudice continues to this day and leaves scars on a lot of bi/pan people. A lot of bisexuals, myself included, have an experience of “double discrimination”; we are made to feel unwelcome or invisible both in straight society, and in LGBT spaces.

It is absolutely true that radfems did not succeed in making exclusionary politics the mainstream policy of LGBT institutions. Hooowever. That's not what I was talking about.

Most people do not engage with the LGBTQ+ community solely by, like... walking into a policy meeting at GLAAD. Generally we do things like finding LGBTQ+ content on social media, or by attending LGBTQ+ social events, or by trying to find people to date!

In those settings, groups that are minoritized within the LGBTQ+ community (bi, pan, m-spec, ace, aro, trans, nb, etc) experience being treated in ways that are invalidating or derogatory. Not all the time! #notalllesbians!! The majority of the community might actually be kind and welcoming, and it might be relatively small microaggressions. But those microaggressions can happen often enough, and in a context where not much is being done to show that we are valued by the community, to create a sense of wariness and unwelcome in a space that ought to be safe for us.

I didn't attend a single LGBTQ+ event, or try to date a single woman, my entire undergrad career, because when I was 16, the first real-life gays and lesbians I ever met laughed and joked, in my hearing, about how bisexual teenage girls are just sluts who are doing it for the attention, not actually gay. It's not that I believed them, since they were obviously wrong; it's just that I went, "Oh okay, so LGBT spaces are still ones where I'll be bullied and shit-talked. I absolutely cannot deal with any more of that, so I'll just never go into those spaces."

Mine is a very small story. There are a lot of little stories like mine, and also ones big enough that they'd look exclusionary even to an outside observer. I know people who actually did get pushed out of their college GSAs, or lost their whole social support network, or had people try to coerce them into thinking they were horrible misguided tools of the patriarchy, in LGBT spaces, because they were bi, pan, m-spec, ace, aro, trans, nb, etc.

If you'd clicked the link in the post labelled "double discrimination", you'd read an NBC article that says, in part:

“This study adds to the growing body of research confirming that bisexual people face unique mental health disparities [that are] closely related to stigma and discrimination [they face] from straight, gay and lesbian communities,” Heron Greenesmith, a senior policy analyst at LGBTQ advocacy organization Movement Advancement Project, said.

(Note: this means "unique" as compared to gays and lesbians, which have been the focus of most mental health research and practice in this area. Namely, bisexuals tend to face certain pressures as a group that cis gays and lesbians don't so much. It does not mean "unique" as in "only bisexuals experience this". Bisexuals are just one of many groups that feel unwelcome or unsafe in LGBTQ+ spaces they ought to belong in.

Maybe you didn't mean to imply that all these experiences didn't happen. I hope you didn't. Because it would be really goshdarn silly for someone who's been on Tumblr for years to suggest that the 2010s were not a fucking golden age of young LGBTQ+ people tentatively reaching out to explore their gender and sexuality, and being deluged with immense volumes of bullshit by other LGBTQ+ people for it.

I don't want to in any way discourage people from reaching out to LGBTQ+ groups, because it's very possible that the reward will far outweigh the risks. It's possible that other people will welcome you and will enforce a code of conduct against anyone who gives you shit. I'm not saying, "Hide forever! You're on your own, kid!"

But on the other hand, it is very easy, in a million different ways, to say "We didn't think very hard about making these groups feel welcome and protected in our space" without ever writing it into official policy.