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As we go into the holiday season, I can't help but feel a great sadness. It isn't unusual for queer, LGBTQ people to feel unwelcome at most household festivities. The reason for this is pretty plain to most people. Even if we are "welcome" to the table, there is often an undercurrent. A lull in the conversation the makes us give pause before we speak up or share information about our lives.
Living LGBTQ is not just being disowned and dismissed, it is having a life experience that people do not understand. As a bisexual, I had a very interesting experience a few years back with some of my closest friends. We were watching a stupid TV show: something about marrying someone you've never met based on a single conversation. I don't remember the title, and it's not really important.
There was a bi man on the show, and when he came out as bi to his fiancé, she dumped him.
Now, to me, this is very clearcut bi-phobia. Upon learning that he had been intimate with other men, she broke off their engagement and accused him of lying to her.
Everyone in the room with me agreed with her, that he lied and that he should have been honest with her from the start, but did he really lie? He was honest about having had other partners in the past. He never said he was straight, and he came out to her, yet despite sharing his truth, he is a liar? My family didn't seem to understand that her reaction would not have been the same if it had been about his past interactions with other women.
Bi-phobia, to be clear, happens in a lot of ways.
1. It can be a dismissal of the bi label based on the partner the person is with. Historically, this is the most common. Many queer icons are label gay or lesbian because they are seen most often with that respective partner despite evidence to suggest they loved both men and women. Virginia Wolfe, for example, was known to have sapphic relationships, but until recently was considered hetero due to her marriage to Leonard Wolfe. Walt Whitman, as well, has long been considered gay for his relationships with men despite his open and public relationships with women. This is called bi-erasure and is one of the hardest to spot in media and real life.
To add this this, there is this idea that being bi isn't as "bad" as being gay or lesbian because you can "choose" to be in a hetero-normative relationship. That didn't stop my own mother from calling me crazy when I came out as bi on Pride. It was in a hetero-passing relationship at the time, and she dismissed me as easily as waving away a fly. Now, when my partner came out as trans, she had a lot of self-reflecting to do because not only was she needing to confront my partner's gender identity, but she also needed to reconcile my bi-ness. Not an easy thing to do, and because of how hard it's been for her, I don't think I'm ever going to come out to her as genderfluid.
2. Bi-phobia can be a refusal to consider or engage in relationships with bi individuals simply because they are bi, as seen in the TV show that was discussed earlier. I'll detail my own experience with this.
Going into lesbian spaces can be very difficult to navigate as a bi person. I was once rebuked by a woman who approached me. We were having good conversation and seemed to be vibing, but then I brought up my sexuality, and it was like a switch had been flipped. Suddenly, she just wasn't interested. Didn't even want to explore a platonic friendship. It was jarring.
3. Lastly, and the one that has proven the most harmful to me, is the hyper-sexualization of bi people. The threesome unicorn, the +1 to a pair, the exploratory adventure.
In high school, I was the "girl" all the curious girls came to for their first girl-on-girl kiss. In college, I was propositioned several times to join an already established couple as their third. I remember being terribly put off, when a PRIDE parade animation grouped bi and pan people with polyamorous people when the two are not synonymous. (Polyamorous individuals also suffer from this hyper-sexualization stigma by the way.) Liking a variety of genders does not equate to wanting to date or be intimate multiple people at once.
Now, I know all of these things because I've lived them. They are part of my existence and identity. And it just is not something other people deal with, so they know nothing about it.
At some point, I stopped talking. There is no point arguing with people when they have already decided they are right and refuse to learn other things.
All this to say, to my fellow bi-pirates and pan friends feels invalidated by their environments, your experience is not okay. To my LGBTQ fam with accepting friends and fam who still don't quite understand you, all we can do is keep educating when appropriate, and if we are tired and drained, it's okay to take a break from that, too. Just never forget that you matter, your experiences matter, and the words your share, though they may be met with push-back, they matter, too.
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