I've been having run-ins with biphobia lately in a place where I expect it but still wish I could feel safe, the kink community. So, it got me thinking about some of the ways in which bias against bisexuals is displayed. I write this with the understanding that there are more fluid terms that exist currently such as pansexual, hetero-flexible, and genderqueer. While I've used each of these terms for myself in the past, I tend to use bisexual more often because it has a firm grip in our society and people think they know what it means.
So, here are my top 4 symptoms of biphobia that I come across quite commonly.
1. Having different standards for men and women.
Female bisexuality tends to be fetishized in our society and therefore marginally more accepted than male bisexuality. It is common for people to make assumptions about gender and how it relates to choices and monogamy.
2. Thinking that bisexuality is a phase or a process.
There are some bisexuals that will stop seeing either women or men during their lives for a variety of reasons. They may enter to a lifelong, committed, and monogamous relationship or they may decide that one type of attraction no longer exists. But, that doesn't mean that they are not bisexual or that they have passed through it. Unless someone tells you that they are now straight or gay (or any other label they may choose), honor the decision they have made about how to describe themselves.
3. Believing that bisexuals are "easy" or promiscuous.
The old joke is that bisexuals are greedy and will be with anyone. In reality they obviously have standards and limitations just like any gay or straight person that is looking for a partner or partners. That said, why not also question the fundamental assumptions of this bias? Consider what you think the problem with promiscuity is and ask yourself if there is any real grounding for it. Even if bisexuals (or any category of people) were more promiscuous, why is that threatening to you?
4. Assuming that people who are in a same-sex relationship are gay or in an opposite-sex relationship are straight.
Bisexuals often feel invisible because, if they are monogamous, they cannot easily signal their sexual identity to others based on their relationships. This is similar to the predicament that many non-monogamous people experience when they appear to be in a single, committed relationship. The reality is that the display of one relationship choice is not enough to define the identity of a person.
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What are some other symptoms of biphobia that you may have encountered or perhaps even had yourself?
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The same reason that they might want to signal any identity category to someone. For visibility, political reasons, or personal pride.
I have friends who like to sleep with both genders but only like relationships with one particular gender. I have friends who love to sleep with both genders and can have long term relationships with both. I even have a friend who claims no interest in sex or relationships whatsoever. She says she gets more guff about her lack of choice than almost anyone she knows.
I agree with all of your points except the 'phase' point. I think, when people are in their teens and early twenties, they like to experiment, as frankly, they should. But, as a term, one must be what one identifies oneself as, usually. Of course, it's more complicated than that because many people are not honest with themselves about their sexuality. But in the main, what happens in your twenties, stays in your twenties. Kind of like Vegas. It's when you know yourself better that you can have a better understanding of your preferences.
If only our society were more accepting of these choices, it would be better for everyone.
What about the buy-sexuals who have to pay for it? Or are they pay-sexuals? Hell, they risk getting arrested and paying the gov't for the same sex.
That's double-jeopardy.
Anyway, I left a message, the woman called back, and in the course of the convo out came this thing of beauty: "we don't want no dirty bisexuals - only hot young straight guys who want to try cock". :-D
The tricky thing about bisexuality is that it isn't as clear cut as "gay, straight or bi" - I believe in the Kinsey scale, where most people have some level of bisexuality, but normally have a preference one way or the other. Since finding a true middle of the fence bisexual is so hard, I think it's natural for most people to "pick a side" and stick to it.
"Bisexuals often feel invisible because, if they are monogamous, they cannot easily signal their sexual identity to others based on their relationships."
Yeah.....But, um, why would a person in a monogamous relationship need to signal his or her status to anyone outside that relationship?
Thanks,
"S"
There's also the diminution of the depth of affection between same-sex lovers by people outside the community (and this isn't just a bi thing -- it happens all the time). I lost my first "real" love in a car accident almost 1n years ago. Had she lived... maybe we would have separated. But... I believe we'd be finally married. I was ready to marry her. I wanted to do so. But I couldn't, because California only made it legal this year. (When she died, we were trying to transfer to Denmark, the only place in the world where same-sex unions were legal at the time. We were willing to give up our citizenship for it... depth of commitment? I'd say so.) So watching California is bittersweet... because after she died, nobody - gay, straight or bi - realized how deeply I grieved. (At the time, I was still standing in the open closet to my family, though out to people closer than 500 miles away.) Had we both been born 1n years later... even if everything went the same, at least when she died, I'd have a piece of paper that said -- yes, this person meant the world to me.
Fast forward 1n years. Yes, I love my partner, and not to devalue our relationship -- it's weird and wonderful and brilliant and he's the joy of my life now -- but he's my second marriage. Of course there's still grief. There's still an absence. That never goes away... but I've learned not to talk about it because the comment always comes -- well, she was just your girlfriend. No. She wasn't. She was my wife... in heart, mind, soul... everything but law. It's tough being a 22 year old widow -- a 22 year old lesbian widow... yeah, nobody gets that. 22 year olds have breakups. Sometimes divorces... not funerals. That's from the straight side. And from the LGBT (yes, even the Bs) community, I get this: Well, you couldn't have loved her that much... you married straight.
No, I didn't marry a sexuality. I married *a person* who is as warm and wise and witty and wonderful as she was in his way. Who fits his rough edges around mine, with whom... I work well. (Hm. I'm big on alliteration today.) It took me years to recover my equanimity and maybe I did say subconsciously no, I'm not going to date women again because I'm afraid I'll compare them to her and that would be unfair to the women I might let into my life. (Except I did. But never again as seriously... Maybe because I didn't want to have to explain the grief again if we broke or bog forbid, I lost another one... So call me gun-shy. A lot of widows are.) Or maybe it just worked that the person I met happened to come with a Y chromosome. These things happen.
There are a lot of monogamous gay and straight people, too.... doesn't mean my eyes down wander, just not my body or my heart. You don't stop being straight because you marry... so why do I stop being bi?
But just because I chose a person who happens to not share my chromosomal makeup does not mean that my love, my attractions, my stance, my hopes for my community are any different. I loved my wife, and I could never call her that. I still do. I love my husband. I want the 22 year old and the 26 year old who are living in California today, sharing sips from the same margarita as they walk on the beach to be able to turn to each other and say, I love you, will you marry me... and have the first thought not be of plane tickets to get to some country where they can love and exist, but of plane tickets for the honeymoon. Or for Mom, Dad, whoever.
So, John Walker, A Corinne, that is why someone in a faithful, monogamous relationship might want to signal their bisexuality. Just one reason.
It's an awkward situation, though, because most of us gayguys know that most of the gayguys we know went through a "bi phase" --not that we were bisexual, but admitted bisexuality to ourselves and others on the road to admitting we were gay.
So when someone says they're bi, it's not polite to say so out loud--or otherwise express cynicism--but it is a legitimate mental question to consider something like, "OK, is this one of the people who is actually bi, or one of the ones on the road to admitting they're gay?"
I think any healthy mind is going to consider that. Especially after years and years of "bi" friends who continued down the path. It would show a lack of learning to continue to blindly believe each later person was self-aware to know the truth and confident enough to say.
So again: tricky situation.
Hopefully the long-term solution is a society that doesn't despise gays (or does so a lot less), so that few gays are copping to bisexuality. An underlying problem here is lying homos--mostly lying to ourselves--so the solution lies in us telling the truth. But society is provoking the lies, and will continue to do so as things stand now.
i'm not sure what you have in mind because there were only two sentences, but the very limited data so far tends to suggest that there may be underlying reasons for homosexuality between men and women, and that bisexuality may be far more prevalent in women than in men.
no one knows for sure--or even close yet--but it's entirely possible that sexuality acts more like a switch in men: flipped either toward male or female attraction; and it is much more fluid in women, with the degree of same-sex attraction spread much more smoothly over a wide spectrum.
we are only beginning to understand what the hell is driving all this, but at this early date, that seems to be quite likely.
the NY Times Mag and the NYer and i think NY Magazine (and many others, i'm sure) did excellent lengthy pieces in the last few years on the data gathered to-date. there's lots of contradictory data, but there do seem to be patterns.
the patterns may well turn out to be incorrect, but they're the best we have at the moment.
It is a taxonomic term, nothing more. When we call someone bisexual we are not identifying a different kind of human sexuality; we are simply organizing human sexuality according to our own preference and agenda. Much as an optomitrist might categorize his customers according to who wears glasses and who wears contacts, the category says more about the person making the statement than it does the person classified. And the classification depends on the reason one is classifying.
I say this because I -- who also occasionally write about sexuality -- do not view orientation as bipolar or tripolar, but as a continuum. As such, there are few, if any, truly "bisexual" people in the world, though we all fall somewhere on a line between the two poles of complete homo-orientation and complete hetero-orientation (though even this is a simplification because it leaves out the intersexed, for whom straight and bi make no sense, and the other various forms of sexual orientation that exist, such as a trans-orientation or age-orientation).
Still, I suppose such capricious categorization serves a shorthand purpose. I call myself lesbian for simplicity's sake, and so the general population will instantly understand that I am attracted to women. But any deeper than that and the terms fall apart and become completely useless.
That's why I discount the "bisexual identity" talk. Ain't no sucha thang. If you "identify" as bi then you are really bringing no more than a Palinesque level of understanding to the situation. Sexual identity is much more complex than the simplistic either/or/both. People who claim to have a bisexual identity decry the great segments of society that insist that there is only a straight/gay choice, but fail to realize that a straight/gay/both choice is also artificially limited and false.
Ellie, I hope your post is just over-simplified, and you don't really identify that way. Like those you complain about, I don't believe in bisexuality, either. But it's not because I don't think there are people in the world who are attracted to both sexes (and I do believe in a strict bipolar sex system), but because there are an infinite variety of two-sex attractions and claiming only one category for it is an arbitrary and false choice.
Oh, I see how people can think of it that way. Sometimes it appears that there are bisexual people in the world. But there really aren't. Take race as an analogy. If you get on a plane in Ethiopia and fly to Sweden, when you get off the plane you're going to see the vast differences between people in those two places and you will conclude that there are two types of people: black people and white people. But if, instead of flying, you were to *walk* from Ethiopia to Sweden, you wouldn't notice any substantive divisions at all; just a slow, smooth and seamless transition from the dark to the light.
And so it is with sexuality. There are no bisexuals. There are only people along an orientation continuum who, for reasons related to both biology and culture, feel and choose to express an attraction to people of both sexes.
I like both, but I call myself lesbian for shorthand, just so I don't have to get into a big discussion. I am in a monogamous, committed, permanent relationship with a woman. I have no need to advertise my particular point on the spectrum, so there is no need to get into identity politics, as this post does.
Ellie, you have carved out a victim position for your own personal taxonomic reasons, but that doesn't make it real. I would posit that, if cultural imperatives failed to act as restrictions on people's self-expression, the vast majority of humanity would express attraction to members of both sexes -- though female sexuality is, I believe, more fluid than its male counterpart.
Still, your article contains a lot of truth, if couched in false terms, and I am rating your post and making you a "friend" so I can be sure to read more of you in the future. :)
True, One's bi-ness can be 90% het and 10% gay or vice versa, and the same "bi" would then describe two very different sex lives. So?
You can talk infinitely about the range and the spectrum, but the point is, if dude A wants to know if he has a shot at gettin' down with dude B, he doesn't want to know, yet anyway, where exactly Dude B is along the spectrum. At first, he just wants to know whether it's at all possible that his desire for B will be reciprocated. If you have a better suggestion for a definition than "bi" for people who are open to sex with both sexes, I'm all ears.
You're right that the post is over-simplified. I thought I nodded to that with my reference to pansexuality et al earlier in the post. In fact I think of gender more along the lines of a galaxy than a continuum. Even the linear nature of most thinking about a continuum is problematic to me. It doesn't change that bisexuals get jammed into a location that is at best the average of the two more accepted orientations and at worst a complete marginalization by other communities.
Also, the comments on this post have made it clear to me that my next post needs to be about non-monogamy because no one seems to be able to wrap their heads around that either ;)
You're an adult, you want to have one or more relationships with other adults... 'good on you. I just hope that eventually everyone finds someone to love. It seems to me that love matters more than any other consideration.
And for same-sex couples, when you're ready, come visit the Great White North to get married. No drama. You'll just get best wishes from us, and a bottle of champagne. Extra hug if you like hockey.
Vive le Canada!
I guess that those attendees who identified as bi constituted a pretty small portion of the crowd, because our cheer wasn't all that loud. The speaker then said 'Oh, you guys can't make up your mind either.'
Huh?
So I left immediately, wishing the strictly gay community the best of luck with their rights issues (issues they clearly didn't see as including me).
Since then I have been monogamously married to a man for over a decade, although I still consider myself 'equal opportunity' -minded. I am in the closet professionally, and socially its a mixed bag (since so much of my social life overlaps with my professional life). Many of my gay friends clearly consider me straight for all practical reasons.
I would agree that generally female bisexuality tends to be more fetishized (as anyone watching basic cable late at light with the incessant ads for _Girls Gone Wild_ videos can attest), and male bisexuality tends to considered non-existent or 'dirty'.
I think that arguments about the topology of sexual orientation (lines, spectrums, surfaces, torii, what-have-you) should generally be viewed as rhetorical devices.
And if one walks from Ethiopia to Sweden, one would actually see myriad unique groups, and no smooth transition at all, to throw in my own critique of another's rhetorical device.
I am curious why it is so important for some respondents here to declare that bisexuality in and of itself does not exist, and I am really not clear what they are proposing as an alternative. Are we all just straight or gay relative to the interaction we are immediately having? I would also ponder whose agenda it serves to summarily dismiss the identities of those who do call themselves 'bi.' After all, we have largely (although incompletely) moved passed denying homosexuality as 'just a phase' or (shudder) 'just haven't had a good man (or woman) yet.'
A thought provoking post, though, as the comments demonstrate. Thanks and a thumb for keeping us thinking.
Yeah, Cam... that would be great, but the drama's at home, not in your delightful country. Our government doesn't recognize that certificate. We can't use it to get into the hospital when the MPA is misfiled. We can't use it to register the kids for school, get birth certificates copied at the County Clerk's, get through probate, get car insurance, get a mortgage.... It's not about the sense of "feeling married" -- we do that on our own. It's about the practical crap.
And hey, the day Canada realizes that an influx of a couple million bright, creative, well educated, generally well-off immigrants from the US can be had by opening the border and saying, "Hey, you LGB community -- move here and we'll expedite your citizenship!" I know dozens of people who will pack their luggage. The problem is "Come Visit" isn't enough. Come visit implies "Go home" and I've no problems with Canada... just the government here that won't recognize your same sex marriages (or those from South Africa, Norway, the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium. Never thought I'd live to see the day when South Africa was more civilized and accepting of human rights -- at least in one area -- than the US...)
Best wishes, champagne and hugs are great... but we've got about 1200 rights that go along with that piece of paper your government issues that our government doesn't acknowledge.
First, I think you're on to something. The idea of Canada plundering America's gay community, stealing all those (mostly) urban, urbane, productive, tax-paying, statistically-relatively-wealthy people, in the midst of a global economic crisis... brilliant.
"Bring us your creative, your fabulous, your rainbow masses yearning to marry free..." I'll get to work on an immigration policy paper. [chuckle]
Second, I hear you, about the rights, the quotidian financial and administrative headaches, and the lack of respect involved. And I'm sorry this is even an issue in the US. Obviously things are changing for the better (viz. Mass, Calif), but it does seem to be taking too long, in my opinion.
I have quite a few bi friends whom I love but I'm always hesitant to date one because I always feel like an experiment. The whole 'I can have sex with a woman but not a relationship' type of bisexual woman is great for a time, but c'mon it's just insulting.
On the subject of identification from within relationships, I have a lot of friends in monogamous, or at least long-term (not always monogamous relationships, and often, they will identify themselves as bisexual or pan-sexual when discussing their preferences. Not many people are that shy about it. Well, as far as I know. Which could mean not very far, I know.
I was refering to:
"And so it is with sexuality. There are no bisexuals. There are only people along an orientation continuum who, for reasons related to both biology and culture, feel and choose to express an attraction to people of both sexes."
posted by Dana Douglass on 10/22/08 @ 6:12pm. This excerpt is from the middle of a lengthy post; it would be easy to miss.
Because it exists. Call it bi whatever name--pansexual, ambisexual, lesbians-who-have-sex-with-men, queer, metrosexual, or Larry Craig--bisexuality has existed for as long as there have been human beings and we, in American culture, have had substantial evidence of its existence since the Kinsey reports. Most bis I know of don't care what it's called, but they do want the freedom to say how they feel, explore their experience, find others like themselves to share, compare, get support, not be judged, not be fired, beaten up, or loose custody of the kids, and not be callously dismissed as stupid, confused, irrelevant, or hanging on to heteroprivilege.
But getting the larger culture--heck, even the "alternative" subcultures that claim to be liberated and open about sexuality--to acknowledge and deal rationally and impartially with bisexuality is a Sysiphean task. I should know; I was part of that group of bi activists who struggled to get the nomenclature of gay and lesbian organizations to include us during the 1990s. To this day, I am unclear as to the value of that effort when I continue to read posts like these. No offense, Ellie, but it just seems like something I could have read twenty years ago--and the fact that you felt compelled to write in response to people's attitudes toward you in the kink community, a space that has always seemed "safe" to bi activists of my generation, is truly disheartening.
I'm going to say what I think we should have fought for twenty years ago: the gay and lesbian community is not interested in defending bisexuality--it puts them too much at risk. For decades they have defended a kind of homoeroticism that is contained and exclusive; in fact, the gay and lesbian movement doesn't even defend same sex behavior or desire--it defends a kind of person who is "born gay", whose sexuality never changes, is never influenced by environment, a person who is innately, essentially homosexual, practically a member of a sexual ethnicity. Under these types of conservatively self-imposed restrictions, defending bisexuality or fluid sexuality or fluid sexual identity of any kind is dangerous and destabilizing and threatens whatever gains lesbians and gay men have made so far.
I had great hopes for "queer" identification--but the politics around that doesn't really defend fluid sexuality in mainstream media, politics, or culture either. Far from being transformational, queer is contained in queer subcultural and academic environments.
Bisexuals, if you want acceptance, understanding, and greater freedom, you are going to have to fight for it. You are going to have to go beyond where the gay and lesbian movement has gone and defend sexual behavior and desire that is changing, changeable, influenced and influencing, unpredictable, sometimes based on gender, sometimes not; sexuality with and without labels. What we are fighting for is the freedom to be totally human.
I'm a bit confused. Are we arguing about terminology now? Because I don't want to do that. I think I'll bow out.
The problem is that gays have let themselves be cornered into "it's not a choice". I choose (well, chose, afore I done settled down with a person not equipped with one) to suck cock. Chose. Not something I could not have refrained from if I saw a reason to. Just didn't see one. (well, would have earlier if not for societal conditioning, probly, but that lasted less than high school, so...)
Whether or not it's a choice (i.e., whether or not you have any attraction to the opposite alongside your attraction to the same) is irrelevant. The single, solitary argument against same sex relationships of any kind between consenting adults is religious. Because Sky Daddy said so.
Sorry it offends your sky daddy, folks. Tell him to gimme a call if he has a beef about me sucking a guy's cock if the guy and I so please. Been meaning to catch a word with him anyway (your sky daddy, not the guy with the cock). Dude has GOT to find better spokespeople. This is not even funny anymore.
I know it seems like a retro argument, that is why I'm shocked that they are concepts that seem:
a) alien to my local kink community and,
b) challenging for people here!
I think you are right that the less mainstream queer community has embraced bisexuality (or whatever you want to call it) but mainstream and queer are already a contradiction in terms, right? ;)
Ricky, I think you nailed it with Sky Daddy. Sky Daddy and his followers have a lot of shit to answer for. Sky Daddy sets the standard for violent patriarchal behavior--so, of course, no tender loving cocksucking can happen on Sky Daddy's watch.
Dana, you've posted: "I like both. I call myself a lesbian for shorthand, just so I don't have to get into a big discussion." I get that. Your in a long term relationship with a woman, you are building your life with her--why bother getting into it with someone who will not understand fluid desire in the first place? I often feel like we are reaching the limits of identity politics. For me "bisexual" is shorthand for all the values I feel in response to all the experiences I have had due to my sexuality.
Constance, thank you for sharing your beautiful story.
The way I first encountered it was this: I was involved with a woman who identified as primarily lesbian (and I'm a guy). She found some local lesbian friends and was delighted to find that community, but then found herself feeling social pressure, uncomfortable in referring to me by pronoun for example. Eventually her discomfort got to the point where she felt like she had to choose, and that was when our physical involvement ended.