Content warning: this post discusses biphobia and lesbophobia
A YouGov poll was published the other day which revealed that 43% of 18-24 year olds don’t identify as completely straight, or completely gay, with pretty substantial chunks of other generations also being somewhere in the middle on the Kinsey scale (a third of 25-39 year olds identify this way; heck, even 21% of 60+ year olds don’t identify as exclusively straight or gay). Nowhere in the reporting did it mention how many people identified as bisexuals, preferring to focus on heteros and gay and lesbian people.
In fact, having a look at the full dataset revealed only 2% of people surveyed identified as bi. This held up for the 18-24 year old demographic, and was pretty much the same for most generations, although the 60+s had half that, and my generation, the 25-39 year olds had double the proportion of bisexuals than the younger generation, with a still fucking titchy 4% identifying as bi.
So what gives? Why are there so few bisexuals, despite a whopping 35% of hetero-identified people thinking they might have sex with someone of the same sex when it came down to it? Why so few bisexuals when so many aren’t identifying as exclusively straight or gay?
First and foremost, I don’t think it’s a product of the tumblr-generation-made-up-sexualities bullshit line that usually gets trotted out when queer folk come up with new words which better fit their sexualities. I don’t think this because of the absolutely tiny proportions who would describe their sexuality as something “other” than heterosexual, gay or lesbian, or bisexual. Only 2% of young people chose “other”, and even smaller proportions of the older generations. So, whatever’s going on, it’s got nothing to do with having the right words to express how they feel.
Maybe it’s a gender thing, to do with how women’s sexuality is constructed. That’s a definite possibility. Placing themselves on the Kinsey scale, 76% of women (compared to 68% of men) placed themselves at “completely heterosexual”. Despite this, following up with straight-identified women revealed only 46% would rule out ever being attracted to another woman and only half would rule out sex or a relationship with another woman. This pattern was not the same for men, where roughly the same numbers who identified as het would rule these things out. Something doesn’t quite add up here, and I suspect that it’s down to the fact heteropatriarchy doesn’t really believe sex and attraction between women exists–or if it does, it doesn’t count. It’s just gals being pals. So, women’s heterosexual identity is not at all threatened by the fact they could see themselves fancying other women and having sex with them and growing old together in the same bed.
That might account for some of it. Some of it. But there’s still a hell of a lot of people who fit the definition of bi, but do not apply it to themselves. This is probably because of the fact that bisexuals don’t exist. Ask a straight-identified person, and they’ll probably say bisexuals are actually gays who aren’t out of the closet yet. Ask a gay-identified person, and they’ll also probably say bisexuals are actually gays who aren’t out of the closet yet (unless they’re straights trying to infiltrate queer spaces). You might also get the standard grumble about tumblr-generation-made-up-sexualities–despite the fact the word “bisexual” was coined at the same time as “heterosexual” and “homosexual”.
I can barely think of an instance where I have heard the word “bisexual” applied to a fictional character: um, maybe Thirteen in House? Possibly the slutty one in Coupling, I think they mentioned she was pretending to be bisexual for attention? Did anyone actually outright say that Tick in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was bi? I feel, like, 90% sure that maybe the word came up there? Like, seriously, please leave a comment below if you can think of characters to whom the word “bisexual” is actually, canonically applied, because I am desperately struggling to think of them. Yes, we’re finally getting to see characters who fuck people of any gender, who love people of any gender, who experience attraction… but the word just doesn’t come up.
Because of this invisibility, there’s still a lot of confusion over what being bisexual even means, no doubt obfuscated a lot by structural biphobia (e.g. the myth that bisexuality reinforces the gender binary, the myth that you have to fancy both equally, the stigma attached to the label). Given the invisibility (and the often poor representation that comes up when it’s actually applied), the myths and stigmas can run free, making people reticent to wear a label that actually fits. People don’t feel like they’re “bi enough” to wear it, or they think wearing it means they are upholding an oppressive binary, or they think it makes them gross plague rats. And I can totally see why this means one might prefer no label to one which monosexuals–straights and gay people alike–have turned into a dirty word.
And of course “bi” isn’t a dirty word. It’s an innocuous label, and one which would fit a pretty sizeable proportion of the population if there wasn’t all the stigma surrounding it.
Update, about five hours after posting this: I confused myself, wondering if I myself was right to describe myself as bi. And then I decided I don’t give a flying fuck, and I am bi. You can see me waffling to myself here. tl;dr my goodness sexuality and identity is ~hard~
Another angry woman 
This goes back to mid-90s so that probably says something in itself, Celie was bi in The Colour Purple IIRC
Actually explicitly bi-identified or just defo bi but the word is never used?
Celie in The Colour Purple is a lesbian, not bi. She.says in the book, “Men are like frogs and it doesn’t matter how you kiss them, they’re still frogs.”
Shug Avery is bi, but I don’t think the book uses the word bisexual.
also lol pretty much all the examples coming through on Twitter (Ferdy from This Life, e.g.) are also 90s-ish, so I guess that explains the higher prevalence of 90s bisexuals.
Roger from American Dad? (By the way, this is NOT in any way an endorsement for American Dad which is awful in many many ways (mainly rape jokes, actually))
Roger self-describes at one point as pansexual, and is called bisexual by the titular character. It’s not exactly delivered in a good natured way, but I think that’s because Stan is not exactly an enlightened man. So there you go. I literally stared open mouthed at the TV at both of these things because I’d never seen someone use pansexual on TV before, and I guess bisexual is only slightly less shocking.
I know the feeling of the staring open-mouthed… like, I remember Thirteen on House simply because it startled the fuck out of me hearing that word said!
Bear with me on this as it’s a pretty tentative point:
Could the fictional characters thing be to do with how much it needs to be named when it can just be shown – after all, show not tell is meant to be the rule for good writing. I’m thinking of the “I’ll be in my bunk” bit in Firefly where Kaylee and the silky one both come across as bisexual of some sort or another, without a word actually being needed.
On the other hand, the Mean Girls “too gay to function” line is really useful, because you can inform the audience that the character is gay, without long-suffering straight viewers having to look at anything unseemly. It’s also something that gets used as a plot point more often – see: Clueless, What Women Want, probably Sex and the City at some point, so needs spelling out.
Then, and for pretty obvious and shitty reasons, when was the last time you saw a character described as “straight” or “heterosexual”?
Very, very tentative point: since most characters are presumed straight, you actually have to announce that gay characters are gay with actual words to remove them from heterosexuality. If you want to show a character being bisexual, you just show them giving horny eyes to someone of the same sex and then go back to business as usual.
Others coming in from Twitter- Ferdy from This Life https://twitter.com/aidanskinner/status/633583038711132160
Alice and Tina from the L Word https://twitter.com/the_eumelia/status/633583055203119104
Kate from Dodgeball https://twitter.com/LilithCathcart/status/633590156927238144
Angela from Bones https://twitter.com/Nesient/status/633597960186634240
I think you’re right about the construction of women’s sexuality being a factor. I can only speak for myself, but I thought I was straight until age 23. I knew that I was attracted to men, so I wrote off my attraction to women as not really counting or meaning anything. But that’s not the whole story, either. I’m not out to very many people, partly because I dread the prospect of explaining how I can be bi while being in a long-term relationship with a man. And my anxieties about coming out have meant that I actually feel less comfortable in LGBTQ-centric spaces now than I did when I thought I was straight.
You just described me perfectly. I dont know if I am bi, I have no sexual experiences with women, only ever kissed a few. However am often attracted to women and yeah no clue. Am currently not ‘out’ as I dont know if there is something to be out about, but my boyfriend does know about my thoughts.
Captain Jack (Torchwood and Doctor Who) – though the word bisexual is never used, his attraction does make it clear he’s attracted to more than one gender.
Cosima Niehaus (Orphan Black) – writers told the actor that the character was bisexual, though the word may not have been used in the show (I haven’t seen it).
Bo (Lost Girl) – as stated in Wikipedia (not watched this either).
Anthem (Coda (book)) – character is bisexual, book nominated for Bisexual Fiction Award (great story too)
Actually all these books – http://www.glaad.org/blog/bi-writers-association-announces-finalists-bisexual-book-awards
^^Captain Jack is one of the most egregious examples of the Schroedinger’s bisexual imo (along with Piper from OitNB). No wonder there’s so many bisexuals knocking about who don’t identify as bi when Captain fucking Jack doesn’t!
Cosima, too, is a bit of a problem: why didn’t they have her mention it in show? Why just Word Of God?
It’s erasure, a massive erasure.
I’m sure I remember people calling Piper from OitNB bi… Is it because /she/ doesn’t use the label?
Nope. Literally nobody uses it. IIRC, the word “bisexual” doesn’t even pop up in the show, despite there being a lot of various shades of bisexual going on.
Woops, my bad. The word “bi” comes up wrt Piper precisely once. Larry said it, so I didn’t notice. http://the-artifice.com/orange-is-the-new-black-bisexual-erasure/
It’s almost like I’ve watched it 3 times or something.
I’m pretty sure “bisexual” is used in “The Empty Child” (the episode that introduces Captain Jack) because the Doctor explains to Rose that in the century Jack’s from, people have a much more fluid sense of sexuality, and he is probably “more kinds of sexual than you have words for in your time” – I just can’t remember what word Rose used to describe him, to lead to that correction.
It’s been a vv long time since I’ve watched his Who episodes. I definitely remember being struck by how the word “bisexual” doesn’t seem to crop up at all in Torchwood despite it practically exemplifying the Everyone Is Bi trope (which, incidentally, I also have issues with… saying “everyone’s a bit bisexual” is kind of a different form of erasure)
yep, I felt Jack’s bi-ness got pretty effectively erased in Torchwood. Very disappointing. All the more so because if what I could remember of how he’d been introduced originally in Doctor Who.
I don’t think any word has been used to describe Cosima’s sexuality in the show, but I think as a bi girl I’d have remembered if she was canonically bi and it came up in the show (as opposed to canonically bi and it’s just not been mentioned, since imo the writers having actively determined that she is counts as canon)
There was an explicity identified bi bloke in Sex and the City at one point. I forget his character’s name, but he was Tag in Friends. Carrie went out with him a couple of times but dumped him because she couldn’t cope with his bi-ness.
Oh! I forgot what I was going to say about bi characters.
Korra and Asami from the Legend of Korra are portrayed as bi. The word isn’t used in the series, but the creators have confirmed it on their blogs, and one of them actually said something like “despite what you may have heard, bisexual people exist”.
I can’t remember if the word is ever used in series, but most of the main cast of Torchwood are bi by Word Of God.
Callie from Grey’s Anatomy is bi, and though she more frequently refers to herself/ is referred to as gay – after she comes out – there are definite uses of the words bi and bisexual.
Wikipedia has category pages for bi/pan male and female fictional characters but not sure how accurate they are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fictional_bisexuals
Like Claire Bennet from Heroes is on the list but I do not remember that and there’s nothing on the actual wikipedia page.
She had a relationship with a woman in that last series nobody watched, I think. Whether or not she identified as bi, fuck knows.
Yeah, I had a look through this, but it doesn’t mention where it’s EXPLICITLY STATED they’re bi in canon (even characters like Captain Jack and Frank N Furter are never explicitly stated to be bi!)
Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5 was bi. She she had a relationship with a female character, Talia Winters, in season 2, and a relationship with a male character, Marcus Cole, in season 3. Never explicitly referred to as bi but there has been a fair bit of discussion on this since. See her character bio here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Ivanova
Also see references 17, 18 and 19 here (not sure if they can be accessed anymore)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5#cite_note-jsgay1-19
“Fluid” was the word in Vice today. It’s one we don’t challenge but it erases bisexuality as an orientation.
I may be the only person to mention the Archers, there is a bi character, Charlie,who is attracted to Adam, and kissed him on NYE (this is the Archers, that’s as raunchy as it gets) but who made clear talking to Adam he also liked women.
Now I take the point about show dont tell, but this was an actual conversation about sexuality, where one character was asking the other, directly how they identified.
The bi word never came up!
On the plus side Charlie is presented as a positive character who has turned down sex with someone, its a huge step for a very conservative show. Bi isnt portrayed as slutty or indecisive
You’ve given me a lot to think about. I fit into the “bi” spectrum, and yet I don’t identify strongly as bisexual because I feel like once I let go of the certainty that I was “straight”, I felt like anything could change. I could still be bi, but given that my relationships with women have had a different quality than they have with men, I seem to skew romantically one way, and yet sexually I don’t necessarily skew one way or the other consistently. Is that neatly “bi”?
I think the patriarchy has trouble grasping that while for many women sexuality is a fixed thing, defining themselves as straight or gay or bi, female sexuality can and does have a strong component of fluidity, contrary to what men are assumed to experience (whether or not this is actually the case). By forcing (predominantly female-identified) people to choose a sexuality, perhaps these patriarchal definitions are ignoring that fluidity component; the truth is many people don’t necessarily fit neatly into gay, straight, or bi; maybe they are pan, or maybe they are fluid, or predominantly into masculine people of all genders or feminine people of all genders. To summarize all the possible non-monosexual attractions as “bisexual” is an oversimplification of a spectrum of sexualities.
tl;dr: bi isn’t a dirty word, but not all non-monosexual people necessarily identify with bi. True, attraction doesn’t have to be 50/50 to men and women to be considered bi, but given the spectrum of sexual and romantic attractions, plus the spectrum of gender identities and expressions, plus that attraction can be towards someone’s intellect, status, fetish, etc, and can change over time, it’s hard to say that yes, the sexuality of anyone who is/has been/can be attracted to multiple genders is bi.
That being said, bisexuality is grossly underrepresented and maybe we just need to broaden the label.
Also the more i think about it the more I think you’re right that the bi label is policed and stigmatized. If someone identifies as “bi” people seem to doubt the validity of the identity: Oh it’s just a phase, oh she just has a really high sex drive and is attracted to anything, oh it’s because she had bad experiences with men in the past (all three are things that have been said to me when I came out). So the more I think about it the more I think you’re right, I am probably buying into the stigma against the label.
I’m glad you bust the “no-one id’s as bi because they’re all id’ing as some trendy queer tumblr sexuality”, which is a disappointingly common attitude within the bi community itself! These things are not trendy queer people’s fault!
It’s a weird situation. You are expected to pick a side eventually and if you don’t you’ll always be eyed suspiciously and as a potential traitor.
If there were an anonymous survey tomorrow I would happily identify as bi. No questions asked. However if there were a survey that showed my name I’d have to identify as straight probably because I had a big relationship one way early doors and picked my side. Anything else would be admitting I’m gay surely? It’s a classic dichotomy. Life is so often narratively divided into binary choices that we have an instinctive mistrust of anyone who occupies a shade of grey. Pretty ironic coz life is often grey as fuck.
Point I’m trying to make is that if I truthfully and publicly identified as bi there would be a bigger shit storm than if I declared myself gay. I’d always be second guessed and always be questioned about intentions and who I really fancied. That’s too much fucking aggro. Better to pick a side and keep the other on the QT. Sadly.
It’s an interesting question this. On the one hand, I agree with the common consensus view that people should be allowed to self-identify and label themselves how they want (including a refusal of all labels), and so no one should be *forced* to identify as bisexual. On the other hand, it does seem a bit odd that there’s plenty of people who refuse the word but who do seem, from the outside, to be engaging in bisexual behaviour.
A few random thoughts:
– Plainly, there is some sort of sexual stigma about the word ‘bisexual’, as the original post suggests. After reading the post, I could think of several bisexual characters in fiction, but none who are actually specifically described as such. Perhaps the word itself feels a bit too precise and medical, in the same way that you don’t hear the words ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’ so much in modern spoken English.
– But also: perhaps some people think of ‘bisexual’ as referring to one’s actual sexual behaviour, rather than who they’re attracted to or open to having sex with? As in, “Sure, I like both men and women, but I’ve only had sex with women in the past year, so I’m not ‘bisexual’.”
– Others, particularly those who are uncertain of their sexuality, perhaps see ‘bisexual’ as too much of a positive statement of identity when they prefer a negative one (‘not completely straight’/’not completely gay’/’unsure’/’no labels’).
You can put these down to ‘internalised biphobia’ if you like, but I think they’re not unreasonable attitudes. I suppose the last one applies to me. I used to think I was entirely straight, but as I’ve learned more about the complex reality of human gender I don’t think I can maintain that any more. I’m still basically attracted to women, not men; but I’m vaguely open to the possibility that I might meet and be attracted to someone who identifies as male one day. (I guess I’m about a 1 on the Kinsey scale.) Yet I don’t feel comfortable with calling myself ‘bisexual’ at present; if forced to choose, I’d go with one of those annoying neologisms like ‘heteroflexible’ or ‘bicurious’. I don’t know, maybe I’m just in denial, but it seems to me there is room for disagreement over how far the word ‘bisexual’ should stretch along the Kinsey scale.
I almost feel the focus on the word ‘bisexual’ is missing the point here, which is that increasing numbers of people are questioning the sexuality binary and living more ‘fluid’ sexualities, whether they identify specifically as bisexual or not. The word probably should be more widely used; but contrariwise, if more people understand that ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ are not monoliths that always describe 100% of a person’s sexual experience, that’s no bad thing either.
Albert Kinsey’s study in the early 50’s showed that 43% of white men were gay.
Source? bc I SUSPECT that this is actually to do with same-sex fantasies/experiences.
The closest I can find on a cursory search to your figure is 46% having “reacted” sexually to people of BOTH sexes. (although there’s issues with the methodology, so pinch of salt)
Btw, for a ‘perhaps we shouldn’t pay too much attention to one survey’ perspective, I just read this link which says contemporary women are *more* likely to identify as bisexual. So who really knows.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/why-more-and-more-women-are-identifying-as-bisexual-and-no-label–not-lesbian-10459146.html
What’s particularly interesting about that survey is it was for a dating app. I guess in a dating context ppl might be a little more out…
Dodgeball. The movie. Christine Taylor’s character says she is bisexual after they win the tournament. Also, I identify as bisexual when it’s relevant for surveys.
I think I recall the character Nicole Wallace being explicitly described as bisexual in one of the L&O:CI episodes she was in.
Of course, she was a serial killer.
Bill, Adam’s dad, in Cold Feet came out as bisexual in, I think, season 5. I seem to remember his character having a discussion about how bisexuality wasn’t talked about as freely as heterosexuality and homosexuality, but it has been a few years since I’ve watched it.
I hear you. Being forced to choose ‘gay’ or ‘straight’ when your lived experience tells you that you really aren’t either is a total fucking drag. Like, I’ve had favourable reactions to my bisexuality when in a relationship with a man. But now I’ve been with my girlfriend for five years, people tell me I’m actually a lesbian. But my whole life story still exists. One doesn’t take away from the other.
I’ve also seen women told to their faces that their actually-very-hot-and-heavy relationships with women must have been ‘a phase’ just because they now share their life with a man.
Off the top of my head, Kalinda Sharma from “The Good Wife” is only fictional character that I can think of who’s shown to have relationships with both men and women by turn. Which is, in itself, a shitty narrow a definition of bisexuality, but I prefer it to the more-common variety of “Gay now!” a la Willow Rosenberg in “Buffy” and Callie Torres in “Grey’s Anatomy.”
[MOD NOTE: sorry, I can’t possibly approve this comment because it’s just repeating a whole bunch of biphobic tropes of the “not bi enough” flavour. Perhaps the commenter has a whole heap of internalised biphobia. It happens. But I’m not allowing it on this wall because it’s precisely the sort of biphobic bullshit which stops a lot of bi women who are currently in long-term relationships with men from coming out]
Alice in The L Word identifies as bi. I mean, I’m not commenting on the quality of the show or anything. But she does actually say the word “bisexual”.
As far as books are concerned, my experience is that YA authors – and specifically YA sci-fi/fantasy authors – are, as always, the people most likely to be ahead of the trends and pushing social boundaries.
A few examples include the warlock Magnus Bane in Cassandra Clare’s best-selling Shadowhunters series, several characters in various works by Sarah Rees Brennan (writing their names would be spoilers, but I’m thinking of her trilogy The Lynburn Legacy and her free online novel The Turn of the Story), and Malinda Lo’s duology of Adaptation and Inheritance.
All of the above books feature explicitly bisexual people within the main cast of characters. In some of these books (no spoilers), the bi character is the protagonist. I hope to see the trend spread to other genres soon!
I’ve got another one from the ’90s. Tim Bayliss from Homicide: Life on the Street explicitly identified as bisexual during season seven.
I distinctly remember it because it was the first time I could look at a character on tv and think “Someone like me!”.
Sad that we seem to have gone backwards.
While biphobia and bi erasure are definitely factors, I think it’s a lot more complicated than that — in that biphobia and bi erasure are part of a bigger… thing. I’m finding this hard to articulate, but the questions raised by Jane Ward in this interview are really important: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/08/why-straight-men-have-sex-with-each-other.html
“…the question is, ‘Well, why do some people want it [sex with people of the same sex] more than others, or why do some people organize their life around it, and other people don’t want anyone to even know that they do it?’ To me that’s a more interesting question than ‘Are you born gay or straight?’ and so I think that the solution, honestly, is to stop being so obsessed with sociobiological arguments about sexual orientation, which I think are a trap, frankly, and instead ask the question, ‘Given that so many humans have homosexual encounters, what is it that makes some people understand their homosexual encounters as culturally significant, and other people understand it as meaningless or circumstantial?’ I don’t think we have the answer to that question yet.”
(And although it doesn’t sound like it from that quote, she does acknowledge and regard bisexual as an important and significant queer identity in its own right.)
Great post. The character of Emily in the Pretty Little Liars book series is described as bisexual, but in the TV adaptation they made her just a lesbian. So biphobia is definitely a thing! I am bisexual, but I don’t think people really believe it.
the issue is that we are on three spheres and we are assimilated into and socialized as straight, bi and gay assimilated norms and we aren’t called open but in each subsection, none of us are closeted. The bisexual community and it’s establishment as well as broadened and expanded range will be the answer to this.
We have a community of our own for our specific views and whatnot that is open to our diversity but the straight world bi people are often not socialized out of that because they are dominant there and won’t deny bisexuality but it gets seen as a “secret kink” thing by peers and same sex relationships are often misread as bros but since we either fight it head on or had that part of us overlooked.
It sent us into different norms and we fought on that spectrum in a different way and they are the majority and need bi-centric norms because honestly, straight-bi and many bi-bisexuals don’t like you or feel like we owe you because we have been representing where we are placed socially all along too and the LGBT-bi people due to their norms shame, embarrass, out and harass the shit out of us when we don’t assimilate to your norms and we don’t feel like we owe any of you anything.
LGBT bi folks deserve the visibility too though. As a bi-centric bisexual, I think the bi folks shunned by the straight world have every reason to be LGBT bi folks. I think they are misread, unheard and that because of LGBT norms and the otherness part of them, they are shunned but even in context, they are seen as sell outs by the bi oriented folks and are hated by both of us because we are both shamed by not conforming to norms against a world that we were leaders in. Bi-centric bisexuality is sometimes a result of being rejected by both cultures, being able to fit into both but still feel alone or in my case, due to seeing our complexity as outside both of their understanding levels.
We could be cohesive if the Allies, LGBT bi folks and society stopped making us regress to the lowest possible place in society because of paranoid ass straight and gay people with weak egos pushing their half baked norms on us when they rejected us right off at the very point that they all bash us for not being culturally in tuned to. If we ran the show or represented in a different capacity, we should not be shamed or outed because to all of us, “coming out” and doing the rainbow crap seems demeaning. We aren’t fortunate to be held to straight norms either. We were at risk of serious violence more because we weren’t attacked as a less than but as an equal opponent and the violence is different and more risky.
Most are not “out of the closet as bisexual” because we don’t owe gay people a fucking thing. Also because we sort ended up assigned to different norms and populations, we have different hobbies and different things are a big deal. LGBT identified bisexuals do because at least it was the better for them than the main world and they can identify with the gay experience more after the straight world wasn’t a place for them to feel good. This shit is why we need a bisexual community and LGBT because those of us who are reported as closeted are either voiceless or called fringe by the LGBT headcases or were fighting a different battle on a different playing field altogether and get shamed into it for not assimilating to a community that really doesn’t understand the complexity of biphobia.
Straight/gay norms are based on their purity and monogamy ideals and we are often shut off at the point of any serious settling down conversation etc. on both ends. That is where the cross over to one side shit comes from. You are also so paranoid and obsessed with everyone practically being registered as a certain orientation and we are and have been the majority and have historic proof of being the norm at one point too so we scare both of them. I never got activisty because of the bi men don’t exist shit because I was stepping up to the same people they whined about. Plus gay and straight people in a contextual place are the mentally retarded ones compared to us. We are more evolved on some level than both and this groveling, norm on both ends is sad and sick. We are not either and we are outside on that point but you LGBT bi people just whimper and whine and claim to speak for us all. LGBT bi people are also the minority of us and they are often seen as the voice and place for us when we are not going to let a minority of us dictate our place. Gay and straight people have no right to control our dialogue or tell us how to behave, be “out” etc.
It is more complex because people are clueless in general and society split us up and we shouldn’t be forced to grovel to the norms that we really never get any voice from for a bunch of gay dudes and their norms. If you want to sway for one or the other go for it, but when LGBT bisexuals are the minority and because of the few of them, are touted ass and assign all of us to the gay dominated norms when only a small portion even sees that view. I know that islolation and alienation is a common thread with all of us and LGBT and the straight world aren’t doing crap for either of you so here’s the root of the problem. Gay people need to stop trying to control the dialogue for us with their inferiority complex via the LGBT bi community.
“Tumblr made up gender,” okay, so my sexuality is made up? Gender and sex are two different things, thanks. And “sleeping with someone, regardless their gender,” yeah, thats pansexuality. And some people dont identity as bi because they usually like the opposite gender more. That’s why they don’t feel like they’re bi enough. It’s okay to have preferences. So before you post a shit article, find actual information that are useful.
Yep, I agree that “tumblr made up gender” is a bullshit line, which is why I keep putting the word “bullshit” after it, because all non-binary identities are valid. Sorry if I didn’t make it clear enough!
And some people call the “regardless of gender” pan, many call it bi. In fact, it’s a standard biphobic trope to say that bisexuals only fancy the two binary genders–bi means “your own, and other genders”, which of course includes non binary genders.