How tf am I supposed to decide if I’m a plaid bi or a dark academia bi? The world is so stressful
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It’s Bi Visibility Day today, which is the perfect moment to recognise bisexual history, as well as the bi community and its culture.
It’s also a day, if you’re bisexual, to celebrate and be proud of who you are and, if you’re not, to celebrate the bisexual people in your lives.
The event has been marked everyday since 1999.
But, Bi Visibility Day – also known as International Celebrate Bisexuality Day – highlights biphobia, too, and the continued discrimination faced by the bisexual community.
Bi Visibility Day: PinkNews bisexual readers told they are “greedy” or to “pick a side”.
PinkNews recently asked its readers on Facebook to describe the most ridiculous biphobic stereotypes they’ve ever heard, receiving nearly 100 responses.
“Now I’ve got to worry about losing you to everyone,” wrote one person.
Another reader said that they get told that their sexuality is “just a phase”.
A third Facebook user said: “That we ‘choose straight relationships’ because it’s an easier life.
“We have no control over who we fall for that might love us back.”
Another reader wrote: “I used to get, ‘You’re bi, you’re going to run off with a man as it will be easier.’
“Well I married a lesbian. We’ve been married for four years and are looking forward to many more years together. Bi people can and do have committed same sex relationships.
“I feel sorry that there are people who close off a chance of happiness all because someone does not identify with the same sexual orientation as they do.”
And another person said that they often get told “you are greedy,” or to “pick a side”.
PinkNews‘ readers highlight abuse from within LGBT+ community on Bi Visibility Day.
Alarmingly, a significant number of respondents also highlighted abuse that they receive within the LGBT+ community, including when discussing coming out or on dating apps.
One person said that they get told by “far too many gay people” that “being bi is just a stepping stone to coming out as gay or straight”.
Another user said: “DO NOT say you’re bisexual in your dating profile.
I feel sorry that there are people who close off a chance of happiness all because someone does not identify with the same sexual orientation as they do.
“Lesbians won’t want to date you because they won’t think you’re serious and straight men will fetishise you.”
Other Facebook users, however, spoke positively of their bisexual partners or lovers.
“I’ve hooked up with two guys who happened to be bi,” said one person.
“Didn’t matter that they were bi. They were fantastic kissers 😉.”
A male reader, meanwhile, stuck up for his partner, simply saying: “My husband is still bi.”
11Happy International talk like a pirate day, me hearties!
September also has Bi Visibily Day on the 23rd, which is why I propose another day so we can celebrate
Birate Day 🏴☠️
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I made another PSA! I know that as a bi account this will either get ignored or hated on, but I’ve seen next to no one addressing this
• • •
4Happy bi visibility week to all the bisexual people out there.
You are valid, you are loved, you are important. 💖💜💙
8i love when women have thigh dimples 🥰 it‘s so cute!! chubby girls are so precious, they’re like big fluffy pillows that can also give you kisses!!! they look so gorgeous in dresses and shorts and anything they want to wear. i love women so much :)
2Let urself go
Let me be ur drug
Let me possess u
Let me care for u
Let me give u a love so strong u don’t need anything else
Be completely mine
0Do all these “I’m looking for a sugar baby…” guys think we’re going to respond back? Like bro we’re in the middle of a pandemic, jobs are still giving low hours with low amount of employees, wait til winter that’ll be fun 🙄, and you’re most likely on unemployment checks…
Save for your rent, or if you have extra money like you claim there’s many people who are struggling and need financial help. Do that instead. 🙄
Like fuck out of here with that bs
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In early April, the LGBTQ publication Queerty ran a piece called “Why does bisexuality still make us so uncomfortable?” in which the author, Jeremy Helligar, describes the moment that a date told him he was bisexual.
“I told him it didn’t matter to me, but I lied,” Helligar writes, explaining that the stereotype of bisexuals having “more options” made him nervous.
Although Helligar says he’s not the type to “side-eye” bisexual people and that he accepts them “in theory,” he is, in reality, reproducing biphobic rhetoric that many bisexuals hear on a nearly daily basis.
Biphobia (the fear and dislike of bisexual people and others who have the potential to be attracted to more than one gender) has been studied for decades. Used by bisexual activists since the 1970s, the term was brought into prominence in 1992 by the researcher Kathleen Bennett, who talked about the “denigration of bisexuality as a valid life choice.” In 2002, Patrick Mulick and Lester Wright developed the “Biphobia Scale,” a set of thirty questions which they used to measure negativity towards bisexual people. Mulick and Wright were the first researchers to confirm that bisexual people experienced “double discrimination”: that is, negative behavior based on their sexual orientation from gay and lesbian people as well as from straight people.
Almost two-thirds of bisexual respondents to one 2015 survey reported hearing biphobic jokes at work. In another survey the same year, nearly half of bisexual respondents reported facing biphobia from their doctors. Biphobia impacts bisexuals’ health and earning power. And biphobia can have more dangerous effects on bisexuals’ lives: Among multiple factors analyzed by Marywood University professor of psychology Susan Turell and her colleagues, “bi-negativity” was the greatest predictor of whether a person was likely to be abusive to their bisexual intimate partner.
In early April, the Daily Beast shared a powerful profile of Dr. Brian Dodge, a researcher on bisexuality and biphobia at Indiana University. Dr. Dodge’s work with the Bisexualities: Indiana Attitudes Scale (BIAS) has revealed the depth and breadth of biphobia expressed by gay, lesbian, and straight people across the United States. In 2016, Dr. Dodge and his team found that while modern attitudes towards gay and lesbian people have undergone a marked positive shift, overall attitudes of gay, lesbian, and straight people toward bisexual people have merely shifted from “very negative to neutral” over the past decade. Attitudes towards bisexual men remained lower than towards bisexual women.
Also in 2016, Dr. Tangela Roberts and others asked more than 700 bisexual people about their experiences of discrimination in various contexts. They found that while bisexual participants reported higher quantities of discrimination from heterosexual people compared to gay and lesbian people, the relative impact of the discrimination was the same from both groups, negatively affecting how the bisexual respondents viewed their own internal bisexual identities.
While these studies shed important light on the extent of biphobia faced by bisexual people, they don’t really examine why biphobia is so prevalent among lesbian, gay, and straight people. In fact, it is very difficult to research causality—there are often many competing and compounding factors that lead to discrimination, and it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly which factors are most indicative.
In March, the Journal of Sex Research published a study that tested participants’ assumptions about hypothetical straight, lesbian, and bisexual women and found that bisexual women were viewed as more confused, promiscuous, and neurotic than straight and lesbian women. Alon Zivony, the author of the study, theorized that “bisexual stereotypes seem to be deduced based on the idea that men and women are opposites: if one holds two opposing attractions, then it stand to reason that this person will be confused.”
Late last year, Nicole Johnson and MaryBeth Grove published a paper looking into possible causes for the intensely high rates of sexual violence that bisexual women face. (Nearly half of all bisexual women have experienced rape and three-quarters of bisexual women have experienced sexual violence, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) Johnson and Grove hypothesize that hypersexualization of bisexual women, plus biphobic harassment and bisexual women’s greater likelihood of substance use, may compound to increase the probability of sexual assault.
The authors do not, however, address the complex correlation between sexual violence and substance use and abuse: it is clear that substance use does not cause sexual violence, and in fact substance use and abuse may be indicative of trauma from sexual violence and other traumas associated with biphobia.
Recent research on the attitudes of college students towards bisexual and transgender people found that students who were afraid of ambiguity—who preferred to see things in black and white—were also more likely to express biphobia and transphobia. And queer theory supports this finding: Bisexuality doesn’t immediately answer the question of “who will this person be attracted to,” which may frustrate people used to making assumptions based on sexual orientation.
“People fear what they can’t wrap their heads around and the idea of being capable of being attracted to more than one type of person rejects everything we’ve been taught about how love, sex, attraction, and the human brain work,” Denarii Grace, a singer-songwriter, poet, and activist told me in an interview.
The author of the original Queerty article pinned his own biphobia to his jealousy over his date’s past partners: “I don’t see [bisexuality] as a layover on the way to straight (for women) or gay (for men), as I’ve heard some people describe it. The B in LGBTQ is as legitimate as any of the letters surrounding it. But if I’m being completely honest, a certain green-eyed monster was controlling my innermost thoughts. I hated myself even more for being swayed by the stereotype that bisexual people are sluttier than the rest of us because they have more options.”
In six sentences, the author hit several major stereotypes of bisexuality, common themes in the biphobia that bisexual people hear every day. The author closes with “I don’t know if I’ll ever be as comfortable with B as I am with G, but in this brave new LGBTQ world of sexual fluidity, maybe there’s still hope for me.”
But given the impacts of biphobia on bisexual people, it’s clear that it is we bisexual people who need hope.
UPDATE: This article has been updated to clarify when the term “biphobia” came into use.
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Bisexual Organizing Project - BOP has gathered somemakers/sewists, donations of supplies, and money to be able to provide our community with free masks while supplies last.
Bi+ humans face greater health disparities making us at higher risk for COVID-19. Many of our bi+ community members report a lack of access to medical care and biphobia when they do.
If you need masks, please fill our our google form. If you can help add to our supply, please email us at bop@bisexualorganizingproject.org
https://forms.gle/WGiCSazVVuJpUwz76
On April 28, 2020, a bisexual activist group claimed that, despite two decades of accepted free public use, they owned the rights to the bisexual flag, though no copyright or trademark has ever been registered to that effect, though that same organization has recently publicly celebrated free access to the flag, and though no evidence exists that they own it, nor have they produced any such evidence.
In recognition of recent controversy within our community, we, the board of the Bisexual Organizing Project (BOP), believe that our commitment to our community requires us to issue a public affirmation of our values.
While we understand and affirm concerns about our community’s icons and symbols being co-opted and inappropriately used, we condemn any unilateral action that seeks to give control of those symbols to any single small group or individual. We believe our flag has become a fundamental component of our community’s collective sense of identity and visibility, and we support the #ourbiflag movement in maintaining free access to the flag as intended by its creator Michael Page.
While we recognize and affirm the challenges of protecting what we create, we believe that the purpose of our work as a non-profit organization serving the entirety of the Bi+ community is not to advance our organization’s interests, but to advance our community as a whole. Members of our board have worked over the years to sponsor, co-sponsor, or create educational programs, research projects, community spaces, and terms by which we understand ourselves and our communities. We believe that these are gifts to our community, and would not seek to prevent any member of our community from benefiting from this work. We believe that our work, or the work of any other organization, ceases to have meaning if we prevent our community from accessing it.
We believe deeply that conflict is part of a healthy community, that there is room for dissenting or unpopular viewpoints, and that discussions about painful and difficult issues must happen for our community to move forward without leaving our most marginalized members behind. We recognize that it is possible that positive intent and an earnest desire to solve problems might exist in this situation in ways that we do not yet understand, and we welcome the opportunity to better understand these public statements regarding the Bi+ flag. However, we condemn unilateral actions that harm our community. We condemn force in the absence of dialog. We condemn deceitful communications and believe that transparency is always important, but most important in the face of conflict. We recognize that our community has been deeply harmed by the impacts of inappropriate seizure of control, and by subsequent refusal to engage in conversations that would have restored good faith.
We unconditionally condemn doxxing or making vulnerable individuals whose views differ from our own, even in the most heated moments of conflict.
BOP will move forward in our mission and goals, and remain committed to meeting the needs of our community through activism and community building. We will continue to work towards making the community a welcoming and open place for Bi+ individuals in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, Greater Minnesota, and the Upper Midwest, and to partner with organizations and individuals around the country that align with our mission and goals.
We will not be working with the organization in question at this time or in the immediate future. However, we believe in opportunities for growth and change, and welcome conversations about moving forward, should we find a way to build a partnership that reflects our values of radical inclusion and dialog.
With love to our community,
Board of Bisexual Organizing Project - BOP
4bi week announcements
(things i wish i’d been told when i was younger)
- sexuality is fluid
- being open about your sexuality is super beautiful and inspirational. but if you’re not interested in talking about it so openly, that’s ok too! you’re not any less valid, just express yourself however you’re comfortable
- when girls vocalize their first crush on a boy, nobody says “well, you won’t know if you’re really attracted to men until you’ve passed a certain sexual milestone with one”, right? so people who tell you you won’t really know if you’re sexually attracted to women until you’ve passed a sexual milestone with one is ridiculous. same goes for bi boys
- if labeling your sexuality makes YOU feel good, do it. if you don’t want to label it, then don’t, neither choice will make your experience more or less valid
- bisexuality is about attraction. you don’t have to keep a scorecard of who you’ve been with to prove anything. bi women who marry women don’t have to then identify as lesbians, and bi women who marry men don’t have to identify as straight. (once again, same goes for bi guys)
whether you’ve been with exclusively same-gender people or opposite-gender people, both, or nobody at all, if you say you’re bi, you’re bi baby! i support you!
22😍GIRLS😍
Y'know? And then also
😍BOYS😍
And that’s not even the best part cause also
😍EVERYONE😍
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