At this point, it’s kind of standard boilerplate to remind people that bisexuality and polyamory do not go hand in hand, that to be bisexual is not to be non-monogamous, anymore than being attracted to blondes and brunettes means you have to have one of each.
And like on the one hand… yes. This is true! Bisexuality and non-monogamy: different things. Glad we have that all sorted out and never need to talk about it ever again.
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There is that other hand, however. I think it is worth asking what exactly is being communicated when we fixate on the fact that bisexuals can do monogamy, that some of us even prefer monogamy, that our relationship to monogamy is no different from anyone else’s. To me, honestly, it sounds a little bit like respectability politics — this need to prove that we are just like the rest of you, just like the straights, that while there are deviants among our ranks there are, nevertheless, a good chunk of us that are wholesome, normal monogamists (the Mayor Petes of the bi community, if you will).
It will not surprise you to learn that I don’t really have much interest in that.
It would be one thing if monogamy were just a choice, just a relationship structure like any other. But we all know that it is more than that. Monogamy is the bedrock of the Nuclear Family™️, one of the core values of “family values.” In American culture, monogamy is expected to the point of fundamentally being compulsory; to point out that bisexuals are perfectly capable of being monogamous is not a politically neutral statement. To say that bisexuals can do monogamy is to say that we’re worthy of being included under the banner of respectable society — rather than questioning why respectable society mandates monogamy to begin with.
I feel like I should also note here that this “being attracted to people of different genders is no different than being attracted to people with different hair colors” line also feels… weird. It’s weird, right? Maybe some people see gender as a detail as inconsequential as hair color, but I think many folks would admit that a partner’s gender does affect the tenor of a relationship. It’s not the only quality that can do that — certainly, partners of the same gender can be wildly different from each other as well! — but it’s enough of one that when a bi person cops to being poly because they want both a boyfriend and a girlfriend, it has a different feel than if someone said they were poly so they could date a blonde and a brunette.
And given that, well — I don’t think that people who see bisexuality as a threat to monogamy are wrong, not exactly. Again it’s not because I think all bisexuals are non-monogamous or that all polyamorists are bi, but because there’s a “what if?” that follows the monogamous bisexual around, one that feels weightier than the one trailing behind a monogamous monosexual. To be bi and monogamous is kind of always to wonder what life might have been like if your life partner was of a different gender, in a way that, again, carries more weight than wondering if things might have been different if you’d married a blonde. Bisexuality chips away at the idea that we all have one unique and predetermined soul mate — why would you be attracted to multiple genders if you were only destined to be with one person of one gender your entire life, seems like a bit of a waste — which itself chips away at the foundations of monogamy, and thus the nuclear family, and, in a way, I guess, the whole structure of American society itself.
Bisexuals are very powerful, apparently.
I’m not particularly interested in advocating for monogamy or the nuclear family — I think they’re fine if you want them, but there needs to be an actual choice, which… there isn’t, not really, not the way our society is currently structured. And as such I’m not really interested in doing the little tap dance about how I could be monogamous if I wanted to, bisexuality aside. What I am interested in, however, is asking why it even matters if bisexuals can be monogamous. What’s so good about monogamy that we need to evaluate a person’s worth by their ability to adhere to it? Why is monogamy placed on such a pedestal in the first place?
The thing that got me to start vocally identifying as bisexual, to say I was bisexual with my whole chest, was that I stopped thinking about it as just a sexual orientation — yes I like multiple genders, who cares — and started thinking about it as a jumping off point for a radical politic. If you really start thinking things through, it becomes clear that so much of our society is built on these assumptions of monosexual respectability — of monogamy, of family, of “love is love” — that bisexuality poses an existential threat to. And again it’s not a question of whether bisexuals can be or want to monogamous family folk — many of us can and do! — but simply that, by virtue of our bisexuality, we are prompting a defense of these cultural values in a way that monosexuality simply does not.
And given my own personal stance on those cultural values (fine if you opt in to them, bad when they’re compulsory and the state coerces you into them)… well, I love that aspect of bisexuality. I love that it forces the question.
So, yes: bisexuals can be monogamous, just like everyone else. But the fact that we’re forced to question our loyalty to monogamy? That’s a feature, not a bug.
The B+ Squad loves you. Do you love The B+ Squad?
Yes, I agree with so much of this. When I came out as bisexual 20 years ago, my marital stability was questioned by my in-laws. My FIL asked my husband: "so is she leaving you for a woman?" Hubby was the one who encouraged me to be open about myself and was affronted by his father's assumption and didn't hesitate to tell him so. I didn't have to defend myself to my in-laws, but I do know I have lost job opportunities because of moral assumptions people have made about me when they learned of my bisexuality (it's not hard, I state it in my bio in nearly every social media and post about it elsewhere. I publish LGBTQ fiction under my real name as well. "If you can't take me as I am, I probably wouldn't want to associate with you either" has become something of an operational code.