Breaking the bi-nary.
A brief critique of gender essentialism in the face of trans bisexuality. (Guest Essay!)
Hey folks! Super excited to be able to share this guest essay by A.L. Want to to submit your own essay to the B+ Squad? Shoot me an email!
- Lux
A major, familiar headache for queer folks is hearing that our identities are short-lived and designed to obscure deeper truth, and bisexuals aren’t exempt from the bullshit.
Cisgender bisexuals are often told they'll default to monosexuality eventually. Not long ago, a friend told me that she’s noticed prejudice towards Black bisexual men that attacks their sexuality this way, using their gender as a springboard. “We have a lot of biphobia towards men, where the belief is often that a bi man is not really attracted to women, but that he is wholly gay and always ‘effeminate’ (and this is supposed to be bad apparently).”
This argument is echoed by bi-skeptics the world over. Cisgender bisexual men are expected to either end their experimentation beyond heterosexuality, or discover themselves as homosexuals. Cisgender bisexual women, on the other hand, are rarely predicted to embrace lesbianism. They are almost exclusively seen as heterosexuals in a queer disguise.
The difference between the two is based on assumptions about the “true” nature of someone’s “assigned sex at birth” (ASAB). Since men are supposedly hardwired to conquer and women hardwired to please, then bisexuality must be the result of “too much” maleness or femaleness. If a cisgender man is bisexual, then it is because he is “too much” of a man—oversexed to the point of wanting to fuck other men. If a cisgender woman is bisexual, then it is because she is “too much” of a woman—interested in making herself enticing to male partners, feeling the thrill of sexually pleasing her mirror image, and relishing the attention both ways. The bisexual man’s sexuality is reduced to indiscriminate horniness, and the bisexual woman’s to desire for admiration.
Gender essentialism, the idea that “assigned sex at birth” (ASAB) dictates immutable behaviors, makes little room at its core for bisexuality. Gender essentialist ideology cannot hold the possibility of someone experiencing attraction to multiple genders without also acknowledging that varied attraction requires fluid scripts that don’t mesh easily with hard-and-fast behavioral rules. This is why opponents tend to reduce bisexuality to a temporary state that will be resolved eventually, and assume heterosexuality is the choice most bisexuals will make in the end.
But not all bisexuals are cisgender. This throws a wrench in the argument that bisexuality ties back to ASAB and follows predictable patterns. When gender essentialism makes no room for varied attraction or varied gender expression, it conveniently ignores a population that raises questions around both elements of identity: transgender bisexuals.
To the gender essentialist, anything a trans person thinks, says, or does is evidence of the unchangeable traits of their ASAB. I would know: ask me about TERFy types pointing to my love of floral prints and crying over a good glass of merlot as proof of my innate womanhood. (Actually, please don’t.) But, unlike in critiques of cisgender bisexuality, gender essentialist arguments against trans people’s genders put their sexualities in the backseat. Whatever is convenient for opponents to believe about trans people while undermining their gender identities is embraced.
More often than not, the most nefarious possible thing is assumed, with little to no input from actual trans people—including non-binary and agender folk, and trans people who date other trans people—about how we experience our sexualities. Gay trans men are seen as tricksters enticing wayward cis gays into heterosexuality, while straight trans men are concealing their true bodies to get unwitting women to date them. Trans lesbians face accusations of preying on cis lesbians’ lack of interest in men, while straight trans women are seducing average joes into the vacuum of queer sex. Ultimately, prejudice towards monosexual transgender people still boils down to ASAB: trans men are attention-seeking females, and trans women are power-hungry males.
Transgender bisexuals, however, pose an existential threat to the gender essentialist rationale against bisexuality itself because our attraction towards multiple genders can’t be pinned to an ingrained, “overly-masculine” desire to conquer anything that moves, or an “overly-feminine” need for validation. Opposition to the transgender bisexual requires the simultaneous dismissal of the trans person’s gender expression and the claim that their ASAB is indicative of what their bisexuality actually means.
As a transgender, bisexual man, it’s laughable to claim that I’m bisexual because I’m “too much” of a cisgender woman. I’m proud to be a hairy, sweaty, delicious fag, and—for the average bisexual-fetishizing straight man—pursuing me might make him...a little gay. It’s also impossible to claim that I’m bisexual because I’m “too much” of a cisgender man.
With that being said, an opponent may counter that yes, I am actually a man, and am bisexual only because I am interested in being “too much” of one. I must be in pursuit of all sorts of partners because I have a vested interest in proving myself as a so-called conqueror. But, with this, they acknowledge my transness as real and legitimate, thus destroying the notion that ASAB comes with innate and prescriptive behavior.
Do you see the problem here? Being bisexual and transgender creates too many twists and turns in the minds of opponents for their usual arguments to work, and this is why trans bisexuals are ignored in broader discussions about bisexuality. We are an inconvenient roadblock, an ace up the sleeve in favor of deconstructing gender essentialism in discussions around gender identity and sexual orientation alike. It’s a lot easier to pretend trans bisexuals aren’t there than it is to recalibrate bigotry designed to shove everyone back into boxes that will never accommodate the complexity of human desire.
My advice: don’t ignore us. We might just put an end to a worn-out, shitty argument.
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