As a mouthy broad with a spicy sense of humor it is not unusual for me to get into Twitter scrapes. Sometimes they are terrible — there was one time when I had to lock my account for a few days due to fallout from a dumb joke about New York* — but sometimes, they are relatively low stakes, and, at least for me, very funny. One of the latter dustups occurred when I jokingly tweeted that Sappho — the great poet of Lesbos, the woman who inspired both the words “sapphic” and “lesbian” — was apparently bisexual, and that as a result, only bi lesbians could be considered real lesbians. This tweet — which, again, was a joke, how can you not see that it’s a joke — irritated a lot of teenage lesbians, who humorlessly dogpiled me. I honestly don’t even know what they were mad about — did they think I was actually saying it was illegal for them to identify as lesbians? Did they think I was going to force them to have sex with men?
Anyway. I digress.
The reason I bring up this anecdote, this silly little story about me joking that if the Prime Lesbian was bisexual than lesbianism must necessarily be female bisexuality, is because the truth is I don’t care if Sappho was bi. I truly don’t. First and foremost, I just don’t think it’s possible to know one way or the other whether a lady who died millennia ago was bi or not; more than that, I don’t think that the concept of bisexuality, as it is currently defined, would have meant anything to her. We so often forget this simple fact, that while people throughout history have felt all the attractions and gender feels we now package with words like “queer” and “trans,” they haven’t necessarily understood those attractions and gender feels the way we, in our modern (and for me, specifically modern American) context understand them. What does it mean to say that Sappho was bi? That Alexander the Great was bi? What does it mean when we slap the bi label on long dead people who cannot claim it for themselves?
(And like, don’t even get me started on the whole “Alexander the Great: gay or bi???” type shit that pops up some times, it always hinges on whether you think someone’s cross sex marriage was real or whether you think it was a beard and again, truly, how can you know — especially when you factor in that love marriages were less common in ancient times! — and also, why does anyone care.)
But I also just — I mean, I guess I sort of see the comfort people take in knowing that trans and queer people have existed throughout history, but I also find it weird as well. What does it matter to me, personally, if Sappho liked the dick as well as the pussy? How does that make my own sexual identity more or less valid? Why do I need historical evidence of bisexuality throughout the course of human existence in order to feel proud of being bi myself?
This may just be a personal thing though. I mean, look, I’m a weird, ornery contrarian who gets uncomfortable with the idea that I need other people’s agreement in order to feel valid as myself. I’ve always hated those infographics that tell you that, for instance, 70% of women can’t orgasm vaginally, not because I think that stat is wrong, but because it always gets construed as this “the majority of women need direct external clitoral stimulation to come therefore all women need direct external clitoral stimulation to come, therefore any woman who says she is having a good time being railed is a liar and a traitor.” By which I mean: I hate this idea that one’s sexual preferences need to be “normal” — which always seems to mean aligning with the majority — this idea that we need other people to like what we like in order for it be okay. I don’t think being alone in your desires makes them any less legitimate; I don’t think they need some deep historical record to be what makes you you.
I mean, what if I was the first ever bisexual woman in the world? What if no one else had ever been attracted to more than one gender? Why would that inherently invalidate who I am, and what I like? I feel like this is just circling back to one of my persistent points, though: this idea that I don’t claim bisexuality because I am a Bisexual Person™️ who does bisexual things bisexually, but because I am weirdo who exists outside the acceptable modes of sexual attraction. To say that someone from history was also bisexual isn’t really to say that they were bisexual like me, because “bisexual” isn’t — hasn't ever been — a coherent or consistent identity group. Which, you know, I’m fine with. But I guess it makes it harder for people who want, who need, community around their sexual orientation, who need a chorus of “me too!”s in order to feel okay in themselves.
Anyway. Sappho was apparently bi! So was Alexander the Great? So were a lot of people — at least if you believe Bi.org’s List of Famous Bi People, which… I’m just gonna say that some of the names on there feel like a stretch to me. If you take comfort in the knowledge that people whose names you’ve read in history books were probably kind of sexually aligned the way you are, then I’m happy for you. But I also wonder if more of us should ask why we, ourselves, in our own unique and splendiferous sexual identities, are not enough.
* You don’t want to know, it was beyond stupid