Heteroflexibility, redux.

A couple more thoughts on this one.

I was at a party earlier this week when someone told me that Taylor Swift is probably queer, that her latest album seems to strongly suggest it. I have no strong feelings about TSwift one way or the other, so this news meant little to me, personally (though I’m happy for all the queer Swiftes for whom it actually feels like it matters). But I bring it up because somehow, the mention of Gaylor led to someone saying “heteroflexible,” and that led to a whole additional convo that… I mean it made me do some deep digging.

One of the people at the party who got drawn into this conversation was a bi/queer hard femme who — coincidentally enough! — had been in the room with me when the incident that inspired my original essay about heteroflexibility occurred. Because she’s a self IDed bi/queer who's about my age, I figured she’d understand what I meant when I said I was surprised the term had returned from the dead, that I felt a little weird about it, that it seemed like a way of tapping into queer cred while retaining hetero privilege. Heteroromantic bisexuality? That I have no problem with, it’s just the way folks are. But heteroflexible, something about that just hits the ear wrong.

But it turned out she actually welcomes wide scale heteroflexibility — largely, it seems, because she, herself, is a one time heteroflexible for whom the term was a way of dipping a toe into the waters of queerdom before finally taking the full plunge. For her, more heteroflexible folks means more ostensibly straight folks exploring their queer attractions, which presumably can only lead to more openly queer folks in the world: a net good.

Hearing that take made me feel extremely uncharitable. It also, obviously, made me want to revisit this topic, this time with a little more focus on, you know, my whole deal. If my fellow bi/queer hard femme (because, while I don’t necessarily use those labels all the time, it’s fairly obvious that, uh, it me too) felt positively towards heteroflexibility because of her own history with it, then what is it about my history that leaves me leery and a bit uncomfortable whenever that word drops?

One thing worth noting here is that I myself have never used any “starter gay” terms. I thought I was straight until a classmate asked if I was a lesbian, and the resulting cascade of analysis made me realize I was bi. Within less than a week I went from straight ally to out and proud bisexual, all at the age of fourteen. Notably, none of this involved an explicit crush on a girl or any relationship with anyone, period*. I simply knew I was bi, and then I claimed it, and that was that. I did not feel the need to dip a toe or foot or finger into the waters to test the temperature: I just jumped in and hoped for the best.

It is possible that that story makes me sound like an incredibly confident and self-assured fourteen-year-old, one able to skip all the experimentation stages and simply know who I was straight out. And sure, I suppose there are elements of that to my story. But I am also deeply aware of how much self doubt, self hatred, plagued me all the same, how my confident exterior masked this persistent feeling that I was, am, always have been, insufficient, that I will never be enough.

I think what I am trying to say here is that, being a person who remained plagued with shame and doubt even as I knew what I was from a young age, there’s some resentment of people who present their own hesitant label as a fully fledged identity. Like, I owned bisexual from a very young and tender age and still managed to be assaulted with not just my own shame and doubt, but other people’s eye rolls and refusal to accept my identity as legit. And yet here you are, offering up an even more tentative label, one that’s even more of all of the things that people accuse bisexuals of being, and you expect to be, what, supported? Applauded for your open mindedness? How is that fair?

And look: I’m aware that that’s incredibly uncharitable. It’s also not necessarily what I actually believe, not rationally — it stems from the angry, emotional part of myself that I try not to take too seriously, even as I attempt to give it space to air out its discontents so I can better understand what’s going on in my brain soup. But I think it does point to something larger, something that, weirdly, circles back to the excitement around Gaylor.

One of the strangest aspects of being out as bi is feeling disregarded and distrusted by other queers even as they celebrate and forge community with people who are very literally straight. There are so many lesbians who pine over straight celebs, searching for the slightest hint of queerness, the tiniest sapphic nod, even as they reject bi women for being “too straight.” It is a strange place to be in, this feeling like your mistake was coming out of the closet, like you’d be more desirable if only you were more conflicted and cautious about your queerness, like people want to turn a straight girl more than they want to accept the bi women in their midst. It’s hard not to be like, “You want women with a history of dating men to decide they’re suddenly into women? Hello! Do you not see me standing right here waving my Pride flag?” And it’s hard not to feel like the reason no one is lining up to celebrate you is because you are not pretty, you are not perfect, you are not the one that they want.

I dunno. It is, clearly, an emotional mess for me, and something I’m still sorting out. But I am trying to be generous. I am trying to find healing for myself by offering others the support, the kindness, that has always been denied to me — to find grace for myself by extending it to others. If I can accept the heteroflexibles, then maybe I can accept myself, you know? If I can be happy for Taylor — be she Gaylor, Bilor, Heterflexilor, or something else entirely — then maybe I can try to be happy for myself.

* I didn’t start dating until I was sixteen