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Alia's avatar

I had an encounter with a dude recently who, immediately after our (unremarkable) first sexual encounter starts speechifying me about how he’s “not looking for a relationship” and “doesn’t want to put labels on things” and I was like *WORLD’S HEAVIEST SIGH* because, even though I agree with both of those statements on paper, the kind of guys who say them are always defining “relationship” in the most banal way and assuming that’s what all women want and it’s just…stop. Why can’t we explore possibilities of types of relationships we could have? Either way, I’m probably too tired and apathetic to fuck around. (I ended up ghosting him.)

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Lara's avatar

Ooh! The same! The same! I happen to currently have a girlfriend, but during my polyamory practice of more than 20 years, I have had both male partners and female partners, and one androgynous partner (I don't think gender-fluid was a widely used term at the time, but "androgynous" was the label they preferred). But I have also had long stretches where my legally defined spouse (male) was my only partner. I did not cease being bisexual during those times, but I did feel invisible and/or get looked at askance in Pride book clubs and LGBTQ social groups. As a writer I wrestle with writing my own bisexual characters, because unless I put it in the blurb explicitly, many readers will miss the fact that my female main characters are bisexual (seeing them as straight if involved with men, and seeing them as gay if involved with women). One reviewer even wrote that a romance story of mine wasn't "lesbian enough" (and shouldn't have earned an award) because one character had divorced a man and became involved with a woman in the story. Of course she wasn't lesbian. If she'd chosen a label for herself, she was bisexual. (I facepalmed for days after reading that review). Shortly after though, the organization redefined its mission statement to include the word "sapphic," to umbrella-cover all female-centered sexualities and romantic attachments. Bisexuality does reject the binary of both gay/straight and monogamous/nonmonogamous, instead making a statement about life being a journey where our relationship practice and our loves can be anywhere on a scatter plot map at any given time along our lifetime, and <b>it does not ever change who we are</>. Oddly that last part has been the main argument gay men and lesbians have been making for decades and yet they often are the ones that most struggle to see and accept the B (or the T) within the rainbow.

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