A few months ago, I wrote in this newsletter about the idea of the “the formerly bi” — a common category prominently represented by people like Ani DiFranco and Billie Joe Armstrong; publicly bisexual celebrities who’ve grown more shy about owning the bi label as they’ve spent years in monogamous heterosexual relationships. You don’t have to be a celebrity to be “formerly bi;” many bisexuals become reticent about identifying as bisexual if they’re monogamous and partnered with someone straight (although, interestingly, not as much if they’re monogamous and partnered with someone queer). It stems from the idea of bisexuality as an active identity, as a behavior: if one is not actively doing bisexuality, or at least “visible queerness,” can one really be bi?
It’s an interesting question for me, personally, to consider. Not because I’m in a long term heterosexual relationship, but because I am in no relationship at all. Indeed, I haven’t been in anything remotely resembling a committed relationship in well over three years; I’ve barely even casually dated since before the pandemic. The entire time I’ve written this newsletter I have been… unattached. If a bisexual is celibate, can they still claim bisexuality? And if they can, why do we see bisexuals who wind up monogamous as less authentically bi?
I mean it’s not as if straight people (or gays and lesbians!) are assumed to become ace during an extended dry spell. And I think most people would concede that, owing to my history of both attractions and relationships, I’m “still bisexual” — especially if I remain open and attracted to people of a variety of genders. But: if a celibate bisexual can still be bisexual, then can a virgin claim bisexuality? People seem to get weird about this one — it delves into the “how can you be sure?” territory — but one could just as equally ask whether anyone can be sure they’re straight if they haven’t had straight sex yet. And no one ever seems to do that.
If we accept that a virgin can be bi — which, quite frankly, we should be able to do if we can accept that virgins can be straight — then a person who’s only had sex with one person, or one gender, should also be able to be bi. If you can know your attractions are real without acting on them, that should be true across the board. It shouldn’t matter if you’ve explored some attractions but not others; the former aren’t more real than the latter just because you’ve had more opportunities to pursue them.
Anyway. Let’s go back to that initial question: the question of the “formerly bi.” If you can claim attractions you’ve never acted on (and you can) then why do we act as though attractions disappear once someone is in a committed monogamous relationship?
I think there are a couple things behind this belief: firstly there’s the “one true love” idea, which suggests that once we’re monogamously committed, any past relationships or other attractions must be disavowed lest they desecrate our current relationship; to continue to ID as bisexual is to defame your current partner and suggest they are “not enough.”
But there’s also this idea that the world is broken into straight and LGBTQ “teams,” and that to be a bisexual who partners heterosexually is to join the former team at the expense of the latter. If team up with the straights, you cede your claim to being on Team Bi (if you team up with the gays, you can sometimes still hold on to the bi identity, but only to the extent that it contextualizes your shameful past as one who consorts with the straights).
Or in other words: people are considered “formerly bi” not because they’re assumed to have lost their attractions, but because they’re assumed to have turned their back on queerness — even as queerness persists within them. It’s a bizarre framing that fundamentally requires bisexuals to be half a self in order be seen as a full queer. And quite frankly, it is a framing that I reject.
This is relevant to my life now because my future mother-in-law had a meltdown over me mentioning that I'm bi on our wedding website (I am, of course, a cis woman marrying a cis man) because she sees it as some sort of insult to my fiancé, and I think this "bisexuals as switching back and forth between teams" logic is very much at play here. (We're open but she doesn't know that and anyway I don't happen to be dating any women right now.)
I think there are a lot of people on the grey-sexual and asexual spectrum who're also bi in some way or another. Ace people who don't want sex, but do have sexual and/or romantic thoughts about a range of genders. If they identify as bi, why not?
The relationship between more active libido and interpersonal connections is another thing entirely. Even if someone loves sex, avoiding people in sexual relationships might be the right move.
What I'm grateful for is how the newer generations are moving to accept pan/bi identities as well as ace/aro, and we're evolving language like "allosexual" and "greysexual" which I never had when I was first deciding I was bi. New language is wonderful!
Bi erasure is not. I do hope that the Kids These Days will bring us to a better place for not erasing someone's sexuality just because they're monogamous or celibate.