Safe for who?

On queer "safe spaces."

When I was eighteen, I began dating a man four years older than me. The relationship progressed quickly: within days, he was calling himself my boyfriend, within months, we were living together. And when it all ended after three years and three months, it finally dawned on me that this man — my first serious boyfriend, the man I thought I was going to marry — had spent our entire time together emotionally and sexually abusing me.

I have spent the last eighteen and a half years unpacking my trauma from that relationship. Indeed, it took me years to accept that I even had trauma that I needed to unpack — that leaving the relationship was not, on its own, some magic wand that fixed me, that what had happened to me was “bad enough,” that it had warped my understanding of both my own worth and what a healthy relationship might look like. But even with all the work that I have done to heal and recover and process those three years and three months of abuse, it has only been very recently that I have been able to recognize the experience as an example of intraqueer violence. It has only been very recently that I have been able to recognize what happened to me, not simply as a thing that happens to women who date men while living in the patriarchy, but as something that happens to bisexual women specifically, something that happened, in this case, at the hands of a bisexual man.

Because — as I have mentioned before — in retrospect it has become obvious that my bisexuality was central to my experience of abuse. My bisexuality enabled my abuser to repeatedly coerce me into group sex, making it harder for me to assess if I wanted threesomes or simply felt like I was “supposed” to want threesomes (sometimes it was a, other times b). My bisexuality gave my abuser license to make me complicit in his abuse of other women: he would routinely tell me about horrific things he’d done, acting as though I should find it hot when he violated women (sometimes even my friends) simply because I was also turned on by the female form.

His bisexuality, too, was wielded as a tool in his years long campaign to manipulate and belittle me. At first, it was a personal detail that he used to gain my trust: here we were, two nerdy queers, bonded in our curiosity about sex and sexual experimentation. But as our relationship wore on, he twisted his sexuality into something he could use to humiliate and debase me. If he could deep throat a cock, then why couldn’t I? If he had mastered the art of sexually pleasing men, then why was I halting and insecure in my own attempts to pleasure him?

So given this — given that bisexuality, that queerness, was inextricably woven into my abuse at both ends of the relationship — it feels strange to admit that I have never really thought of what happened to me as a problem that the queer community should feel invested in. I never really saw it as something that queer anti-violence organizations were set up to address, I never really saw it as anything queer at all. It seemed, instead, like the kind of risk you set yourself up for if you’re a woman who opts to date men. It seemed, basically, like the consequences of attempting to live a “straight” life.

It’s not hard to see why I felt this way. Bisexuals are constantly getting the message that, while we may be queer even when we’re in mixed gender relationships, when we’re in queer spaces, our mixed gender relationships are to be left at the door. It’s not even a question of whether bi women’s male partners are bigots or boring or both; even just being a bi woman who acknowledges the existence of a boyfriend while in a queer space is considered a party foul that pollutes the space with hetero energy. Being openly bi, to the extent that it involves sometimes having relationships that might not be considered queer in the strictest possible sense, is always framed as threatening the sanctity, the safety, of a queer space by opening the door to heterosexual contamination.

And yet even as bisexuals are constantly getting lectures on the ways in which we disrupt the balance of queer safe spaces, on why we must be on our best behavior lest we wreck the vibe for everyone else, no one ever seems to wonder what it might mean for a space to be safe for bisexuals, ourselves. Surely, a space where you feel constantly policed, a space where you are routinely treated and sometimes even explicitly referred to as a parasite, is not one that can truly feel safe. Surely, a space where opening up about the abuse that you, a queer person, experienced while in a relationship with another queer person, feels like you’re just harshing the vibe and poisoning the air with hetero nonsense cannot be considered a safe one.

I should probably note here that I have never really loved the term “safe space” in the first place. When I co-ran a feminist professional development conference for gender-marginalized writers, I preferred to say that we were creating an inclusive and welcoming space — “safety” felt far beyond the reaches of what I could reasonably be expected to guarantee. But I think it’s an interesting thought exercise all the same. What would it mean for a space to be safe for the bisexuals? Is it possible for LGBTQ spaces to truly be safe for the Bs? Or is the bisexual need to be understood as queer people experiencing queer oppression even when we are participating in nominally or actually heterosexual relationships fundamentally in conflict with our fellow queers’ apparent need to avoid all mentions of heterosexuality or anything remotely resembling it?

I’d like to believe the former, but I have to admit I’m pessimistic enough to lean towards the latter. If lesbians want to avoid all mentions of men, if gay men don’t want to hear about anyone’s girlfriend, then I do not know that these people can actually provide bisexuals with the support we actually need — I do not know that the spaces they construct are ones that can actually provide for us as fully realized people.

But I think it’s an ask that’s still worth making. I think it is important for bisexuals to see ourselves, not as ticking time bombs just waiting to make the space less safe for everyone else, but as people in need of safety ourselves, as people who need — who deserve — support for our unique, underdiscussed experience of oppression.

Love The B+ Squad? Back this project on Patreon and get bonus content!