There’s a Massachusetts Daily Collegian piece that’s been sitting in my tabs since yesterday. I don’t want to go too hard on it — it’s literally written by a newly out college student — but it did open a line of inquiry that felt worth exploring further.
The piece itself is whatever, literally just one more addition to the Bisexual Myth Busting™️ canon. But the headline, well. The headline is what got me to open the piece in the first place.
“Bisexuals are queer too,” it declares. It’s not a novel statement — I’m sure it’s one I’ve personally said at some point in my life — but for some reason it is hitting me differently right now, for some reason when I hear it today, it does not feel like exciting rallying cry. It just makes me feel tired.
I understand full well what the writer is trying to communicate with that line; indeed, she states it explicitly towards the end of her piece. Bisexuals, we are to understand, are just as queer as the Ls and the Gs and the Ts, and deserve the full support of everyone who considers themselves part of the “queer community.” And, like, sure. But also: who gives a shit?
I used to be more on board with identifying as queer; it used to feel like a really powerful way to align with a vision of a better future. Now though — I mean, I’m not not queer. But I see the term as more functional than utopian: I’m same-gender attracted, therefore I’m queer. That’s where it begins and ends for me.
I think what gets to me about this phrasing, this statement that “bisexuals are queer too,” is that it buys into this binary that I have come to loathe. The world, we’re told, is divided into two camps: the straights on one side, and the queers on the other; and you must figure out who you are aligned with. I think that’s part of why we’ve seen the definition of queer expand beyond just “same-sex attracted” to include a broader range of groups excluded by the extremely limited definition of “normal” sexuality and gender, to include trans and ace and possibly even kinky and poly people too.
And —
And I just kind of find it suffocating, you know? I don’t like binaries, I think the world is way too complex to shove billions of people into one of two camps. And I simply feel too old to care if people think I’m “queer,” you know?
If queerness is about same-sex attraction or marginalization due to sexual desires or challenging the limited definition of “normal” sexuality, then yeah, bisexuals are queer, full stop. There’s no discussion to be had beyond that. But the fact that we keep having this discussion makes me feel like it’s not simply about “are you marginalized by society” and instead about some bizarre loyalty test — one that bisexuals are presumed to continually fail due to our potential to be in heterosexual relationships.
And I know all the arguments that one can make, I really do. They’re in that Daily Collegian piece! But I simply find myself thinking, more and more, that anyone who wants to flatten the world into queer vs straight, anyone who wants to force me to “prove” my queerness, is someone whose goals are simply not aligned with mine. I could not care less whether people think I am “queer enough” to be in their club.
I simply want the freedom to be myself.
This reminds me of something someone said to me this evening about building social capital and the concepts of bonding and bridging (first you bond then you bridge, but without bridging there is no integration or social progress) - in my conversation it was about the challenges of integrating ethnic minorities into the overall culture whilst keeping their ethnic identities. Seems like it might apply equally to the queer bonding needing to move into a bridging phase?