Earlier this week, the legendary Tristan Taormino (who, btw, has a memoir out!) tagged me in the comments of an Instagram post (which I’m including below just for ease), asking me what I thought of it.
I am, as you may already know, a natural critic and a hater, so my immediate reaction was a bit, “Ugh.” (I mean seriously, Comic Sans?) Tempering that immediate reaction, though, I figured that, well, this isn’t horrible. Points are being made, points about how bisexuality is not half-gay, half-straight but rather a secret third thing. Is that strawberry soft serve? Who even sells strawberry soft serve? Bisexuality: the ice cream flavor you have to go to a special store for, I guess.
On a more serious note, though: setting aside my thoughts on the graphic design here, the thing that fundamentally bugs me about this graphic is that it positions bisexuality as a specific thing. This is something I am always fighting against, right? Everyone wants to talk about sexuality like there’s the straight silo over here, the gay silo over there, and, look, we’re building a special silo for all the bisexuals so they can do their weird, wacky bisexual stuff (it’s throwing sex parties, right?). (Aces are still waiting for any acknowledgement at all.)
But I don’t want to be strawberry ice cream and I don’t want to live in a silo. Silos are for cow food! Straight people are welcome to be vanilla and gays and lesbians can be chocolate if that’s what they all want, but me? If I had to put bisexuality in ice cream terms, it wouldn’t be strawberry ice cream. It wouldn’t be any one ice cream flavor at all: it would be the ice cream store menu, one that every individual bisexual gets to pick and choose from at will.
Because you know what? Your bisexuality really might be a chocolate-vanilla swirl. Or maybe it’s vanilla for thirty years and then, surprise!, chocolate for the rest of your life. Or maybe it’s chocolate with rainbow sprinkles and a cherry, or (my favorite) ube with condensed milk and toasted coconut (try it some time). Maybe it’s even strawberry. Sure, why not.
The point I’m making here is that bisexuality is not a defining characteristic. That's kind of the whole point. Bisexuality may be very important to who you are. It likely has shaped your life experience. But you are not your bisexuality. You are you. Bisexuality is just the blessed freedom you have to follow your bliss without concern for the strict rules of monosexuality.