Maybe a year and a half ago, back when I was working on a proposal for a book about bisexual womanhood, a book proposal that ultimately did not sell but did eventually inspire me to launch this email, there was a question that I kept getting asked, one that frustrated me to no end.
My book was primarily about the pain of living in a world where being bi (and in this case, specifically a bi woman) means having a collection of frequently unflattering stereotypes forced upon you. The party girl, the unicorn, the faker — even if you’re not these things, even if you actively reject them, your entire identity is still in conversation with them. The very fact that you even have to explain that you’re not whatever dumb bullshit someone is convinced that all bi women are means you are starting from a defensive crouch. It’s a terrible way to live a life. That’s the point I wanted to make.
But the point that other people wanted me to make, this notion that kept being raised, was more along the lines of, “Here are the good things about being bi, here are things about bisexuality that you can feel proud of.”
And it bothered me because to answer that question, I would fundamentally have to do the very thing I was rejecting: I would have to reduce bisexuality (and in this case, bi womanhood) into a limited, a universal, quality. And it simply is not. I cannot give you some shared wonderful thing about being bi because beyond “being attracted to multiple genders” and “living with horrible stereotypes about bi people” — the former of which is neutral and the latter of which is bad — there is no shared bi experience. The positives in our lives are joys that we as individuals are able to find for ourselves. They’re not things that we find simply because we are bi.
(If anyone is tempted to say “right but being bi is cool because you get to have different types of sexual experiences by pursuing people of different genders” — that’s only good if you are bi, because if you’re monosexual you’re not going to see that as a desirable outcome. Being able to eat pizza and pasta is only a good thing if I like both of these foods; for someone who only likes pasta, an all pasta diet is the win.)
Anyway. This idea of a Bi Person™️? I think it is a myth. Bisexuality, that’s real, obviously. But “bi values”? They simply do not exist.
To be fair, this isn’t limited to the bis. I don’t really believe that straight people, that gay people, that lesbians actually exist either. I mean yes, I believe that there are monosexuals with attractions of varying types, but the idea that to be a monosexual of a specific persuasion is to have X, Y, Z values that you adhere to? That’s entirely a creation of heterosexuality, a form of social policing that we all live with. “Straight culture” isn’t adopted by heterosexuals because it’s inherent to them; it’s adopted by them because it’s socially enforced. You have to learn to be straight, you have to learn to be gay, at least in the cultural sense. Being same gender attracted is not a culture; same gender attracted people created a culture — and then passed it on from generation to generation — in order to feel less alone.
I get why people don’t always love this argument. I get why people want bisexuality to be something they can hold on to, something that helps explain who they are and how they should behave. There is a comfort in being told that your bisexuality (or just your sexuality) means something good about you, that it opens doors or shapes a certain path or gives you clarity on life.
But I just don’t think it’s particularly honest. Your bisexuality — or whatever sexuality — just means you’re naturally drawn to certain genders in certain ways.
Everything else is up to you.
To me this summarizes as "Bis Are". In a world where everyone wants sexuality and identity in general to mean something specific, it's nice to remember that it's enough just to be
to me, the bi identity IS the active rejection of such cultures/persuasions. not only is the rejection of such boxes & categorisations inherent to what bisexuality is, but our political history also reflects this and so do (& must) our political goals.