Years ago, when I still had some hope that posting ads on Lex was going to help me find a girlfriend (I was so young and innocent back then), I posted an ad noting that I was a bi woman seeking another bi woman for good times and potentially more (though my ad was wittier and more artful than that, I just don’t feel like digging it up).
I specifically noted that I was looking for another bi woman for the same reason that POC want to date other POC, or trans people are T4T. I didn’t want to have to deal with biphobia in an intimate relationship; I didn’t want to have to worry that a lesbian partner was going to make an issue of my attractions to, and history of dating, men. I simply wanted to date a woman who, you know, got it, who wouldn’t feel weird about my identity because it was her identity as well. And given that my ex-girlfriends had all been bi themselves — well, it seemed like a pretty obvious thing to want.
So it surprised me when, after agreeing to hear a friend’s feedback on my various Lex posts, one of the first things she mentioned was that I shouldn’t specify that I was looking for someone bi.
“I wouldn’t respond to that ad,” she told me, even though she certainly fell under the bi+ umbrella herself. “You’re one of the only bi-identified people I know who has good politics,” she explained.
I bristled when she said this, but I had to admit that I understood where she was coming from. It hadn’t been that long ago that I had avoided the label bi myself, that I’d written it off as cringe and corny, as unbearably unfashionable. I’d never quite gone down the “bi is transphobic” line of reasoning (a line of reasoning, which, I should note, I hate and consider ahistorical), but I did feel like there was something a little embarrassing about identifying as bi.
And then, you know, it occurred to me that that embarrassment might actually just be a form of internalized biphobia, one that was preemptively leading me to write off other bisexuals, to cut myself off from potential community, to refuse to engage with the rich history of bisexual theory and writing — history that I was shocked to discover wasn’t embarrassing at all, but incredibly thought provoking and even enlightening.
I should note here that my friend might have had a point about my ad: everyone who responded to it kind of sucked. Whether that was because I’d specified that I was looking for bi women, or because of some other aspect of the ad, or because Lex in general can be a cesspool, I’ll never know. But it did leave me wondering: if the word “bi” is so toxic even to people who themselves could be considered bisexual, then how can we actually be expected to find one another, to build community with one another? If the mere mention of the b-word is a conversation ender, then how can we be expected to actually start a conversation? Because sure, you can sub in “pansexual” or “mspec,” but you’d likely wind up having the exact same problem. And broadening to “queer” loses the specificity that is embedded in the word bi. I wasn’t interested in dating a queer woman, broadly; I was interested in dating a woman with a history of attraction to multiple genders. And yet the very word that would flag who I was looking to connect to was a word that apparently ensured that no one worth connecting with would want to connect with me.
I use the words bi and bisexual a lot these days. It’s been a long time since I felt cringe at uttering the b-word. I use them as umbrella terms, and sometimes alongside words like pansexual and mspec (though I am admittedly not a fan of mspec), and I try to use them in ways that hopefully help people understand that “bisexual” doesn't have to mean bad politics. A lot of people still don’t get it. A lot of people, even people who could, themselves, be considered bisexual, have that same reaction my friend had — they approach me with suspicion, the project a lot of baggage on to me, they assume that my use of “bisexual” rather than (though really it’s in addition to) queer must flag something bad about me.
But I’m going to keep using it anyway, and hope that in the process I will chip away at anti-bi bias. Because really: if we do not have a word, what do we have? If I cannot easily say that I, a woman with a history of attraction to multiple genders, am romantically interested in pursuing relationships with other women who also have a history of attraction to multiple genders, then what are we even doing here?
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This is so fascinating to me because I don't see this same pushback from lesbians who specifically ask to only date lesbians
"Because really: if we do not have a word, what do we have?" I love this sentence. Language is so important.
Not to de-center the bisexuality convo, but this is applicable to so much (& reminded me of how good it felt to publicly use the label realizing it applied to me.)