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C I Fautsch's avatar

The person who's served by the bi respectability politic is, I think, bi women who have sincere capacity for feelings for other women. Sometimes it feels like in our desire to be inclusive and to "not police" we ignore the obvious, and in my world, the obvious is this: I know that for me, and for every single bi (not bicurious/heteroflexible) woman I know, there have absolutely been issues with being treated like an experiment or a sex accessory for a heterosexual pairing. It *definitely* influences the hesitation so many of us feel when it comes to hitting on another woman-- not the only factor (the major one, I think, is not wanting to be creepy), but a very substantive one.

I've had sex with someone for whom I was such an experiment (at a point where I had no need for experimentation myself) and it was underwhelming to the point of being traumatic. I've been roped in (by my sincerity and sincere attraction) to public spectacles of sapphism because someone's boyfriend thought I was hot and it was a complicated way of managing that aspect of the relationship. Whatever the confounding factors in these types of events, I would have been much better served if the default of bi women's experience had as little to do with men and heterosexuality as possible, and this sort of thing was the exception borne of occasional misunderstandings and bad luck rather than the norm of my early 20s bi journey. I love your writing and I love that you're bringing this up in terms of the specificity of being bi (rather than the usual lesbian complaints, though I find those quite valid tbh). But to me, there is no wonder why we now consider Katy Perry extremely gauche, even though I'm sure you're not alone in untangling this knot; this is not judgment of your past self, she was trying to figure all of this out just like the rest of us, but is to explain why I am perfectly fine with bi "respectability"-- call it what you like. This type of norm, of expectation, removes several layers of complication from a difficult, complicated situation: women wanting to express their sincere attraction to other women, because they are *attracted to women*.

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