A few years ago, back when I made the commitment to start prioritizing dating women, to really give things a go, sapphismwise, I had this vision in my head of how things would unfold. I assumed that it was simply my own shyness, my own internalized homophobia and biphobia, that had held me back in the whole dating women game. I assumed that once I full throatedly embraced my true desires, everything would fall into place and I’d have a girlfriend in a matter of months. Maybe a year, tops.
It did not work out that way.
This isn’t a newsletter about my dating woes, so I’m not going to bore you with an analysis of why it is that I’ve been single for several years. But I wanted to give you this context so that you have a sense of my mindset, of the frustration I often feel around my failure to find the romantic connection that I crave. Because that will help explain what I’m about to say next, which is —
You’ll often hear lesbians deride bi women for not really being queer; for being heteroromantic at best, tourists in sapphic spaces. And when I feel like shit, when I am really down on myself for not having had much success in the queer dating space, it’s hard not to notice that many of the women, many of the bi women, that I am interested in and attracted to only seem to date men. And it is more easy than I would like to find myself irritated that so many women who are ostensibly in my dating pool don’t actually seem to be interested in dating me, that — at best — they are interested in some flirtation and make outs but not actual romantic connection.
I don’t like that I feel this way, I think it is kind of ugly. But it’s a feeling that is sometimes there, and so, you know, I get it. I get where the resentment, where the frustration with bi women is coming from.
And yet.
I am also a bi woman, and I am a bi woman who has had many periods where I was primarily dating men, and so the leap that many other people take — the way the frustration that bi women are not necessarily romantically or sexually available to them becomes an insistence that bi women are not really queer — is a direction I simply cannot go in. Because I know, deeply and intimately, that regardless of one’s sexual history, regardless of the gender of one’s partners, regardless of who one is or isn’t romantically available to, simply identifying as bi opens one up to a world of stigma and oppression. I know that dating — even exclusively dating men — as an openly bi woman means getting objectified, harassed, and abused at higher levels and in different ways than other women. I know that the stress of living in a biphobic society increases mental and physical health woes, even if one is in a heterosexual relationship.
I know, in other words, that other women’s bisexuality, queerness, and experiences with biphobia have nothing to do with whether or not they want to fuck me. Which feels like it should be obvious, right? And yet somehow bi people are constantly reduced to who we are sexually available to, constantly flattened into a story about where we are or aren’t putting our genitals. And the sad thing is it’s not just monosexuals who do this to us. We do it to each other, too — I see the urge to do it in myself, as I said above, and I have to work to beat it back.
But I’m glad I know enough to push back on it. Because truly, there are few things uglier than judging people by whether or not they’ll fuck you.