The only provable sexual orientation.

And yet the least believed.

This morning I was reading a really terrible LA Magazine profile of Bari Weiss, which I’m not going to link because… it’s terrible and you don’t need to read another apologia for Bari Weiss. Anyway, it was making me absolutely miserable, but I kept soldiering on out of sheer masochism, right up until I got to the line “Weiss, who considers herself bisexual” — and that’s when I had to quit.

It’s always like this for the bisexuals, isn’t it. We “claim to be,” we “consider ourselves,” we “identify as.” It’s rare that we simply are, without any hedging or qualification. To the monosexuals — who seem only to be able to conceive of sexuality in terms of what someone is doing right now, in this very moment — bisexuality is always in question unless you’re actively in a threesome, whereas monosexuality is proven whenever you opt for a partner of whatever gender aligns with your label.

But it’s funny, right, this idea that the validity of someone’s bisexuality is always up in the air, because bisexuality is actually the only provable orientation. Oh, you want me to believe that you’re gay or straight? Well, how do I know that your monosexuality isn’t provisional? How do I know you don’t simply think you’re straight or gay because you simply have not met the person who’s going to blow the doors open on your bisexuality? (I mean… many such cases exist, peeps.) In order to prove (“prove”) one’s bisexuality, one only need to be attracted to two people of different genders at any point in their life. In order to prove monosexuality, you have to consistently be attracted to only one gender (out of many!) for the entirety of your life. And you want me to believe that you’re sure that you’re straight?

And look, obviously some people are straight or gay, because being straight or gay isn’t actually about definitively eliminating any possibility of attraction to someone of a gender you don’t usually go for. Being straight or gay is about choosing to align with your dominant attraction, about building your life around that attraction. These identity labels aren’t us surfacing some deep truth about ourselves that’s buried deep within, hardcoded into our DNA. They’re always an act of identity creation: you feel aligned with straightness (or gayness, or biness) and thus you are. In some ways, all of us are only claiming or identifying as or considering ourselves to be whatever label we put out in the world. It’s impossible to actually do anything else, because these identities… they’re social constructs, you know?

But it’s the bisexuals who are given the burden of proof in an attempt to bolster this idea of monosexuality as “more natural,” the bisexuals who are viewed with suspicion. The bisexuals who are just looking for attention, or overstating our attractions, all with an eye to attempting to be cool. It’s a sick game, and I’m tired of it. Everyone is (potentially) bisexual, no one is really bisexual, none of this actually matters anyway because it’s all just words, you know? Words that point to a messy stew of emotion and attraction and try to give it some clear-cut name like borscht*. But it’s just a word we made up.

Anyway, we’re in the tail end of Chanuka and almost to Christmas and practically in 2023 and it’s been a wild week**, so it feels fitting to wrap it all up this way, you know. You are bisexual if that’s how you feel — it’s not a provisional label except to the extent that all labels are provisional because humans are always changing. It would be great if the media could get the message and start putting a little more respect on our identities.

* Fun fact: I call any beet-based soup a borscht.

** I had 24 hours where I thought I had COVID due to a faulty home test, I’m fine, never had symptoms, do not have COVID, but what a week.

Need a last minute holiday gift? Buy your favorite bisexual a membership to the B+ Squad Book Club. Or join yourself!