Things that trigger my internalized biphobia

An incomplete list

Internalized biphobia. We all have it, even the best of us; at most, we have had it and done a lot of hard work to process and work through it. I, myself, still struggle with it — though in a sign of growth I am least aware of what it is when it crops up. Back in the before times, back when I was more ignorant of what it was I was feeling, I felt justified in turning up my nose at the so-called “bad” bisexuals; the ones who were — to borrow and slightly corrupt a turn of phrase from my heritage — a shanda fur di monosexuals. Now, though — well, now it feels more complicated.

I still feel the revulsion, I’ll admit that much. It tends to be triggered by a certain kind of bi person — though really I mean woman here, because it’s almost invariably a bi cis woman, and usually a white one, who raises my hackles and brings out my inner “really?” For a while — okay, perpetually — it was Kyrsten Sinema, whose sheer commitment to embodying every bad stereotype of a bi person would be impressive if it weren’t so personally painful. Now, though — and I’m sorry to say this — it’s everyone’s favorite hipster model Emily Ratajkowski, who has gone from casually coming out as bi on TikTok to using her platform to say astonishingly dumb shit like “I don’t believe in straight people.”

And look, of course there are evil bi people. Of course there are bi people who say dumb, basic shit that oversimplifies sexuality and identity and wind up making my eyes roll out so hard they fall out of my head. Bi people contain multitudes, and there’s bound to be a portion that’s just… embarrassing. So why do I care? Let these people be shitty, let these people be dumb, it’s none of my business, right?

But — and this will probably not surprise you — it’s so hard to shake that voice inside my head that’s like, “This will reflect badly on me.”* It’s so hard to not think, “Ugh, everyone is going to think that all bi women are Kyrsten Sinema” or “Ugh, everyone is going to think that every bisexual has as dopey and facile an understanding of sexuality as Emily Ratajkowski.” It’s so hard not to think that people will see these prominent women and say, “Welp, that’s the end all be all of bisexuality” — because so many people do that so often, because so many people are just willing to dismiss the whole lot of us as shallow and embarrassing and toxic.

And yet I know that it’s not fair to put the burden of Representing Bisexuality™️ on these women. I know it’s not fair to be more irritated at them for being irritating simply because they are bi. I know all this, and it’s… it’s what I ultimately turn to when I want to calm that hateful voice, when I want to stop hating other bi women because I think they’re embarrassing, because I think they’re making me look bad.

I don’t like that society has such an empty understanding of bisexuality, of sexual identity as a whole, that it’s assumed that any random bi celeb is qualified to be any expert on the experience, that their opinions and thoughts are worth quoting. I don’t like that bisexuality is so poorly understood, so rarely and often negatively represented that every single public bi person feels like an official representative of the cause. But hating other bi women because they aren’t the kind of bi woman who I feel represents me? I’ve ultimately accepted that doesn’t get us, as a collective, anywhere.

So every time I feel that horrible little voice I just try to put something better out there to counter the thing I don’t like. I just try to be the bisexuality, the Professional Bisexual™️, I want to see out in the world.

* Some but not all of that voice is due to OCD