Two years ago, it actually felt like bisexuals were making progress in the world — I mean, at least when it came to getting people to actually acknowledge the reality of our lived experiences. The New York Times was writing about “the double closet.” Multiple major publications lined up packages for Bi Awareness Week, or at least Bi Visibility Day (the week is awareness and the day is visibility, right?). This was right when I was in the midst of putting together a book proposal on what living in a biphobic world does to bi women, and I almost felt like my book was going to be obsolete by the time it came out. Biphobia was being solved, right before my very eyes!
Except. Well!
That proposal I was writing did not become a book, because — and this was so weird to watch in action — all that bi awareness I was seeing online and in the media was not actually as pervasive as I thought. I couldn’t sell a book about the fact that biphobia was a serious, deeply damaging force in the lives of bisexuals because I was confronted by editors who… didn’t believe that biphobia could possibly be serious, because, lol, bisexuals, right? And I mean, it’s fine: I retooled the proposal and made it stronger, and then when it still didn’t sell, wound up using a lot of the ideas I’d honed in the process in this here newsletter.
Which —
Well, OG readers may remember that the whole reason why I launched this newsletter to begin with — which I did completely on a whim on last year’s Bi Visibility Day — was because suddenly, surprisingly, it was Bi Month 2022 and literally no one gave a shit. All those publications that had been doing weeklong packages on bi issues in 2021? You’d be lucky if they accepted a single bi pitch last year. Trust me, I know this because I tried to pitch bi stories.
And like, yeah, maybe my pitches weren’t good and that was why no one wanted them. But they weren’t publishing anything on bisexuals during our one little week. It was as though bi awareness — which is really, let’s be clear, biphobia awareness — had been a passing fad, the Kanye sunglasses of social justice.
This year is shaping up to be no different.
It’s very jarring to see your own life, your own struggle, treated like a cause célèbre one moment and then swiftly abandoned the next. Everyone was so proud of themselves for realizing that biphobia was real that they forgot to actually do anything to solve biphobia, I guess. And I know very well that this is hardly a bi-specific problem — I, too, remember the way that BLM summer faded into business as usual with astonishing speed — but it is nevertheless interesting to observe.
Anyway. It is once again Bi Month, and a week from tomorrow marks the start of Bi Awareness Week. I do not feel like most people care, and maybe that’s honestly fine. I’m not sure that “awareness weeks” are actually accomplishing what they promise. I’m not even sure that “awareness” of bisexuality is truly what I want. Where’s the campaign for Mind Your Own Fucking Business Week, you know? The campaign for It’s My Life And I’ll Fuck And Date Who I Want To Month?
That feels way more useful than bi awareness, I think. That feels way much more like the point.
PS You are welcome to give me money in celebration of Bi Month, however. It’s also my birthday month (9/20, baby), so it’s really a twofer.