What is always missing when we talk about the "straight passing"

The pain, the pain of it all

One of the criticisms that is often lodged at bisexuals is the idea that we are “straight passing” — that we can, and often do, live the lives of straight people, regardless of our queerness. This is, of course, the basis of the obsession of bi girls with boyfriends; the idea that bisexuals are impostors and tourists within the “real” queer community.

There are a lot of possible responses to this: one could point out that bisexuals are always queer, with all the baggage that that entails, regardless of the gender of our partners. One could also point out that many bisexuals never “pass” as straight, even when we are in extremely heterosexual relationships. There’s also the perennial “my relationships are always queer because I am” response as well, which I am personally not a fan of (which is neither here nor there).

But the thing I want to point out today is this:

The entire point of the concept of “passing” is that it involves a deep loss and pain.

I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert on the whole topic, but I can say with some confidence that passing — a term that originates with light-skinned Black people denying their heritage in order to live safer, “white” lives — originated as a fraught concept. If you had the ability to “pass” as white, you did not simply gain the benefits afforded to white people as though you had always been one of them. Passing in the traditional sense required a full scale denial of one’s heritage, one’s history, one’s family. Even if you did not completely leave your family behind, passing — truly passing — required you to refuse to acknowledge them in public. It required you to put a deep and painful distance between your public “white” self and your private Black one.

It is impossible for this particular, original meaning of passing to fully translate in other circumstances — it is simply foolish to try to create a 1:1 correlation between a Black person whose phenotype allows them to move through the world as perceived a white person and a bisexual who is assumed to be straight by people who are too baby-brained to realize that a person’s current partner does not reflect the entirety of their sexual identity and history. But I do think it is worth thinking about the sadness, the pain, the inherent loss that is built into the concept of passing.

For a bisexual to pass as straight — to truly pass and not merely be perceived as heterosexual by tunnel visioned dumb dumbs — they must never speak of their queer desires. They must never acknowledge any queer relationships they may have had. They must keep the queer community at arm’s length, lest someone become suspicious of their familiarity with queer culture, queer norms.

For a bisexual to truly pass as straight, they must remain closeted. It is hard for me to see that as a “privilege,” despite the benefits that might come with being seen as straight in a queerphobic world.

“Passing” is not aspirational. It is not an uncomplicated experience — nor is it the same as being a member of the privileged group that you are able to embed yourself with in. Passing is a survival mechanism for a broken world — and while not everyone is able to wield it, those who do cannot experience its benefits without tremendous loss.