About a year and a half ago, when the first horrific wave of the pandemic was starting to ease up and I found myself eager to be social again, I befriended another bi femme. In theory, we were very similar: two overeducated cis white girls in Brooklyn, both bi, both Jewish. But there was one thing that dramatically differentiated our respective experiences: she was into butches, and I was into femmes.
It was such a small thing, and yet it contained a world of difference. My friend’s bisexuality felt like an overarching appreciation of masculinity across the spectrum. She jokingly called herself a “no homo homosexual,” baffled by the idea of being aroused by another woman’s femininity. I, on the other hand, was deeply cognizant of the way my attraction to women felt different from my attraction to men, how I craved that commonality from the women I was into while seeing men as an alien other intriguing to me in their difference from me. It’s hard to say whose experience was more comprehensible, more legible: mine was certainly the more stereotypical read on bisexuality — the attraction pattern of unicorn hunters who want to bring a pretty girl home to their boyfriend, certainly — but hers may have actually been the one that’s more common (at least judging by the seeming paucity of femme for femme sapphics generally, that is). Either way, she definitely had an easier time dating in queer spaces than I did.
It is strange, I think, that “a bisexual” is supposed to be some cohesive identity with a cohesive culture and experience, when even two white Jewish cis bi femmes living in Brooklyn could veer so aggressively away from one another in lived experience, simply on the basis of what kind of women we were each attracted to. We don’t talk about this much, do we? I mean sure, we give the nod to the fact that bi men and bi women have different experiences and live with different bi pressures, that bi non-binary people are dealing with their own shit, but it sorta stops there, doesn’t it. We don’t talk about the way the particulars of your own gendered attractions might shape your experience of bisexuality, and we certainly don’t talk about the way individual bisexuals’ own personal gender expressions can affect their experience of bisexuality.
I mean, most people don’t even think about that last one, do they. Bisexuality is always positioned as flirtation with heterosexuality, and thus bisexuals are assumed to have hetero-approved gender expressions. A femme bi man? What women would even?? Nevermind the possibility of a butch bi woman: both male femininity and female masculinity are so aggressively coded as (monosexual) queerness in our culture that the idea of bisexuals being, you know, femme dudes and butch ladies just doesn’t seem to occur to anyone (no matter how many times the Genderbread Person insists that gender expression and sexual attraction are just totally unrelated). And yet these people absolutely exist — as does, notably, a bisexuality that exists utterly separate from heterosexuality. (I am thinking a lot these days about a colleague who, after going on testosterone and reframing their relationship to their attraction to men, reclaimed their bisexuality while noting that their attractions to both men and women were gay, that they were attracted to all genders in a gay way. I think that’s beautiful.)
Anyway. This is sort of the exhilarating, surprising chaos of bisexuality; the unpredictable rush of never knowing what to expect. It’s fantastic and yet, I think it is also one of the things that makes it more difficult to find bisexual solidarity. With other orientations, there’s kind of this underlying assumption that every other member of your group is either someone you can identify with or someone you want to fuck: among heterosexuals, you either are a woman or you want to fuck one; among queers, you’re either masc or trying to mack it to one. Obviously it’s not really that simple (it’s never that simple), but there’s still an aura of simplicity that is generally denied to the bisexuals. Our diversity can be difficult to comprehend, let alone discuss, and I think it sows division among us. The bisexuals who are more visibly and inescapably queer resent their more “hetero” presenting peers for constantly complaining and not recognizing their privilege, for not seeing that they'd gain more acceptance if they could just be chill; the bisexuals who feel rejected by the queer community resent their more effortlessly queer peers for not understanding what it’s like to feel alienated from any community. Despite the fact that we’re all ostensibly bisexuals and in this together, our common ground is little more than a tightrope strung haphazardly between two platforms labeled “gay” and “straight.”
Solidarity is often talked about in terms of commonality: we’re united by our shared experiences, by the way our lives resemble one another’s. But bisexuals don’t often have that. Yes, there are pockets of us who have similar experiences — there’s a wealth of femme bi women who really vibe with the “secret” confessions I periodically dole out on Twitter — but by and large, we simply don’t have that much in common aside from the fact that we are told again and again that we are not meant to exist. That’s a hard thing to frame solidarity around, and yet we kind of have to do it anyway. Because if we don’t come together, there isn’t really any hope for us. If we don’t unite in spite of our differences, we won’t ever overcome our common enemy.
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I feel like I want to sit down and have a whole long conversation with you about this because my experience of being bi and dating women, especially, has been so opposite yours in terms of the ease! As in, I have found that I'm neither femme nor butch enough for other people's preferences. (But also I love the idea that I love everyone in a gay way because that feels very true to my experience lol)
I am finding this writing very educational-. I agree re the difficulty with bi-solidarity, it’s lonely, and as you’ve said before at the same that’s kind of freeing and important as maybe the bi-lobby are the most likely to make social progress for everyone, as the natural bridge between the mainstream and alternative -
We’d have to adapt our identity - we’d no longer be the cool edgy minority because bi would become so ubiquitous - hopefully this would not cause a destructive ‘appropriation’ turf war, as long as our past struggle was respected properly, those of you who are out and writing, advocating etc., are the best hope for a progressive future, the world is catching up with us - it’s a good thing. 😀