When you are a member of a marginalized group, it is understandable to wonder why, exactly, you’ve been targeted for other people’s aggression. For sexual minorities in particular it can be especially baffling: why do people hate us for our sex lives, something that literally does not effect them in any way?
A popular response to this question, one that is quite understandable in its appeal, is that they hate us because they wish they could be us. “They” in this framing are presumed to be repressed and self-hating; and when they look at “us” — presumably a self-actualized, joy filled group — they cannot help but transmute their jealousy into hatred, their self-hatred into a hatred of the other.
Like I said, it makes sense that this explanation appeals to people. Within this setup, one’s oppression is now a measure of one’s level of ascension: we are hated because of all we have achieved that our haters have not. It casts the marginalized as elevated and aware, in contrast to those who hate us because they hate themselves.
And look: I do think there is some truth to the idea that people who are the most comfortable with themselves are the least likely to hate others — the chillest straight people are the ones who are the most settled with the fact that, yep, they’re straight. But this idea of the marginalized person as elevated and self-actualized; hated because they are living their truth?
That… kind of feels like a stretch. At least when we are talking about biphobia.
Because for starters, I know too many complete mess out bisexuals — including, at various times, myself — to have any illusions that to be openly bi is to have achieved some stunning level of self-awareness. Acknowledging one’s multi-gender attractions is not necessarily some major level of emotional work, especially not as the stigma around queer attraction decreases. It is a step towards self-actualization — and certainly brings you closer than you’d have been if you’d remained in the closet — but it is just that: a step. One tiny piece of a massive, infinitely complex puzzle.
And there’s also the fact that it seems bizarre to suggest that monosexual queers — people who have gone through their own struggles of self-actualization, who have had their own coming out journeys — might feel antagonistic towards bisexuals because they’re not as self-actualized as we are. Indeed, to frame it this way is to suggest bisexuality as some sort of natural endpoint that all of us are arcing towards, which… no.
What I would offer instead is that it is not so much that they hate us because they hate themselves, or because they are jealous of what we have achieved, so much as it is that they hate us because they do not understand us, because we upend the stability of their worldview.
As many have pointed out before me, monosexual identity requires the elimination of bisexuality in order to maintain its stability. For straight people, bisexuals represent the threat that they, themselves, might be queer and not yet know it — that heterosexual attractions are not enough to ward off the threat of queerness. For gays and lesbians, bisexuality threatens to undo a hard won separation from heterosexuality — creating a potential that one could be “forced straight,” that one could somehow backslide away from queerness and into a more socially supported life. And for both camps, bisexuals are a kind of wolf in sheep’s clothing — the other that passes itself off as a member of the in group, the outsider who remains undetectable until it is too late.
In this read, it’s not self-actualization, or joy, that leads to the cessation of hate. It is, instead, an expanded mind. To accept bisexuality, one need only to understand that “because I want to” is a good enough reason to pursue a romantic or sexual relationship with someone — that past behavior need not dictate one’s present or future, that attraction does not have to be acted on just because it exists. Bisexuality does not threaten your own monosexuality because if you are only attracted to one gender, then congrats, you’re only attracted to one gender. Bisexuality merely offers an affirmation of multigender attractions should you experience them; it cannot create them where they do not exist.
Bisexuality also does not require anyone to be “forced straight” or hemmed into hetero relationships simply because the possibility of hetero attraction exists — plenty of bisexuals strongly prefer same gender partnerships. I happen to enjoy both peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and peanut butter and pickle ones; no one gets to force me to choose the former over the latter simply because it happens to be more socially accepted. That’s the beautiful thing with bisexuality, too: you can opt for the set up that feels best to you, regardless of whether or not it aligns with the predominant culture.
I don’t really understand why this world view is so hard for people — I mean I’d grasped it by the age of ten — but I have hope that it’s got the potential for mass adoption. Because truly: shouldn’t we all want to live in a world where we can simply pursue the relationships that feel good to us, full stop? Shouldn’t we all want to live in a world where we don’t have to turn to discussions of the immutable self, or gay genes, in order to justify being in relationships that are fulfilling and make us happy? Because once we can accept that choosing to be happy is a valid enough reason for establishing a partnership or having a sexual fling or not doing any sex/dating at all, the world becomes a lot less stressful. Instead of focusing on whether we are living up to some arbitrary definition of our “potential,” or “doing it right,” we can simply ask: is this making me happy in the moment? And, if we are lucky, we can answer with a resounding “Yes!”
PS Just want to toss in a plug for
’s upcoming lecture series, which looks really awesome!
I feel like biphobia from monosexual queer people isn't just a lack of understanding, but that it also has an ideological element? Like, many of these people understand bisexuality -- but they're ideologically opposed to allowing "straight" things into their "queer/same gender attracted/gay/lesbian" spaces. "Straight" attraction is built up as the opposite of queer attraction, straight men are treated as predatory bogeymen incapable of ~really loving women the way women can~ etc. So you get outcomes like accepting the presence of bi people as long as we don't talk about opposite gender attraction, ask to include our opposite gender partners, or, god forbid, express attraction to an opposite gender person who's there.
And as you've pointed out, this isn't an issue of how you define "queer"; it's an issue of people believing that queer and straight people have nothing in common, that queerness is inherently good and straightness is inherently bad. This sucks! But it's also a prominent stance at the moment, especially with broader cultural influences like the general promotion of homophily (described by Wendy Chun in Discriminating Data as "showing your love for people like you by hating people who are different to you") as a political practise.
Agreed, feeling superior or self-actualised is probably a defence against the pain of rejection. We’re such useful scapegoats, particularly popular with populist and authoritarian governments who justify their power and control over populations by instilling fear about a faux enemy within, who threatens the faux stability they claim to create. And it seems hopeless, a bit like atheists arguing with religious people. If a person did not use rational thought to get into a position, no amount of it will persuade them out of their belief/faith. And yet to be aware that we are bi-sexual would require some rejection of following the indoctrinated, dominant behaviour codes? If so maybe at least as a group we are more in touch with our own sexuality than the average straight person? You know the classic sense that everyone must be bi might also be a suspicion that most people don’t really know what they are beyond what they have been indoctrinated to be. So in a sense whilst we are oppressed we are also more free, or in other words oppressed for daring to act as if we are free to choose who to love.