Intent is Everything

bimagazine:

Ms. Gay Limerick is bisexual and has been blogging about it in the Irish lesbian blog Gaelick —

“I have been dating my best friend for the last month. My best friend is a boy. Before anyone starts throwing stones of “passing”, “straight privilege”, “heteronormativity,” or “attention seeking skank”, hear me out.

There is little point in trying to deny that parts of the queer community are rife with biphobia. I dealt with it a lot with Ms Gay Limerick and even more with Ms Gay Ireland. For the year and a half I have been out, I am very careful what I say to certain people. Sometimes it feels like the more political and vocal I get about bisexual identity, the more backlash I seem to get.

Previous to dating the current boy, I was very hush hush about my romantic life to anyone outside my best friends and my mom. I didn’t want the LGBTQ circle to find out I was flirting with boys, I didn’t want my straight friends to know I was shifting girls. I became overly conscious of avoiding gender pronouns and did all I could to avert the inevitable slut shaming that tends to follow bisexuals around. I even censored myself when writing Gaelick articles so I could be sure there would be no flaming.

Finally, there came a point when I realised that I was acting like I was still in the closet. In the same way I used to hide that I loved the ladies, I was now ashamed of not being gay enough.”

please click link to keep on reading

bialogue-group:

Then President of BiNet USA Wendy Curry said it best when the Bisexual Community refused to go along with too many in the the mainstream Gay/Lesbian establishment and ditch Trans*/GenderQueer people to try and get Equal Rights for just Cisgender Heteronormative/Homonormative people back in 2007 —

The trans community is part of the bi “net.” Unlike other national groups, we will not discard “inconvenient” parts of our community in order to win a political victory. Likewise, we would never consider tossing out the polyamourous, the monogamous, the pagan, or the christians; our diversity makes us strong …

The people who wish to “shave off” gender identity and the same people who, when necessary, will remove bisexuals from marriage, military, or any other civil rights actions. We’re too complicated. We distract from the “core” issue …

Sure, I’d love to live in a country where I couldn’t be fired for being out. But not if I had to look a transgender friend in the eye and tell them they weren’t convenient.. that it’s not their time.

It’s not about “those people” making things difficult (unless by those people, you mean the ones willing to ditch gender identity and divide the BLTG community). This is an attack on the bi community directly. Whether it’s about your gender identity, (one of) your partner’s, or your future partner - it all comes down to the right to be employed should not be given based on any one’s gender.

A wise person once said “United we stand, divided we fall”. There was no mention of when it’s “convenient.”

himecupcakes:

I am bisexual, and I’ve known that since I was… 9 or 10, and in a lot of ways it was never an issue of “OMG I’m weird” so much as “OMG what if people think I’m weird” which I personally consider a triumph… but I digress: that’s really not the point here.

The last little while I have been getting my fair share of, shall we say, “advice” concerning how I label myself: specifically “you’ve only seriously dated girls before so how do you know you like boys?”

And this, ladies and gentleman, is a very stupid question that you REALLY should not ask your bisexual/pansexual friends because it is as silly as “bisexuality isn’t real” does. Next time you want to ask someone this, PLEASE be aware of this: it’s like asking a straight person who’s never had a serious girl/boyfriend “how do you know you like girls/boys?”

… except, of course, that would never happen because if it was to a straight person, you would seem like a jackass. Dx Damn you and your double-standards, society.

fliponymous:

Several of the myths about bisexuality come from the common root that we are defined by our partners. This misconception is a direct cause of bisexual invisibility, and is frequently compounded into erasure. The common myths that come directly or indirectly from this include:

1. Bisexuals are incapable of monogamy – they will cheat on you with another gender, can’t be satisfied with one partner, aren’t really bisexual if they aren’t polyamorous.
2. Bisexuality is a transitional phase rather than a stable identity – bi now, gay later.

In a monosexual worldview, it’s easy to use our partners as markers of our sexuality. In the straight community, what is the “trophy wife” but a visible indicator of heterosexual virility? … In the monosexual part of the queer community, to walk down the street with your same-gender partner is an affirmation of your Pride, your ability to be just like everybody else. But if you are bi, and you have one partner, if they have a clearly defined gender you are lumped into one of the monosexual categories.

Polyamorous bisexuals would seem to be able to make their bisexuality more visible. This is debatable, because what they make visible by walking down the street tends to be myths about polyamory rather than about bisexuality … nearly all representations of bisexuality involve either simultaneous partners of multiple genders, or some form of serial alternating monogamy with varying levels of commitment …

The metamyth, that when we’re with someone of the opposite gender we’re straight, and with someone of the same gender we’re gay, is purely a case of being defined by the gender of our partners. No other sexual orientation faces this myth. Further, if our partner is genderqueer, I posit that someone assuming that our identity is monosexual is denying our genderqueer partner hir identity and assigning a gender to them. Show me a monogamous bisexual (and there are more of us around than you know, because, SHAZAM, you can’t see us when we’re in the same room with you unless we say so), and I’ll show you someone who has been assumed to be monosexual …

So this is why I make a point of labeling myself as a monogamous bisexual. By being visible as such, I break down the metamyth, which also breaks down the idea that I will leave my wife someday for a man, that I am a greedy cheater on the make, and the myth that I’m just a gay man with a beard (willing or otherwise).

My wife is not my beard. My beard is that stuff growing out of my face. I’m not straight, and she not only knows that, she’s as comfortable as I am with it, and she knows that I’m not going to cheat on her with anyone of any gender. I wish people would quit assuming that I will.

bisexualmind:

Why aren’t the attractions and labels of monosexuals scrutinized to the degree those of bisexuals are? I have never seen it. Have you? I don’t see the same kind of hand-wringing about monosexuals dating nonbinary people and whether or not they must switch to identifying as pansexual as there is about bisexuals.

We’ve all heard this one before: “Saying you’re bisexual but attracted to nonbinary people is saying those people are really men or women because bisexuality means you only like the binary! Binarist douchefuck!” Even when we say that, yes, we are well aware there are more than two genders and we know that nonbinary people are not binary but we still prefer to identify as bisexual for whatever various reasons we may have, it doesn’t matter because BINARIST DOUCHEFUCK I CAN’T HEAR YOU LA LA LA

Some claim we are never attracted to nonbinary/trans people. Two common attitudes that come from this are: we are either willfully and deliberately bigoted by identifying as bisexual rather than something else, or it’s a more pitiable “well you can’t choose your attractions, so they can’t help if they aren’t attracted to nonbinary people, poor things.”

Either way, we are made into lesser beings, and the dialogue has been framed so that the only way to escape is to abandon bisexuality as an identity altogether.

It doesn’t matter one bit that all of these things are lies, that many bisexual people are attracted to and identify as trans/nonbinary and that we say so repeatedly. We are inconvenient to their biphobia and so are dismissed as an insignificant minority, if not outright ignored.

Because biphobia is what it’s about. If it really were about fighting binarism or supporting trans/nonbinary people, bisexuals wouldn’t be singled out because everyone has said something at some point that reinforces the gender binary, nor would the existence of trans/nonbinary bisexuals be completely disregarded. 

In the time I’ve been on Tumblr, I’ve noticed something about “social justice” activism here: rather than learning to examine and root out their prejudices, some people have learned only how to better cloak them in activist language. They know they can’t say “Bisexuals are cheaters/will leave you for cock” without looking like an obviously biphobic asshole, but they can say “Bisexuals are more concerned with genitals than other orientations.” They can’t say “Bisexuals care only about sex and not about activism” but they can say “Identifying as bisexual is evidence one is ignorant about social justice issues.” Others just nod and accept it because it reinforces their preconceived notions in a way that isn’t so obviously biased and inflammatory.

These are often people who also give lip service to the idea that we are all living in a society steeped in prejudice that we can never fully escape no matter how much we try and that our thoughts and actions towards others will always be colored by those prejudices, yet they insist they are not at all biphobic but simply explaining bisexuality in a completely objective, rational way.

Yeah, sorry, I don’t think they are somehow magically exempt from the biphobia that pervades society. Maybe if more people actually practiced what they preach and tried to confront their prejudices particularly against bisexuals we wouldn’t have to keep having this stupid argument all the time.