Intent is Everything

imfromdriftwood:

1.) I am a woman. 2.) I am married to a man. 3.) I work to defend queer youth rights and fight victimization. 4.) I am queer. 5.) I am bisexual. Most people hear the first two and assume that I am straight. They hear the third and wonder why a straight woman is working for the queer community. They hear the fourth and are confused. And when they hear the fifth, it all comes together in an eye roll. Bi-ignorance and bi-phobia are issues that I deal with every day of my life.

When I say that I am a woman, I mean female biologically and in my gender expression. On the continuum of gender expression, I mostly reside on the feminine side. I like to wear dresses with high heals, make-up and jewelry, carry a purse, shop at Victoria’s Secret, and get my nails done. There are of course the days that I am in men’s basketball shorts and wear my hair up to where it is shaved on the underside, but most people take one look at me and think that I am very feminine. When I first began working with queer youth, one of the questions I was asked was, “You don’t identify do you?” These kinds of assumptions followed me all the way to a date with a woman who actually asked me on the date if I were gay. I grew so tired of this that I decided I would change my appearance so that people could take one look at me and know that I was queer. I cut and buzzed my hair. I then had my nails taken off and I stopped wearing the dresses and carrying a purse. I completely altered how I looked, and it worked. I could walk into a room of queer people and no longer felt like an imposter. I was no longer asked questions of why I chose the line of work that I did. I felt completely accepted into the gay community. Only one problem, I hated to look in the mirror. I was feeling forced to express my gender in a way that was contrary to who I was, just to feel accepted. But even all that change to my gender expression was still not enough.

I could only get so far in the queer community based on my altered gender expression because it would all change the moment I said that I was bisexual. Once those words escaped by mouth, the bi-phobia from within the community would emerge. I had women not want to date me because I was tainted having been with a man. I was told that bisexuality did not exist; you were either one way or another. I stopped identifying as bisexual and started calling myself queer. I avoided ever talking about an ex-boyfriend and stopped seeing a lot of my straight friends. I felt like some sort of mutt, trying to hide my straight side and displaying only my gay pedigree. I couldn’t escape the bi-phobia. I would try to watch the L Word, hoping to see a bisexual character that I could identify with, but instead would watch her being asked to “make up her mind.” Several seasons later, she started identifying as a lesbian. I gave up the losing battle against other’s bi-phobia and realized the only thing left to do was fully embrace within myself being bisexual.

Embracing who I was felt good, and I started to date a wonderful woman who was supportive of my identity and encouraged me to put back on the dresses and high heals. I began to call myself bisexual again, this time with pride. I stopped thinking of myself in terms of my gay side and my straight side and realized that I was letting other’s perceptions cause me to divide myself. I came to realize that I wasn’t one-half gay, one-half straight, that I was all bisexual.

That relationship came to an end and the next person that I met was a man. Falling in love with and being in a serious relationship with a man brought back all of my insecurities. How could I bring him now into my queer world? He was fully accepting and wanted to go with me to my usual places, but I felt ashamed. I imagined eyes glaring at me, questioning me. It only got worse when he asked me to marry him.

Marriage was a hard decision for me. On one hand, it was a “no-brainer,” he was and is the love of my life. On the other hand, I felt like a hypocrite marrying when if by chance I had fallen in love with a woman, then marriage would not have even been an option. It was a long process to come to a place where I felt comfortable accepting the proposal. I discussed this at length with my queer family and friends. They told me that denying myself marriage, although a noble gesture, really did them no good. In fact, they said that they would rather see me happy and were glad that I had this opportunity. The general consensus was, why have one more suffering queer person out there if they don’t have to be? One optimistic friend told me that her time would be coming soon. A lesbian friend performed the marriage ceremony, and I felt as though I had the queer community’s blessing. All of my family and friends, both straight and gay, were there to help me celebrate.

Being married only added to my feelings of queer invisibility. When I talk about my husband, everyone assumes that I am straight. Add that to my feminine gender expression, and there is no doubt in anyone’s mind. I actually had a queer coworker complain to me that she was the only queer person at our work. I find myself wanting to scream out in meetings or in circles of new friends, “I’m queer!” It is funny because one of the criticisms I have heard of bisexuals is how easy we can blend into heterosexual society. If only those who made such statements knew how desperate I am to not fit in, to be noticed and recognized for who I am.

And who I am is bisexual. When I was with girlfriends, I was bisexual. Currently married to my husband, I am still bisexual. From my morning shower to brushing my teeth at bedtime, I am bisexual. It was never a phase, never a thing I did in college, never something for fun. It isn’t an identity that I tried on like a party hat. It was and is who I am. I don’t need to make up my mind. My mind, heart, body, and soul have been made up for a long time. I am bisexual.

I recently said to a young girl who proudly exclaimed that she is bisexual to be prepared, that it is a hard road. I hope that when she reaches my age, the bi-ignorance and bi-phobia will have dissipated. In the meantime, I will strive to educate all those whom I come in contact with that a person can be 1.) A woman. 2.) Married to a man. 3.) Work to defend queer youth rights and fight victimization. 4.) Queer. 5.) Bisexual.

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:

bisexcellent:

When I was questioning my sexual orientation, I sometimes got a message from my environment that everybody is curious sometimes. At the time, I interpreted this as a pleasant, ‘accepting’ message. It treated things as not a big deal; nothing to worry about. That was good, I thought.

But it set me back.

It set me back on my journey to realise that I wasn’t straight. It told me that my homosexual interests were negligible. It erases sparks that could result in key realisations, as aberrations from my otherwise hetero sexuality. When I discussed this on twitter, a person responded that she was set back 32 years by this and others experienced this to differing degrees as well. It is harmful, when somebody would benefit from coming out to themselves.

It’s also related to the untrue ‘everybody is bisexual’ stereotype, which erases the experiences of others and can degrade bisexuals (sometimes in spite of the intentions of people who say it, to show they are accepting).

This is exactly what happened to me. At 13, after my first sexual experience with a girl, I had read that same sex attraction at this age was often just a phase. It took me until I was in my twenties to actually realise that I wasn’t just interested in guys, and that that was a legitimate attraction.

bialogue-group:

bisexualftw:

I think the reason why there’s so much biphobia is because people don’t get taught about bisexuality in school. I, for example, was taught that there’s only gay and straight. The teacher didn’t mention bisexuality, pansexuality, asexuality etc. 

People need to learn about bisexuality in school.  If schools just teach about two sexual orientations, of course there will be people saying that the other orientations don’t exist. 

Sorry that this is so badly written, English is not my first language. 

Lara, a 13-year old bisexual girl. 

Don’t worry Lara, you are perfectly understandable and get an important point across very clearly. Thank you for posting.

bialogue-group:

bidyke:

clementinecannibal:

almost every time i come out as bisexual i hear the same comment, not always said directly to me but often said right after i have mentioned identifying as bisexual: “i don’t identify as bisexual because it reinforces the gender binary. i identify as queer/pansexual.” these words come across to me as a judgment against bisexuality. and to be honest, they come across as biphobia.

i identify as queer. i identify as pansexual. and i identify as bisexual. this third aspect of my sexual identity, bisexuality, is expected to be absorbed into the other two words. i identify as queer in a political sense. pansexual describes the vastness of my sexuality and it’s multiple forms of desire. bisexual describes my experience not of desiring two distinct sexes, but of living in two distinct worlds.

i exist in the queer world. i exist in the heteronormative world. sometimes simultaneously. and sometimes the queer world gets heteronormative and the heteronormative world gets queer. but, for the most part, the two worlds remain pretty distinct. and i exist in both of them. in the the heteronormative world my bisexuality is often fetishized and rendered harmless through the objectifying male gaze. in the queer world my bisexuality is negated and absorbed into queer or pansexual. neither queer nor pansexual describe my experience in the heteronomative world: the experience of passing, and when discovered, the experience of homophobia and/or the fetishization of my sexuality. neither queer nor pansexual describe my relationship with heterosexuality and my relationship with the queer community and the moving i do between. neither queer nor pansexual explain the ways that i interact with the heteronormative script, both for pleasure and survival, and the ways that those interactions and desires are feared and shamed within the queer community. bisexual, and all the the stigma that comes along with that word, does capture those experiences.

for me, bisexual differs from queer and pansexual in that it retains a desire and commitment to heterosexual and/or heteronormative worlds. we are shapeshifters. we have multiple truths. this makes people perceive us as liars, dishonest and unfaithful. a longstanding stereotype about bisexuals. but we aren’t lying. we really feel both: at home in both worlds and in neither.

my desire for cis men, my enjoyment of heterosexual acts and heteronormative scripts, are as important to my sexual identity and history as my desire for women and genderqueer people and my enjoyment of completely queered out of your mind sexual acts and completely rewritten scripts. that’s why i’m queer, pansexual and bisexual. because the part of my sexuality that engages with heterosexuality and heteronormativity is important to me and these experiences shape my life in particular ways. the word bisexual acknowledges that in a way that queer and pansexual don’t. likewise, queer and pansexual address aspects of my sexuality that bisexual does not address.

i am honestly sick and fucking tired of biphobia. it’s a real thing. it fucks with a lot of lives. and i don’t believe that ending queerphobia will necessarily result in an end to biphobia. because it isn’t just our queerness that causes people to fear us. it is also our ability to pass, to shapeshift, to exist in multiple worlds. until multiplistic identities are accepted as possibilities, bisexuality will be feared.

in order to end biphobia, we need to be able to talk about bisexuality without it being absorbed into queer. we need to be able to talk about the distinct experiences of men, women and genderqueer people who spend part of their time in the queer world, part of their time in the heteronormative world and who enjoy this. there is not a uniform experience of bisexuality any more than there is a uniform experience of any sexuality, but there are commonalities and shared experiences. i want to be able to talk about this stuff without being immediately shut down.

bisexual men are told they are ‘really gay’. bisexual women are told they are ‘just doing it for male attention’. apparently bisexuals don’t exist and no one is sexually attracted to women. i’m sick of these stereotypes. i want to hear the stories of people like myself who live and desire in different worlds, who cross lines and get away with it, who love and live in queer environments and who still desire and maintain contact with heterosexuality. i want to be able to talk about bisexuality in queer settings. i want to be able to bring the cis guy i am fucking to queer events. i want bisexual women to be taken seriously in our sexuality. i want bisexual men to be able to come out of the closet. i want genderqueer people who live and desire within heterosexual contexts some of the time to be able to express that without it contradicting their gender identity or queerness.

i want to talk about what it was like to come out in a homophobic high school and to be called ‘the lesbian’ every day, until i started dating a guy when the joke was changed to calling him ‘the lesbian’s boyfriend’. i want to talk about what it was like coming out as bisexual in the queer alternative school i attended after being driven out of my home town. i want to talk about what it feel like to simultaneously feel like i belong in multiple, contradicting places and to also feel like i belong nowhere.

bisexuality is important to me and i’m not giving it up.

I love how unapologetic this text is about heterosexual/hereronormative desires. It stands in stark contrast with the multiplicity of texts trying to defend bisexuality by subsuming it into “queer” and denying any resemblance or affiliation with anything non-gay, ever. I love that we can demand acknowledgement even if we don’t particularly want to “vindicate” bisexuality by “good/gay behaviour”. This option to be a “bad” or “failed” “queer” and still have the right to be accepted by the queer mainstream is no less than revolutionary in bisexual discourse. This is both brilliant and challenging. Kudos.

However and notwithstanding, I must admit I did cringe a lot when reading about commitment to heterosexual worlds and heteronormative scripts. As other commentators have mentioned, I agree that this could have been framed otherwise. As a bisexual person, my only feelings towards heteronormativity revolve around my explosive desires to subvert and destroy it as a standard and a structure, and it makes my brain hurt to think that bisexual identity has any stake in heteronormativity as a structure which is monstrously oppressive not only towards bi people, but towards everyone. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy some heterosexual/heteronormative scripts as fantasies, some of the time, in some ways - but it does mean that my “stake” in them, as it were, is framed and contextualized within feminism, consent and a bisexuality of refusal and subversion of heteronormativity.

Really get so annoyed when people say The “Bi” = 2 in Bisexual = [cis homonormative/heteronormative] Male/Female only.

Really? Why? Says Who? Where did you find that? Was it from a source within the actual Bisexual Community? No? It was from some other “expert”? Did you check to see if they were perhaps biphobic? No you didn’t? Well why didn’t you?

It’s the equivalent of saying that you won’t call yourself a “Gay Man” becasue you heard (somewhere) that it means you are congenitally promiscuous, prone to violence and getting diseases.

(Source: clementinecannibal.com)