Live And Let Bi
Rhea Dangwal
This is the part 2 of breaking Bi-sexuality stereotypes at KrantiKali for part one click here: Busting Bi-Sexual Stereotypes
So, let’s take this story forward.
You spend your formative teenage years trying to make sense of the ecology of your birds and bees, and suddenly as the bisexual in the dating ecosystem, you’re now the predator.
“Bisexuals cannot be trusted”
Maybe you cannot trust them to be very good at taxes or maybe they are clumsy in general, but whatever brought about the misplaced fear that bisexuals are sneaky and infidel as a biproduct of their sexuality is beyond me. Beyond the fetishizing, the most common form of bi-phobia as expressed by straight people is the fear that because bi people have ‘more options’ they are more likely to cheat.
In Gay and Lesbian identifying people, this is manifested in the form of the reaffirmation that bisexuality means that the person can ‘switch up’ and ‘go back to being straight’.
This kind of rhetoric is hurtful and disturbing and can leave a person feeling ashamed of an identity they cannot choose out of, and feel undeserving of affection from people of other orientations. This also restricts Bisexual identifying folk from coming out about abuse or oppression they may feel because they are ostracised from both narratives. Trans or non-binary non-gender conforming folk who identify as bi are often scrutinized for their relationships, and experience more nuanced and highly dangerous layers of ‘otherness’ from both the straight and queer communities.
There is also this whole narrative that bisexuals are incapable of making friends because all they see is ‘prey’. How hurtful a stereotype to have to live by and internalize.
I want this echo to resonate in the largest radius it can reach; if you are in monogamous relationship with a horrible disrespectful person THEY MIGHT CHEAT/ HURT YOU AND THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING ‘A BISEXUAL WITH MORE OPTIONS’, AND ANYONE CAN BE BISEXUAL REGARDLESS OF BEING CIS OR TRANS OR NON-BINARY.
Bisexuals are pushed constantly to ‘prove’ themselves
After striving to be a good-bi all my life, it’s surprising how many sayonaras I get from queer and straight people alike.
In the LG community, the B are often seen as more privileged than gays and lesbians, able to duck discrimination by entering into straight relationships. Bisexuals are often wrongly assumed to be straight or gay depending on who they are with. Spelling out that they are bisexual can be misconstrued as rejecting a current partner or declaring themselves up for anything. Often, a person’s bisexuality is dismissed because they might not have had a history of same-sex relationships. To that, I would like to point out that for example, statistically, a majority of South- Asian people remain single until they marry, due to a cultural setup, but that doesn’t make them any less straight, so why would we not hold that standard to anyone else’s experience.
The intersections of oppression that are put on some bisexual people, like those who are transgender, gender nonconforming or non-binary, of color or low-income at greater risk.
Bi-phobia is not the same is homophobia
Identifying as Bisexual has a whole set of its own complications that cannot be categorized in along with other Lesbian and Gay identifying narratives.
‘Far more bisexuals are in relationships with people of the opposite sex than the same sex,’ a study by the Pew Research Center found. ‘They are less likely than gay men and lesbians to have weathered slurs or attacks, been rejected by friends or family or treated unfairly at work,’ its survey showed.
Yet researchers and activists say bisexuals face another set of frustrations, sometimes shunned by the gay and lesbian community and the straight world alike.
Bisexual women complain they are leered at by straight men and rejected by some lesbians as sexual “tourists” who will abandon them for men. Bisexual men, in turn, struggle to persuade men and women alike that they aren’t just gay men with one foot in the closet. Both are stereotyped as ‘oversexed swingers who cannot be trusted.’ Because in a lot of spaces that only consider the binary of hetero and homo sexuality, and because a lot of spaces do not even recognize bisexuality as a genuine orientation, coming out as bi can lead to a lot of ridicule, ostracization and whole reputation marred by stereotypes.
Bi-folk are constantly made to feel ashamed of ‘the non-conforming side’ of their personality and are hence more likely to be forced to stay inside the closet and only interact with their straight partners in relationships.
“Bisexuals are thought to be confused, opportunistic and unable to make commitments — and those aren’t the kinds of things you want to see in an employee,” explained Denise Penn, vice president of the American Institute of Bisexuality, a nonprofit that funds research on bisexuality, on workplace response to the orientation.
Why Bisexuals remain in the closet
‘Only 28% of bisexuals said most or all of the important people in their lives knew about their sexual orientation, compared to 71% of lesbians and 77% of gay men,’ Pew found. The numbers were especially small among bisexual men: Only 12% said they were out to that degree, compared to one-third of bisexual women who said the same’. The Pew Research Center survey revealed for North American statistics. This is a statistic that screams layers of discrimination that bi identifying people face everyday. Most people hold themselves back because the assumptions are;
- They are probably doing it for attention
- Not ‘queer enough’ to be validated
And the worse of them all
- Just a depraved pervert trying to subvert the norm for their own satisfaction.
Even writing this has been very triggering and I am not going to elaborate further because this is self explanatory.
The perfect-bi, then you come to understand, is one that doesn’t exist.
Sociologist and author Crystal Fleming describes the concept of social psychology called meta stereotypes; ones that are so prevalent they get internalised by the oppressed and start to actively shape their reality. These are the stereotypes we develop about how people we think others view people ‘like us’.
Over the years, I developed several meta stereotypes as well about my orientation and internalised a whole lot of bi-phobia due to all the bullying and abuse one is subject to as a process of coming out in a country that doesn’t openly accept the existence of a spectrum in sexuality. These are harmful, mentally, physically and emotionally for the persons living with it and need the same kind of space and compassion allotted for everyone else.
Everyday mono, bi and pan sexuality are given more love and representation by a growing internet culture of acceptance and openness. Let’s keep it that way.
Diversify your interactions, boost people from different orientations and races, hold stereotypes and those propagating them accountable, until we hear the glorious headlines of how “Millennials are killing regressive dogma that is used as an oppressant of people to maintain a false semblance of control by a ruling class that would rather have order than justice.”
You have reached the end of this discourse, Good-Bi.
About our writer: Rhea Dangwal is a Desi feminist and writer at large, annihilating misogyny and chicken nuggets with equal vengeance. DM her a high five here: @rheadangs
