I’m Bisexual and I’m NOT Invisible
If no one asks me the right questions, am I obliged to give them my personal information?
I’ve known I’m bisexual for 48 years. Imagine my surprise to learn, just a few months ago, that I’m also invisible. Damn! That’s a superpower I could have been using. But, like so many other bi+ humans from the baby boomer generation, I didn’t receive the Official Bisexual Welcome Packet, including the instructions on how to operate the cloaking device.
Let me be clear: I’ve known and accepted the fact that I’m bisexual since I was sixteen. And I have not been hiding, in a closet or anywhere else. I have been living, albeit unhappily much of the time. As one who made a career using language, I will not allow such phrases as “straight passing” to be applied to me. If the world assumed I was heterosexual, that was not my action. True, I did not disclose my sexual orientation to anyone until around age 50, but I knew damned well what it is.
Why didn’t I disclose it? Because no one ever asked me!
Yes, on a small handful of occasions, I have been asked, “Are you gay?” My response: “No.” I’m not. Never have been. But no one has ever followed up that question. Because it’s faster, easier, and requires less brains to simply resort to the default setting: Not gay = straight. I spent years trying to teach critical thinking to late adolescents. I know that getting humans to see beyond what’s “obvious,” to reflect on what they don’t know as well as what they’re so sure they do know, is as easy as pushing rope up a hill. Against a headwind. In a blizzard.
Like the students I used to teach, you should be asking some thoughtful questions about what I’ve just said. For instance: Why didn’t I feel a desire to at least say, “No, I’m bi.”? I can offer two reasons. First, although I knew and understood that bisexuality not only exists, but is prevalent in humans, I reasoned (and not without good reason) that over 95% of the people around me were clueless about it. Add to that the fact that, in the time and place where I was living, identifying as homosexual was still unwise and sometimes dangerous. Identify as bisexual?
Second, and I think this reason gets overlooked far too often in discussions of bi+ visibility, I’m extremely introverted, fairly private, and not too keen to discuss either my sexual or romantic exploits with just anyone. Oh, sure. I’m perfectly able to deflect obnoxious inquiries and comments about my orientation. A response like, “You tell me about your favorite masturbatory habits and I’ll consider sharing my sex life,” generally works. But, to be honest, I just don’t care to get into it. Aspects of my life are mine. Period.
That explains why I didn’t disclose my orientation. If you were one of my better students, your next critical question would be along the lines of, “So, why are doing it now? After all, you’re almost dead, aren’t you?” (Keep in mind that I primarily taught 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds.) There are days. But I get longevity from both streams running into my gene pool. At 64, I’m just starting my third career!
My main reason for talking about my identity as a bi+ guy from the baby boomer generation is to establish that we exist. Still. And have always. We were said to be nonexistent, despite the evidence piled up by Kinsey and others. We continue to be overlooked because we aren’t “visible enough.” Kind of like black-footed ferrets, once deemed extinct because they didn’t come out to shake hands with humans shooting at prairie dogs, with whom they live.
Here’s why bi+ guys like me are overlooked. Only within the last four years do I recall completing a form that asked my sexual orientation. Every other type of demographic datapoint about me is well documented, practically down to my shoe size. But not that one. Now, because I’ve worked in research and data-gathering, I can explain why. Because it gets really messy, really fast!
Data-gatherers like neat columns of data, optimally with a very limited set of possible answers. That’s definitely not going to be the case with sexual orientation. Hell, survey takers and forms designers will have trouble deciding how to ask about sexual orientation! In the general population, there is so much confusion, debate, and abject ignorance of what “sexual orientation” means that it’s a real chore to get good, clear responses. But it can be done. After all, we eventually figured out some ways to sort ethnicity from race and to get slightly more realistic views of the population. Not perfect; better.
So, I’m here to refute the assertion that there are/were so few bi+ guys amongst the older generations that identifying as bisexual is a “young guy” thing. Yeah. Bet they figure they invented cussing, too. While younger guys vocally identify as bi+ in increasing numbers with each passing generation and year of maturity, we bi+ guys are members of all generations. Fist bumps and bro hugs all ‘round! We’re out here. Ignore the very large lower portion of any iceberg at your ship’s peril.
One final critical question you may ask: If I’m disclosing that I identify as bisexual, why don’t I use my name? Multiple reasons, of course. First, I live, as I often have done throughout my life, in a very small, rural community where disclosing my orientation in very public ways could be uncomfortable. Kind of like putting on my brown Carhartt jacket and my antler cap and strolling around in the trees down by the river in the fall. The people who matter and for whom my orientation is important know. That’s enough.
More important to me, I write under the initials fzs in solidarity with those bi+ guys — millions of them, of all ages, around the world — who, for many reasons, do not have the freedom that I experience to live who I am. I won’t pretend to represent or to speak for them. But I deeply respect them and their choices because I lived two-thirds of my life bi+ from the neck up.
Now, where’s the damned switch for this cloaking device?
Visible Bi+ is a space for members of the Bi+/MSpec community to share their voices. We’re striving to increase authentic visibility and dispel the many misconceptions which fuel biphobia and bi-erasure. Join us and SHARE YOUR STORY!
