February 13, 2022

Bisexuality and dating (with boys)

How to go out with the straight boys CIS after having fully in touch with my sexual orientation BI+ proves to be more demotivating every day.

A few weeks ago, while I had a coffee with a friend, she brought me back an experience that had happened to her A few days earlier, with a boy who recently frequented. After sharing his orientation with him Bi+, he, amazed, said that he seemed strange to him that he could be bisexual, since he had long hair and A very feminine presentation and expression of gender. A naive exit, a little unhappy, which, however, offers an interesting cross -section of the topic that I would like Touching in this article, that is, how bisexuality is perceived and recognized, or not recognized, (often, not always) in a hetero-mononote company.

First, some clarifications: it is meant by bisexual, or bi+, a person attracted to a sexual, Romanesque or emotional level by more of a genre, not by the two genres men/women only (binary perspective), and not necessarily at the same time. A person who, returning to these characteristics, self-defines such (people can use other labels to express the great variety of guidelines within this definition, or not wanting to use them at all) is understood by bisexual.

Therefore, returning to the affair, l'My friend's experience brought me a situ to my mindA similar action in which I found myself: a friend, one evening in front of a beer, when he saw me arrive with a very short new haircut, he thought that It was an ally to exclaim "Crazy with this cut! You will surely getting out a lot of Girls now! ". The premise to be done would be that we must not confuse gender expression, sexual orientation and gender identity. But, established this, what the two people in question I think they wanted to communicate, or have involuntarily let it leak, is that you have to present yourself in a specific way if you want to be perceivedə as Also gay, especially if they attend Also straight people (in my case and in the case of my friend, guys). The orientation of the personsOne Bi+ is established by the society's gaze, based on the partner's genre that we decide to attend. Here, therefore, that bisexual people, entertaining relationships with different genres, are led to having to validate, and almost sometimes demonstrate, in any new social situation, their bisexuality, triggering a coming out continuous and infinite. And hence our invisibility in the eyes of society, who struggles to recognize bi+people, since they continually escape binary (or straight or gay) monoosexual classification, and which exchanges our fluidity for confusion about what we like. THEnvisibility that is reinforced, precisely, when you decide, as a woman to go out with a man.

"I don't understand how the length of my hair has to do with who I can like" replied Sofia.
"So have you also had relationships with girls?" He puts the boy, perplexed.
And Sofia, who has also had them with the relationships with girls, at this point she is sweeping. Because one would never ask a heterosexual person to try their orientation with facts, to validate it, but we are based on what he says they hear, or for those who claim to feel attraction.
“Sorry, before your first relationship with a girl you didn't know you liked the girls?”.
At this point the paradox becomes evident, and fortunately the boy apologizes.
It doesn't always happen though. I did this type of conversation several times, and several times after saying (at this point almost reluctantly) that yes, I like them Also The girls, a mischievous smile appeared on the face of the interlocutor, wonderfully describe the type of images that are painting in his head.

Because invisibility and non-value lead to two other large ones topic of the ESIn my case, in my case, from a woman's point of view: the first is the sexualization of the Sapphic relationship, the second is the sexual promiscuity often associated with BI people.
In relation to sexualization, the discussion also expands to lesbian people: in our heteropathial society gay relationships between women are often fetishized by straight men, who see in the relationship an erotic content of which to appropriate the need, or completely aimed at them, in a phallochus perspective. This ends up downgrading the lesbian report to type of "Serie B" report. Sortpecie where there is the possibility of "choice”, as in the case of bi+people. In relation to promiscuity, a strong stereotype on BI people is the one who is taken for granted that if you are attractiveə from more of a genre, then you are attractiveə from "Whatever you move", or even it is given as an established one that a bisexual person is predisposed to three -mixed relationships or relationships, as if to be sentimentally satisfied must "have" partner of both The genres (again, binary optic) at the same time. It is no coincidence that the 1990 bisexual manifesto was published in San Francisco by the magazine Anything that moves (“Anything that moves”) who decided, at the time, to claim and appropriate the label which represented the prejudice that was often attributed to bisexual people.

I remember that once, after having done out, A high schoolmate asked me: “So now do a lot of things a Three?”. At least no comments on the hair, but still rather gruesome.

The last experience I want to report It is a chat that I once did with a girl I attended. She was in an open relationship with a boy, and in the face of my question to explain to me a little better their type of relationship, to talk to me about Boundaries who had established and of the type of relational freedom of which she had, replied: "For my boyfriend it's ok if I see girls, but it would prefer that I didn't attend other boys." At the time, perhaps out of naivety, perhaps due to poor political awareness, I remember that I did not problematize the thing too much, but I admit that now, in the face of the same words, I would have a different type of response. The person with whom he was the girl considered potentially threatening, for the stability of the couple, a situation that understood the presence of another boy (hetero, Cis) in his life, while he proved to be condescending and encouraging in frequentations with people of the same kind. Needless to say how much this reasoning, in the eyes of a bisexual person, is unfounded and naive, because in experience I would never underestimate how much the right girl can make her head lose, as much as a boy. But the truth that these beliefs highlight is that the bisess experienceIt is basically perceived as a game, a way to show off and stay over the lines. One way like any other, In fact, to please the male gaze.

And in the long run, I admit, he is tiring. It is tiring to have to be pastelatə Ultimately in which we do not identify ourselves, it is tiring to have to try your orientation to be recognizedə, it is tiring to be sexuallitə, demonizzatə As a promiscuə, unfaithful, indecisə, unreliable, confusə, labeltatə as “gay not abbalebrave room ”if guys, as "Hetero looking for attention" if girls.

For this reason we often prefer to remain a silent mass, because sometimes we prefer to remain invisible, if The alternative is to be stereotypizzatə, or misunderstandingə. But the problem is not our bisexuality, but how this is redefined or denied within our society. And the invisibility, in the long run, hurts. If nobody sees you, you end up becoming invisible to you tooə.
The way I found in order not to become invisible is to share my experience, and create a support network, made up of friends, friends and Amicə who see me and support me. But I know it's not a chance for allə, therefore, a bi+ person what a terms now this article: I see you, I know that it exists, and that your experience is valid.