Bisexuality and dating (with queer people)
Bi+ person who read this article, I turn to you to introduce the topic: before leaving the house to go to a date with a person of the same kind or belonging to the Queer community, you have ever looked at you in the mirror and think worried “I will seem quite gay"." If so, you are not alone.
I wrote a few months ago, for periodic, an article that faces the problems and complexities for a non -monoosexual person (i.e. sexually attracted, romantically, or emotionally by more than a genre) in leaving and having relationships with straight people Cis, in my case guys. Today I want to offer you the other side of the medal: the dating in the queer world.
I state that in this article I will report my experience, which will probably find meeting points with that of many other bisexual people. But every experience is different and valid, they do not live their orientation and its celebration in the same way.
Starting from the origin, I have always implicitly learned that a person to like me did not have to have specific gender connotations: if I think back to my childhood, the characters of the cartoons I was madly in love with were Kim possible, double D of Ed, Edd and Eddy, Dragonball Junior, Cornelia Delle Witch. But I was taken for granted that it was so for all, and that the sexual/romantic orientation was the preference Of one genre on the other (when I was little, I had no awareness of non -binary realities and gender non conforming, for obvious cultural motivations). And since heterosexuality for me was not only a possibility, but certainly the orientation more comfortable, with more representation, preferred and perpetuated by all the people who characterized my newspaper (parents, relatives, friends, teachers) and by the society (media, books, cinema) I decided, or I was Statə Portatə to decide, for circumstances, that It was my romantic orientation. Even because if you can choose, why choose the difficult road?
Heterosexuality is a comfortable sofa on which I left my body hung out for a long time, before I notice how many pins there were however among the cushions under my butt. Invisibility and cancellation rapidly pass from being a den in which to hide from a cage from which it is complicated to come out.
Because despite the lawyer word segments in third place of the abbreviation LGBTQIA+, the representation and validation of bi+ people are not very space in the systemically monoosexist society in which we are immersə. If you don't have models, it is difficult to see yourself. So that for me it was not even an option.
So I spent my first adolescence to develop a functional romantic relational model for straight relationships and when I started getting out of the closet (doing coming out), I realized how different it was, complicated and frightening for me to relate in a romantic way with people of my own kind.
Firstly, because all the implicit dynamics of role/stereotype of gender collapse: years dedicated unconsciously to internalize and follow patriarchal dynamics, to learn to perform more pleasantly for the male gaze, to be accommodating, assertive, inclusive, careful, but but Even sensual and winking become misleading in a relationship in which with the partner shares the non-non-revolution of gender.
Secondly, because basically as a bisexual person, you never fully feel part of the queer community. The delegitimization is divided into two levels, the personal one, the compliance syndrome for having and having had romantic experienced as they are "straight", which make us feel that we "do not deserve" a place inside the queer spaces next to gay and lesbians, and the social/cultural one exercised, unfortunately often, by the monoosexual queer community (people with gay or lesbian orientation), known as Straight Passing Privilege. The term defines the thought, according to which a bisexual person suffers only partially a homo-lesbophobic discrimination in that, on the occasion, it can exercise the privilege of being in a perceived relationship as "heterosexual". This type of reasoning is bi-challant because he wants to forcefully insert the biffic oppression within the homo-lesbophobic discrimination, as if bisexuality was a subcategory of homosexuality. But they are two different things.
Bifobia and the Bi-Erasure They are articulated on the denial and cancellation of non-monoosexual realities. It means undergoing the prejudice to be Vistə as unreliable, Promisquosed, Indecisə, looking for attention. See your orientation defined according to the partner's genre. It means reminding people that if I attend a boy I have not "returned straight", if I attend a girl or queer person I have not "become lesbian": in the first case they are in one
Report (however queer) with a partner with a genre different from mine, in the second case in a saffic relationship, or queer. And that this does not make me a confused person on his orientation, or in transition, in an intermediate step, towards another orientation. Makes me a bisexual person.
Although homosexual people suffer the same type of heterosexist oppression who suffer bisexuals when they are in a relationship with people of the same kind, it is nevertheless important, for the purposes of the BI+liberation, to speak of systemic monosexism, as a specific oppression suffered by bisexual people.
And this specificity can be found in the data collected about the experience of the bisexual community. A study conducted by Stonewall UK in 2017 that involved more than 5000 queer people, has in fact highlighted that bisexual people tend to do less coming out In every aspect of their daily life.
Only 20% of bisexual people are out With their family, against 63% of gay or lesbian people, and 36% with friends, against 74% of gay and lesbian people. Only 23% of BI+ students are out in the university context, against 44% of gay or lesbian students. In a working environment, 22% of bisexual workers are out, against 57% of gay or lesbian people. Furthermore, to the question "you would feel supported/credit (from the employer) in reporting to be a status of bullying or harassment" only 28% of bisexual workers are very agreed, against 41% of gay or lesbian people .
Comparable percentages can be found when it comes to medical-health services: 40% of BI men and 29% of BI women do not specify their sexual orientation during medical examinations against 10% of gay men and 11% of women lesbians.
As for the queer spaces (such as clubs, events, pride), the study shows that 43% of bisexual people say they have never taken part of it against 29% of gay or lesbian people, because they are perceivened as not Benvenutə due to the their identity: 27% of BI women and 18% of men say they have suffered discrimination within the community (against 9% of lesbian women and 4% of gay men).
For these reasons, it is easy to understand how a common experience for bisexual people is not feeling "enough" bisexual, or bisexuals in the "right way". And it is then the reason why before leaving the house to go to a date with a queer person it can happen that we ask ourselves if we are credible, and if we come credit.
So what can be done?
Whether you identify ourselves in a straight orientation, whether part of the queer community is being part, we recognize and fight bifia and bi-taillus, when we see or hear it, not leaving people BI+ alone. We do not question or mayor the validity of the orientation of bisexual people. We do not hire on someone's orientation only based on his partner and we use inclusive language: a couple formed by two women is not necessarily lesbian and one formed by two men is not necessarily gay. Don't recognize it is Bi delente. We support the BI+ community in the queer spaces, and we validate its historical contribution in the liberation movements LGBTQIA+.
We recognize bisexuality as a true and complete orientation, not as 50% straight and 50% gay. We stop judge an orientation that is not.
We make it possible, for those who want it, to get up simply from the sofa full of pins.
We make it simple, for bisexual people, do not live more in invisibility.
Valeria Regis
Statistical sources shown in the article:
Sophie Melville, Eloise Stonborough (Stonewall Uk), Becca Gooch (Yougov), LGBT in Britain, Bi Report, 2020:
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/lgbt_in_britain_bi.pdf
Bisexual activist for those who want to know more:
https://www.instagram.com/anything.that.moves/
https://www.instagram.com/notdefining/
Bisexual Manifesto 1990:
https://bimanifesto.carrd.co/#manifesto
