chasingtides | Biphobia: It's What's For Dinner

There's plenty of information on biphobia out there. There's plenty of it out in the world.

In her essay, Robyn Ochs writes, "Thus, bisexuals create discomfort and anxiety in others simply by the fact of our existence. We are pressured to remain silent, as our silence allows the dominant culture to exaggerate the differences between heterosexual and homosexual and to ignore the fact that human sexuality exists on a continuum. It is much less threatening to the dominant heterosexual culture to perpetuate the illusion that homosexuals are “that category, way over there,” very different from heterosexuals. If “they” are extremely different, heterosexuals do not have to confront the possibility of acknowledging same-sex attractions within themselves and possibly becoming “like them.” There is considerable anxiety in being forced to acknowledge that the “other” is not as different from you as you would like to pretend."

I recommend reading her whole essay, especially if you're unaware of this issue. I identify alternately as pansexual and anthrosexual and am currently working my way through Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out (edited by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Kaahumanu).

For online resources, I recommend Texas A&M's Biphobia Guide, this discussion of biphobia in the lesbian community [warning for a fair amount of biphobia in the comments], Biphobia on Scribd, and this extensive read entitled GL vs BT, taken from the Journal of Bisexuality.

There is biphobia in the world. People who aren't monosexual experience it regularly - often daily if we watch television or read books. We grow up in a culture where we are invisible except in the negative. Bisexual women are often the slutty ones who play both sides of the field. Bisexual men spread AIDS.

There are few heroes for us. When, for example, I say that Oscar Wilde exhibited bisexual behavior and the reaction is, "What the hell are you talking about,

chasingtides, the man was gay," that is erasure. Not only is it erasure, but it denies us our heritage.

When I was fourteen, I realised, startled and suddenly afraid, that I liked girls. I knew I liked boys - I had had quite the crush on a boy in my junior high. However, out of the clear blue on my first day of high school, I realised that I was definitely attracted to females as well. However, I struggled with this for years. It wasn't that I wasn't attracted to men and women; I was. It was that I knew there was a word for that - bisexual - but I also knew, quite clearly, that I wasn't bisexual. I am monogamous. I have a low sex drive. I am honestly attracted to people of all genders and want to pursue single romantic relationships with them. Clearly, I was not bisexual. There was no decent person, not in my extensive reading and not in my genre television watching, who was bisexual.

In those years, I well could have done with the knowledge that these were biphobic stereotypes and it would have been a good thing if I had been, in main stream media, exposed to non-phobic figures. (I was not involved in queer culture because while I was clearly not a bisexual like that, I was also obviously not gay or lesbian.) I could use having some less-than-monosexual figures in my life today, for that matter.

Biphobia is integrated into our culture, in the mainstream West and into the culture of the queer community. This means that, likely, you might say or do something that's biphobic. Hell, I always have to check my biphobic thoughts as self-destructive; I hardly expect the rest of the world to be magically biphobia free.

When you write the slash fic where either or both of the male characters have canonical female love interests, think of the possibility that your character might be not-monosexual, rather than a closeted gay character. When someone points out that a person or a character exhibits bisexual behavior - for example, Lord Byron or Ianto Jones - think before you jump on that person. When you are in a place of fannish discussion, think before you espouse biphobic stereotypes.

However, I will say this: ignorance of this issue is not an excuse. If I said something racist and said, "But I didn't know better," what I said would still be racist. If I said something homophobic and said, "But I didn't know any better," what I said would still be homophobic. The same applies to biphobia. It is not the purpose of bisexuals and other non-monosexuals to educate and help you. We aren't educators; we are people, living lives. Telling us we should not be angry is also, in my less than humble opinion, inappropriate. This is prejudice and discrimination that we face in our daily lives; we have every right to be angry about it.

(And no, I'm not putting this under a cut. It's long, but it needs to be read.)

Current Mood: angry
Current Music: Heroes