Well, my stance on that is that the comments are biphobic - much as my thoughts as I was realising my own sexuality were biphobic - even if the people aren't necessarily.
The other to be understood is that people who are not monosexual are bombarded with biphobia and biphobic comments and actions regularly. For example, there are few dating websites that allow for anything other than "likes women" or "likes men" - essentially we have to choose whether to represent ourselves as homosexual or heterosexual. I wrote an entire meta on bisexuals in genre media and how, outside of Torchwood, most of the time I feel like I might as well not exist.
Even if you are unaware of the existence of the bisexual community, if you say things like, "People should just choose," or assuming that when a person is paired with the opposite sex that they are heterosexual and when a person is paired with the same sex that they are homosexual, that it is biphobic. It doesn't make you an inherently bad person. It means that you've absorbed the prejudices and intolerances in our culture and are expressing biphobia. This biphobia, even when it stems from ignorance and comes from a person who, after they've learned, is open to the non-monosexual community, is hurtful to those who aren't monosexual.
Edited to add: Saying biphobic things does not always make you a bad person. Many, if not most, of my monosexual friends from Bryn Mawr have said biphobic things to me. This does not mean I cannot be friends with you (though it probably means, depending on the offensiveness and apparent intent of the statement, that I might never date you). It does mean that I will be hurt that you think less of me because of my sexuality, that somehow you find my sexuality wrong/bad/offensive. I usually try, especially if you are a friend, that this is inherently untrue, though I do think that always expecting this of a non-monosexual, that is, expecting the oppressed group to always explain prejudice to the oppressing privileged group, to be a highly problematic way of thinking.
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Date: 2009-03-28 02:33 pm (UTC)The other to be understood is that people who are not monosexual are bombarded with biphobia and biphobic comments and actions regularly. For example, there are few dating websites that allow for anything other than "likes women" or "likes men" - essentially we have to choose whether to represent ourselves as homosexual or heterosexual. I wrote an entire meta on bisexuals in genre media and how, outside of Torchwood, most of the time I feel like I might as well not exist.
Even if you are unaware of the existence of the bisexual community, if you say things like, "People should just choose," or assuming that when a person is paired with the opposite sex that they are heterosexual and when a person is paired with the same sex that they are homosexual, that it is biphobic. It doesn't make you an inherently bad person. It means that you've absorbed the prejudices and intolerances in our culture and are expressing biphobia. This biphobia, even when it stems from ignorance and comes from a person who, after they've learned, is open to the non-monosexual community, is hurtful to those who aren't monosexual.
Edited to add: Saying biphobic things does not always make you a bad person. Many, if not most, of my monosexual friends from Bryn Mawr have said biphobic things to me. This does not mean I cannot be friends with you (though it probably means, depending on the offensiveness and apparent intent of the statement, that I might never date you). It does mean that I will be hurt that you think less of me because of my sexuality, that somehow you find my sexuality wrong/bad/offensive. I usually try, especially if you are a friend, that this is inherently untrue, though I do think that always expecting this of a non-monosexual, that is, expecting the oppressed group to always explain prejudice to the oppressing privileged group, to be a highly problematic way of thinking.