Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Hello and Good-Bi

Sept. 23 is Celebrate Bisexuality Day, so in advance I throw some parade streamers out to the bis.

However there are some of us in the gay world who act like the B in LGBT doesn’t exist, or rather we wish the B didn’t exist. You’ve heard the line snorted by a gay man or woman, “Bi now, gay later.”

The assumption is bisexuality is used as a safety zone where the person in question
acknowledges queerdom just enough to reap the benefits of gay culture but keeps a foot
in heterosexual waters to curry favor with straights and appear “not really gay.”

Quite a few gays have told me bisexuality is a bullshit concept, plain and simple.
Basically, the skeptics insist bisexuals are really gay but either confused or cowardly for
not completely being “on our side” or “one of us.” And I think that’s what the fuss is about. A sense of (dis)loyalty appears to be at stake.

I’m one of those legions of men who, shortly after coming out, did use “bisexual”
because it seemed easier and didn’t sound as drastic. I got over that in, like, two weeks. I
knew who I was but just needed to couch my language in new territory. I have been on
both sides of the fence but I never truly straddled the fence.

So, yes there are truly gay men and women who use bisexuality as a cloak, whether out
of fear or self-hatred. But I’m convinced that some self-proclaimed bisexuals are the real
thing and are truly oriented to the two genders.

Full disclosure: I have a couple of friends who are bi. And, yeah, I didn’t understand it the first time either. I had no scorn or animosity, just a little confusion. I thought that having a lasting relationship would be fairly impossible. Wouldn’t someone with a man after awhile get a hankering for things only a woman has, and vice versa? And as someone who has had no sexual longing for a woman during his gay adult life, it was hard to imagine switch hitting. For me, it can only be men all the way.

But one of my bi friends just explained that she ultimately is attracted, sexually and otherwise, to the complete package (er, person) and it’s more like her receptors are more wide-ranging that most other people’s. And she promises she’s not just being greedy.

But the fact that she explained her orientation reminded me of many times I had to defend my sexual orientation, whether it was people charging me with “choosing” this lifestyle or berating me for being a “woman-hater.” They couldn’t understand what I was about and found it easier to attack and deny me.

So aren’t we doing the same thing when we sneer at bisexuals? Just because we may not get it 100% doesn’t mean that the orientation is invalid or nonexistent. It just means that we may not fully understand that perspective and it’s OK. And theoretically, why should we be so caught up in what someone else does in the bedroom?

Besides, I don’t necessarily see bisexuals as having a charmed life despite having a bigger dating pool. For many straights, anyone who isn’t a heterosexual is “the other” and is treated as such. And because some gays shun and disrespect bisexuals in many aspects in life, some bis can be without very many advocates and true friends. They may date both ways, but they get the missile fire both ways too.

It’s awfully hypocritical for gays to judge bisexuals when they resent being judged by heterosexuals. The B got inserted in LGBT for a reason, just like the T did. We all may have discrete struggles, but we all have the same challenge of fighting discrimination big and small and getting the world to see our identity as true and valid.

So on Sept. 23, even if some of us don’t completely understand the bi world, perhaps we can at least acknowledge the authentic bisexuals and their pride in who and what they are.