Bisexuality as social resistance
Why do bisexual people have to fight for their place within the queer community?
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As we slowly settle into the colder fall season, many of us desire to find that special someone. When it comes to sexuality, our time at university allows us to experiment with new possibilities and meet new people who may potentially become our first or next relationship. There is a sad running joke within the bisexual community that us bisexuals cannot make a choice between dating a woman or a man. Despite the strange autonomy and challenges navigating university brings to our dating lives, bisexual folks, like myself, must also manage the never-ending double-standards that come with being the bisexual.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, biophobia or bi-negativity is defined as negative attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours towards bisexual individuals. Biphobia manifests in various forms, including erasure of bisexuality—usually through suggestions or implications that bisexuals are either just straight, gay, or in denial— stereotyping, harassment, and exclusion. This prejudice often stems from misconceptions and societal stigmas surrounding non-monosexual orientations.
In 2026, biphobic attitudes are all too present, and yet remains one of the least addressed forms of discrimination towards those who identify as queer. In fact, research shows that bisexuals are at a far greater risk for mental health concerns than compared to their monosexual peers—such as straight, gay, and lesbain individuals—due to the stress of having to navigate an identity that isn’t easy to digest by society. Whilst the younger generations have shown increasing receptiveness towards bisexuality, which allows for society to internalize more accurate depictions of what it means to be bisexual, we still experience an unspoken weight of oppression rooted in exclusion not only from mainstream, heternormative society, but also from within the queer community itself.
Those who identify as bisexual often feel the need to justify their sexuality as if it were something to be argued in a court. Even a bisexual who balances dating equally between genders may be dismissed as confused, experimental, or simply being indecisive. Unfortunately, as bisexuals, we often experience internalized doubt, notably when we do not fit the traditional stereotype of a “bisexual-looking” individual. This connects us back to the concept of “looking queer,” which is particularly damaging; being in a heterosexual relationship as a bisexual does not erase our sexuality. And ironically, people never demand proof of someone who is straight or gay.
A major contributing issue to our lack of visibility comes from society wanting to put people into specific boxes that confine who we are and what opportunities to explore our expression and sexuality are allowed. Someone who is monosexual has a distinct category of attraction that they fall into. A bisexual person challenges these norms and refuses to fall into a clean-cut and totally arbitrary category. We are both attracted to multiple identity expressions at once, and this attraction can vary in strength, consistency, and duration across a lifetime. This does not make it any less legitimate as a sexuality. In fact, the flexibility and the supposed non-categorizable nature of bisexual is our greatest strength as bisexuals: it helps reveal the dormant prejudices and underlying colonial and exclusionary thinking that the queer community—and by large, progressive society—claims to condemn. We do not choose to be attracted to men and women, nor do we choose how intense or balanced this attraction may be. It is time to stop treating bisexuality as confusion or indecision, and start considering that the social binary that polices our identities itself may be the issue.
This invisibility we experience in regard to our sexuality has real consequences on our own sense of self and identity. When treated as less legitimate, bisexuals may fear opening up about their sexuality out of fear of being seen as attention-seeking, or unable to commit. That judgement does not cease to exist when entering into LGBTQIA+ spaces. What justifies the accusations— sometimes dressed as jokes—of being “half-gay” and “half-straight?” What justifies having our hardships and marginalization diminished since we have the “option” of heterosexual relationships, or being labeled as promiscuous and incapable of monogamy?
We should not be afraid to speak up about how members of the LGBTQIA+ community can be complicit in reproducing biphobic rhetoric—whether that’s just a passing comment, a light joke, or the fact that some queer mono-sexuals just refuse to date bisexual people. If we cannot hold members of our own community accountable under the pretense that queer people cannot reproduce anti-queer discrimination, then can we really expect the rest of the world to change?
The B in LGBTQIA+ may appear to show inclusion and acceptance on paper, but this does not translate into practice when our worthiness as romantic partners casually comes into question by other queer folks. Queer liberation was originally born out of the ideology that gender binaries are social constructs, and that everyone should be free to not conform to expectations about who they should be. The fact bisexuality continues to be one of the most misunderstood and policed identities proves to us that the discourse is not as open as it should be: the weight that stereotyping is able to put on the shoulders of someone who already suffers from self-doubt can be crippling. Feeling rejected both outside and within one’s community that is supposed to be as a safe space leaves us suspended in a suffocating in-between.
Creating a truly inclusive space would mean not categorizing bisexuals as gay or straight depending on their choice of partner. True inclusion would mean allowing us to define our own identity rather than demanding equal attraction, a particular pattern of dating, or a physical appearance as proof. Thankfully, bisexuals refuse to stay in the shadows and be spoken and (mis)understood for, and many incredible opportunities to understand the bisexual experience are opening up every day.
At the end of the day, we all have to live on the same planet, breathe the same air, gaze upon the same sun and moon. If the world, notably the LGBTQIA+ community, is meant to be a place where everyone belongs, then bisexuals should never be fighting to feel like they have a place in it. Just like other queer and heterosexual identities, bisexuality has been around for thousands of years. We are already here—why is it so difficult to create a place for us as well?
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