Straight on Mondays, Gay on Tuesdays: The Biphobia Epidemic 
Why has biphobia become so normalized in queer friendly spaces and relationships?

Bi-negativity. Bi-erasure. Biphobia. Monosexuality. Yet, there are a lot of aspects of my bisexuality that feel painfully foreign to me.

These are terms that many bisexual people may be familiar with; terms that may denote the lived experiences that many bisexual people can relate to. Broadly speaking, biphobia refers to any form of prejudice or discrimination directed against bisexual people, or individuals who experience romantic, emotional, and/or sexual attraction to more than one gender. For me, my bisexuality manifests as romantic attraction to men and women—whether cis or trans.

As the pensive and impressionable teenager I was, I believed that claiming the label of “bisexuality” would allow me to feel more welcome in queer spaces—whether that’d be relationships, friendships, or literal social community-forming. I was under the naive impression that a label could free me by legitimizing my sexual identity, and by extension, make it easier to be bi. 

So, what’s so “hard” about being bi? Is it the fact that in the imagination of others, I am seemingly conjured up as this girl who can’t choose who to fuck? Is it the idea that me liking girls is just a phase—reduced to a whimsy, character-adorning trope just for the plot—and that eventually, I’ll settle with a long-term boyfriend because it was all an experimentation? Or is it the reality of having to defend that I am plainly just bi—without having to justify my bisexuality by listing every man and woman I’ve been in a situationship with? 

Against all of this, bisexual is who I am—not a hypersexual, indecisive person; not a closetesd lesbian; not a fruity femme; not a bi person with a long-winded answer as to why they won’t date trans people. I am just boringly, burgeoningly bi. To be clear, I am surrounded by great people in my everyday life who I am grateful for, who really know me: friends, coworkers, that emotionally long distance, geographically close pal. This article is not about them, necessarily. Rather, this article is about the paradox of visibility that emerges when a bisexual like me tries to frequent queer spaces or when I am vocal about my sexuality. On campus, online, or through casual friendships, we need to talk about how biphobia can run rampant in the queer community and what this reveals about solidarity.

Caption: Famously popular among gay, lesbian, and straight audiences, the hit TV show Heated Rivalry has sparked an onslaught of bisexual memes at the behest of one of the show’s leads: Canadian actor Hudson Williams, who, as the fans say, exudes bi-energy in its purest form. But why must bi-ness always somehow—even comically, even in passing—be coupled with notions and disclaimers of “biblical” greediness?

The paradox of queer visibility: Am I not bi enough for you?

Without putting my personal life on display, I had a recent conversation with a queer friend who knew I was bisexual, and who said to me: “Mash, I think you might be straight.” It felt so definitive. The “I think” didn’t soften the sting; if anything, it reinforced the quiet attitude that other peoples’ perception of my sexuality seem to matter more than my own voice. For context, I was sitting on the bus and I noticed a really cute guy studying on his iPad, and naturally, I sent a couple of flustered texts to my friend about him. I love my friend, but the innocent moment quickly turned into me—yet again—feeling like I needed to justify why I am still as bisexual as ever, despite however many guys on the bus I think are cute. 

Another, more potent example: I was at a queer social house in the city one fall afternoon, and I, along with some other attendees, decided to head to a cafe after the event ended. I started talking, flirtatiously, to this one cute girl who also happened to go to U of T, and the conversation—which started innocently enough with “What’s your idea of a perfect date?” quickly devolved into what seemed like a competition of which one of us was “queer enough.” For reference, she was a lesbian, and upon finding out I was bisexual but had not dated any girls, her tone and attitude became one of invasively questioning and prodding me about my history with girls: Have I ever slept with one? Do my parents know I’m bi? Do the “guys in my life” know I’m bi? Have I ever eaten a girl out? Why did it take me so long to come out (actually, it didn’t—I’ve always been bi?)

I’m sure she’s a great person and just wanted to get to know me better, but right there and then, I could tell there was some mental calculus going on in that beautiful brunette head of hers, and no matter how bad she was at math, the answer to her equation would always be: Mash is not queer enough for me and that, to their horror, I am certainly more attracted to men than women. 

In 2018, a study published in the journal of Psychology and Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity found that many lesbian and gay men—monosexuals—tend to see bisexual women as more attracted to men and to be inauthentic in their attraction to women.

And please don’t ask me about my experience with men—especially when they find out I am bi or queer, because regardless, they don’t care about the difference. Truly, if I could capture the momentary look of absolute and dejected surprise on their faces when the fantasy of my straightness shatters, I would copy and paste that photo here, and you’d probably let out a painful laugh. I am not alone in experiences of being sexualized by men and simultaneously denigrated and sexually ostracized for my bisexuality, which is then interpreted as hypersexuality. 

Caption: These memes are pretty accurate for me. Please slide into my Instagram DM’s (@earthlingmash) if you ever want to yap about this “biblical greed” I seem to harbour! Does it come with secret perks and benefits? Where do I store all this greed? Do you want some of it? Happy to rub some of my bisexual greed on you, if you dare!

These examples highlight how bisexuals have to navigate the paradox of visibility. Rooted in hetero-normativity, this paradox emerges when the experience of coming out or vocalizing one’s bisexuality brings with it a simultaneous feeling of hypervisibility, shortly accompanied by erasure, invalidation, and denial. Within certain spaces and conversations, my bisexuality—assuming people happened to know about it—becomes a label that immediately separates me from the “conventional queer person,” simply because I’m deemed as somehow sinisterly wielding my bastion of straight privilege, invisiblizing my identity by reducing to optics and performance. At the same time, my bisexuality seems to exoticize me in the eyes of men and bring about an unwanted feeling of hypervisibility whenever someone—queer or otherwise—pokes and prods at all the experiences I have to validate my queerness. 

Gate-keeping queerness: Queer people can still reproduce oppression

No identity, label, or mere membership to a group has the power to bring about liberation or topple the empires of oppression that quietly shape our daily lives and interactions. But for the longest time, I thought that the label and prospect of “being a part of the community” would at least help me process and digest the exclusion I felt at home or in traditional spaces. It didn’t. I’ve met amazing queer people, writers, and activists who have given me a more liberatory vision of my being. And I’ve also met queer people who make me question whether I am bisexual enough.  

Queerness is historically rooted in social, anti-oppressive movements that condemn all forms of hetero-normativity, essentialism, and patriarchy, as well as advocating and organizing for socialist causes. Queer theory itself emerged in the 1990s to say that identity is not a fixed label, but rather a dynamic, constantly changing experience that doesn’t need to be “earned,” or “validated” by societal structures. 

Validating the biphobia that many bisexual people experience must start with acknowledging that queer communities are not somehow exempt from criticism or accusations of discrimination just by virtue of their identity. Believing so can reinforce exclusion, isolation, and harm for bisexual people, especially women, who are already at the nexus of multiple planes of oppression. Bisexuality exposes how heteronormative stereotypes and marginalization can take shape within queer communities, queer desire, and of course, in queer relationships. However, I think that bisexuality, for all the ache it has caused me and the internalized narratives it has conjured, is what makes me so excited to be myself. It’s my source of solidarity and sensitivity in a world that sees queerness as something to be policed and redefined at its will.