Decades of Being Out as Bisexual

I knew I was bisexual in 1974. I was 14. I heard the word, and the definition, thought, yeah, that's me, though I'd never thought about whether I was straight or not prior to that. This was how I came out to myself. It was as non-traumatic as it could possibly ever be.
I never made any attempt to be closeted, but it would be somewhat inaccurate to say I was truly "out" all these years. This is because being out as bisexual requires a continuous active process - take a break from it for five minutes, and you're no longer so out. Most people assume everyone is straight, unless you are publicly obvious about a same sex relationship, in which case you are assumed gay, and people won't know otherwise until you make it a point to be sure they know, which often requires being inappropriately "in their face" about it.

I think the first time I did anything that could be considered "coming out" was when I mentioned the fact of my bisexuality casually to my best friend when I was 15. It didn't occur to me to be ashamed or feel awkward. She was vaguely fascinated, and asked a few questions. Looking back I realize it was beautifully uneventful, and yet at the time I was surprised it struck her as anything out of the ordinary.

I lived in San Francisco in my 20s and marched in gay rights demonstrations (they were not called LGBT rights demonstrations). I went to gay pride events, hung out in gay neighborhoods, supported gay businesses, saw gay movies, read the gay free-weeklys on a regular basis.

There was a Bisexual Center that had advertised meetings. I always thought about going but never did. I think I considered it a place to go if one had problems with their bisexuality and needed help. I didn't have problems with being bisexual, but did feel a lack of community, and so looking back, I regret having not gone.

I couldn't get past the anger, animosity for men, the separatism, and negative attitudes about sex, that I often encountered in the lesbian community. Yet I, a bisexual woman, felt comfortable in gay male surroundings. I loved the rejoicing of sexuality I saw among gay men, and the celebration of life (ok yes, then there was AIDS and death, and I grieved and freaked out like everyone else.)

Every year at the gay parade I loudly cheered-on the handful of people in the bisexual contingency, while meanwhile feeling that I should maybe feel some sense of being an imposture for attending the gay parade with my opposite sex lover.

A Bisexual Symposium held while I was a student at San Francisco State was where I got my first glimpse of how ugly biphobia could be in the gay world. We were split into discussion groups. A young man in my group was very depressed. He’d always thought he was gay, but suddenly had feelings and desires for his opposite sex best friend. Voicing this to his formerly very supportive gay community, he found he was shunned, ridiculed, and threatened with excommunication.

It was at the Symposium where I first found out about The STUD - a predominantly-gay-male-bar-with-a-slight-bisexual-bent (which I model the bar HUNKS after in my bisexual themed novel, "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe"). I went there frequently because it just felt good to be in a place where bisexuality was acknowledged and accepted. The bartender flirted with everyone, including me and my boyfriend.

The first woman I had serious inclinations towards was a bisexual who was both closeted and completely out. She was out as a lesbian. She admitted only to me that she was bisexual. We had heated discussions about this. I felt it was important for her to honestly label herself as bisexual; she said she IDed as lesbian for “political” reasons. It was important, she felt, for everyone to rally around gay rights, that this was what was best for bisexuals too. I felt it was important to ID as bisexual for bisexual political reasons. Saying she was bisexual, she said, would only detract from, water down, the gay rights message. 

This is what bisexuals did for decades, (and many still do) fight for gay rights while denying their own identities, suppressing their own need for recognition. Now, all these years later, I see that while indeed gay rights (often inaccurately referred to as LGBT rights) has made many gains, bisexuals are left standing in the dust. Yes, gains in gay rights have important positive implications for us bisexuals too, but bisexuals have our own, different battles, and while we, often gallantly, stood side by side with our gay and lesbian counterparts fighting homophobia and it's oppressive manifestations, many gays (not all - shout out to those who do stand by us!) have never even bothered to think bisexual specific oppression is worthy of their consideration. I guess it's not entirely their fault when for so long so many bisexuals gladly, voluntarily, subsumed a secondary status. Sadly - and in hindsight, predictably - many gays now feel that acknowledging the battles of their bisexual brothers and sisters  - who were right there with them at gay rights demonstrations - would likely distract from and water-down their new found place in society.

When I was 26, my mother – whom I didn't see very often – came to visit. A woman from my neighborhood stopped by at my garage sale, and when she left, I mentioned to my mom that I’d been attracted to her, and it was ironic that I finally got to talk to her just as I was moving. This was how I came out to my mother. In this fashion, I've always been out as a bisexual. I've never hidden it, I would mentioned it when appropriate in conversation, and I always found a way to offhandedly bring it up to love-interests before we ever had our first kiss.

However, I was in an (open) relationship with a man for, seemingly, eons and people assumed I was straight, never even questioned, suspected, that I could be anything but straight, even as I was always adamantly and openly pro LGBT rights, even when I occasionally went out on dates with "known" lesbians. 

It’s easy to be invisible as a bisexual, way too easy. It’s difficult to be out. Yes, in the usual ways that it’s difficult to be out as a homosexual, but also in so many other ways. On top of the homophobia, you get the biphobia, and the accusations that you are really gay and homophobic. But on top of all of that there is the - often overwhelming - difficulty of the shear super power of bi-invisibility, which you have even though you don’t want it, even when you try to shake it off. Bi-invisibility is like an unwelcome film on your skin that you have to constantly scrub off with abrasive words and actions which so many straights and gays tend to see as a caustic confused haze of immaturity and crazy attention seeking.

So to the request - which prompted me to start writing this blog post – for older bisexuals who were out in the 1970s, to please make their voice heard - I say this: Yes, I've been out since the 1970s, sort of; I always tried to be, and now that I’m unequivocally out, please understand why it comes in the form of figuratively standing on top of a hill and shouting nonstop. This unfortunately is the only way a bisexual can be heard at all.

Why Gays Don't Support Bisexuals

Gay and Lesbian people often are not only not supportive of bisexuals but actually go so far as to bash bisexuals or deny our existence. A lot of people are perplexed by this. After all, shouldn't homosexuals be bisexuals' allies? shouldn't they feel our rights are just as important as their own? Shouldn't they relate to being oppressed, ridiculed, marginalized? Why are they not on our side?
I have a few thoughts about this, just thoughts, not saying these are facts, and I would love to hear other people's ideas as well.

First Thought:
If you have a lot of frank conversations with a lot of bisexuals, as I have, you will find that many bisexuals feel that everyone is fundamentally bisexual and that gay or straight people have, for one reason or another, ended up focused on one gender or the other. I read an article in Penthouse when I was fourteen which had this notion as its focus. At the time, I thought, "yeah, that sounds right," and this is actually how I came out to myself. Thus I went around believing everyone was fundamentally bisexual for a very long time. It was only upon some very frank conversations with some very open- minded gay and straight people that I realized that they were really actually fundamentally mono-sexual.

Why was it so hard for me, and many other bi people, to get this? I think that for many bisexuals the idea of not being attracted to one gender or the other is difficult to grasp. If there is a good looking, sexy, man who has a great personality and who you get along with etc. - how can you say, no, not attracted?  Same for a hot beautiful woman who has a hot beautiful well matched personality. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's all beautiful and wonderful and sure, sexy, and we get along great, but no I'm just not attracted to women? I don't get it. But, I've come to accept that it's not for me to get; if people tell me that they cannot be aroused, not be attracted, interested, in someone like that because of their gender, then I have to take their word for it. I'm not in their head, not in their body, so who am I to say? Conversely - and now were getting to the point - I think, gay/lesbian and straight people - in other words, monosexuals - do not get how we can be attracted to both genders. It just doesn't add up to them. I'm thinking that in their minds they feel that men and women are so different physically and mentally, how can us bisexuals be attracted to both? Either you like feminine body types and personalities or you like male body types and personalities and to like both is beyond their comprehension. If they can't understand it, then in their minds, its not possible. Bisexuals will often use the chocolate and strawberry ice-cream analogy - you can like one or the other, or both, right? But for monosexuals it must seem more like a mutually exclusive situation. It must sound more like if someone said "I'd love to go live in a quiet monastery, and I'd love to play guitar in a heavy metal demonic band." They're all like, what? Make up your mind already. You can do BOTH, and you certainly can't HAVE it both ways!

So the theory here is a difference in perspectives, each side not understanding and there-fore denying the other side.

Second Thought:
It's pretty well established that some gay/les people who have struggled with coming to terms with their identity do go through a phase of deciding that maybe they can find a way to fit into established society. The hope is maybe their same-sex attractions can be ignored, because maybe they are also attracted to the opposite sex. Maybe they can just have a normal hetero life-style and subvert their same-sex desires. For a kid growing up in a homophobic family/school/community/religion the effort to grasp onto any hope of not being that which they know is not accepted and considered evil or sick, must be substantial. "Bisexual" then would be like some shining light in a formerly dark tunnel of "oh my god, why can't I stop lusting after that cute same-sex person sitting next to me in math class!" So maybe I'm bi and can try to live a nice hetero life and no-one will know about my hidden desires. But eventually they find they can not pull this off, and they come out to themselves as being gay and not bi. Then as they become more prideful in their new found love for who they are, they look back disdainfully or pitifully at who they use to be. This colors their view of everyone who claims to be bi and they just think "Oh stop fooling yourself, stop hating yourself, stop hiding yourself! As a result these well-meaning homosexuals make some true bisexuals try to fool themselves into believing they are really gay, and hate themselves for not accepting their "homosexuality" and hide from them-selves and others their true bisexuality.

Third thought:
Gay people have been trying to be accepted by the larger hetero population for so long that the ideals of "being  respected for who you are," and "being able to love who you love" have been overshadowed and largely forgotten by "Acceptance and rights! Acceptance and rights! Acceptance and rights!" I'm going to guess that others besides me have heard bisexuals - especially in the earlier days of gay rights - say that they identify publicly as gay "for political reasons." Fighting for gay rights was paramount, more important than, addressing bisexual-specific issues. The idea was that once we have gay rights and acceptance, things will be much better for bisexuals too. Of course gay rights and acceptance has addressed many issues that bisexuals also have to deal with, but what perhaps no-one saw coming was the day when many homosexuals started to identify with their former oppressors more than their fellow opressees. Perhaps many gays - finally enjoying somewhat the fruits of their labors and getting to be finally considered "normal and included" by many in the majority population - do not now want to muddy up the situations by saying, "bisexuals need to be taken seriously too and need to be acknowledged and accepted."

Homosexuals have one major thing in common with heterosexual that neither have in common with bisexuals - yep, mono-sexuality. And it's all very "let us normal, mono, types stick together and snub those silly, out-of-control bi people."

Again, I'm generalizing and over-dramatizing to make a point. I know there are still lots of gay people who are bisexuals' advocates. These thoughts are about those who are not.

Fourth thought
This is really an extension of the third. Back in the 1960s and 70s, gay people - in celebrating their newly, found pre-HIV, out-and-proud euphoria - got rather wild with displays of overt sexuality. After AIDS/HIV settled all that down considerably, many gays, especially as they got older and society got more accepting, looked back and maybe felt all that bath-house, glory-holes, stuff didn't help any in the cause of fitting in. They look at how bisexuals are stereotyped and see "oversexed" and "sex-greedy" and want to distance themselves from that. There is so much in the current gay rights movement that says over and over again to the straight community "Look, we are just like you!" Aligning with the bisexual contingency does not help in that cause, because straight America still sees us as being perverse.

I'd like to end with a shout out to all the gay men and lesbians who still do stand by our side, defend us, and recognize and respect our existence.
Please everyone, share your thoughts and ideas about this issue.

LGBTQIPA et al.

I'd really like to see people start using NSP instead of LGBTQIPA etc. NSP - for non-straight people, it seems to me, would cover it all, and be a lot more manageable.

I'm old enough - 53 - to remember a time before anyone ever used LGB, much less the loger version(s). I'm working off memory here, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, and I realize too that different things may have been happening in different places. Anyway, what I recall is that back in the 70s, people were talking about Gay rights a lot. Then I remember lesbians wanting to be mentioned separately and not assumed to be included in "Gay" rights, very likely partially as a result of the feminist movement. Then the press etc. started referring to Lesbian and Gay rights - most likely "Lesbian" came first because if it came second it would upset feminist.

Eventually,bisexuals said, "hey, what about us?" As it got lengthy to say Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual rights the press started using LGB rights. A little later, not much, the trans world chimed in as well, and LGBT was born.

It was - I believe - some years later, that I saw a Q added. At that time Q was for queer to cover mainly, I understood, people who either didn't want to be labeled, or didn't feel they quite fit any of the labels. I'm not sure how people now define queer, but at the time queer, which had been earlier derogatory for homosexual, was taken on as an umbrella term to mean "not straight as an arrow." Now, I've seen Q in LGBTQ refereed to as specifically, "Questioning."

Back when I fist heard the word bisexual, 1974 or so, I'm pretty sure no one had yet coined the term pansexual. The whole pan verses bisexual will be another blog post for me soon. But yeah, self-defined pansexuals consider themselves not the same as bisexual and so a P had to be thrown into the lot. 

Inter-sexed people is another whole group that is ignored, bashed, and discriminated against, so the I was added too, I think much more recently.

In an earlier blog post The Superpower of Bi-invisibility, I offhandedly used "LGBQT" to lead readers to a related link. One such reader was kind enough to comment that I should also add "A" on the list to include asexuals. I believe everyone needs recognition and respect and equal rights, so I agreed. However, this made me all the more aware of something that I'd long thought about and intend to write a blog about soon - the extent to which, as the list grows longer, we (meaning all of those included on the list) have our individual group's issues, problems, joys, legalities, etc, watered down. Further, bundling ourselves like this, I believe, has been the cause of some in-fighting. Stay tuned for my future blog about that if you want to hear more.

Meanwhile, when we do all want to stand together, or be refereed to together, in regards to common issues, can we just start using NSP? I think this way we are less likely to leave anyone else out too. Or perhaps, NTHP - for non-traditionally heterosexual people?