bisexuality and erasure
Last week, I closed out Pride month by finishing up some of the things that I'd been working on at the library, where I do a lot of social media posts and resource compiling on the library blog these days under the umbrella of our ARTIVISM project. In compiling resources, I came across a recent article about bisexuality and feeling like one is "bi enough" and it got me thinking about my own sexuality--not necessarily in how I live it, which has pretty much always been a static thing, but how much I actually talk about it and what spaces I feel it's okay to occupy. Especially since, while I'm predominantly attracted to cis-gendered men, both sexually and romantically, I have been open to attraction to women when it occurred and bisexual in some sexual situations. For years, I called it "heteroflexible" which I've since learned is often wielded as a sort of bisexual erasure term and to be avoided, but I would imagine it is the closest to my experience. I've also described jokingly that I'm not entirely straight, maybe but a little bent. If this were the 70's I'd be a 1 on the Kinsey scale, which I think is actually a very good reflection of the sliding scale of attraction. I know a couple people at the extreme either ends, but most fall somewhere in the middle if you really asked them.
But I get nervous around things like Pride month...about claiming ownership of labels that I feel like I don't do enough to manifest. For all intensive purposes, to the world I am a straight, male-partnered cis-woman. Or actually, since I am solo most of the time unless I am actually with my partner, there may be no indication at all of my sexual preferences. Ultimately I suspect no one cares who you are sleeping with unless they, you know, also want to sleep with you or use it against you somehow. While I will talk about being poly to anyone who is interested, I don't talk about being bisexual with as much eagerness, only because it is really only something that effects the people I am actually involved with. And despite sharing so much (in writing, in this space, on social media) I keep my debaucherous details sort of private unless I can wield them for art..lol..) So in conversations about sexuality, I feel wrong comparing my experience to the more openly queer--friends whose struggles have been very different than my own--sometimes violent and discriminatory.
Someone once suggested I was a "bedroom bisexual" but I didn't like that it seemed hidden, because that was certainly never my intention. While I wouldn't go shouting who I like to sleep with from the tops of buildngs--men or women--in conversations about sexuality, I'm pretty open about it. I also don't think I have an "out of the closet moment" since I don't think I was ever so much in it. Or maybe I feel that way about poly, but not about orientation--the former being something that might come up in discussions of monogramy and escalator expectations out in the world. (ie, Why aren't you married? Wait, did you break up with X to date Y? Didn't I just see you together?) I've come out as poly and non-mongamous on occasion, but perhaps less so about orientation.
Or maybe too that it comes up less since in poly circles, many women are usually bi in some way (and in fact one of the main reasons some folks are poly--to not have to choose one gender attraction over another. One side of their identity hidden in favor of another. While my poly is more a thing about being independent from partners, it does give you ample opportunity to connect and mesh with people of all genders as possible lovers and stray outside heteronormative patterns of behavior, or at least the heteronormative-given mindset. But even in more queer circles--among friends and other writers--bisexuals seem to be less vocal than those who are purely driven one way or another. Which is its own kind of erasure.
At the same time, I know my experience is vastly different from my friends who date within their own genders. I don't, for example. face harassment on the street. (well not for whose hand I happen to be holding.) I'm not discriminated against in marriage laws or adoption protocols or in the workplace. It's a different sort of existence, definitely made easier also by being female where society is more tolerant of bisexuality (men I know who identify as bisexual would tell a different story.) So claiming space in the conversation feels strange..but then I am also aware that NOT claiming space is another sort of erasure. So I always feel sort of stuck. Sorta queer, but not queer enough. So sometimes rather than speaking out about it, I throw my efforts behind promoting LGBTQ causes..publishing queer writing when I can, being a good ally to those who live their lives in a way that identifies them as such.
But then again, perhaps it erases things further and does more harm than good. Some folks know their orientation from the get go. I was certain I was completely straight until sometime in my late 20's when I just wasn't anymore. It was neither a dramatic or life changing thing, nor something I had to struggle with, or even talk to anyone about except those I was involved with, Sometimes, it feels like I didn't quite earn enough bisexual points to be able to claim the distinction. Friends who I was close enough to talk about my love/sex life would know. Family, I never really talked about the men I was involved with (mostly because things were never that "serious" or long term--and sometimes problematic) so women would really be no different.
But maybe these are things we should be talking about to keep the conversation open, since I heard many writers, on socials particularly, talk about being bisexual but also not feeling like they have a claim to the space or the language of it. It does seem that the world is much more openly discussing all of it--which is amazing, but also how to not seem like we are taking up room in discussions we don't necessarily have as much of a right to.
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