Kissing a girl for the first time felt like flying.

| was 17 and drunk, and she was a gorgeous, green-eyed redhead-—a little older, and
a lot more confident. When | told my friends about it a few days later—brushing it off
as drunken curiosity (even if | couldn't stop thinking about it)—-I was faced with two
reactions: | was told | was “just experimenting’ by some well-meaning friends, and “I
always knew you were a lesbian” by others.

Both reactions made me uncomfortable, though | couldn't put my finger on why. It didn’t
feel like just a drunken experiment. lt felt right. It felt like something | was probably going
to do again, that | wanted to do again. But the idea of coming out as a lesbian seemed
oddly extreme to me. If | did, did it mean | could never date men again? Would | have to
choose?

Even though this was only five years ago, LGBTQ+ education is much more widely
disseminated now than it was then. My experience with the term “bisexual” was
incredibly Limited. Ultimately, it armounted to a single conversation | had with someone
| was dating when | was 14 years old, as he was talking about a friend of a friend of his
who “claimed” to be bisexual.

“Cant someone be bisexual, though?” | asked, genuinely curious. The boy | was dating
was older, and seemed to know way more about this kind of thing, so | trusted his opinion
on the matter over mine.

“Nah,” he had said, shaking his head. “People are either gay or straight, you know? Girls
who say they're bi are just trying to get attention.”

He didn’t mention bisexual men. | didn't even know men could be bisexual.

Because of this, and because of other harmful ideas I'd absorbed over the years—that
bisexuals were greedy, sex-obsessed, more likely to cheat, confused, liars, dirty—it took
me a long time to figure out why | found more than a single gender attractive. Did that
make me a “confused bisexual?” Sure, but not because there was anything wrong with
me—it was because there's something wrong with how our society views people Like me.

One of the most rewarding things I've ever done was give a presentation in university
about bisexuality and pansexuality, opening the floor to questions. “Whatever you want to
ask, no matter how offensive,” | said, grinning and confident, so different from how | was
only two years before when | thought there was something inherently wrong with me. “|
won't be angry or judge you.”

After all, how could | judge their misguided notions about bisexuals when so many of
them were ones that I'd held for years?

Well, unless I've been a metaphorical concept for the Last 22 years of my Life instead of a
flesh and blood human, | can say with certainty that this is untrue.

One thing I've noticed about the “bisexuals are confused straight girls or confused

gay guys” argument is that the assumption seems to be that once youre attracted to
men, it’s game over. The power of dick is just too strong to deny. Never have | heard the
argument that bisexual girls are “confused lesbians:” the fear is always that bisexual
women will always choose men. Ignoring the inherent misogyny and enforcement of
patriarchal standards in this mindset, this kind of thinking seerns prevalent in both the
heterosexual and L6BTQ+ communities. There is a significant faction of lesbian women
who refuse to date bisexual women, the argument being that they can't trust a bisexual
woman to stay with them and not, in the infamous words of the TV show Glee, “stray for
penis.

TV has a lot to answer for when it comes to perpetuating bisexual stereotypes. Even in
the arguably very progressive show How to Get Away with Murder, they cant seem to
choke out the “B” word when referring to bisexual characters. One of the main characters
fiancés from season one is discovered to have had a past sexual relationship with a

man, and he’s mocked for being “bi-curious” and ultimately assumed to be gay. The
protagonist of the show, Annalise Keating, is shown to have relationships with men and
women, and when asked refers to herself as “complicated.” It reinforces the idea that
bisexual people are confused, unstable, and will ultimately settle one way or another.

| could write an entire article on how the healthcare system screws over bisexual
people, but let me give an example from my Life:

When | was 19, | entered a healthy and stable relationship with another woman. Neither
of us had any significant sexual experience prior to being with one another. During

a check-up with my doctor for other health reasons, | mentioned that | was in this
relationship, and when she asked my sexuality | said bisexual.

She asked for my sexual history, and the sexual history of my partner, and didn’t seem
to believe me when | told her it was limited. Minutes later, asking questions about my
mental health to try to diagnose the problem I'd actually gone to her about, she asked if
| was “sex-obsessed,” and if | had a habit of going out on weekends and hooking up with
basically anyone | could get my greedy Little bisexual hands on (not her words, but not
too far off). This, moments after I'd essentially told her | was a virgin in a monogamous
relationship with another virgin.

| was then promptly signed up for a battery of blood tests, testing for everything from HIV
to gonorrhea, all because of what my sexuality implied.

 

the bisexua

BECAUSE HETERONORMATIV
BY REBECCA PETERS