I’ve known for a while that bisexuals’ experiences vary markedly by gender. There’s a certain social acceptability around bi women that has its roots in thoroughly biphobic and misogynist concepts like “gay till graduation” and the assumption of availability. Throughout the week I’ve had maybe twice as many bi women share their experiences with me on Twitter as men, and considerably more men than women have done so in private (DM, email, etc.). A lot of bi men seemed to feel that their orientation was something incredibly private that they didn’t want to share with the world, that it didn’t matter in the wider context of their lives. There were some women who shared this view, but a much higher proportion were much more open about their identity and experiences. And of course, being genderqueer and bi brings a whole different set of challenges too, one that we probably don’t understand terribly well at all.
At the same time, if you look at public figures out as bisexual, a slightly different picture emerges. Based on a few sources I’ve leafed through this week (the Guardian’s World Pride Power List, last year’s Independent on Sunday Pink List, Stonewall’s role models booklet) and on highly unstatistical numbers, openly bisexual women tend to be found in entertainment – singer Jessie J and boxer Nicola Adams being the two most prominent examples. There are no openly bi women in politics. On the other hand, we have three openly bi male politicians: Simon Hughes (who in all fairness was forced into the open), Patrick Harvie, and Edward Lord, as well as a reasonably high-profile lawyer and journalist in David Allen Green. (For the sake of completeness, Craig Revel Horwood is openly bi and in the entertainment industry. And I don’t know of any genderqueer bisexuals in the public eye.)
To me this looks like an interesting object lesson in intersectionality. I think the same things that make bi women slightly more accepted (albeit in a sleazy sort of way) in everyday life are the things that stop them from being out in public life outside of the entertainment industry. Our Prime Minister already feels it’s okay to tell female MPs to “calm down dear” – imagine the field day he would have with an openly bisexual female politician.
ETA
This discussion went all sorts of interesting places, particularly because I also threw in a question on how sexual orientation impacts gender presentation. We touched on everything from body hair to men in skirts and the right/wrong kind of pink.
A couple of genderqueer people shared their experiences:
From Charlie Hale: (In that I’m still seen as a guy. Just about.) I did feel less comfortable coming out as bi. Maybe because it’s seen as more overtly sexual? I don’t really know. if I understood my feelings on gender I’d be much less confused 😛
And from anonymous: I’m out in terms of sexuality but not genderqueer, and only to my mother. Pansexuality was hard to explain to her, and I expect genderqueer will be harder. Publicly coming out will be easier, I think, because I can do it all at once with both, because the people who matter will know already.
We talked a lot about femininity, and different ways to appear feminine or otherwise (make-up, removing body hair, wearing frilly sleeveless tops to proudly show off your armpit hair and the reaction that tends to get). We touched on gender presentation within the goth community. Some insights from @nanayasleeps:

I don’t think so, but goth interpretation of gender & sexuality is different anyway. I think it’s more about: what is high femme elsewhere is the base state for goths, as a very rough rule. That pony-tailed guy in t-shirt, skinny jeans & eyeliner? He’s the blokey one. Lacy cravat/cuffs dude? Middle-of-the-road. And a long-haired woman in lacy/pirate shirts, jeans, winkelpickers and eyeliner is actively butch. But only here.

This then led into a discussion of pink as a feminine and/or goth colour and @drcabl3’s wonderful chart of the right and wrong kinds of pink.
We had a couple of book recommendations in this area: Alternative Femininities and Brazen Femme. As well as this wonderful feminist make-up tutorial.
@drcabl3 and I got into an interesting discussion on femme as a gender presentation vs. gender identity. The identity side of this is something neither of us know a huge amount about, and neither of us feel comfortable speaking for other people and their identities but we’d love to hear from people for whom femme is a gender identity and how that relates to their gender presentation.
We also talked about the effect gender presentation has on how people perceive you. @geek_manager who’s a fairly butch lesbian with a strong interest in sports, motorbikes and shooting things tends to be seen by men as “one of the guys”. My own gender presentation tends to be androgynous in an “a bit of both” sort of way. (Or as I said on Twitter, my gender presentation is “jeans and t-shirt” or “business casual” with a side helping of “no sense of style”.) And while my gender identity is female, I’m not especially strongly attached to it. I find I don’t fit in terribly well with either very masculine men or very feminine women.
We touched a little bit on why there are four out bisexual men in British politics and no women. @geek_manager had a theory:

Some bi men are camp. Camp men get hounded to admit/come out, even if with women? More incentive to be open? Whereas I think the bias against bisexual women is strong in the lesbian community. So many if in SSR “pass as lesbian”. And bi women in diff sex relationships certainly end up passing or having to Educate The Whole Damn World Daily?

Edward Lord joined in this discussion too as he’d been interviewed on Radio 4 about Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski coming out as bi earlier this week. Here’s his blog post about it.
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