I started the discussion this afternoon with a reference to my post from last year on bisexual role models and the lack thereof.
I think what struck me most about this conversation was the variety of reasons people gave for why they looked up to some of their role models. There were people we admired for their work who just happened to be bi (or feature on Wikipedia’s list of bisexual people, which we did acknowledge was slightly problematic in terms of self-identification). There were people in the public eye who were simply themselves, no fuss, and we admired them for that. There were also celebrities and public figures who were very visibly bi who we weren’t sure counted as role models. People certainly didn’t feel that role models had to be celebrities or public figures – we had community volunteers, friends, teachers and family members declared awesomely bi too. And some of us admired those bisexuals who had the option to hide and pass as straight and chose not to.
Probably non-exhaustive list of the awesomely bisexual role models we came up with (Note that not all of these are self-identified bisexuals. Some are based on rumour, some on behaviour, some on Wikipedia. Tread carefully.):
Bowie
Alan Cumming
Prince
Frida Kahlo
@robynochs
Alex Gaskarth from All Time Low
Virginia Woolf
Simone de Beauvoir
Alexander Morris of @BisexualityDoc fame
Isadora Duncan
Grace Jones
Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Hepburn
Greta Garbo
Marlene Dietrich
@suegeorge
@who_the_heck
@santaevita
@ShiriEisner
@applewriter
Ani Difranco
Sophie B Hawkins
@evanrachelwood
@margaretcho
Anna Paquin
Patrick Harvie
@carolynUK
@BecciJohansson
Lady Gaga
Freddie Mercury
Birgitta Stenberg
David Allen Green
Alice Walker (Here she is on Desert Island Discs, if you’re in the UK or have a UK proxy.)
Amanda Palmer
Tom Robinson
I’m going to leave you with one final thought on today. Today for me was about stories. Fictional stories and real-life stories. It is vitally important that we have lots of different stories about people like us. Here is an amazing talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on the danger of the single story. Watch it.
ETA
Some more names to be added to the role models list:
Edward Lord
Daniel Kawczynski
Kate Millett
@jenyockney
@megbarkerpsych
@XTaffi
@laurenbbeach
Surya Monro
Previous: Fictionally Bi
Next: The privilege of passing, the burden of invisibility
@TWkLGBTQ Index

One of the small tragedies of my teenage life was my unfortunate addiction to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series. I have a number of excuses for this. For one, I was reading it in translation, and unlike MZB herself, her German translators could actually string together a grammatically correct sentence. Most importantly, though, I found the books addictive because some of the characters were “people like me”, where in this particular context I mean LGBT people.

Growing up in the 1990s in a small town in the Austrian mountains and working out that I was bisexual was an… interesting experience. For a start, Austria’s a bit Catholic. Some of the key social issues at the time were whether people who divorced and remarried would be allowed to receive Communion in church (file under “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”), and who the President would take to the Opernball now that he was divorced (file under “Hello magazine”). This was very much not a world in which people like me existed, so I turned to badly written science fiction as my last resort.

Things are better in 2013 in the UK, but not hugely better. The BBC’s own research identifies significant opportunities for improving the portrayal of LGBT people in the media. While things are steadily improving, we’re still essentially in single story territory. More often than not, we still talk about the gay character, rather than the character who has a full life and just happens to be gay. More often than not, the story is about coming out rather than anything else – and while showcasing a range of coming out stories is still hugely important, so is getting beyond that point and showcasing diverse and authentic characters for whom sexual orientation is only one facet of their life. And when it comes to representation of bisexuality in media and fiction, things look sufficiently dire that No Bisexuals is actually a TV Trope.

The bisexuals we do see in media and fiction tend to conform to the stereotypes. The fickle and indecisive bisexual who struggles to leave their opposite-sex partner for the same-sex love of their life and the “just a phase” bisexual are particular favourites. What is perhaps worst is that there are very few characters in media and fiction to actually openly identify as bi, which serves to further reinforce the stereotype that it’s action that matters rather than identity.

[Parts of this are taken from my review of Artifice, a webcomic you should totally check out.]

ETA
So what I learned from the discussion about this on @TwkLGBTQ is that Captain Jack Harkness (Doctor Who/Torchwood) and Willow (Buffy) are the Marmite of representations of bisexuality in fiction.

With Willow, the main issue is the portrayal of “straight, then gay” which leaves a lot of bisexuals feeling erased and invisible. Joss Whedon clearly missed a trick there. Though there were also a lot of people who loved Willow, and who could identify with her process of self-discovery.

Jack, too, split the vote. People loved how proudly and nonchalantly he carried his bi(omni?)sexuality. Equally, some felt that he was the embodiment of certain bisexual stereotypes (slutty, attracted to everything), and they felt judged by the “standard” that set.

I also managed to make a couple of people cry with the conversation, as a disproportionate number of bisexual characters seem to have horrible things happen to them. Ianto Jones (Jack Harkness’s also bisexual lover for some of Torchwood) dies horribly in Children of Earth. And no one really survives being loved by Commander Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5 – Talia ends up having her personality erased and Marcus is stuck in cryo with fatal injuries until the end of time.

We talked about the different portrayals of bisexual characters. There are a few out there who explicitly self-identify as bisexual, but the majority of fictional bi characters “act bi” (i.e. have relationships with people of different genders) without necessarily openly identifying as such. Some people preferred the latter, as that left more room for interpretation (not that those of us involved in the fanfiction community need any room at all to interpret things!). Personally, I would like to see more characters identify as bisexual, and one thing I want to see less of is characters going from straight to gay and vice versa without even an acknowledgment that bisexuality exists.

Having said that, the subject of queerbaiting also came up, particularly with reference to Dean Winchester in Supernatural. You know, where are character is obviously gay or bi and there’s masses of unresolved sexual tension for seasons and seasons on end? I must admit I’m not a huge fan of that. But of course, that too is what fanfiction is for.

Of course we found a lot of the portrayals of bisexuality in fiction to be utterly trope-tastic. Here are some of the relevant TV Tropes:
No Bisexuals
Everyone is Bi
But Not Too Bi
Make of those what you will.

Something else we seemed to agree on was that genre fiction (including sci-fi and erotic fiction) and other non-mainstream media such as webcomics do a much better job of handling sexual orientation as well as gender identity and presentation. Erotica author @aleksandrvoinov briefly joined us to talk about the portrayals of bisexuality in his work.

AV: Bi characters are the most natural for me to write.
Mili: I loved what you did with Gold Digger, particularly with Henri being supportive of Nikolai’s sexuality.
AV: I figured he’s seen it all and is confident enough in being gay/himself that he doesn’t feel threatened by loving a bi guy. Though my favourite couple/throuple (?) is Stefano/Silvio/Donata – genderfluid bi menage. And hot as hell. #DarkSoul
Mili: That’s the other thing I like – you show a range of different bi characters.
AV: Well, we are all people. 🙂 Sexuality is not WHO they are, though I love writing sex and am sex-positive. Most of all, I want to get away from usual bi cliches: kill off the other partner so they can be with same/diff sex partner… I also loathe the “Evil Bi” – people so screwed up by conflicting desires they destroy other people. Thirdly, I hate them coming out on one side of the fence and emotionally dis-avow previous other-sex relationships. I try to write charactes who are largely at peace and mature in how they deal with desire and conflict… after all, I have to spend weeks and months in their heads and want to be able to like/relate to them.

Here’s a probably non-exhaustive list of the bisexual characters in fiction that we came up with:
Captain Jack Harkness (Doctor Who/Torchwood)
Reece (Adaptation by Malinda Lo)
Mutant Mystique, esp. as written by Brian K. Vaughan (X-Men/Marvel)
Bo (Lost Girl)
Jen Lindley (Dawson’s Creek)
Willow (Buffy)
Ianto Jones (Torchwood)
Gaeta (Battlestar Galactica)
Xena and possibly Gabrielle (Xena, Warrior Princess)
Quite a lot of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s characters, especially in the Darkover series
Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint series was mentioned. I honestly can’t remember if either of the main characters in the book I read was bi (they were a same-sex couple).
The bisexual vampire played by Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger
Andrew in Desperate Housewives (self-identifies as bi)
Katheryne in Desperate Housewives
Nikolai Krasnorada (Gold Digger by Aleksandr Voinov)
Stefano (Dark Soul series by Aleksandr Voinov)
Kushiel’s Dart series
Commander Susan Ivanova (Babylon 5)
Ammar ibn Khairan (The Lions of Al Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay)
Dora (Questionable Content)
DAR by Erica Moen
Ramona (Scott Pilgrim)
Kat (Gunnerkrigg Court)
Winifred Burkle (Angel)
Homestuck
Knights Errant
Girls with Slingshots
Mal (Firefly; “leans towards womenfolk”)
Possibly Freya (Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross)
Possibly Anwar (Rule 34 by Charles Stross)
Possibly Robin (Glasshouse by Charles Stross)
Happy reading/watching/exploring! Let me know what you think of any/all of these.

Previous: On being invisible
Next: Awesomely Bi
@TWkLGBTQ Index

Look at almost any privilege checklist and you will see that a significant proportion of the items have to do with visbility or otherwise.

• As a child, I could choose from an almost infinite variety of children’s media featuring positive, active, non-stereotyped heroes of my own sex. I never had to look for it; male protagonists were (and are) the default. (Male privilege)
• I can turn on the television or glance at the front page of the newspaper and see people of my own sex widely represented. (Male privilege)
• When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is. (White privilege)
• I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race. (White privilege)
• I do not have to fear revealing my sexual orientation to friends or family. It’s assumed. (Straight privilege)
• I am guaranteed to find sex education literature for couples with my sexual orientation. (Straight privilege)

Dominant groups in our society construct narratives about what is right, beautiful, true or important, and those narratives are so pervasive that it is easy to mistake them for fact, for “just the way things are”. Looking at our media, cultural output, political representatives or other influential people, a statistically-minded Martian would be hard-pressed to conclude that the human race consists of anything other than white, heterosexual, cis, middle-class, middle-aged men. Looking at Tory suggestions for the brave new history curriculum, a schoolgirl may struggle to see that women have ever contributed anything of value to our society, not to mention LGBT people, brown people, or – *gasp* – poor people.
This kind of invisibility is not only a form of oppression, it is perhaps the worst form of oppression. Invisibility limits our imagination of what is possible. It makes us think that we and people like us have nothing valuable to offer. It makes us think that the things that matter to us are not valuable or important. It limits our desires and ambitions. Most damagingly, invisibility makes us doubt the validity of our own experiences.
We all have experiences that to us are a big deal. They shape us and define us. Sometimes they don’t feel quite right; sometimes we instinctively know that they are exactly right. Yet the rest of the world refuses to acknowledge them or name them. Sophia Collins makes a great point on this with regards to pregnancy. Pregnancy – something which nearly 50% of the human population on this planet experience at some point in their lives – is so marginalised that most of us have no idea what to expect until we’re in the middle of it.

Yet we relegate pregnancy to specialist magazines and the occasional feature in the women’s section. Many people will probably have skipped over this column, thinking that making future human beings is petty and parochial. Not to be compared to IMPORTANT ISSUES like the economy and politics. We marginalise pregnancy and ignore it.

An example closer to home for me is bi invisibility. Non-monosexual identities seem to really confuse monosexual people (both straight and gay), and that confusion leads to denial and erasure of our existence. Being so invisible in turn makes it incredibly easy to internalise biphobia – to think that it’s normal, that that’s just how things are. We let biphobic incidents small and large – from comments like “I just can’t imagine being attracted to both men and women” to scientific studies trying to prove or disprove our existence – slide, because in the narrative of the dominant group they are so normal that we struggle to imagine an alternative.
I am often asked – and I am guilty of asking others – to quantify the impact of biphobia and make it tangible for others; give personal examples of actions that have had a negative impact on me as a bisexual. I struggled with this for a very long time. It was only once I started talking to bisexual friends and we started comparing notes that I realised that I was not alone. I was not the only one for whom things felt slightly off, who heard these comments and thought there was something wrong with them even though I couldn’t quite put my finger on what exactly. When you’re invisible, sometimes you don’t even see that you’re oppressed.
Any effort to change the dominant narrative and to make the invisible visible is to be welcomed. Initiatives like Black History Month, Women’s History Month and LGBT History Month are invaluable to our communities. Women sharing their stories of pregnancy and abortion, rotation curation accounts like @TWkLGBTQ, and even the one dissenting voice – they all help us see that we are not alone, that we are not invisible. They show us that people like us can and have contributed something of value. They show us that the things that matter to us matter to others too. They give us badly needed role models and stories we can identify with.
Yet we need to strive for more. We need to strive to change the narrative of what is right and beautiful and important and true. We need to make sure our stories are everywhere, not consigned to one month of the year, one website, one Twitter account. We – all of us who have at one point or another been made invisible – need to make it clear that we have every right to – we expect – our stories to be told on an equal footing with those of others, we expect to be valued and included, and we expect to be listened to. Only then can the oppression of invisibility be lifted.
ETA
A few interesting thoughts from the discussion on bi invisibility over on @TwkLGBTQ.
Here’s the thing about bi invisibility: if people assume that your sexual orientation corresponds to the gender of the person you’re currently dating that’s quite a clever trap. If you’re monogamous, you’re not bisexual. If you’re polyamorous, you’re clearly a filthy slut and we will judge you for it. And as someone else pointed out, “if you’re single and not looking you may as well not exist at all, because apparently it doesn’t count if you don’t act on it.”
At least one person said bi invisibility had made growing up very difficult for them, as they knew about straight and gay people, but neither of those explained the feelings they had.
Erasure and invisibility comes from both the gay and the straight community. I don’t think I’ve been to a single LGB(T) event where at least one speaker hasn’t talked of “lesbians and gays” (most recently Yvette Cooper MP, discussing marriage equality at the Stonewall Workplace conference). This used to make me feel like a fraud – like wasn’t “gay enough” and had not right to be there.
In fact the political discourse around a lot of recent developments – marriage equality, DOMA, DADT, etc. – was brought up by a few people. It’s almost like no one thinks that any of these pieces of legislation will have any effect on bisexual people at all.
We also talked about using invisibility as a shield, because sometimes the environments we’re in just aren’t safe enough, and invisibility is the lesser of two evils.
Invisibility can also foster a climate where homophobia and biphobia thrive. A few people brought up workplace situations where people made homophobic comments which probably would not be made if the person was out. This is of course a vicious cycle – the last thing you want to do if someone’s not-so-subtly let you know that they’re a homophobe is come out.
Previous: Let’s talk about stereotypes
Next: Fictionally Bi
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Greedy. Indecisive. Promiscuous. Fashionably bi. Gay till graduation. Just a phase. Scared of coming out as “properly” gay. Sexual orientation is irrelevant unless you act on it. There’s a real story behind each of these. A real human being. And for good reasons.
Our media tells us that men find women snogging other women hot, and even more importantly that being found hot by men is the single most important thing a woman should care about. Don’t be surprised when women bow to that pressure and snog other women in bars to attract male attention.
Our culture and media also still tell us (sometimes) that being gay is very very bad. Don’t be surprised when people bow to that pressure and feel safer adopting the bi label.
Oh, and by the way? Some of are polyamorous. Some of us are promiscuous. Some of us are sluts. So what? There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a healthy and varied sex life. Equally some of us are in committed, long-term, monogamous relationships; some with people of the same sex, some with people of the opposite sex. That doesn’t make us any less bisexual.
Some of us experiment in college and find the social pressure once we’ve left that safe environment too much to deal with. Some of us meet the love of our lives in college. If they’re of the same sex, that doesn’t mean we’re now “proper gay”. If they’re of the opposite sex, that doesn’t mean we’ve gone straight either.
Hey, you know what? Some of have only ever slept with people on one gender. And not even that makes us any less bisexual. Much like gay people who married someone of the opposite sex to keep appearances aren’t any less gay for it. Much like straight people who’ve never had sex aren’t asexual. A lot of the time sexuality is a question of identity, not always or necessarily action. It still matters, we still experience the world differently to other people, it’s still relevant.
There is a certain temptation to fight all the stereotypes, try to make ourselves look as similar to “normal” people as possible. As damaging as stereotypes are, it is hugely important to remember that behind every stereotype there is a real human story – that is in fact why they are so damaging. Ultimately, denying that some bisexuals are that way is throwing parts of our community under the bus. It’s also a lose-lose proposition. If we try to look more “straight” we will get flak from lesbians and gays. If we try to look more “gay”, we’ll get flak from many straight people. To me, being out and proud, and embracing the diversity within our community is the only sensible way forward.
ETA
Well, that seemed to strike a chord with people. Let me try to catalog at least some of the stereotypes and how people felt about them.
Confused and/or fickle. Strangely not a charge ever leveled at monosexual people who like both blondes and redheads.
Bi men are really gay men in denial, or too cowardly to come out as gay. Bi women do it for the attention. Given how negative that attention can be from both straight and gay people, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Greedy. Promiscuous. Slutty. Which, you know, some bisexuals are that way, and that’s perfectly fine. But some aren’t. Certainly the polyamorous people who commented felt that being bi and being poly were completely independent facets of their personality; and a lot of monogamous bisexuals were deeply annoyed by the fact that people assumed they couldn’t be faithful in relationships.
A number of people had been rejected by potential partners once they’d come out. We briefly touched on whether we “should” come out to potential partners up front – and arrived at the unanimous conclusion that no one was under any obligation to reveal their sexual orientation to anyone.
The slutty stereotype gets even more damaging when people start assuming that just because you’re bi you automatically fancy everyone, or fancy them. “You’re a bi girl? Threesomes!!” Both monogamous and polyamorous people found that one annoying. I’ll come back to that assumption of availability later in the week.
The assumed correlation between the gender of a current partner and sexual orientation also annoyed a lot of people. Particularly because previous or other relationships were dismissed and seen as unimportant (“just a phase”). Someone pointed out that this gets even worse once you have kids in an opposite-sex relationship – any bi identity you might have clung on to until then gets automatically erased.
There was also a sense that the QUILTBAG community didn’t look particularly favourably on bi people (and especially women) in opposite-sex relationships. As @the_eumelia pointed out, it feels ‘[a]s though they’re “abandoning” the community. When really it’s “the community” that abandons them.’
I did love @flyingteacosy’s point about how it wasn’t necessarily the stereotypes themselves that were annoying but how we are measured against them. “Like I’m either Not Like All Those Others, or I’m just a certain way ’cause I’m bi.. not because I’m just me.”
One concept that seemed to spark a lot of ideas and side conversations was the distinction between sexual orientation and romantic orientation. This seemed to ring true for a lot of people who suddenly had the words to better explain how they felt.
An interesting conversation flowed from this around some bisexual women in particular who are sexually attracted to more than one gender but tend to be romantically attracted to men. A couple of women wondered whether this was a socially conditioned response, a reflection that in our heteronormative society it is “easier” to have an opposite-sex relationship. This of course also plays into the stereotype of bi women in opposite-sex relationships somehow abandoning the community. It’s a tough one to unpick, and I love how openly people shared their experiences and views.
Leading on from that, a few people also shared experiences of partners and ex-partners saying they would feel more hurt if the person left them for someone of a different gender. Someone summed this up nicely: “Love is love and heartache is heartache.”
Of course, one person’s evil, hated stereotype is another person’s cherished identity. Some people loved the word fluid in connection with their sexual orientation, others hated it. Some happily embrace and reclaim the word slut, while others try to distance themselves from it. I do love that for the most part we are having remarkably respectful, insightful conversations about subjects that can be incredibly difficult.
And here are a bunch of interesting links people shared:
Something on the different types of love the ancient Greeks recognised.
Another piece on how “bisexual” doesn’t have to mean “binary”.
What about the B in LGBT?
Yes, I really am bisexual, deal with it! (The one with the “I am not 4% lesbian” quote.)
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Next: On being invisible
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Coming out as bi is an interesting experience. You think you have to keep coming out as lesbian or gay? Try being bi, in any type of relationship! The first person I came out to was my then long-term boyfriend. And interestingly, I didn’t use the identity word (I’m bi), I used action words (I would sleep with women/I am attracted to this woman). I started dropping enough hints around my highschool friends that they figured it out. I think the first person to actually apply the bi label to me out loud was one of my friends. I certainly really struggled to say “I am bisexual” for a very long time. But I implied it heavily enough that my uni friends knew.
Coming out in the workplace, when I’ve been with my current – opposite-sex – partner for longer than I’ve been with my employer, is a whole other bundle of fun. Best reaction: “Why are you in the LGBT network? You’re not L, G, or…” – from straight and gay colleagues. Even though I was heavily involved with the internal running of our LGBT network, for years I wouldn’t actually speak about it outside the network. I was worried I would confuse people and detract from the network’s main messages with my issues which I perceived as fairly minor and unimportant.
In some ways I needed to be given permission to speak. Things that did that for me: talking to bi friends who listened and shared their own experiences – and I realised they were similar; the Bisexuality report; ending up leading the the LGBT network when my colleague left the company; the Stonewall Leadership Programme. I remember the first time I stood up in front of a bunch of straight colleagues who knew me as “Mili who’s been with Paul forever” and talked about LGBT issues; and the awkward conversations I had with them over dinner afterwards. These days I start conference speeches with “My name is Mili and I’m the only bisexual in the village”. But it’s been a journey.
Last year I realised that not being out to my family was beginning to have a very significant negative impact on my relationship with them. I was very public about being bi all over the Internet, at work, and with my friends, but not with my parents. (Note: this only works if your parents don’t speak English.) As more of my charity work and parts of my day job started to revolve around LGBT rights, there were huge chunks of my life I couldn’t talk to my family about. At Christmas, I came out to my Mum. I’m still not sure how I feel about how she reacted – that one’s still work in progress.
ETA
A few common themes on coming out as bisexual from the discussion on Twitter…
Having to remind people incessantly. Having to tell them again and again.
Having our identities questioned, particularly if we are in “straight” relationships.
Referring to past relationships rather than to identity.
“The stigma of ‘bi’ is different to the stigma of ‘gay’.”
Feeling like coming out as bi is just making unnecessary fuss.
Not hiding but not going out of your way to “inform” people.
Fear for your safety.
Coming out as a political act.
Other people’s reactions vary hugely.
The boyfriend who forgot.
The hug.
The snarky biphobic and homophobic comments.
The friends who walk away.
The people who tell you it’s irrelevant.
The mind-reading mothers.
A lot of people saw coming out to family as especially difficult.
“It’s just left unsaid and it’s been so long, it would be weird to do it now.”
“I was raised not to hide important things, but I’m almost 23. How do I explain this now?”
Sometimes one parent is more difficult to tell than the other.
Do keep sharing your stories, either in the comments here or on Twitter.
Previous: Let’s talk about labels
Next: Let’s talk about stereotypes
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I use bi to mean “same and not same” – I am not attracted to “men and women” but to people regardless of gender. This includes genderqueer and non-binary. I first noticed I was attracted to women as well as men aged maybe 12 or 13. I had no idea genderqueer/non-binary people even existed then. Heck, I had very little idea LGB people existed then.
By about 16 or 17 I was comfortable enough to adopt the bi label for myself (at least in my head though not necessarily out loud). I’ve identified as bi for half my life – so in some ways I’m quite attached to the label. At the same time I realise that it can come across as exclusive of people on the genderqueer spectrum. And “bi as in same and not same” is a hell of a mouthful.
I do feel deeply uncomfortable with pansexual as a label. Some of that is a fair amount of internalised oppression/slut shaming. Some of that is that there’s not even a P in QUILTBAG. We’ve done a lot of work educating people about what bisexuality means – and heck, we’re still not even nearly where we need to be with that. Starting from scratch on pan just seems terrifying. I do like the approach of using pan with people who will know what it means and bi with everyone else as an interim solution.
On a typographical note, it’s bisexual, not bi-sexual.
ETA
Fascinating discussions over on Twitter about this. Let me try to sum up.
People use all sorts of labels for themselves, sometimes even apparently contradictory ones. @the_eumelia said she identified as bi, lesbian and gay and especially queer because of the stories and the contexts associated with each. Someone identified as “sexual”. Someone else said they used queer but found people just took that to mean “gay”. We also talked about bisexuality as an attraction to more than one gender vs an indifference to gender. Several people mentioned the way that the labels they use for themselves and the way they think of their own sexuality have changed over the years.
Someone who identified as gay felt they were in the minority in today’s discussion – which to an extent was the point; I am trying to raise the profile and visibility of parts of the QUILTBAG community beyond lesbian and gay. Most weeks those parts of the community will feel in the minority.
Three in-depth discussions struck me in particular: There was a sizeable contingent advocating against the use of labels. Many of those tweets were variations on the theme of “Can’t we just be ‘people’?” I saw a couple of good counter-arguments to this. Using “people” can very easily lead to erasure of minorities like QUILTBAG people – it’s easy to assume that there is a default for people, and that default does tend to be straight, white, cis and male in our culture. Using labels is a way to differentiate ourselves and call attention to the fact that we exist, we are different and we have different needs. And not only do QUILTBAG people in general have different needs, but as @the_eumelia pointed out, each letter in that alphabet soup has different needs.
I also liked the distinction between “label” and “identity” that @GeoffreyBrent made:

I distinguish between “labels” (how we describe self to others) vs “identity” (how we see self) so there are labels I am comfortable using, for convenience in communication, without *identifying* w/ them as such.

The second discussion that went into quite a lot of depth was the distinction or otherwise between bisexual and pansexual. There was a clear sense of discomfort expressed by quite a few people with the pansexual label, not dissimilar to what I described above. It almost feels self-excluding.
@LauraTea linked to this article by Julia Serano on how “bisexual” does not reinforce the gender binary. Interestingly, while I completely agree that it doesn’t, I find very little in that article actually matches my own experience of my sexual orientation. Julia talks a lot about male and female “bodies” whereas I am attracted to people as much as I am to bodies (yes, those are different); also, I have a huge thing for androgyny which doesn’t seem to fit in this framework. Of course the beauty of all this is that we can all choose how we identify and that does not detract from anyone else’s self-identification or experience of their sexuality.
I found this article on the differences and similarities between bi and pan which @the_eumelia linked to incredibly compelling. It argues that bisexual as a label has its political roots in sexual orientation politics whereas pansexual is more concerned with gender. There is a huge overlap between the two and they aren’t actually mutually exclusive. All of this makes an instinctive kind of sense to me.
The third, briefer, discussion was around “living up” to your chosen labels. A few people expressed fears of not being “queer enough” or “bi enough” or “gay enough”. I thought @1nineeight3 put this beautifully:

I guess that is the problem arising from labels. When you give yourself a label, you somehow expect yourself to go through certain experiences. And when that does not materialise, you question yourself and feel guilty because it’s as if you’re using the label “wrongly” or not justifying yourself thru that label.

So if this is you, take heart: you’re far from the only one feeling like this!
Edited some time later to add more awesome things people sent me
@DRMacIver wrote something on labels, some of which I quite like. @Drcabl3 has promised a full rebuttal.
He also shared the Genderbread Person model.
@Drcabl3 wrote up something on queer as a label, and coming out or not coming out as such.
Next: Coming out as bisexual
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