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.)
Previous: Coming out as bisexual
Next: On being invisible
@TWkLGBTQ Index

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
@TWkLGBTQ Index

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
@TWkLGBTQ Index

From about 5pm UK time on Sunday, I’ll be running the @TWkLGBTQ rotation curation account for a week. Which means I’ll be talking about bisexuality a lot. I’ll be using this blog to post snippets that are longer than 140 characters but probably still shorter than my normal blog posts, all around my experience of being bisexual and some challenges bisexuals in general face in today’s world. If you’re not on Twitter (Why not?!), feel free to engage with them in the comments here. But by all means also come by and check out the discussion on Twitter. This should be fun.
Now excuse me while I go an freak out about only having 48 hours to prep this.

For the sake of completeness, I’m quoted in this Guardian piece on bisexual issues in the workplace.

Put three feminists in a room and chances are you’ll get four different definitions of what feminism is. After all, the likes of Louise Mensch and Julie Bindel get to apply the term to themselves. Bindel in particular is a well-known transphobe, and in her latest Huffington Post column she adds biphobia to her credentials.
There isn’t much of an argument in between all the vitriol and nonsense, but from what I can gather Ms Bindel would like me to stop sleeping with men. That’s in those paragraphs where she isn’t questioning my existence in the first place. Yet in the same piece she objects to Camille Paglia telling lesbians to sleep with men, and declares that – while she believes “straight women are missing out on the best sex on the planet” – it is straight women’s right to choose to sleep with men. So hang on. Camille Paglia doesn’t get to tell lesbians who to sleep with. Julie Bindel oh-so-graciously grants choice and agency to straight women in the matter of who they take to their beds. Yet we poor, possibly-non-existent but definitely misguided bisexuals cannot be left to get on with our lives without this vital guidance from our superior lesbian overlord. Would she spot irony if it bit her in the arse?
Here’s the thing: If feminism is about anything, it’s about not letting your reproductive organs dictate your role in life and limit your choices. It’s about giving choices to people – yes, men and women; and while all our choices are by necessity made within a political context, feminism is about levelling the playing field so that said political context is less restrictive. When you find yourself seeking to limit women’s choices and telling them what they should do and how they should behave – in any area of life, let alone sex! – then, Ms Bindel, you have become part of the problem, not the solution.

I find myself in the odd position of responding to government consultations and writing to my MP on an issue that I feel – at best – lukewarm about.
Marriage is not a social institution I feel has any relevance to me (not until I hit the inheritance tax threshold anyway, which is a long way off), and I have for a long time now felt that we’re doing the whole thing wrong. I also strongly object to David Cameron and Theresa May taking this opportunity to lecture me about the best possible set-up of my private life and family relationships. Even within the limited context of LGBT rights I believe there are bigger and more important issues than marriage equality.
On the other hand, I understand that marriage is hugely important to a lot of people – both heterosexual and not. It strikes me as a no-brainer that if we have an institution available to one part of the population and not another, this is discriminatory and unjust. So if we have to have marriage in its current form, I do believe that it should be available on an equal basis to all. With that in mind, I have today sent the below letter to Nick Brown, MP for Newcastle upon Tyne East. Mr Brown and I don’t often see eye to eye, and he has a record of only replying on issues he agrees with me on. Let’s hope this is one of those where I get a response.
Dear Nick Brown,
I am writing to you with regards to the government’s ongoing consultation to extend civil marriage rights to same-sex couples.
The current set-up which makes civil partnerships available to same-sex couples while reserving marriage only for heterosexual couples is problematic on several levels:
1. It clearly creates a distinction and inequality between heterosexual and LGBT people and the legal recognition of their relationships. This inequality is arbitrary and discriminatory.
2. It is also particularly harsh on transgender people seeking legal recognition of their gender, as under current rules they have to dissolve an existing marriage or civil partnership to obtain such recognition. This is an expensive, bureaucratic process that is extremely emotionally traumatic at an already difficult time in a person’s life.
3. Finally, it was only two years ago that there were more countries in the world where homosexuality was punishable with death than countries where same-sex couples could get legal recognition of their relationships in the form of marriage. Yet over the last few years we have seen more and more countries embrace marriage equality, and now there are countries on four continents which do so. It is disappointing that the UK is lagging behind countries perceived as conservative and staunchly Catholic, such as Spain, Portugal and Argentina, on this issue.
While an actual marriage equality bill is some way off, it would be helpful to understand your position on the issue. The Coalition for Equal Marriage is tracking MPs’ stance on this at their website and it would be great to see your support reflected there.
Yours sincerely,
Milena Popova

I remember my first Stonewall Workplace Conference, maybe in 2006. We had spent most of the day discussing issues of “lesbians and gays” in the workplace when a woman interrupted one of Ben Summerskill’s keynotes to point out that we weren’t just “lesbians and gays” – some of us were bisexual. That was the moment I stopped feeling like a fraud for being there.
Despite the huge progress we have made over the past ten years in LGB (and to an extent T) rights in the UK, bisexual invisibility is still a huge issue. The Bisexuality Report found that bisexual invisibility, biphobia and bisexual exclusion have a profound impact on bisexual people’s lives in every area from health and crime to school and the workplace.
Fast forward to this year’s Stonewall Workplace Conference. There was a strong theme of role modelling going through most of the keynote speeches. Perhaps I am also more sensitive to it, having attended last year’s brilliant Stonewall Leadership Programme. One remark in particular, by Beth Brooke from Ernst & Young struck me: “We cannot be what we cannot see.” That sentence really rang true for me and reminded me of the woman who stood up at the same conference six years ago and pointed out that some of us were, you know, bisexual. That woman gave me a voice.
At any rate, I was delighted to see that Stonewall have produced a booklet in which they showcase 17 high-profile LGB individuals from across the private, public and third sectors, “Role Models – Being Yourself: Sexual Orientation and the Workplace”. I leafed through it on the train home after the conference, and the part of my brain that notices that less than a quarter of people travelling in business class are women, or that there are very few ethnic minority faces at an event, started ticking. When I counted, it turned out that there were eight lesbians, eight gay men, and one bisexual man profiled in the book.
I completely understand the challenges of coming out as bisexual. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If you enter into a relationship with someone of a gender different to the people you’ve previously dated, some of your friends, gay and straight, may feel terribly betrayed. If you do explicitly identify as bisexual regardless of who you’re going out with, you’ll face reactions ranging from “Why are you flaunting your sexuality?” to “Don’t be stupid. You’re not bisexual, you’re married!” There is also a significant gender difference in how society views bisexual people. Bisexual women are to an extent more “accepted” but also considerably more fetishised than bisexual men. (The answer is no, I don’t want to have a threesome with you and your girlfriend.) Certainly in my experience that leads to more out bisexual women than men, but I haven’t got hugely scientific data sets on this.
I do have huge respect for Edward Lord OBE who was brave enough to take on the mantle of the one bisexual role model in Stonewall’s booklet. He tells a story that may ring true for many of us – how coming out as gay wasn’t half as dramatic as coming out as bisexual, how at least one of his friends stopped speaking to him after that, how his second coming-out was necessitated by him entering a relationship with a woman, how before that he had hidden his true sexuality “within the broader gay closet”.
It’s as good a story as any, but that’s the problem with it – it is just a single story. The booklet tells the story of the lesbian mother; the black Welsh gay man; the lesbian disability rights campaigner; the gay head teacher whose Irish Catholic family disowned him when he came out; the lesbian woman who grew up in Singapore where homosexuality is illegal; the gay soldier who with his partner celebrated the first civil partnership in the Household Cavalry’s 350-year history; the gay scientist from a northern Methodist mining family; the first openly gay peer ever; the lesbian former vice chair of the Conservative Party.
While sexual orientation is a reasonably significant part of some people’s identity (both straight and not, incidentally), it is not our only defining characteristic. Just because someone happens to be of the same sexual orientation as me doesn’t mean that their experiences are similar enough for me to be able to build a rapport with them and see them as a role model. Therefore providing a range of people with varying backgrounds and experiences is crucial if lesbian, gay and bisexual people are to find role models among the individuals Stonewall have profiled.
Equally, it is unfair on Edward Lord to cast on him all of the responsibility of being the one person that all bisexual people should look up to. That’s a role no one can be expected to play with any level of comfort. So where are the bisexual women? Where are the bisexual people in long-term relationships – the “don’t be stupid, you’re married!” ones and the “don’t be stupid, you have a civil partner” ones? Where are the ethnic minority bisexuals, the bisexuals whose families cast them out, and the bisexuals whose families accepted them? There is more than one bisexual story, and both bisexual people ourselves and those who tell us that we’re married/it’s just a phase/we’re only seeking attention need to hear those stories.
There isn’t a simple answer to all of this. For as long bisexuals continue to be invisible and face the potential of double discrimination, few of us will raise our heads above the parapet; yet unless more of us do so, we will continue to be invisible and biphobia will continue to go unchallenged. To an extent it is up to us to fix this by being more open, more visible, more honest about who we are.
Some of the responsibility, however, has also to be shouldered by Stonewall. They claim to speak for all of us – L, G and B. Yet reading the “Role Models” booklet made me feel a bit like I did back at the conference in 2006 – tokenised at best, silenced and invisible at worst. We cannot be what we cannot see.