Bisexuals? Just another fairy tale.
Jun. 29th, 2010 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
askygoneonfireSo someone linked to this article on facebook, and I hate it.
My sexuality is something to be celebrated, embraced. It is not something to be grudgingly tolerated as a bad habit.
Tolerated? Try appropriated. Try attacked, try turned into something which leads female bisexuals to be attacked as faking it to get men. Try always having to defend your relationship as real rather than 'the best thing you can do until a man comes along'. Try being told the only reason you're with a woman is because you can't get a man - because who would choose to be gay? Try having a man come up to you and your girlfriend, dancing in a club, asking if they can take a picture or trying it on with one of you.
Tolerated? No. Stolen, turned into something else? Yes. Having a sexuality, or in some cases the physical body of a man, thrust upon you? Yes.
Who is worse off? I don't like playing this game. But at the end of the day, patriarchy exists, and a woman will always be lower in the hierarchy than a man, bisexual or otherwise.
Do not tell me to be glad I'm bi because I can play straight when the going gets rough, do not tell me to be grateful for a partner who tolerates my sexuality rather than celebrates it with me. Do not tell me it's not possible for me to be out of the closet - that for bisexuals the closet is too simple a metaphor; coming out was hard and I did it, being out as a bisexual, exists.
The couple says they've grown closer over time, but like any marriage, two people can have differences -- including sexual orientation. Christine Winn is straight, and she has been supportive of her husband, who is openly bisexual.
"I don't think about it [his bisexuality] as a part I have to accept," she said. "It's just a part of him like any other husband who loses their socks on the floor or doesn't take the trash out"
"I don't think about it [his bisexuality] as a part I have to accept," she said. "It's just a part of him like any other husband who loses their socks on the floor or doesn't take the trash out"
My sexuality is something to be celebrated, embraced. It is not something to be grudgingly tolerated as a bad habit.
Winn realized then there was an unexpected upshot of bisexuality."I always had this heterosexual relationship to fall back on," he said. "I could choose to ignore the rest and put it on the back shelf."
That is exactly the argument made by the homophobic heteros - "you're just indulging a peversion you could resist" and the biphobic gays - "you could avoid prejudice any time you want, just go straight" Are we supposed to by sympathetic to Winn? Because he is shooting himself, and the rest of us, in the foot. There is no choice when it comes to sexuality because there is no choice when it comes to who I fall in love with. If I fall in love with a woman, and then endure prejudice and attacks because of that it is, according to that quote, my fault, I could avoid it all if I simply but my desire for women on the 'back shelf'.
It's either you're in the closet or out of the closet, and it's not that simple," David Malebranche, a physician and professor of medicine at Emory University
Well actually, in the common use of 'closet' - as opposed to whatever definition David Malebranche is holding it to - it is that simple. You have either decided to publicly announce to the world your sexual orientation or you have decided to work to disguise the fact of your sexual and romantic attractions from friends, family and anyone else who matters. In the case of Ali and I, I was out of the closet as a pansexual/bisexual woman, and Ali wasn't. So yes, for bisexual persons it *is* that simple. We had different relationships with what out sexuality meant in the world around us as a result. Our experiences were different. In and out of the closet *means* something.
The idea that bisexuals are somehow half in and half out of the closet is another biphobic notion, we must dismiss the idea of that bisexuals are a half-sexuality and we accept that bisexuals exist; in effect, it *is* that simple.
The idea that bisexuals are somehow half in and half out of the closet is another biphobic notion, we must dismiss the idea of that bisexuals are a half-sexuality and we accept that bisexuals exist; in effect, it *is* that simple.
It's [female bisexuality] something that's tolerated because sometimes men see it as entertaining and exciting for them," said Denise Penn, director of the American Institute of Bisexuality
Tolerated? Try appropriated. Try attacked, try turned into something which leads female bisexuals to be attacked as faking it to get men. Try always having to defend your relationship as real rather than 'the best thing you can do until a man comes along'. Try being told the only reason you're with a woman is because you can't get a man - because who would choose to be gay? Try having a man come up to you and your girlfriend, dancing in a club, asking if they can take a picture or trying it on with one of you.
Tolerated? No. Stolen, turned into something else? Yes. Having a sexuality, or in some cases the physical body of a man, thrust upon you? Yes.
Who is worse off? I don't like playing this game. But at the end of the day, patriarchy exists, and a woman will always be lower in the hierarchy than a man, bisexual or otherwise.
Do not tell me to be glad I'm bi because I can play straight when the going gets rough, do not tell me to be grateful for a partner who tolerates my sexuality rather than celebrates it with me. Do not tell me it's not possible for me to be out of the closet - that for bisexuals the closet is too simple a metaphor; coming out was hard and I did it, being out as a bisexual, exists.
