Im Fluid - Youre Bi

“i’m fluid” - you’re bi

“i’m pansexual” - you’re bi

“my sexuality fluctuates” - you’re bi

“i like the label queer because it’s unlimited” - you’re bi

“idk I just like people regardless of their gender” - you’re bi

We’ve all heard about what happened in Afghanistan, where women have lost all their human rights, but something else has come to light. You see men from all over the world expressing that they wish this could happen everywhere. I’m saying this because I want women to see the bigger problem here. Men worldwide are unhappy that women are independent. They would love to see women silenced, to strip away our rights. That’s what many men want, and it’s visible everywhere. I see it on Twitter and TikTok. The number of men out there who want the worst for women, who hate the idea of women working, who despise women’s independence, who believe women should belong to them is crazy. That’s why we, as women, have to be more careful, more awake, more focused, and conscious. It’s a very dangerous time for us now. As women become more independent and knowledgeable, men want to fight us and any progress made.

“Therefore, it is not surprising that some bisexuals find their bisexual desire more a burden than a gift. They may feel a pressure or a wish to choose between heterosexuality and homosexuality to make their lives easier and avoid internal and external conflict. Many desire the ease they imagine would come with having one clear, fixed, socially acceptable identity. The behavior of individual bi people, as members of a stigmatized group, is frequently seen as representative of all bisexuals. Thus, a bi-identified person may feel a sense of shame when any bisexual person behaves in such a way as to reinforce negative stereotypes of bisexual people. And we can feel an even more profound sense of shame when our own behavior happens to mirror one of the existing stereotypes of bisexuals (such as practicing polyamory, or leaving one relationship for another). Although some bisexual people do behave in ways that conform to negative stereotypes about bisexuals, it is actually the dynamics of prejudice that cause others to use such actions to generalize their stereotyping and prejudiced behavior to an entire group.”

- Robyn Ochs, Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World

Too Butch to Be Bi (or You Can't Judge a Boy by Her Lover)

by Robin Sweeney

"It wasn't difficult for me to come out as a lesbian. In fact, most people I knew in high school assumed I was gay long before I started grappling with my own identity. I have, as one lover told me, “the face.” When I asked her what she meant, she said that I just looked like a dyke. And it's true. Even in pictures of me at four or five, I look like a little dyke. No one has ever been surprised to find out I was queer.

I ran into pretty standard teenage homophobia - my own internalized version and from others - but I was fortunate to grow up in a Southern California town with a surprising number of openly gay and bisexual adults and teenagers. While Aaron Fricke was making headlines taking another boy to his prom, the administrator in charge of student social events at my high school made it quietly known that same-sex couples were allowed to attend the prom together. 

Even though I fit the stereotypes and images of what a lesbian was supposed to be, it wasn't always a comfortable identity for me. I was sexual with men - and liked it -  and that fact was a problem for a lot of women and men I met in the lesbian and gay community. It was a problem for me, too. I didn't know how to come to terms with being bisexual and still maintain my butch identity and connection to the gay community.

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Sexual minority communities do a lousy job of confronting our assumptions about ourselves and each other. We hold onto the same notions about difference that the dominant, heterosexist culture teaches us and apply these to our own queer communities. Most of the time this doesn't work, and nowhere is this more true than in our assumptions about appearance, gender, and sexual identity. 

I am a butch bisexual woman whose romantic and sexual partners are primarily other butch women, with some notable exceptions. Frequently, I like to appear as masculine as I can, often passing for male on the street. I like to keep my hair short. I'd rather wear jeans and boots than anything else. Sometimes I pack when I go out, putting my dildo in my pants and wearing my dick out of the house. (No, people don't really notice that often. And the ones who do notice are the ones I'm probably trying to attract.)

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But being a butch woman who is also bisexual can be difficult. It feels sometimes that the the idea is so challenging - since the assumptions in our communities are that all butch women are lesbian women and all femme women are bisexual women - that often a butch woman trying to come to terms with being bisexual is stuck.

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But once we find a community that is accepting of our same-sex interests, we run into an entirely different series of messages. A number of these are about appearances and what they are supposed to say about who we are. The ideas about femmes (femme women aren't really interested in other women, and femme men aren't really interested in women at all) and butches (butches are always the aggressors in sex, whether they are men or women) permeate our queer culture. These ideas make it difficult for us to explore who we are and who we want to be. Many people feel too threatened to challenge the status quo of an already fringe community, for fear of being outcast from the one place where they have struggled to belong."

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Bisexual Politics edited by Naomi Tucker, 1995.

“uwu I’m not bi I’m just a person who likes all genders :3 I don’t like labels :3” well I DO! Label me as bisexual! Call me bisexual! I am a bisexual woman! I like all genders because I’m bisexual! I sit bisexually! I dress bisexually! I talk bisexually! Bisexual bisexual bisexual it’s NOT A DIRTY WORD! And mind you, it’s not even a label, it’s a sexual/romantic orientation and identity. What if I was like “please don’t call this an arm :3 it’s not an arm, I don’t like labeling my body! It’s just an appendage from my shoulder uwu!” like I cannot control or change being bisexual it wasn’t a choice I was just born like this 💖💜💙