Claiming the B in LGBT: Illuminating the Bisexual Narrative

ISBN-13: 9781944934606

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Thornapple Press

Publication Date: 10-05-2018

Pages: 344

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

Kate Harrad is a fiction and nonfiction writer, bi activist, event organizer, and parent. Her published works include the novel All Lies and Jest.

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CHAPTER 1

THE BASICS

Editor: Kate Harrad

Part One: Definitions and Numbers

"For me, it is that I am missing a little bit of wiring that allows other people to discriminate between the genders when it comes to attraction. Not that I consider it a deficit — it is a little like the unusual brain symmetry that allows someone to be ambidextrous."

DH Kelly

Are labels really necessary?

People often say things like "labels are for jars" and "we're all just human, so why divide people up by race/gender/sexuality?"

It's a reasonable question. The answer is that language matters, and it matters just as much here as it does anywhere else. Apples, strawberries and grapes are all fruit, but nobody says "all fruit is fruit, so why distinguish?" Gender and sexuality labels give us potentially useful information about someone, just as it's often useful to know whether someone is tall or short, or vegetarian, or terrified of snakes. The important thing is that the label is accurate and descriptive, and not imposed by someone else.

So that's why we think it matters that some people are bisexual and are able to call themselves bisexual.

"I could finally describe what I felt. And what's more, I could describe it using existing words, which made it easier for others to understand what I meant."

Mharie

Definitions

If you asked random people in the street for a one-sentence definition of bisexuality, you'd probably get two things: a weird look, and a sentence such as "someone who's attracted to both men and women" or "someone who has sex with both genders." This is also what you get if you search online for a definition, and from most dictionaries.

If you ask someone in the bisexual community how they define bisexuality, there's a good chance you'll get something slightly different from the above. This is because the current dictionary definitions aren't the ones used by a lot of bisexual people.

Why not?

Well, several reasons:

• They focus on sex and sexual attraction — but bisexuality isn't just about who you're sleeping with.

• They make people assume that to be bisexual, you have to be equally attracted to men and women. Not true!

• They're based on the idea that bisexuality is a half-and-half sexuality: you're half gay half straight. Lots of problems with this one. For one thing, bisexuality is a sexuality in itself, not something you can divide up. For another, much of the bisexual community doesn't view gender as binary.

All of these issues will come up later in the book. Let's quickly address one thing, though: sex. Or rather, the potential absence of sex.

How do you know you're bi if you've only slept with one gender?

We can't emphasize this enough: you do not need to have slept with anyone to know what your sexuality is. After all, heterosexual people are allowed to call themselves heterosexual before they've had any sexual partners. So, equally, lesbian, gay and bisexual people should be allowed to know who they are attracted to before they've done anything about it.

That doesn't mean you have to decide on a label early on; it means that you can choose one at any age if you find one that fits. And you can change it later if it stops fitting. Sexuality labels can be applied and then removed and then applied again, just like ... well, actual labels.

And if you have had sexual experiences, it's still okay to define yourself based on attraction and not who you've slept with. You can be a bisexual person who's only ever slept with women. Or you mostly sleep with men but feel romantic only about women. Or you don't want to have sex with anyone, but you fall for all kinds of people. Or you'd like to experience sex with men, but you haven't found the right man yet. If a label feels right, go for it.

"I've had relationships with men, women and people who those categories don't fit — but it's the attraction that makes me bi, not the actions. I was every bit as bi when I was fifteen and had only ever dated and kissed boys."

Fred Langridge

Some useful definitions

So, do we, the bi community, have our own official definition of bisexuality?

Not exactly. For one thing, we're lots of overlapping communities, plus loads of people who never go near a community, so it's not as though we have monthly meetings where we sign off new bisexuality laws. But these are two of the most useful and frequently quoted definitions out there:

"I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted — romantically and/or sexually — to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree."

Activist Robyn Ochs, robynochs.com

"You're bisexual as soon as you stop being exclusively attracted to only one sex." The Bisexual Index, bisexualindex.org.uk

People also often find they have personal definitions of "what my bisexuality means to me." For example:

"I'm attracted (romantically and sexually) to people whose gender is like mine and to people whose gender is different from mine."

Fred Langridge

"I tend to define my sexuality as 'attracted to people regardless of gender.'"

Milena Popova

"It means gender isn't a limiting factor when considering who I might want to be in a sexual relationship with."

Karen

"If one day I feel attraction to a woman, I don't have to think 'Does this mean I'm gay?' or 'If this carried on, would it mean I was a lesbian?' If one day I feel attraction to a man, I don't have to think 'Does this mean I'm not gay after all?' or 'If this carries on, at what point do I lose the right to call myself lesbian?' If one day I feel attraction to someone who identifies as neither binary gender, I don't have to think 'What does this mean about me?'

None of that noise exists in my life. As far as gender-linked sexuality is concerned, there isn't some territory over here where I'm officially supposed to walk, and some territory over there where I'm not supposed to walk. It's all one whole, and I already live there."

Jennifer

Numbers

How many people are bisexual? This is really two questions: How many people identify as bisexual? and How many people behave in a bisexual way?

It's become clear in recent surveys that in terms of self-- identification, bisexuals make up a significant proportion of the LGBTQIA+ community. In 2011, 3.5% of US adults (about nine million people) identified as LGBT. That broke down as 1.7% lesbian/gay and 1.8% bisexual. A more recent survey in 2013 found that 40% of LGBT Americans identified as bisexual, which made them the biggest single group. And more people are identifying asLGBT in general: 4.1% in 2016 up from the 3.5% figure of a few years earlier.

In terms of behavior, we wouldn't want to claim anyone as bisexual who didn't themselves identify as such. But it is worth noting that the 2011 survey found 11% of Americans had experienced attraction to the same sex, and 8.2% had engaged in sexual activity with someone of the same sex. That's over 25 million people who aren't 100% heterosexual in terms of attraction and over 19 million whose behavior isn't 100% heterosexual.

Does that matter, if they still define as straight? Well, maybe. Bisexuals are a lot less likely to be out than lesbians and gay men. If minority sexualities were less stigmatized in general, we might find a lot more of those same-sex-attracted people were willing to use the word "bisexual" to describe themselves. And since younger people are more likely to define asLGBT, we might find that happening increasingly in the next few years.

It also matters how the questions are phrased. A UK survey in 2015 asked people to place themselves on the Kinsey scale, where 0 = completely heterosexual and 6 = completely homosexual. In that survey, 19% of people opted for between 1 and 5, and when you look at 18- to 24-year-olds, that number went up to an amazing 43%. Are 43% of young British people bisexual? Not in terms of self-definition, but in terms of attraction and/or behavior? Well, let's just say it's a cheering survey for those of us who stand to benefit from a less black- and-white view of human sexuality.

Part Two: How Will I Know?

"When people find the Bisexual Index website through search engines, the most common question they've asked isn't 'Where are the bisexuals meeting these days?' or 'What are some films with bisexual characters?' It's the same question over and over again.

'Am I bisexual?'"

Marcus Morgan, founder of the Bisexual Index

How can you tell if you're bisexual?

We quoted above the Bisexual Index's definition of bisexuality. This is a fuller extract, from their tongue-in-cheek "Am I Bisexual?" page:

"If you're asking yourself 'Am I bisexual?,' then here's a handy checklist:

Thinking about the people you've been attracted to, so far in your life, were they all of the same gender?

If you answered 'No' to any or all of the questions in our list above then we feel it's okay for you to call yourself bisexual. We don't care how attracted you are to the genders around you — you're bisexual as soon as you stop being exclusively attracted to only one sex.

That's it. It really is as easy as that."

But don't you need to ...?

As we've said, people often ask, "Do you need to have slept with women and men in order to be sure you're bisexual?" No — or at least, not necessarily. Some people do need to have experience with a specific gender before they know for certain if they're attracted to them. Some know what they are well before they've ever done anything with anybody.

"I don't remember realizing I was bi. I remember being little (five or six) and only registering my crushes on boys as crushes, thinking of (what I now identify as) crushes on girls as a separate thing — and then I remember having distinct crushes on girls that I recognized as crushes when I was fourteen/fifteen. I don't remember the first time I recognized a crush on a girl as the same sort of thing as a crush on a boy."

Fred Langridge

Of course, you might be told, or tell yourself, that only one kind of crush counts. That one kind is "normal" and the other is a phase, or something to be ignored.

"I'd had 'crushes' on girls as well as boys for as long as I remembered but I was always told (even by people who didn't know that about me) that I shouldn't worry if I developed feelings for other girls and that it wasn't really real and was just something that happened as you were growing up and you'd grow out of it. So I was twenty-three and on my first divorce before I realized I wasn't going to grow out of it and should 'do something about it.'"

Kaye

And maybe you can ignore it, for a while, or even forever. But why should you have to?

Being bi-curious

Being bi-curious gets even more bad press than being bisexual does.

"One of the labels used to harm bisexual people is 'bi-curious' when it's used to sneer at people who are experiencing similar-gender attraction for the first time. It's common for some people to sneer at bisexual women for 'not being able to commit to lesbianism,' and say that 'bi-curious' women aren't even 'proper bisexuals.'

This is toxic bullshit. What's wrong with being attracted to someone? What's so distasteful about being the source of someone's desires? I think the main vilification comes from the fact that no one uses 'bi-curious' to label people who felt they were previously exclusively homosexual but who have started to have feelings that aren't 'gay enough." Because these people are seen as 'straight but confused' it feels likely to their detractors that they'll go back to being straight, or are just 'experimenting.'

If no one was curious about 'gay sex' would there be this many gay people? If I'm curious about something, I might try it. If I try it, I might like it. If I like it I may love it. If I love it I may make it a major part of my life!

We need curiosity. Thinking, feeling, loving outside of the rigid roles society wants to press us into should be rewarded."

Marcus Morgan

When do people first realize they're bisexual?

"I had my first crush on a woman maybe around age twelve / thirteen? That was the first one that was clearly 'I wanna bang her' rather than 'She's cool, I wanna be her.' ;-) I'd had crushes on boys/men before so bi was the logical conclusion. (Getting past the gender binary took somewhat longer.) For a very long time I wasn't comfortable actually applying the word 'bisexual' to myself. In fact, the first time anyone said it out loud with reference to me, it wasn't me, it was a friend."

Milena Popova

"Like many folks, I guess I had an idea. David Bowie. Yeah. Anyway ... Never being in a world, even at university, where such things could be explored meant exactly that; it was a part of myself I never explored. The fact that I could totally get why women thought certain blokes were gorgeous was put down to me being in touch with my feminine side. It was the '80s and all the cool kids were doing it.

Shutting myself away as a writer didn't help. It wasn't until I got a job as an in-house writer in a game studio more than twenty years later that I was finally out in the open long enough to realize I really understood why women dug on certain blokes."

Iain Lowson

Of course, not everyone comes out as bisexual from being straight — some people first identify as gay or lesbian and then later identify as bi.

"I finally admitted [my bisexuality] to myself at about twenty, having failed to sufficiently bury it for three or more years. I'd been out as gay for five years. I was twenty-two or twenty-three before I admitted it to anyone else."

Elizabeth Baxter-Williams

It's also unfortunately true that coming out as bi to the gay community can be met with disbelief or even hostility.

"I called the local lesbian and gay switchboard, and asked about bisexual support groups. I guess they didn't get bisexuality awareness training back in those days because the volunteer I spoke to wouldn't give me the details until after he'd tried to counsel me about how I was in denial about my homosexuality. When I explained I'd already come out as gay he laughed and said that most people who said they were bi did so as a stepping stone to being gay — and maybe I was just making the crossing in reverse. That was the last time I called the switchboard."

Marcus

What can help with the discovery?

For people who are discovering their sexuality, musicians often seem to provide a way in to finding out about bisexuality, or experiencing bisexual attractions for the first time. If you're one of those people who think pop music is corrupting the nation's youth, you might be feeling smug and validated at this point. (Although if you are one of those people, you may also be reading the wrong book.)

"When I was about ten, I had a grand passion for a little boy my age. When I was twelve, I fell in love with a girl. Both my parents and my schoolmates were pretty homophobic and I was the sort of child who turned to books in times of crisis. Only, I didn't look at a nice glossy book about teen issues or anything so sensible — I went straight for Freud and I discovered I might be 'amphigenously inverted.' But my next big crush was with another girl, a long time had passed since primary school, so I began to think I was probably a lesbian.

I know this is going to sound daft, but Oasis didn't help matters. I was at high school at the height of Britpop and one of the regular discussions among my friends was 'Which Gallagher brother would you most like to sleep with?' Now I realize that there were almost certainly straight girls amongst us who were lying about it, but I looked at these two men who were supposed to be objects of universal female lust, considered my attraction to ordinary unglamorous schoolgirls around me and had no doubt.

So I thought I was a lesbian up until I got together with my first husband, then flitted about a bit; I was with a man now, so that had to be a phase and I was straight. Or perhaps he was the exception, or perhaps I had only convinced myself I fancied him at all. My first husband didn't help at all, because [he thought that] if I was bisexual I would enjoy not just porn, but the exact same porn as him, and I would enjoy threesomes with women he happened to fancy, etc....

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Excerpted from "Claiming the B in LGBT"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Kate Harrad.
Excerpted by permission of Thorntree Press, LLC.
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