BlogHer - The B in GLBT - Comments

Very well said.

no_I_am_zoe — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:10:57 -0500

Very well said.

A Couple of Issues Seem Mixed In

sylvia_the_SU — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 11:12:24 -0500

First, I think that monogamy and sexual preference are very different issues. Being a bisexual does not (and should not) make you more or less monogamous. It seems to me to a dangerous precedent to view one person as more or less promiscuous or more or less able to be monogamous on the basis of their sexuality. That is a slippery slope.

I think being bisexual means that to some extent (greater or lesser), you are sexual attracted to men and women. However, monogamy is an entirely different spectrum. Monogamy speaks to a desire to be intimate with just one person for a length of time. Just because you are attracted to both men and women does not preclude you from being intimate with just one particular individual at a time. It means the person you choose to be monogamous with may be either a man or a woman. If your relationship was to end and you chose another partner for a monogamous relationship, you may again choose a man or woman.

Eventually, we have to stop defining people by their partners. Every person is an individual. A woman with a man is not necessarily heterosexual. A woman with a woman is not necessarily a lesbian. A woman is a person, with her own sexuality, who chose her partner based on her preferences (sexual and otherwise). That sexuality is not overt or visible in either relationship, and I don't believe it needs to be. I think we want to believe that sexuality is visible - when we see a woman with a man we want to believe each person's "heterosexuality" is visible.

Maybe the real issue is that we want sexuality to be more "rule-based," less of a choice. Maybe it is hard to believe some people inherently like women, some like men, some like both. "Both" seems like a choice to those who don't feel those feelings. Maybe this is hard for the gay and lesbian community since they have been told by idiots that they should "choose" not to be gay. I don't think sexuality is ever a choice, even for bisexuals. A bisexual may choose to be with a man or a woman, but their sexuality is not a choice.

I think you did a gret job

no_I_am_zoe — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:00:10 -0500

I think you did a gret job explaining the evolution of discovering sexual identity of so many lesbians. I really don't think that straight people can even begin to understand the pressure to conform to heterosexuality that exists. Since sexuality, in all the forms sexuality takes, is not taught in schools and since most parents aren't going to teach it either, so many of us don't understand or can't interpert the feeling we have for same sex people.

It's funny you brought up that L Word quote. I kept trying to figure a way to work that into this post as I was writing it. But I couldn't work in. I think that was a rather apt line.

I do like the more

no_I_am_zoe — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:41:08 -0500

I do like the more encompassing term queer. Though where I live, queer is not really an all encompassing term (at least not in the average midwesterner vocabulary), it just means gay. Give us 10 or 20 years and we'll catch up with the coasts.

"I think you hit the issue -

no_I_am_zoe — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:32:07 -0500

"I think you hit the issue - what does it mean to be bisexual if you're monogamous?"

You know, the funny thing is, in the relationship I"m in now, my insitance on trying to figure out if I was gay or bi had to do with the guilt left over from my catholic upbringing, until I decided that it there was nothing wrong with being gay. So now, it doesn't matter, I am what I am. However, I if I think about, what would happen if I were suddenly single at this point in my life and then ended up in a monogamous relationship with a man, I think I'd be instistent on identifying as bi. Not because I think being bi gives you lisence to not be monogamous, but because I think I hold some predudices about the term straight. So, while in theory, I think if you're monogamous what difference does it make to identify as bi, I also understand why someone would.

Does that make sense?

the evolution of gay...

RightistWrongs.com — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:36:41 -0500

Zoe, you are right on. In my opinion, much of the confusion around this issue of the "B" stems from 2 primary old-school issues (where women are concerned). 1. Gay women are not feminine. 2. Lesbians (or Bisexual women) know they are gay from puberty.

False and False.

I see more and more articles and discussions rotating around shattering these stereotypes. But it is a seldom discussed issue and we have years and years of "programming" to overcome. From my experience and discussions, it is a very very small margin of LGBT women who are "gold stars." That is to say, most lesbians took a long while past puberty to discover / realize/ learn they were not straight and there can be husbands/boyfriends along the way. This doesn't match with most people's model. "But you were married for 10 years!" "But you have 3 kids!" "But you have long hair and nails and are beautiful - how can you be gay?"

I probably know 300 maybe 500 LGBT women. I know 3 who have never been with men by choice. This surprises most.

It also does seem to be a fact that Bi women are not taken seriously. I think much of this comes from the fact that many lesbian women (mentioned above) "evolve" from men to women as their primary partner. They then apply this to everyone and assume "she's just not all the way there yet."

I tend to think sexuality is a spectrum but I will say that most women I've known who claim to have been bisexual, now identify as lesbian. Lindsey Lohan is what, 22? Time will tell, but if you would have asked me (and most of my friends) 15 years ago we would have identified as B also. I think the majority just form the stereotype that pushes aside the minority Bs. I think Lword did a good job of imitating reality on this issue - they all mocked the token B: "I'm looking for the same thing in a man as I am in a women" -- her friend interjects "yeah, big t**s"

Good issue to blog about... there are still a lot of misperceptions.

Tina Righter

www.RightistWrongs.com

Identifying

Lelonopo — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:50:37 -0500

Oregon has a very out bisexual legislator, Kate Brown. I'm looking forward to seeing what Lindsay Lohan identifies as: will she, or will she just say she's dating a woman? I think more and more, there's less need to identify oneself, and a reason why I just prefer the encompassing term queer.

One big happy family...

Denise — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:39:19 -0500

hah. One big dysfunctional family is more like it. But still family. :-)

I think you hit the issue - what does it mean to be bisexual if you're monogamous?

After spending YEARS on queer message boards, that's still the question. There are a bunch of bisexuals on boards who feel like being bi means never having to BE monogamous and they don't understand why their current partner doesn't agree. Then there are a bunch of bisexuals on boards who do believe in monogamy and are ready to BE monogamous but their partners don't trust them enough to try.

~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager

Flamingo House Happenings

The B in GLBT

no_I_am_zoe — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 03:05:45 -0500

September 23, was the Ninth Annual Celebrate Bisexuality Day, and I missed it. Actually, I was not aware of its existence until I caught up on reading through my bloglines earlier today. The odd coincidence is that I had already planned on writing a post on bisexuality today. So what is Celebrate Bisexuality Day anyway, you ask. It's a day to celebrate and increase bisexual visibility, of course.

Sue Hyde wrote a nice piece, posted at The Bilerico Project, saluting bisexual leaders.

Bisexual people challenge and question the fundamental assumptions about sexuality, gender and relationships. Our bisexual leaders, thinkers and lovers shake it up and in so doing, help us all break free to live and love as our hearts desire.
- read full post by Sue Hyde, Celebrating Bisexuality Day 2008: Bisexual Leaders We Salute!

I think her post serves as a nice reminder that bisexuals are an equally important part of the LGBT community. I have a hard time understanding why bisexuality is so often misunderstood, and discounted as a true sexuality. We seem to have a tendency to see the world as either gay or straight. We make judgments on someones sexuality based on who they are dating at a specific point in time, as if homosexual or heterosexual are the only two options. But we don't live in a binary world, and there is a whole range of sexuality in between gay and straight that so many aren't even willing to consider exist.

I know that one would assume that since there is a B in LGBT, that we all must get along like one big happy family. But, that is not always the case. Yeah, we're all equal. Some are just more equal than others. The bisexual woman fits nicely into the LGBT community as long as she is dating women. But even then some lesbians will want to insist the bi woman is really a lesbian, and not a bisexual. But as soon as the bi woman dates a man, she's tossed from her imposed lesbian identity back into heterosexuality.

Aviva of Bi-Furious writes

Thinking about the way some lesbians react to the bisexuals in their midst got me thinking about other responses to us. They all seem to come down to "bisexuals really like men" - like all bisexual women are essentially straight and all bisexual men basically gay.
[...]The same way lesbians worry about dating bi women because they see men as (sometimes inherently superior) competition, straight men don't worry about dating bi women because they can't possibly imagine ladies as their competition.
-read full post What's so great about cock, anyway?

When individuals in the bi community date or partner with opposite sexed people they are seen as heterosexual by both the gay and the straight community. Along with that comes social acceptance of the relationship, and if a marriage occurs, then all the legal protections of marriage follow too. Once married, with all its heterosexual privilege, it's difficult for many to see how or why the bi person any longer fits into the LGBT community.

But the gay folk are not alone in their worry that their bi partners might wake up one day and decide to switch teams again. Kellypanic wrote about biphobia at Stuff Bisexuals Like

For bisexuals, coming out of the closet is a lifelong process. One day we are in the closet, the next day we are out, and then a week later, we're back in.
[...]Straight folk are wary of bisexuals. At any moment, we might change our minds and go gay again. And when we do, they scratch their heads and say, "I didn't think you were serious about that bi thing." Sure, they're all about our raging bi pride until we're actually doing something bisexual, unless it's hot girl-on-girl gay-for-pay.
-read full post #14 Revolving Closets

I think one of the greatest misconceptions of bisexuality is, it doesn't really exist,it is just way to identify before you accept your true gay identity. To sort of ease your way into gayness, if you will. It's true that many identify as bi before reaching gay, but I think in part that is do to limited knowledge of, or education about sexuality. And too, there sometimes great difficulty in understanding your own feelings, especially when you are under tremendous pressure to conform to the norm. Of course also, sexuality is a complex thing.

When I first realized that I liked women, and after having my "Wow! Now my whole life makes a lot more sense moment," I started trying to figure out if I was really gay or if I was bisexual. And I wasted a lot of time, energy, and emotion thinking about this. I needed an answer because for a very long time, I felt guilt for dating a woman when I was still attracted to men. Now I tell people I'm a lesbian because it describes the relationship I've been in for the last, almost, 16 years, and the relationship I hope and intend to be in for the rest of my life.

I still think about and find men attractive, but not nearly in the numbers that I find women attractive. If I were single, I wouldn't limit my dating pool to just women. But if I had to choose one over the other as the only dating pool for the rest of my life, I wouldn't even have to think about it. I couldn't go the rest of my life with out ever being with another woman, but men I could go without. So does that make me a lesbian? Or does that make me a bisexual with a strong preference for women? I don't know. I'm sure everyone has their own opinion on it.

To further complicate the gay or bi question, one could ask if you are liming your self strictly to female/male binary. What about dating someone who is gender queer, or trans. Does bisexual cover that, or now do we add pansexual to the mix of labels?

I know this barely scratches the surface on this topic and as I delve a little further into researching this topic I'll write more. But for now, my questions are, is it important to maintain a bisexual identity while in a life long monogamous relationship? And, how do you make your bisexual identity visible while you are in a relationship? If you are bi, given a choice, would you prefer to date someone who is also bi?

More blogs by bisexual bloggers:
Bliss Warrior the bi-girls guide to decadent living (adult content)
The Bisexual Bipolar, a blog about sexuality and mental health
Bisexuality and beyond, by Sue George. Theory, history, news...