Currents

In the decade since coming out as a bi man, I’ve noticed a few troubling trends. Surveys consistently show that bi individuals outnumber their gay and lesbian peers by a significant amount — in fact, bi people make up about 60% of all LGBT folks. Despite this, polls show that bi adults are much less likely to be out about their sexuality compared to gay men and lesbians. What accounts for this disparity? One big reason is social pressure, and for bi people, erasure and hostility come just as often from radical gay men and lesbians as they do from straight homophobes. Operating under the influence of a self-destructive victimhood mentality, many gay and lesbian separatists see bisexuality as “too straight” or “not queer enough” to be included, respected, taken seriously, or, in some cases, even treated with common courtesy.

As a bi man, I’ve seen this firsthand. Years ago at my first Pride celebration, excited to find my place among the LGBT community, I was happily discussing coming out stories with a group of gay men. When I shared that I was bi, the group’s warmth was replaced with chilly skepticism. One guy reacted as though I had offended him, launching into an unhinged tirade about how I was a detriment to the LGBT community. The “indecisiveness” and “lack of consistency” of bi folks, he angrily alleged, made it harder for gay men and lesbians to find acceptance. “Eventually, you’ll learn you’re gay, so you might as well accept it,” he fumed before storming off.

Despite his assertion, my bisexuality remains unchanged almost a decade later; but I cannot pretend that experience didn’t rattle me, nor can I say it was an isolated event. I’ve been told by similarly confrontational gay men that I only identify as bi because I’m too scared to be gay (as if the double discrimination bi folks face from both straight and gay people is any better). I’ve been accused of insincerity, being an attention whore, and jumping on the bi bandwagon because it’s trendy. I’ve been called stupid, flighty, hypersexual, confused, and a liar, to name a few. All because I am bi and not gay, as some would apparently prefer. These experiences are not unique to me by any stretch. Ask any bi person about biphobia and they’ll chew your ear off with stories about gay men or lesbians pointedly insisting that bisexuality is not real, or that bi people are really just gays in denial, or that they’re insufficiently gay and therefore “inauthentic.” And this inauthenticity, we are told, somehow makes it harder for gay men and lesbians to find mainstream acceptance. According to this idea, bi people are causing harm by merely existing.

Nobody enjoys being treated this way, and I have to admit, I felt bitter about it for a while. But the longer I stewed on all of these hostile encounters, the more I came to understand where this behavior was coming from. I wondered why any gay man would employ tactics so similar to the oft-derided messaging used by homophobes to guilt gay folks into submission, such as “This will kill your mother” or “Your selfishness is tearing this family apart.” Why would any gay man play on my empathy in an attempt to bully me into a sexuality they were more comfortable with? I realized that the issue wasn’t actually me, or the fact that I was vocal about my bisexuality — much of this toxic behavior was springing out of a deeply entrenched victimhood narrative.

What at first I interpreted as an attack on me, I began to see as a kind of defensive lashing out. The aggression directed my way from these guys had more to do with their own insecurities and perception of self. Many gay radicals and gay separatists derive a sense of meaning and identity from seeing themselves as victims. They see themselves as beleaguered and oppressed rebels standing proudly outside of and in opposition to mainstream culture. In this view, bi people — who can “pass” as straight and thus are imagined to somehow be more “mainstream” and experience less suffering — are seen as outsiders. They’re seen as leeches, hangers-on, and dead weight that serve only to devalue the gay grievance currency at best, and outright imposters at worst.

To gay radicals, my acceptance into the community was contingent upon a universal rejection of all practices one could deem heterosexual/normative. If I have a foot in both camps, how could I have sufficiently suffered to earn my place among their ranks? To them, my “flimsy” sexuality, lacking the arbitrary level of victimhood they use to imbue their own identity with worth, seems like an affront to the challenges they have faced. Understanding this psychological starting point, the behavior makes more sense — but it remains no less counterproductive. The whole point of building an LGBT community is to ensure that future generations have it easier than we did. Hostile gatekeeping and condescending purity tests undermine that important mission.

Accusing bi folks of holding back the collective causes of LGBT people because they are too hard to place in a box or haven’t faced sufficient oppression, or otherwise aren’t gay or queer enough rings hollow. It’s just biphobia, at the bottom. Gay men and lesbians have certainly faced a lot of discrimination, bigotry, and hate over the years, and those scars run deep. Turning pain into pride is the most natural thing in the world. We’ve seen it in almost every mistreated minority group in history. But that doesn’t justify passing on the hurt to others to prop up one’s own sense of exclusivity. And it’s no way to treat friends.

Published Nov 13, 2024