You Need Help: 7 Highly Effective Habits of Dealing with Biphobes

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Q: I am a person who dates both ladies and non-lady persons, and my person of choice right now is a young man who I met through a girl I used to date. As in, we went on 4-5 dates. And then fell comfortably into acquaintances. We have dated multiple people since each other, and she is dating a young woman who is friendly with me and my partner. So lady person a (that I used to date) and girlfriend were invited over to the apartment where I live with my partner. Lady person A is a lesbian identified person, but she has a lot of opinions on bisexuality. Cliff notes: “Make up your mind. “Queer” as an identity is a copout. People who alternate between men and women are just bored.” Any perceived pattern in my dating life is because bisexual persons are skanky. Or slutty. She liked both those words.

So I tried to brush that shit under the rug — it happened a long time ago and she was drunk. But while in my home, Lady person A made disparaging comments about me. I am not ashamed of my choices — I have had amazing experiences with wonderful people. I do resent feeling like a joke because of bisexuality hate. I reject the idea of sluttiness as a character flaw, but I can’t help feel the sting when it’s used as an insult against me. Even if I don’t think it’s wrong, it sucks for someone to pass judgment like that. I still consider her my friend, so I’m having difficulty understanding why she would say something meant to be hurtful like that. How do I react next time I hear something like that? What do I say to her next time she says something like that? I spoke to my partner and he was supportive, but didn’t have much input. Why must I defend my sexuality?

A: Well this person seems like a real charmer! Very fun at parties. I’m so sorry you had this experience! Let’s figure out how you can try to not have it again.

Okay, so: this girl you dated clearly has issues. If she’s dating people whose identity she fundamentally objects to, it either means she is the kind of person who enjoys dating people she feels superior to and/or she has lots of issues with self-loathing, both of which are her own problem. Either way, she has something going on: having weird opinions about bisexuality is one thing, needing to share them with you when you’re in your home points to something else, a desire to specifically needle you because it makes her feel better about something, somehow. Does this have to do with somehow resenting you for dating a dude after having dated her? I don’t know! That is also ultimately her own problem, not yours. I know it’s tempting to try to reverse engineer her thinking and try to find out why on earth she would be like this, but the job of figuring out why someone is biphobic and feels the need to rub your face in it shouldn’t be yours; it should be hers.

So we’ve established it’s her problem, but it seems like she’s trying to make it your problem by bringing it up constantly. What are your options?

First of all, I think it would be helpful to really and truly ask yourself this question: how much do you really want this person in your life? Is there anything about spending time with her that’s positive or redemptive, outside of the fact that you consider her a friend and have mutual friends? If you know deep down that you don’t really get much out of this friendship, or that its positives are outweighed by having to listen to her be incredibly rude to you, I fully recommend just letting her go, like a goldfish into the sea. You don’t have to invite her places, make a point of saying hi to her if you see her, respond to her facebook events, anything. If she asks, you can either play dumb — “Ohmigod I totally miss you too! Let’s definitely get coffee sometime soon!” — or be honest and say “Hanging out with you wasn’t really fun anymore because you kept calling me slutty and making fun of me. If you’re done doing that, let me know and we can hang out again.” I realize the social universe you and this girl inhabit may be small, and it may feel impossible to really avoid anyone, but have faith! I went to a very small MFA program of about a dozen people, and by the end of it I had managed to completely stop talking to the one person who turned every conversation into an explanation of why you didn’t know as much about Marxism and/or RuPaul’s Drag Race as them. The key is to engage as little as possible, and to politely deploy monosyllables until you can exit the situation. Eventually they’ll take the hint.

Okay, that’s all fine, but what if you actually want to be friends with this person? Maybe she is somehow pretty stellar when she’s not telling you that you’re a slutty greedy jerk who is both bored too easily and incapable of choosing a side, I don’t know. If that’s the case, and you want to salvage this relationship and turn it into something that doesn’t make you want to flee civilization and join a family of voles, then you’ll have to change the dynamic of this interaction.

Right now, this girl is making you feel like you have to defend your sexuality — I can tell because you asked “Why must I defend my sexuality?”. The key here is to remember that you don’t have anything to be defensive about; your sexuality is totally normal and fine. The only person who should be on the defensive is her, because her attitudes are ridiculous and poisonous. So with that established, that’s the dynamic to push for: don’t let the conversation center around your identity and choices, but hers. Put the spotlight on her behavior, and push her to be the one providing explanations. Next time she says something like that, here are some possibilities to respond with:

“Wow, so you’re just super uncomfortable with bisexual people, huh?”

“So you just really can’t get over who I’ve slept with? Like, you’re still thinking about it?”

“You sure talk about this a lot. It’s like a really big deal to you, isn’t it?”

“Do you ever worry about how you sound when you just go on and on about bisexuality like this?”

“Why do you think you can’t let go of this stuff for even just one evening while we all hang out? What’s going on there?”

“Do you do this to other bisexual people, or just me?”

“Do you ever feel like you should have warned me about how you feel about bisexual girls before we dated?”

If these things sound uncomfortable to say out loud, especially in front of other people, I get that, but I also promise the moment will be way more uncomfortable for her. (If actually asking her a question or opening up a conversation is too scary, you can also use my other tried and true line: “Wow, this seems really hard for you, that you have to [be in the same room as a bisexual person].” This has pretty successful rates of shutting the person up and ending the conversation for the time being.)

To employ some playground psychology for a second, the reason this person is pulling this shit to your face and in front of other people, instead of behind your back like a normal jerk, is because it makes her feel good in some way. She feels powerful, or like a Better Queer Person, or in control of the situation. If your response instead puts her in the hot seat and makes her feel uncomfortable, she won’t get that emotional payoff anymore. Harassing you will become way less appealing, and she will likely find another hobby, like taxidermy. Will this successfully educate her about the validity of bisexual identity? Probably not, but you know the old adage about the lightbulb wanting to be changed. Also it sounds like educating this girl would be a full-time job, and you have a life to live — if she really wants to learn about why she’s wrong, there are plenty of free resources she can turn to on her own time.

The bottom line is there are so many great people on earth you could be spending time with — or at least people who can sit through a single episode of Adventure Time with you without having to spout vile accusations about your character and sexual orientation. You deserve that experience; having your social interactions not make you feel actively shitty should not be too much to ask. Next time somebody wants to goad you into providing an explanation of your entire sexual orientation, make it clear that you’ll be happy to, right after they explain why they’re such an asshole.

In order to make sure that the comments section on this article is a healthy and welcoming place for our bisexual readers, please note that any comments that question the validity of bisexuality or sexual fluidity as a sexual orientation, question Autostraddle’s decision to publish pieces discussing bisexuality, or make essentialist claims about bisexual people (ex. bisexuals are cheaters, bisexuals turn out to be gay) will be swiftly deleted.

Catwoman is Bisexual, Confirms All of Our Lifelong Crushes

The latest series of Catwoman’s solo title has been widely praised and celebrated for its originality, slow-burning and tantalizing crime story, great art and the new direction that it’s taking the character. In a lot of ways, it’s reminiscent of the classic Gotham Central series, but focusing on the other side of the law. With issue #39, it steps into a new frontier by showing that Selina Kyle, one of Batman’s, and all of Comicdom’s greatest villains and anti-heroes, is bisexual, and having her kiss another woman.

Catwoman #39 art by Garry Brown.

That other woman is Eiko Hasigawa, who is the current Catwoman and the daughter of a Gotham City Yakuza boss. The crime family that Selina has found herself at the head of and the Hasigawa family are about to be at war, and seeing as Eiko is the liason between the two, this could create some tension between her and Selina. Good thing Selina’s used to tension in her relationships.

This current storyline, written by Genevieve Valentine and illustrated by Garry Brown, started with issue #35 and has Selina Kyle giving up the leather outfit of Catwoman for the tailored suits of a Gotham Crime Lord (and dang, does she look good in a suit). In her absence, a new Catwoman has risen up: Eiko Hasigawa, who keeps on getting tangled up in Selina’s life. She’s perhaps more of a do-gooder than Selina was in the role, and even confronts the former Catwoman because of some of the crime family moves she’s making. Selina tells her that things are more complicated that she thinks and that she’s doing what she’s doing because she loves Gotham and is trying to make it a better city.

Selina and Eiko in an early encounter, which Valentine scripted as having close-talking that should be comparable to Xena. Catwoman #36 art by Garry Brown

As many of you probably know, Selina Kyle has long been a favorite comic book character of many queer ladies. All you have to do is watch Michelle Pfeiffer play her in Batman Returns to completely understand why. I mean, come on, with the “bad girl” streak, the leather outfit, the whip and the take-charge attitude how can you not have a crush on her? Now, with Catwoman #39, she becomes the highest profile canonically queer comic book character of all-time. Catwoman is one of DC’s most iconic characters. She’s not just a part of comic book culture, she’s a part of mainstream American culture. She’s been around since Batman #1 in 1940 and has starred in her own comic, in multiple TV shows and a couple of movies. She’s been played by Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt, the previously mentioned Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry and Anne Hathaway. Catwoman is known by millions of Americans and millions more around the world, and now she’s officially and openly bisexual.

On her blog, Valentine confirmed that yes, Selina Kyle is bisexual and that no, this kiss “isn’t a throwaway” and that she’s working on a story for Selena and Eiko’s relationship “that would be woven into the next arc.” It’s wonderful that Valentine recognizes how important this moment is for comics and for culture, and it’s wonderful that she’s taking so much care to make this story as good as it can be. Also, it’s wonderful that she, unlike so many people that we see in pop culture, actually understands what bisexuality is, as shown by her saying “Selina’s longstanding connection to Batman has not been forgotten; that is not how bisexuality (or humanity) works.”

Eiko and Selina on the cover of Catwoman #36 with art by Jae Lee.

Selina Kyle’s being confirmed as canonically bisexual is definitely a huge thing, but we also can’t ignore the importance of Eiko. Since she’s the current Catwoman, that means that Catwoman is a queer woman of color. That’s big, big news. Of course, we don’t know how long she’ll be in the role of Catwoman, but we do know that Valentine isn’t done with her yet.

Both Selina Kyle being depicted as bisexual and the introduction of a queer woman of color as Catwoman are positive signs that the trend of introducing more diverse characters and women into comics is going to stick around. In the last few years DC, Marvel and a bunch of independent comics have been including more and more women, more and more people of color and more and more LGBTQ characters in their comics, and have been giving many of them their own comics to star in. Selina Kyle being shown as bisexual is perhaps the most high profile example of this so far. As long as DC keeps making decisions like this, the future is looking bright for women and queer people who want to see themselves represented in the pages of their favorite comics. We all want to have heroes who are like us, and now with Catwoman, queer women across the world have a popular, iconic and super version of that.

Kate Brown Becomes Governor of Oregon, Is (Still) Openly Bisexual

Democrat Kate Brown is now sitting Governor of Oregon, following the “bizarre and unprecedented” resignation of elected Governor John Kitzhaber over an ethics scandal. Brown was sworn in on February 18, and is the first openly bisexual person to serve at such a high level of political office in the United States.

Governor Brown is a 24-year-veteran of the state Legislature and secretary of state’s office, most recently serving six years as Secretary of State. In Oregon, the Secretary of State is lieutenant governor, handling audits, elections, archives, and business registrations. Brown’s status as sitting governor will go before voters in a special election next year. If she wins, she will serve the remaining two years of Kitzhaber’s term, and could run for a full four-year term in 2018.

Chief Justice Thomas Balmer administers the oath of office to Secretary of State Kate Brown in the House chamber of the Oregon Capitol on Feb. 18, 2015. Brown becomes the state’s 38th governor, succeeding John Kitzhaber, who resigned amid an ethics scandal. Bruce Ely/Staff. Via OregonLive.com.

Brown — who was born in Spain but raised in Minnesota — first moved to Oregon to study law at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. After earning her JD in 1985, she stayed in the area to practice family law for several years, eventually taking a job in 1991 as an advocate for women in the Oregon legislature. When Brown began dating a woman, she hid it from her colleagues in fear.

“I was walking on eggshells the whole time,” Brown said of the experience in Breaking Through, a documentary about LGBT politicians. “Like I couldn’t be who I am — I’m not free to be myself. It feels like you’re cutting off your legs or your arms. It feels like you can’t be a whole person.”

When an Oregon newspaper called one night and announced that they would be outing her in their newspaper the following day, Brown was forced to go public with her sexuality. In Out and Elected in the USA: 1974-2004, an exhibit by Ron Schlittler, Brown described the reception: rejection by gay friends who called her “half-queer,” inappropriate sexual advances by legislative colleagues, and being told by her parents, “It would be much easier for us if you were a lesbian.”

Kate Brown (D), State Senator, Portland, Oregon. Photo by Ron Schlittler. Via Out History.

In spite of this, Brown remained in the House, helping to pass the legislation that made Oregon one of the first states to enact family medical leave. In 1997, she ran for a seat in the Oregon state Senate, narrowly defeating a three term incumbent who outspent her two to one. Brown believes support from the LGBT community was a major factor in her win.

As a legislator, Brown was the chief sponsor of the state’s first domestic partnership legislation, and successfully blocked anti-gay ballot measures across the state. In 2008, Brown became the first woman to serve as Oregon Senate majority leader, and later that year she was elected secretary of state.

Although Brown has said little so far on her plans as governor, a look at her campaign contributors and political background suggest a slightly more progressive outlook than her (also Democratic) predecessor. Issues such as education funding, timber policy, tort reform and campaign finance limits are all on the table. Many will also be watching to see what, if anything, she does to address recent allegations of an overly cozy relationship with Comcast.

Kate Brown took the oath of office to become Oregon’s 38th governor, February 18, 2015. Michael Lloyd/Staff. Via OregonLive.com.

Regardless of what the future holds, many view Brown’s nationally commented-on appointment as a major win for bisexual visibility. Although gay and lesbian politicans have been making rapid gains in numbers, the number of nationally out bisexual politicians can be counted on one hand. (Two, if retirees are included.) Aside from Brown, they are:

• JoCasta Zamarripa, current Congressional Representative from Wisconsin (8th district) and Minority Caucus Vice-Chair.
• Kyrsten Sinema, current Congressional Representative from Arizona (9th district).
• Angie Buhl O’Donnell, current Congressional Representative from South Dakota (15th district) and Minority Whip.
• Micah Kellner, who served as a member of the New York State Assembly from the 76th district last year. However, his offices were closed in June due to harassment sanctions and Kellner is not seeking reelection.
• Evelyn Mantilla, who served as a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives from 1997 to 2007.

Brown lives with her husband Dan Little in southeast Portland, where Brown is an active member in the LGBT community and an encouraging role model for youth.

In order to make sure that the comments section on this article is a healthy and welcoming place for our bisexual readers, please note that any comments that question the validity of bisexuality or sexual fluidity as a sexual orientation, question Autostraddle’s decision to publish pieces discussing bisexuality, or make essentialist claims about bisexual people (ex. bisexuals are cheaters, bisexuals turn out to be gay) will be swiftly deleted. 

Empire’s Tiana Is A Hot Girl, Has A Hot Girl (And Boy!)

Lady lovers assemble! This past week, Empire’s Tiana Brown revealed that she has a girlfriend. In addition to her boyfriend. Clear your schedule now, because Empire airs at 8/7c on Fox and we need to talk about this show.

Haven’t been watching? Let’s catch you up real quick. Here’s the premise: When successful hip hop mogul Lucious Lyons (Terrence Howard) is diagnosed with ALS, he puts his three sons in competition with each other to determine who will take over as CEO of his entertainment company, Empire Enterprises.

Front: Lucious. Left to Right: Andre, Cookie, Jamal, Hakeem.

The frontrunner is oldest son Andre (Trai Byers), who’s basically all business and has a conniving and power-hungry wife, Rhonda (Kaitlin Doubleday). Middle son Jamal (Jussie Smollett) is a talented indie singer-songwriter, but he has a live-in boyfriend, Michael (Rafael de la Fuente), and Lucious is super homophobic. Youngest son Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray) is allegedly recording his debut hip hop album, but appears to be more interested in partying than anything else. The boys’ tough-as-nails mother, Cookie (Taraji P. Henson), has just been released from a 17-year jail sentence, and is (secretly) working as an informant. As one of the only people who knows the truth about how Lucious started the company using drug money, Cookie works out a deal in the first episode to get a $5 million salary along with a spot in Empire’s A&R department. She takes Jamal under her wing, and soon after, also begins to manage Tiana (played by actress Serayah).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp7cEz-ZpeI

From the moment Tiana graces the screen, it’s immediately clear that she’s the hottest act at Empire. When Hakeem runs into her in a rehearsal studio in the second episode, he immediately tries to pick her up by complimenting her act as “bananas” and telling her that there are “a lot of perks that come with being nice to me.” Tiana is not impressed. She tells him to stop ruining her rehearsal and turns him down in no uncertain terms.

Hours later, Hakeem and his crew get drunk in a fancy restaurant and film a viral video in which they call out everyone from Tiana to President Obama (whom Hakeem’s father calls personally to apologize to). Hakeem doesn’t apologize to Tiana, exactly, but during his performance at Laviticus, he works her name into his song lyrics. She’s intrigued. After the show, she meets him in his dressing room and they hook up.

The next time we see Tiana, she’s recording a music video with labelmate Veronica (Veronika Bozeman). Tiana sings about looking for a hot boy so she can be a hot girl, “oh na, na, na.” It’s very Rihanna circa 2010.

Lucious pushes Hakeem to continue his relationship with Tiana, and takes her side when a disagreement breaks out over who should be foregrounded in the video. When Veronica’s manager complains with a veiled threat about “needing protection,” Lucious takes him into his trailer, beats him with a metal rod, and fires him.

Later, Tiana joins the family for dinner as Hakeem’s date. It’s uncomfortable but also hilarious when Cookie pointedly stares down Lucious’ new girlfriend, Anika (Grace Gealey), and leads grace by asking God not to withhold blessings even from “hoes that hire skanks to spy on me.” (Yeah, that happened. This show is a little soap opera-y. Okay, more than a little.)

Tiana sits on Hakeem’s lap during a post-dinner musical performance by Jamal. Everything seems to be looking good for them as a couple… until the very next scene, where we see Jamal making out with another chick (Camilla, played by Naomi Campbell) on top of a pool table. It’s revealed that they’ve secretly been seeing each other for over a year.

When Hakeem fails to show up for dinner later that week with just Cookie and Tiana, Tiana goes to his penthouse and walks in on him and Camilla. She walks out without saying a word. Meanwhile, Camilla asks Hakeem why he gave Tiana a key to his apartment when he knew he might be taking romantic bubble baths with another woman. A valid question.

Tiana and Hakeem don’t speak again until the night of their duet at the Teen Choice Awards. Hakeem misses sound check and is confused when Tiana doesn’t seem to care about Hakeem seeing Camilla. “Don’t you dare blow this,” she says. “Let’s get it really tight and bring this house down.” They do.

One week later, “Takeem” is in full force in the public eye. Tiana stands up for Hakeem to a reporter, and they make cute faces at each other on the red carpet. On the ride home, Hakeem asks if Tiana will come over to his house. She declines. He asks if she’s “feeling [him] like that,” presumably referring to their status as a public “it” couple. She says “yeah” with a kiss, and says she’ll see him later. Hakeem’s crew teases him for being in love.

When Tiana gets home, there’s someone already waiting for her: a blonde woman in a neon sports bra.

Mystery Woman: Hey, T. Did you have fun?

Tiana: Yeah.

Mystery Woman: You’re already up on Perez.

Tiana: I know.

Mystery Woman: You looked hot.

Tiana: Thanks.

Tiana takes off her coat, walks across the room, and sits on Mystery Woman’s lap. They make out.

At a photo shoot the next day, Rhonda calls Andre into the studio. He’s mildly annoyed, but she’s insistent. “I would not have pulled you down here unless it was important,” says Rhonda. “God loves us. And he sent us a little gift.” She pulls back the clothing on a hanging clothes rack to reveal Tiana and Mystery Woman, limbs entwined, sharing an intimate moment on a chaise. Rhonda pulls out her phone, telling her husband the recording will serve as fodder for “a meltdown for Hakeem.”

Some unspecified amount of time later, we see Tiana and her background dancers practicing synchronized choreography to Hakeem’s newest song, “Drip Drop.” Tiana asks Cookie’s assistant, Porsha (Ta’Rhonda Jones), to handle the knuckleheads Hakeem rolls with. Porsha just laughs at her.

Here’s a photo, because they both have really excellent hair in this scene:

When it’s time to film, Tiana meets up with Hakeem on set. He thanks her for agreeing to be in the video. Mid-shoot, Andre steps outside and tells Rhonda to go ahead and spread the footage they took earlier all over the internet. When the story goes live on Perez Hilton, we finally learn Mystery Woman’s name: India (who is, by the way, played by Elizabeth Whitson).

After finding the story, Porsha immediately shows the other assistants. They appear alternately shocked, delighted and concerned.”That is hot as hell,” Porsha exclaims with excitement.

Unsurprisingly, Hakeem is not pleased with this development. He confronts Tiana.

Hakeem: Hey, yo, Tiana, this how we really roll? We supposed to be a team. Whatever you do reflects off me. What the hell is you doing?

Tiana: Don’t yell at me.

Hakeem: What you mean, don’t yell at you?

Tiana: Somebody at India’s job was taping us.

Hakeem: India? You my girl. You ain’t supposed to be kissing no damn India chick, and you know that.

Tiana: So, if it was a dude, it would’ve been all right?

Hakeem: I’m not saying that.

Tiana: Look, you got a sidepiece, too.

Everyone is surprised to learn about Hakeem’s chick on the side, although I’m not entirely sure why, given the boy’s reputation. Tiana scoffs and walks off. Hakeem calls off the video shoot.

Tiana calls Cookie and tells her what happened, referring to India specifically as “my girlfriend.” Overcoming the urge to make incoherent gleeful noises for half an hour (I assume), Cookie takes it all in stride. “All right, look, girl, I don’t judge, but you’s a freak,” she says. “That’s a good thing. We can sell that.”

…Yeah.

In response, Tiana makes the only appropriate face one can make in reaction to that remark.

Back at the studio, Andre advises Hakeem, “It is the measure of a man how you come back from these things.” Hakeem replies that he doesn’t want to work with “that girl.”

Across the room, Tiana has zero fucks to give. She’s now accompanied by India, who specializes in looking pensive, sullen and bored.

Lucious comes by to tell his son that he can’t afford to waste precious time, “especially over a thot.” (Because what better way to rally your offspring than by throwing misogynistic slurs, amirite?)

Lucious: Let’s look at it from a mathematical perspective. Your girlfriend has a girlfriend.

Hakeem: Mm.

Lucious: Add that up.

Hakeem: Two?

Lucious: Two girlfriends. It’s a mathematician’s dream. You… it’s trigonometry.

Umm, I’m not so sure about that. Also, I’m slightly surprised by how seamless his reaction is here, considering that in an earlier flashback, we literally saw Lucious throw his gay son away. As in, he physically picked up little-kid Jamal, stuffed him in a trash can, and slammed the lid down. But biphobia intersected with misogynoir is a different equation to solve than straight up homophobia, I guess.

Regardless, Lucious’ little motivational speech works here, and Hakeem gets back to recording. By the final music montage, it appears that India, Tiana and Hakeem are all on the same page. They’re going to work their triad for all it’s worth as they venture down the road to wealth and fame together. At least in public.

And that’s where we are today. Good Lord. There’s so much to process, I hardly know where to start.

On the one hand, I absolutely love Tiana’s brazen self-sufficiency. She’s not afraid to turn a guy down… and then change her mind and seduce him, just because she can and she wants to. I like that she goes after her desires and doesn’t waste any time being apologetic for it. Her dance moves are mesmerizing, and adding another bi women of color character to broadcast TV is a-okay with me.

On the other hand, the relationship between Tiana and Hakeem strikes me as totally self-serving, on both ends. They’re clearly using each other to get ahead, and the way they (don’t) communicate is highly annoying to me. Bisexuality is often used as a trope to indicate immaturity, deceptiveness, or both, and I worry about the ways in which Tiana fulfills harmful stereotypes. Though to be fair, Hakeem has her beat on both counts, and it’s not fair to ask one bisexual to represent all bisexuals everywhere. It’s also a little early to tell how they’re going to handle her storyline. So.

Left: Young Dro. 2006, real life. Right: Hakeem, 2015, fiction.

It seems realistic to me that the people around Tiana would want to leverage her bisexuality as “hot” and a titillating novelty they can use to further her career. Within the music industry, lady loving ladies have historically been the “holographic Charizard card of urban music.” As Brittani once explained,

Hip hop and R&B remain genres fraught with tension when it comes to relations with the LGBTQ community. Between Nicki Minaj’s faux bisexuality and Chris Brown’s what-seems-like-weekly homophobic rants, who would’ve thunk that male artists would be so affirming of the queer lady lifestyle… kind of? In these industries, being a gay male is equated with weakness and failure as it’s the exact opposite of the “I got bitches” mentality that’s so prevalent. …

Using supposedly bisexual women as a pawn in their mastermind scheme shows just how cunning the artist is. In a landscape where sexual prowess is as important as money and power, sending sexy woman folk out to do their bidding has become the ultimate bragging right. These men are only interested in lesbian action as it relates to them. The sexual conquests and flawed versions of bisexuality strangely assert and negate women’s sexual agency simultaneously.

Obviously I’m not in favor of outsiders exploiting queer sexuality, but I am looking forward to watching this show dig in to the issue a bit more. For one thing, Tiana has an honest-to-goodness girlfriend; they don’t appear to be setting her up Katy Perry-style to obnoxiously reinforce the idea that women do everything — including having same-sex relationships — for the benefit of men. Tiana was clearly not having it when she heard Cookie’s plan, and I very much doubt she’s going to silently let it happen. Also, Jamal is being positioned as the brother for audiences to root for, right? It just seems like there’s a strong vibe of wanting to do right by LGBQ people on this show.

Perhaps my biggest hope right now is that Tiana will label her sexuality. Nobody ever says the word “bisexual” on TV! Not Emily Fields, not Piper Chapman, not Brittany S. Pierce , and I’m sick of it. Wouldn’t it be awesome to see the outspoken Tiana break the silence? And even if her queerness isn’t something the fictional public can stomach, we know that real life pop music stars (such as Nicki Minaj, Jessie J. and Mel B.) sometimes recant on their queerness. That’s sad, but it’s a thing that happens, and we never get to see the other side of it. If it turns out we can’t have out-and-proud for this character, wouldn’t that be an interesting story to explore?

Anyway, that’s hypothetical, and I’m probably getting ahead of myself. What do you think?

Bisexual Women’s Mental Health Remains Poor, So What Do We Do?

Feature image via Shutterstock

In familiar and horrible news, bi women in the UK experience worse mental health than straight women and lesbians. Based on responses from 5,700 lesbian and bisexual women surveyed in 2007, bisexual women had worse outcomes than lesbians in most categories, according to a new study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published in the Journal of Public Health.

Bi women were 64 percent more likely to report a problem with disordered eating and 37 percent more likely to have self-harmed compared to lesbians. They were also more depressed and more anxious, less likely to be out to friends and family, and less likely to be in relationships.

Only 16 percent of the sample identified themselves as bisexual, although other studies have shown numbers of UK bisexual and lesbian women to be about equal. That may be because bi women are ashamed to report their identity — a shame that leads to further mental health problems, the study authors note.

“These disturbing results echo international findings on mental health differences between bisexual and homosexual people,” said Lisa College, the study’s lead author. “Although non-heterosexual women as a group have far poorer mental health than heterosexual women, bisexual women report even worse mental distress than lesbians. All women deserve equal chances of mental wellbeing and happiness, regardless of their sexuality. Homophobic prejudice is now widely and rightly condemned; specific stigma around bisexual identity needs to be similarly confronted.”

As we’ve reported, bisexuals struggle with physical health problems at higher rates than gays and lesbians, too.

via the Bi Resource Center’s Bisexual Health Awareness Month, held in March

The press release on the UK study also notes that 10 years ago, bisexual and lesbian women had similar rates of mental health distress, and “The authors suggest that legal and social changes in subsequent years (e.g. the 2004 Civil Partnership Act, and improvements in public attitudes towards lesbian and gay people) may have benefitted lesbian women more than bisexual women. The 2012 Bisexuality Report highlights ongoing prejudice against UK bisexual people.”

Put another way, the fact that bisexuals are invisible in the equality narrative and often not considered while pushing policy efforts means we’re not benefitting from those efforts as much as our lesbian counterparts.

A study like this comes out a couple times a year and it can get exhausting to constantly realize how rocky the landscape is for bi women — a combination of poor mental health outcomes, shame, lack of resources and overt social prejudice and erasure look massively overwhelming.

But the first step is talking about it — studies like this are vital, even if they all say the same depressing thing, because they force people to confront the real impacts of biphobia and discrimination.

Last year’s LGBT MAP report “Understanding Issues Facing Bisexual Americans” highlights some suggestions for improving these outcomes. One key solution is bisexual competence training for healthcare providers — for example, therapists need to learn that bisexual patients may have very different experiences than gay and lesbian ones. Researchers looking at LGB issues need to investigate and report more precisely to raise awareness for the distinct needs of each group for the benefit of all groups and the community as a whole. They should also avoid conflating sexuality and gender identity.

Another necessary step is creating more bi-specific resources and projects within larger LGBT organizations and as stand alone initiatives to improve visibility, access and understanding about and within the bi community, and existing organizations and researchers need additional support from LGBT funders.

“We need to have executive directors who have the autonomy of being salaried by their organizations,” said bisexual advocate Estraven Le Guin. “It is so ironic that we have such high poverty levels and we can’t even pay the folks who are doing the work for us, they have to have other jobs on the side. ”

2014 was a big year for bisexuals. Bisexual celebrities were louder than ever — who can forget Anna Paquin’s perfect, side-eye-filled rebuttal to Larry King’s dumb questions? We celebrated the first ever Bisexual Awareness Week, the first ever Bisexual Health Awareness Month, Nickelodeon’s Legend of Korra gave us an animated bi couple to cheer for, and bisexuality became a mainstream topic after the New York Times Magazine article that shall not be linked revived the public conversation about whether bisexuality exists (hint: it does).

Let’s make 2015 even better. We need more funding for organizations like BiNet USA, Bisexual Resource Center and BiUK, some of the only groups dedicated to providing resources for bisexual people, and LGBT organizations need to dedicate more resources to bisexual people and our specific challenges. The media should stop questioning bisexuality’s existence and instead address our stories with compassion. Bi women deserve physical and mental health care that responds to their needs so we can make statistics like those in the UK study and so many others a thing of the past.

Evan Rachel Wood And Kate Moennig Break Up, Earth Implodes, Sadness Ensues

feature images via Getty

In mid-October, we breathlessly reported that the glorious romantic union of fictional Lothario Kate Moennig and Evan Rachel Wood Bisexual was a real thing happening in our lives. We were delighted to learn that two very goodlooking, very famous human beings were maybe/definitely kissing each other on the regular. How innocent we were then! So young and full of promise! It is with our deepest regrets that we inform you that according to trustworthy sources at Us Magazine, our favourite power-couple of 2014 may have gone their separate ways. We never even got to give them a catchy name!

Although the two had been reportedly text-flirting since February of 2013, it seems that the relationship itself was only a couple of months or maybe even weeks old – a great deal of anticipation for a relationship that burned too brightly, and could not last. You were too pure for this world, Kate and Evan. The world just wasn’t ready.

A forlorn Evan Rachel Wood Bisexual has been tweeting very sad things, the modern equivalent of leaving a bunch of heart-wrenching Fiona Apple lyrics in your AIM away message.

…all the time, to keep you off my mind!

— Evan Rachel Wood (@evanrachelwood) October 27, 2014

ok excuse me everyone, 2001 throwback song of the day ‘gone’ #nsync — Evan Rachel Wood (@evanrachelwood) November 3, 2014

Kate Moennig has tweeted a lot about television shows she’s been watching.

To be fair, the only solid evidence we have of this (dreamy) affair is their singular appearance at a Los Angeles gala last month – beyond that, their relationship remains a complete mystery. The two were rarely photographed together, never spotted gazing lovingly into each others’ eyes over a $30 kale salad, never adopted a rescue cat together. A solid 99.9% of their relationship happened inside my own imagination.

Like the relationship itself, the reasons for the break-up have been very private. At this time, there is no reason to suspect that Moennig left Wood at the altar at a picturesque ski resort in British Columbia, paid for by a very rich British woman the couple barely knew. A source tells Us that the split may only be a break, which fills our hearts with hope for the future.

Commenters on said Us Magazine article made sure to remind Evan Rachel Wood that she only just divorced her husband (determined ballet dancer Jamie Bell) this past spring, and that probably she isn’t really bisexual anyway. Those people are all gross.

In these trying times, dear reader, we hope that both Moennig and Wood are taking excellent care of themselves, not watching each others’ movies obsessively and crying in the shower (which is what I’d be doing/am doing, whatever). Evan, if you want to get brunch and talk about your feelings, I’m around all week and I’ll even buy you a mimosa. It’s good to get out of the house, girl. We’re all here for you.

…Oh girl.

Mel B Says She Was A Lesbian “For A Few Years,” That’s Not How Any Of This Works

Perhaps you, like me, came of age in the mid-90’s, when The Spice Girls ruled the charts. They were bastions of feminism for very young girls, clomping around in huge platform shoes, posing cheekily for photos all around the world and declaring that the only thing the world truly needed was a healthy dose of girl power. Their message was simple, powerful and effective. The Spice Girls were more than pop stars – they were superheroes, and as far as my 12-year-old brain could tell, they could do no wrong.

Today we are here to discuss Melanie Brown, née Scary Spice, and question whether or not our dear Melanie has forgotten the principles of girl power.

Best music video of all time, and if you do not agree with me you are wrong.

Friday night, the artist formerly known as Scary Spice appeared on Alan Carr’s variety show “Chatty Man,” presumably to discuss her experiences as a judge on pretty much every singing-and/or-dancing-based reality show on this planet. Somehow, the topic of Mel’s well-reported fluid sexuality came up. As we’ve discussed previously, Melanie has had well-documented romances with women, and has also admitted to kissing all the other Spice Girls (be still my heart). In 2007, she was quoted as saying, “People call me lesbian, bisexual or heterosexual, but I know who’s in my bed and that’s it… I have a huge libido and a great sex life.” She’s made a few troubling statements about sexuality over the years, but things really took a turn Friday when Carr mentioned straight women who “become lesbians” for a period of time, presumably for cheap thrills.

“Yeah, I was one of those for a few years,” Brown declared. When asked if she’d consider herself a lesbian, she replied, “I would not call it that. I was just one of those ladies. Now I’m happily married.” Oh, OK.

Thank you, Tumblr.

Melanie Brown has been married to film producer Steven Belafonte since 2007 and the two seem very happy together, which is awesome! We’re really happy for you, Mel! However, the implication that Melanie’s attraction to women is something she experimented with for a brief period before putting it on the shelf and forgetting about it entirely is troubling for… basically anyone who falls somewhere in-between on the Kinsey scale. “Now I’m happily married” also posits “happy marriage” and “being a lesbian” as mutually exclusive.

Her dalliances with women (including several legitimate and serious relationships that spanned multiple years) don’t make her “just one of those girls,” and to phrase it that way seems awfully insulting – as though her relationships with women were in some way less important than her relationships with men. There are so many ways she could speak positively about her past relationships and the genders of her former lovers without implying that she had somehow “cured” her sexuality by marrying a man! So many! Please just stop.

Of course, Mel B doesn’t owe us anything and is free to define herself as she pleases — she isn’t a lesbian spokesperson, nor is she the dictionary responsible for defining the sexual orientation vocabulary. But as a feminist and an LGBTQ ally, shouldn’t she be staying away from perpetuating damaging stereotypes about sexuality when she speaks about her own? As Riese wrote when Jessie J told the press that her bisexuality was just a “phase” and that she wanted to “stop talking about it completely now and find [herself] a husband,” “It’s not Jessie J’s responsibility to ensure that your friends and family believe that your bisexuality is real… but it is her responsibility, as it is every ally’s responsibility, to not talk about bisexuality like it’s a curse or a disease she can’t wait to be rid of — a nasty thing from the past she loathes to revisit. And although she doesn’t have to lie to the media, it would’ve been awfully kind for her to refrain from referring to it as a “phase,” specifically.”

The UK’s Daily Express has made a very big deal about Melanie asking The Great British Bake Off television presenter and lesbian-of-note Sue Perkins for her phone number after the show, which obviously means that the two are destined to hook up. Because that’s how phone numbers work.

but for real though.

We will continue to throw shade via Peggy Peabody as this story develops.

You Need Help: Attraction to Women and Feeling Like A “Bad Muslim”

feature image via shutterstock

Welcome to You Need Help! Where you’ve got a problem and yo, we solve it. Or we at least try.

Q:

I am 24 years old and live in a west European country and I am Muslim. I am still in school, and is the perfect “excuse” not to get married or try to be set up and all. But I am scared shitless for the future. What about when I finish school in a few years? What will I do then? My friends are all either married or pregnant, and I feel the odd one out. I think I am attracted to both men and women. But for the last few years I only notice women, so I am really sad. It isn’t just the attraction towards women thing, also the fact that I feel like a bad Muslim. I can’t just get to know a guy, and 6 months later bam! We are getting married. I don’t know how everyone around me is doing that. Choosing a major took more time than that.

I also feel like a bad Muslim, because I feel like a hypocrite. I choose to wear a headscarf, but only because I know my family will be very disappointed if I don’t. But still they would never force me. I feel like a hypocrite, because I want to experience everything. I don’t want to be with just one person, and forever wondering what it would be like to be with someone else. (I don’t understand why I feel so overwhelmed, when it comes to sex; to have your first kiss and losing your virginity all in one night seems like a lot, but when I talk to other girls about it, they say it’s normal, and I am just being weird, which I understand.) I feel guilty because I feel restricted, but I was always taught that our religion liberates woman, and I agree with that in general. But when it comes to me as an individual I feel restricted. I think about what it would be like to be with a girl, and I am scared that I will just end up alone. I also feel like a bad Muslim woman, because I don’t really care for having a baby like all my friends to. I don’t dream about being pregnant and all that. Maybe when I am in my thirties, but that’s too old they say. I feel like a hypocrite because I masturbate. I feel like a freak, so different than my Muslim friends, but also different than my non-Muslim friends. And hardest part is that I feel like I don’t belong anywhere.

I am just floating around, and in a few years I will have to make a decision. Because the thought of being alone for the rest of my life, not having experienced anything, not being with someone, is unbearable. But I can’t just marry a dude and have his babies either. I am really confused, and maybe you are too, after reading this story, written by someone whose first and second language are Dutch and Somali, so I guess English is my third, so I hope you can understand this. If you read all this, I think you deserve a medal. I just don’t know what to do. How to deal with my attraction towards women, maybe I will just ignore it.

A:

Fikri, Autostraddle Writer

Friend,

There are so many things I felt after reading your story but confused was not one of them. Thank you for writing in to us. You’re probably coming from a place where you’re feeling alone, but know that first, you’re not! So, so far from it. And second, I also want you to know that you sharing your story is going to make so many other people — me included — feel less alone, and that’s an important thing you’ve done.

There are so many things you’ve brought up — marriage, parenthood, friends, sex and so on — that there’s no way that I (or any other person) could take it all on, so I’ve asked a few other folks to weigh in. We’re all at different stages in our lives, with different relationships with our religion and communities and families and selves and everything, and I hope that you find a little bit of what you need here. Now it bears repeating that none of us felt we could take this all on our own when you and so many of us (queers, Muslims, weirdos, all of the above) are expected to do so every day. You’re in both an ordinary and an extraordinary position and if any one of us here deserves a medal, it’s you.

Like you, I’m thinking a lot about what life looks like beyond school (I graduate in seven months) and what form/s family and relationships take beyond the bubble of adolescence and early adulthood. I know intimately the pressures to make Big Life Decisions. Unlike you, however, I was the kind of person who was making Big Life Decisions from before I could so much as drive or vote. (I chose my major at 14.) I come from a culture where you’re expected to sort your shit out asap and then stick to the plan, especially with regard to work/education, but even then I was ahead of the game.

None of those decisions turned out the way I thought they would.

Here’s how I thought my life would be: I’d go to a local uni, coast by on the same academic interests and social circles I’ve had for years, take on a humdrum office job of no particular interest. I’d skirt questions of marriage at work and family gatherings alike, maybe saying something non-committal like wanting to focus on my career. My parents and I would have a tacit understanding that my Special Friend/s would be around but not talked about, and maybe someday we’d have enough money to share a room and a bed that would again be noted but never discussed. In other words: I thought I’d get by by never talking about anything, ever.

Here’s how my life has turned out: I went so far away for school and I learnt that there are places in the world where we don’t talk about our partners in vague, gender-neutral terms. (Not just overseas but at home, too.) I changed my mind about what I wanted out of my education and work and relationships; I learnt that it’s okay to want — maybe even expect — more than to just get by. I started dating a woman who challenges the way I think about sex and relationships and politics every day and who’s supported me through coming out to friends, schoolmates, future colleagues, family and the whole damn internet (not all of which was deliberate). In other words: I’ve gotten by by talking about everything, always.

The good news is that nothing might turn out the way you’re afraid it will. The bad news is that nothing might turn out the way you hope it will. I don’t have an It Gets Better™ narrative to offer you because I’m still figuring it out myself — those Big Life Decisions, and the million smaller ones that we make along the way — and honestly, the odds are stacked against people like us, because of sexism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and all the things that make the call to “just be yourself” fairly poor advice.

You don’t (always) have to play on those terms though. Let people surprise you. I could never predict how others would respond to my coming out: when I ran for LGBT Officer at my undergrad uni, the Islamic Society — a group I’d never even dared to think of even allying myself with, because of my queerness and blue hair and Southeast Asianness and everything — rallied behind me and provided support my non-Muslim friends didn’t always know how to give. On the other hand, when a personal essay of mine was plagiarised and circulated among Malay Muslim websites earlier this year, I found myself in the middle of a targeted harassment campaign orchestrated by the very people I’d considered my “community,” and that hurt. My social and political circles have imploded and reconfigured themselves so many times over in the past couple of years alone, and each time I’ve (re)learnt that there will always be people who won’t set aside their religion or beliefs or whatever for you, but also that there will always be those who will. Let yourself surprise you. In pushing myself (or being pushed) outside of comfort zones I’ve learnt not to give too much weight to things I tell myself about well, myself, because it’s not always true that “I’m not the kind of person who’d [write about my personal life on the internet, date non-monogamously, take on an advice piece to a fellow queer Muslim, etc.].” Don’t underestimate how much strength you have to make decisions you never thought you’d be able to, too.

There’s still plenty I’m still working through, though, and your story reminded me of that: I still find it hard to talk about sex and masturbation, even as I’m dating the most sex-positive, caring (and shameless, she’d add) person ever. I still don’t really know what to do in “Western” queer spaces centred on alcohol and hook ups other than to excuse myself after the first half an hour of standing awkwardly in a corner. And the no. 1 question I’ve gotten since I started talking about my queerness publicly is how I reconcile faith and sexuality, to which I always respond by telling people that someday I’ll write a proper piece about it. I thought this piece would be it but I was wrong, because the truth is that I don’t. I just get by. I am queer and I am a Muslim, and most of the time learning to navigate both those things simultaneously in my real actual life is hard enough without thinking about how to justify it to other people, too. There are as many ways to be Muslim as there are Muslims (just as there are as many ways to be queer as there are queers!) — it’s not as simple, or irreconcilable, as good versus bad.

Remember that everyone around you, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, is grappling with a lot of the same things that you are right now: about what they want “family” to look like and mean to them, about sex and sexuality and learning to live in their bodies, about how to hold onto faith when it can feel like there’s not much going for it. If you step back a little, away from the pressures of friends’ pregnancy announcements and impending graduations, you might realise that you don’t actually have to make Big Life Decisions right now. And you don’t always have to know what’s the best thing to do before doing something, anything.

I don’t think, however, that you’re really stuck on what to “do.” I think you know what you want, and I think that you know that your options aren’t only to marry a man or stay alone forever. I think you’re scared of what you want and what it’ll take to get there — and these are all completely understandable, valid fears. I hope, however, that you don’t confuse being afraid of your future with being afraid of yourself, because you’re a brave, amazing person with so much ahead of you. I wish you all the best.

Creatrix Tiara

Dear Letter Writer:

I was in a somewhat similar position to you, and I empathise. My family are Bangladeshi Muslims based in Malaysia, and while my parents have given up on trying to be strict with us religion-wise, they still hold some expectations/wishes for us to be married off with family etc etc. I am the last girl in my massive family tree to be unmarried; the only cousins I have younger than me are teenage boys.

I was dating a man for about 6 years — he was my first anything, but there were many years between my first kiss with him and when we “lost our virginity” (however you define that; more like we “gave it to each other”). We knew I was attracted to women from the get-go, but it wasn’t until much later (and a lot of shenanigans) that I shifted to only being sexually attracted to women. We ended up parting ways as lovers (though we are still best friends).

This caused a LOT of trouble — mostly because my parents really REALLY liked him, and so did a lot of people who knew us. Even when I came out to my parents and they figured that I wasn’t sexually attracted to men, they still wondered why I couldn’t just marry him anyway. And honestly? I still wonder that sometimes. We were thissuperclose to getting engaged, even if it was for more practical reasons, and I spent a lot of time and mental energy beating myself up for letting my sexuality get in the way of what was otherwise a really fulfilling, loving, and positive relationship. It didn’t help that my future relationships with women turned out to be somewhat tumultuous, and I’ve been wondering whether I threw a good thing away just because of my sex drive.

I totally hear you about finding the idea of marrying a guy for the sake of marrying him and then having babies etc etc to be unbearable, but at the same time I wonder if both of us are grappling with filial piety: how our family’s wishes are ultimately considered to be more important than our own, how it would be selfish and painful to not make them happy. This can be a huge mental block for people who don’t grok filial piety and who don’t understand why “just cut your parents out of your life and do what you want to do!” is so easy to follow. We ultimately do care about our family’s happiness, and this is probably stronger if we are shown how our family members sacrificed their personal happiness too, or had a different idea about what makes them happy. My parents didn’t get married because of their sexual attraction necessarily, but that doesn’t mean their marriage is any less valid to them.

My parents didn’t try to throw the religion angle at me when I came out (as I said, they kinda gave up on that once we turned out to be heathen weirdos) but they were concerned about everyone else in our family and community finding out because they were potentially more conservative and it could come back to bite me (especially since in Malaysia it’s still technically illegal to be anything but straight & cis). I did end up coming out to my extended family, and those who responded were generally positive about it; I think most people just didn’t understand what I meant by “gay.” Maybe your family is the same? You might have allies in places you don’t expect. It’s up to you how much you trust other people to come out to them or even just talk about sexuality, but there may be people in your family that grok your predicament.

As for being a bad Muslim: honestly, I think there are very few people that can count as a “good Muslim.” I grew up having to take Islamic Studies classes for 11 years and behind the hijab were so many bullies and hypocrites and awful people — as well as many good, loving people. The hijab wasn’t any reliable indicator of personal morals or religious piety. There are a lot of young-ish Muslim writers, thinkers, artists, etc on places like Twitter and Tumblr that actually talk about the good Muslim/bad Muslim false dichotomy and how they negotiate it personally, and some of them are queer. Look up the people behind hashtags like #NotYourStockMuslim or #NotYourTerrorist or #MuslimApologies to see if any of them can help.

I am starting to get the “when are you getting married” questions, since I’m 29 and the last girl standing. I don’t have the heart to tell them “well, right now I’m single and am in no hurry to look, but if I do get married it’s likely to not be with a guy and I don’t know how you feel about that.” I was going to say that 24 is still pretty young, but I understand how sometimes you can get bombarded with these questions practically from the moment you hit puberty. As for when you need to make a decision: I say you don’t have to decide what happens then now. Circumstances can change quickly in a few years; you would have graduated, probably have met new people, and would have a different understanding of yourself and the world. There’s no need to worry about making a decision now, even with all the pestering questions. You’ll cross that bridge when you get to it.

In the meantime… well, I hate to throw my dad’s response to “I am in a relationship!” to you, but try to focus on your studies. Or on living your own life. You can delay the marriage/sexuality question till later — there is more to you than your relationships. See what happens on the other side; it may be weirder and more interesting than you expect.

Good luck, I don’t envy your pain, but I hear you and send you love. <3

Maryam, Autostraddle Contributor

Salaam wa laikum. And thank you for writing,

You can’t judge yourself based on your friends. As Muslims, we aim to please Allah SWT, not just those around us. That’s what’s freeing about religion.

And part of that is knowing Allah has a unique plan for everyone. It doesn’t make you less Muslim to be different. Among the Companions (P) are people of broad and diverse backgrounds. Even your friends are experiencing marriage and pregnancy differently from each other. So, maybe it took you longer for you to find your major. But it also meant finding a major better suited to you. One that you could pursue farther than if you’d just chosen a major to have one.

It’s the same with marriage. Maybe you’ll need more than 6 months to decide if you want to marry someone. Maybe it will be in your 30s. That’s not too old. My mother was 34 when she had me, and she and my father were engaged for 2 years. My cousin Sarah was 29 when she got married. My Aunt Omima never did.

But Aunt Omima wasn’t lonely. Or, she wasn’t lonely because she was unmarried. She still had a large company of family and friends, and, even though you feel different from them, you still seem to have a group of friends. The key to stopping loneliness is being comfortable in your skin. No amount of company can change that. People can be in marriages can still be very lonely.

As for being attracted to women: there’s nothing about your desires that are different from other women, it’s just that they’re about women instead of men. When I was younger people didn’t think anything about me being attracted to women, because they assumed I was a man. It’s the same thing.

Also, you’re not a hypocrite because you wear a headscarf for your family. Doing something (like wearing hijab) to ease your parents’ hearts is considered a good motivation in Islam. If nothing else, your intention is halal, and actions are judged by intentions.

Oh, and statistically, one third of your friends have masturbated in the last month, even if they won’t admit it. You’re not alone.

Sincerely,
Maryam

Wazina Zondon, Sexuality Educator & Co-Creator of Coming Out Muslim: Radical Acts of Love

Dear,

Thank you! Thank you for reaching out and thank you for sharing your reality because what you may not know is that you are speaking words and truths that you share with so many people: Muslim and non-Muslim; people who are questioning their sexual orientation; people who are wondering what is next for them…

I have been thinking long and hard about your words and what comes to me are are the words of my dear friend, sister in spirituality and creative partner, Terna:

Allah makes Muslims.
Allah makes queers.

For me, being both has never been a source of internal conflict. I’ve never felt Islam ask me to be something other what I am. If Allah is closer than my own jugular vein, is the creator (ya Khalaq! ya Bari! ya Mussawir!) of my heart, the source of its blood and beat, how could I despise myself?

I have heard Terna say these words so many times, both in her soothing my personal fears and questioning my path and purpose and I have heard her share them with queer Muslims and queer people who thought they were the only one or that they had to leave their faith because there was no room for them.

The truth is: there is room for all of us in Islam.

Yes, there are messages of homophobia, sexism, expectations of us based on our gender, our family desires for us, and the messages from every place else that we are surrounded by, day in and day out and we absorb them without even knowing, they fill our cells with self-doubt and fear.

I can only speak from my experience but as the daughter of immigrants to the United States/NYC, growing up in an Afghan household, I struggled with (and still do) figuring out the balance of family desires for me, my desires to be the perfect daughter without losing out on my beloved culture and identity, all the while making sense of all the messages from both family, my friends, media and ‘American’ culture:

• to be heterosexual or ‘straight’ (aka heteronormativity)
• the anti-immigrant sentiment (aka xenophobia)
• the hatred and ignorance towards people of color and anyone who wasn’t white (aka racism)
• to look, act and be the ‘perfect’ type of woman who bears children and all that (aka sexism)
• to major in an area of study that would make me A LOT of money in the future in order to buy lots of stuff (aka the pressure of capitalism)

With this weighing on us, no wonder it feels like the impossible to be us… no wonder,we are uncertain and unsure about what life after college is like because we have so few (or maybe zero?!) role models and people we can turn to see what is possible or who we can become.

What allows me to keep going each day…

… to literally coax myself out of bed;
… to believe that someone can love me for who I am;
… to allow myself to dream even when it feels like there’s no reason to do so;
… to feel my attractions to the people I find attractive;

… is because I remember that I was created by Allah with purpose and an intention that shows itself in small hints and sometimes immeasurable ways, but there is reason.

I also questioned for a long time (and still do!) why I don’t desire children, marriage or if my sexual desires and attractions were normal… and they are. Masturbating, attractions, getting aroused, questioning what you have been taught and uncertainty is normal. People, especially women, rarely discuss it openly because of stigmas or fears of being judged but it does NOT mean it does not cross their mind!

You are uniquely you, but I have to be honest, you are not the first, nor the last to wonder if you belong. There are many of us, SO MANY! who are beginning to come together and shed loneliness in one another’s company. The beauty (and also burden) of living in a tech-filled world is that we can connect with others virtually until we are ready (and safe enough!) to do so physically. Tumblr, Facebook and social sites are filled with folks like us and I encourage you to take a peek and read/observe peoples’ posts (even if you don’t feel like posting). I will forewarn you about people who like to make negative, harmful, mean and ignorant comments on these sites. Never read the comments! :)

Sites like: IAmNotHaraam.Tumblr.com or follow hashtags like #qfaith,  #queermuslims or #lgbtqmuslims on Twitter and other social media.

I leave you with the words of Terna again with hopes that whoever reads them will be reminded, wherever they are:

Here’s the truth:  I want to tell you that the arms of Islam are wide enough to hold you — in your love, your anger, your boundless hope, your desire, your striving, your failing, your victory, your living, your dying. I want to tell you that every masjid can hold you, have you fling open the doors, uncovered, brazen, perhaps even LOUD, without the stone foundations shaking. I want to tell you that the adhan sings for you, for and to the ruby in your palpating chest. I want to tell you that you are Allah’s khalif(a), as we all are. Yes, you!

Send your questions to youneedhelp [at] autostraddle [dot] com or submit a question via the ASK link on autostraddle.tumblr.com. Please keep your questions to around, at most, 100 words. Due to the high volume of questions and feelings, not every question or feeling will be answered or published on Autostraddle. We hope you know that we love you regardless.

You Need Help: Do I Call Myself Bisexual?

Welcome to You Need Help! Where you’ve got a problem and yo, we solve it. Or we at least try.

Q: “I’m attracted to more than one gender, but am not sure what label to use. “Queer” resonates with me, but am I contributing to bisexual erasure if I don’t ID as bisexual?”

Audrey

I identify as both queer and bisexual because they ring true to different parts of my experience as a woman with feelings for other humans and also the world. I have always been bisexual but didn’t know how to express it. Choosing queerness gave me a context in which to live out my whole self, including my sexual and romantic desire for multiple genders. It’s been a long journey, and everyone has the right to their own individual version of that process. If the word bisexual doesn’t feel right in your mouth, don’t feel pressured to claim it for yourself. However, I also encourage you to look up bisexual resources, communities and history, as you may find things that resonate with your experience in some ways. Whatever label you choose (or don’t), the most important thing is that you accept yourself and others with an open heart.

Stef

Personally, it’s not important to me to have a label at all. If you find a word that you feel comfortable with, I encourage you to use it all you want, but only you can make that call. When I refer to a group of people who identify somewhere in-between, I tend to use the word “bisexual,” but when it comes to myself.. I’ve never had a preferred term. Pansexual? Fluid? Omnisexual? My sexual orientation has never been super easy to pin down, and it changes over time. I really struggled with this for years, but I found that I felt a lot better once I stopped pressuring myself to slap a label on it.

Lydia

I suppose since coming out, queer has felt like more of a home than bisexual. I suspect my aversion to the term “bisexual” is largely influenced by the biphobia that pervades both heterosexual and LBGTQ culture. My attractions to multiple genders seem to be a cause to doubt my “true intentions” – the typical “you can’t up your mind/you’re greedy” etc is a rather annoying (and ignorant) hurdle to deal with. Since my attraction is an ever changing spectrum, I feel best under an umbrella term that says “non-heterosexual” but doesn’t limit me to a static identity. Queer makes more sense to me; personally, it feels more fluid than any other label.

The power in choosing bi/queer/gay or whatever label you want to be identified as (it really does fluctuate depending on context) is you take back your own agency. Instead of relying on societal views and boxes, you get to choose. You have the assurance of labelling (or not labelling) yourself – rather than being defined by others. I’ve realized I will never make every single person in my life happy, so I deserve to focus on creating happiness for myself. Queer is a starting point of that for me.

Laura

Although I identify as both queer and bi, I’ve found that “bi” is the most useful label when I want to succinctly communicate my identity to strangers. When people hear that term, they know to place me in the realm of “not straight” and typically get the gist of where I fall politically. “Queer” comes with a lot less understanding and more questions — and honestly, I just don’t have the time or interest to repeatedly explain myself. I think if you choose to publicly declare a label because that word most accurately reflects how you feel deep down inside, that’s great! But if you’d rather call yourself something else for the sake of expedience, practicality or feelings of political allegiance? Well, that’s great too. You can be queer, bi, both or neither. You can say one thing today and another thing tomorrow. It’s fine! Really.

KaeLyn

I initially came out as bisexual when I was 17. However, as soon as I discovered the word “queer,” I latched on to that. Queer encapsulates everything I feel about fluidity, politics, and disrupting heteronormativity and gendernormativity in the way that I experience my own sexuality and who I’m attracted to. It just works for me. A downside, however, is that other folks think queer equals gay/lesbian, adding to bi erasure. I also used to have the wrong idea about bisexuality, believing “bi” identity meant subscribing to the gender binary. I now know that most all bisexuals do not believe in upholding the gender binary.

Most bisexuals, like me, are attracted to people regardless of gender identity and could potentially be attracted to someone at many different places on the gender spectrum (or, really, the huge-non-linear-gender-amoeba). Bi means “two.” It doesn’t have to mean “attracted to two genders (male and female).” It can mean “attracted to people of my own gender and people of other genders”, or “the ability to move along a continuum of multiple genders” as it is currently defined by the Bisexual Resource Center. So, these days, I still identify primarily as queer, but I am put myself back in the bisexual category, too. There are so many of us — possibly more than queer people who straight up ID as lesbian — but we are still a minority in terms of representation. If calling myself “bi” and helping to educate others about bi myths can help, I’m OK with that. So these days, when asked about my sexual orientation, I often say, “I’m queer/bi/pan.” It’s a little over-specific, but I feel like it’s important to be out as bisexual and queer.

Rachel

I’ve had a long and winding road to get to where I’m at today in terms of identity (which is queer and bisexual both, mostly), and so I get why this question is so hard to figure out! A lot of times nothing feels right, or more accurately (for me) everything feels like someone else is gonna tell me it’s wrong. I think it’s important to remember that there isn’t a panel or committee that’s going to assess the way you ID and tell you whether you’re doing it right. And there also doesn’t need to be one identity that covers all your bases. As other people have pointed out, you can certainly ID as both — like I do! And many others do! — and it doesn’t have to be always, or at the same time, or in the same way.

I think it’s helpful to think about what the words you’re considering mean, both to you and to others. I know I tend to use them differently — “queer” is usually what I say when I just want to signal that I’m not straight, without going into any particular detail. I tend to use “bisexual,” sometimes along with “queer,” in situations where my specific identity matters (which is sometimes a situation where I feel like bi erasure is occurring, and where my presence as an out bisexual person might change the course of the interaction). It wouldn’t make sense for me and the way I talk about my identity to use only one word.

It’s awesome that you’re concerned about contributing to bi erasure, because that’s definitely something that occurs. In my experience, it’s certainly possible to throw bisexuals under the bus by strenuously refusing to identify as bisexual, and actively distancing yourself from that community — “Sure, I date [genders], but I’m not, like, bisexual or anything.” It’s important to be on watch for avoiding that, and to not define your sexual orientation in opposition to another group’s or as inherently better than another group’s. But at the same time, you don’t owe it to anyone to adjust your identity just for the sake of visibility if it’s not something that actually fits for you.

In terms of what will resonate personally with you most, and what you want to call yourself inside your own head, that’s a different conversation. What do the words queer or bisexual mean to you? If you’re feeling drawn to queer over bisexual in a noticeable way, what happens when you sit with that feeling and think about it? Do you think internalized biphobic attitudes are influencing your feelings? How do different words make you feel about yourself when you try them out? Ultimately, you’re the only person who knows what works best for you, and as long as your choice of labels doesn’t generalize about others’ identity or experiences, you’re the only one whose approval of them you need.

Send your questions to youneedhelp [at] autostraddle [dot] com or submit a question via the ASK link on autostraddle.tumblr.com. Please keep your questions to around, at most, 100 words. Due to the high volume of questions and feelings, not every question or feeling will be answered or published on Autostraddle. We hope you know that we love you regardless.

Injustice in the Justice System: Two Lawsuits Expose Struggle for Incarcerated LGBTs

Two new lawsuits brought by LGBT inmates call out different arms of the criminal justice system on their brutal and inhumane treatment of people incarcerated with and without charges. The people bringing the cases have been singled out for their gender expression and sexuality in violation of their constitutional rights. These cases could create major shifts for the experiences of incarcerated LGBT people. They also raise important questions about what a justice system better equipped to incarcerate LGBT people might mean for our communities.

Justice 4 Jane Organizers via Feministing

Jane Doe, Connecticut

Last week, Jane Doe brought a federal lawsuit against Connecticut state child welfare services and prison officials, saying they violated her constitutional rights by detaining her in solitary confinement. The suit also says she’s been called male pronouns and her birth name at the Connecticut Juvenile Training Center where she’s being held, and made to wear boys’ clothes.

The public eye has been on Jane’s case this year, as she’s been bounced around between different facilities. Her case came to national attention in April when she was transferred to the York Correctional Facility, a Connecticut prison for adult women, despite her being a minor with no criminal charges. After public outcry, including a statement from Connecticut Governor Dannel Molloy, she was transferred to a children’s psychiatric care facility, but was then transferred to the Connecticut Juvenile Training School (CJTS), a facility for boys, where she has been kept away from the boys in isolation. CJTS reportedly offered to let her be in the Center’s general population, but she faces harassment and abuse there. “It is psychologically damaging and harmful for a transgender female to be placed in a male facility and to be unable to express herself as female,” Aaron Romano, Jane’s attorney told the AP.

IV Sta, an organizer with Justice 4 Jane, said, “This lawsuit is one of the things that DCF is most afraid of, and I think that legal action and more publicity for Jane are the things that they fear the most and the reason that they are launching all of these assaults against her and trying to get her to be as subdued as possible, as afraid as possible.”

Sta also spoke about what they thought success in the suit would look like:

“Success in this lawsuit would both mean a legal victory for Jane that would allow her to be treated better by DCF [and] hopefully it would allow for Jane to finally look at being to be adopted, because there are so many families that are interested in adopting her. One of the things being demanded of DCF — at least at a grassroots level — is that they release her to one of these families.”

West Valley Detention Center, San Bernardino County, CA via WVDC Bail

Class Action Suit On Behalf of GBT Inmates, California

At the West Valley Detention Center in San Bernardino County, California, self-identified gay, bisexual and transgender inmates are held in isolation in the “alternative lifestyle tank,” or ALT. This bizarrely named (particularly for those who might imagine the alternative lifestyle tank as that white tank top you wore to Pride along with your alternative lifestyle haircut) section of the Detention Center is meant to keep GBT inmates from being exposed to harassment or abuse from inmates in the general population. It consists of eight cells, each holding two inmates. The ACLU of Southern California, with the law firm Kaye, McLane, Bednarski & Litt, is representing fifteen people who are or have been incarcerated in the ALT in a class-action lawsuit against San Bernardino County. The plaintiffs — three trans women, eleven gay men and one bisexual man — argue that despite being framed as a “safe” place for GBT inmates in the detention center, being held in the ALT comes with its own set of restrictions which have other highly detrimental effects on inmates. A press release from ACLU SoCal says the suit “charges the county’s policy is unconstitutional and violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection to all individuals.”

Inmates held in the ALT are not permitted to participate in programs that are offered to the non-GBT inmates at the facility, including drug rehabilitation programs and work programs that allow inmates to earn time off their sentences, thus guaranteeing that GBT inmates will serve more time than their non-GBT counterparts, solely on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Not having access to these programs also also puts them at a disadvantage when they do eventually leave the facility, because it will more difficult for them to create stable lives and put them at higher risk for recidivism.

GBT inmates in the ALT are not permitted to attend congregational prayer meetings, access Bibles or have visits from chaplains in their cells. The inmates are also being kept in their cells for 22-23 hours a day, despite the fact that there is an isolated common area that they could access without interacting with the non-GBT population. This isn’t technically considered “solitary confinement” because two people live in each cell, but it’s only a small step up. They still aren’t able to move freely to the extent that people in the non-GBT population are, and for no specified reason. Inmates are also singled out for harassment from the staff that patrol the ALT, who call them derogatory names and subject them to humiliation, neglect, harsher punishments and retaliation against people who have filed complaints about their poor treatment.

”Gay, bisexual and transgender inmates should not have to accept a longer sentence and an extra layer of punishment as the price of safety,” said ACLU attorney Melissa Goodman in an email. She told the LA Times, “Imposing harsher penalties just because of who they are is illegal, and it’s unconstitutional.”

The people represented by the ACLU have reported that when they have complained about their treatment in the ALT, they have been offered spots with the non-GBT population, but this is not a realistic option, because the entire reason for the ALT’s existence is because they’d face harassment and abuse in the non-GBT population. According to ACLU SoCal, “the lawsuit seeks to require San Bernardino County and the sheriff’s department to provide all inmates equal access and treatment to programs, as required by state and federal law.”

These cases are pretty different. The suit brought against San Bernardino County deals with a group of adults being held in jail, who have been charged and/or convicted of crimes. The suit brought against Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families addresses the Department’s handling of the case of one girl, who has never been charged with a crime, but is in the custody of the DCF, which gets to decide where she lives. What both cases illustrate is how the idea that prisons, jails and detention centers can be safe for LGBT people is a pipe dream. Both of these lawsuits point to glaring inconsistencies and gaps in the current capabilities of the state to care for the inmates and detainees kept in their custody, particularly those who are transgender or living other “alternative lifestyles.” They also show how measures taken for these people’s “safety” often means they are forced to be in the care of their abusers or other staff that harass and aggravate them.

We should not be reading the San Bernardino case as an expose of one place that is “doing it wrong” when it comes to its GBT inmates. The “Alternative Lifestyle Tank” method of separating GBT inmates from the general population is not typical. Usually, GBT inmates must be with the general population, or else they are held in solitary confinement “for their protection.” These options come with their own risks to LGBT inmates.

Jane Doe is fighting for her right to be acknowledged as the young woman that she is. Her being addressed by the wrong pronouns and name are signs of willful neglect and mistreatment, and we should absolutely have her back as she fights for them. It’s also important to remember that her case is one amongst an unknown number of transgender kids in DCF custody. It’s also not a horrible exception to sunshiny lives of other kids who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. It’s a whole system that is dramatically underfunded and ill-equipped to care for its kids, which mirrors and feeds a criminal justice system that we know to be oppressive in pretty much every possible way.

It’s interesting to see these two cases drop within days of each other. The plaintiffs in these cases are not the first trans or LGB people to be discriminated against while in the custody of the state. Not by a long shot. What these cases show is that we are in a moment where the legal system might actually be equipped to respond to one of the multitude of ways trans and LGB people are stripped of their rights.

Is this a good thing? On the one hand, yes, it is good. It means that there is actually a mechanism of accountability that trans and LGB people can turn to! It means we have lawyers and national organizations like the ACLU who are equipped to take on these fights. It means there is a glimmer of hope that things might get better for Jane, or that the people incarcerated at WVDC will be able to work at reducing their sentences while also not being exposed to abuse and harassment from non-GBT inmates.

But on the other hand, wins in these cases would mean that the criminal justice system can expand in its capacity to incarcerate LGBT people in a way that is seen as acceptable. And when the system expands in its capacity, it ultimately means more of us will be swallowed up by it, particularly people of color within our communities, who are already disproportionately targeted by the prison industrial complex and the school-to-prison pipeline. Even if prisons and jails and detention centers and juvenile correction facilities become safER for individuals held there, the prison system continues to be a mechanism to police and oppress and dehumanize. As CeCe McDonald reminds us: “men’s prison, women’s prison, trans prison, or unicorn prison — no prison is safe.”

As these suits go forward, it’s important to fight for Jane and the plaintiffs in the San Bernardino suit. It’s also important to remain critical of the current function of the justice system as a whole, particularly as it works to incarcerate more and more people from marginalized communities, and to work on envisioning alternatives to incarceration altogether.

National LGBTQ Task Force Has A New Name — Will It Have More Inclusive Programs to Match?

With little fanfare, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force changed its name to the National LGBTQ Task Force last week. In an op-ed for The Advocate, director Rea Carey wrote:

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is changing its name and upping its game to tear down any remaining barriers to full freedom, justice, and equality for all LBGTQ people. We want to create a world where you can be you, without barriers. Our new name is the “National LGBTQ Task Force,” our tagline is “Be you,” and our vision is a society that values and respects the diversity of human expression and identity and achieves freedom and equity for all.

The Task Force began as the National Gay Task Force in 1973 and added lesbian to its title in 1985. After decades of pushing for a more inclusive name from bisexual and trans activists, it has officially incorporated the B, T and Q. It’s great to see a major organization embracing more people in the rainbow in its name. But the timing and manner of the name change leave me a bit cynical.

In recent years, the Task Force has increased its efforts to work on behalf of bi and trans folks. In 1997, it updated its mission statement to include those groups, and a look at its campaigns, events and reports in recent years demonstrates a growing diversity in its programs.  Hopefully this new name will precede even stronger efforts on behalf of more parts of the complex and beautiful community we are part of. Mark Daley, a spokesman for the group, says he fully anticipates that the community will continue to define itself with new letters and names.

“Regardless of which letter you identify with, whether it’s used today or has not been invented yet, we include you in our work,” Daley said. “And we want to do more for everyone who belongs to our community.”

It would have been powerful to see the Task Force get ahead of the political curve with its naming and mission. Instead, its name change coincides with a political and cultural moment when transgender and bisexual people have seen a burst in acceptance and success in achieving policy needs and when “queer” has gained acceptance, at least in some circles, as both an identifier and a blanket term. In the last few years, bi, trans and queer people have made extraordinary efforts to pursue their goals, often without the support of mainstream gay and lesbian groups like the Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign. Nominally supporting bi, trans and queer people has gone mainstream, but those groups haven’t seen substantial increases in funding and political action. Instead, national organizations often promote statistics about the crisis facing bi and trans people without always supporting those groups and their work.

More promising than the name change is the corresponding announcement that the group will increase its focus on topics like anti-queer and -trans violence and employment and housing discrimination. The Task Force should also turn its attention to problems like mass incarceration, police violence, institutional racism and homelessness that disproportionately harm queer people. The group’s future actions and inclusivity will speak much louder than its name, said bisexual activist Lynnette McFadzen, the creator of the BiCast. The Task Force has a history of excluding bi and trans needs from its programs, though it’s improved in recent years, she said.

“The real issue isn’t their name, it’s their conduct, and that’s something they need to work on,” McFadzen said. “If they conducted themselves as an inclusive task force, that would be great. I’m not concerned about the alphabet soup.”

The organization’s upcoming programs include several trans specific initiatives, including a campaign to protest violence against trans people using the hashtag #StopTransMurders. But they still have work to do. The organization left the bi community stunned when it published an piece from one of its staff members called “Bye Bye Bi, Hello Queer” on Celebrate Bisexuality Day. The article called for a rejection of the term bisexuality based on outdated definitions of the term that enforce a binary understanding that the bi community itself doesn’t use. The Task Force also published a positive article about bisexuality on the same day, and it later published a counter article from trans and bi writer Aud Traher. Weeks later, it took the offensive post down and posted a brief apology.

The complexity of our community makes it hard for us to be 100 percent inclusive all the time with our work and language. At Autostraddle, we sometimes default to LGBT, queer or gay because we’re working with a language that doesn’t actively create space for all our experiences. We also work to be inclusive of everyone’s stories and examine our own biases and failures to do better. I hope to see the same efforts from national organizations like the Task Force so that their organizing, writing and political work celebrate and advance every part of our community and family.

Bisexual Awareness Week: We See Each Other, And That’s Something

The first ever Bisexual Awareness Week ends today. In the last seven days, groups have released illuminating reports about the bisexual community, bisexuality hashtags have popped up on twitter, and people have hosted and attended events around the U.S. Bi people made connections and shared their stories. Robyn Ochs and Heru Khuti released a new book on bisexual men that I can’t wait to read. It’s awesome to see so much activity and learn about all the bisexual people who are doing amazing work.

I realize most of the world is entirely unaware of the week. Despite vibrant efforts from GLAAD, BiNet USA, and other organizations, the mainstream media didn’t pick up on Bi Week. All the coverage I saw came from queer sources — The LGBT verticals at Slate and Huffington Post mentioned the week and the 15th annual Celebrate Bisexuality Day on Tuesday to varying degrees, and The Advocate had a few good stories, mostly from the pen of their new bisexuality writer Eliel Cruz. Our friends over at Elixher had some great stories and hosted a Twitter talk. And I wrote a few pieces and lifted up the voices of our amazing bi readers. At events, bisexuals came together to celebrate and articulate their experiences, like in this video from GLAAD that gave me at least 10 feels:

There were moments of disappointment. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force chose Tuesday to publish a column from a woman calling for a dismissal of the term “bisexuality.” She argues that bisexuality lifts up a hateful binary definition of gender and doesn’t acknowledge that bisexual activists have grappled with and found bi-friendly answers to that concern. The comment sections of many articles I read were quick to call bisexuality a myth — though I didn’t have to moderate a single biphobic comment on Autostraddle, because you are all perfect and I love you.

I am generally suspicious of awareness and visibility campaigns. Sometimes it’s hard to gauge the impact — how much do pink product breast cancer awareness efforts contribute to the fight against cancer, and how much do they line the pockets of foundation presidents and company executives, for example. And that whole ALS ice bucket situation was out of control (though arguably effective). Visibility is a complicated question within the queer community, too — for many people, visibility and outness do not help achieve personal or political goals, and for others being visibly queer is dangerous. Making the bisexual community visible to the larger world won’t guarantee our safety or our rights. Awareness of our challenges and needs as a community is a worthy project, but only if it comes with follow up action.

We can’t fix every problem in a day, and bi week was highly effective in at least one way: It made bisexual people more visible to each other. On Facebook and Twitter, bisexual people found each other and had conversations. For example, activist Feminista Jones, who identifies as pansexual, started a great conversation on the hashtag #MyBisexualityIs, where people shared resources, asked questions, examined labels and supported one another. In the comments on the bisexuality stories here at Autostraddle, I was overwhelmed to see so much openness, kindness and thoughtful conversation from the bi people in our community.

Two of my friends from college came out publicly on Facebook, and two other friends came out to me personally. On Tuesday, posts in English and Spanish celebrating Bisexual Visibility Day and Celebrate Bisexuality Day were all over my newsfeed. I had dozens of conversation about bisexuality online and in real life. I learned about work happening within the bisexual community and created a long list of texts, organizations and resources to explore and share. Bisexual people are more than our sexuality and we’re committed to many things. It was important and powerful to set aside a week to come together to talk about our experiences, establish roots within the community and promote our causes and projects. A population that exists year round seized the opportunity to amplify its voice and invite people in for seven days. Work began that will continue, relationships formed that will grow and knowledge spread that will inform conversations and policy work.

I don’t mind too much that bi week didn’t go mainstream. We see each other in new ways, and I don’t think I can underestimate the impact that will have on our lives every day between now and Bisexual Awareness Week 2015.

Becoming Visible: On Coming Out As Bisexual

feature image via Shutterstock

It’s 2014, and queers are coming out in droves, increasing visibility and demanding basic human rights. But in many ways, bisexuals have a harder time coming out. We’re substantially less represented in fictional media and in public life, and plenty of people still believe bisexuals are selfish, greedy, duplicitous, indecisive, emotionally unavailable unicorns going through a phase. Bisexual adults and youth are much less likely than their gay and lesbian counterparts to be out to their friends and families, according to recent reports from LGBT Movement Advancement Project and the Human Rights Commission.

via LGBT MAP

Some bi people put off coming out or come out as gay or lesbian because they feel forced to be decisive and hear from all corners that bisexuality isn’t a legitimate choice. There’s no one way to come out as bi — some people have an easy time and lots of acceptance, others have to fight harder to gain respect for their decision. Some figure it out young, and others come out as bi after identifying as straight or lesbian for a long time. To celebrate Bisexual Awareness Week, we turned to our readers for their anecdotes and advice about coming out as bisexual. Add your own ideas, stories and questions in the comments!

“The quickest/least arduous way to come out to all those acquaintances and other people who don’t really deserve a personal disclosure IMO is to start posting super gay pics of yourself on facebook.” – Jeannette, 29

My coming out experience has been pretty great, honestly. I didn’t really let myself explore dating women until a few years ago, and so I’m going through all these milestones as a mostly independent adult, which has had its advantages. Like a lot of bisexuals or femmes I know, coming out is an ongoing, piecemeal process. The first person I came out to was a dear friend and mentor who identifies similarly. She was wonderfully supportive and in hindsight I’m glad that I told her first. Everyone should be so happy for you when you come out to them!

My friends have been mostly awesome, and I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly they adjusted to being more gender inclusive when talking about dating and sex partners. I was absolutely terrified to tell my conservative, Christian family. I was afraid that they would stop talking to me or keep me from spending time with my little siblings, nieces and nephew. Thankfully, that actually went pretty well too. My mom and older sister were definitely surprised when I first told them I was bisexual, but they didn’t yell or question what I was saying. My mom was more concerned that I hadn’t felt like I could tell her sooner. (We didn’t, and still haven’t, discussed her homophobia/biphobia in relation to my waiting so long to come out.) More of their discomfort surfaced when they later met the woman I’m dating, but that’s another story! The quickest/least arduous way to come out to all those acquaintances and other people who don’t really deserve a personal disclosure IMO is to start posting super gay pics of yourself on facebook. They’ll figure it out.

I still choose to come out to people all the time in all kinds of situations; it is exhausting and scary, but overall my experiences have been positive. My age, the fact that I’m white, living in a relatively liberal town in CA and my “gender-normative” appearance have all made this fairly easy for me. I know that I am so privileged to even have a choice to come out; for me it has been an immense relief and hugely affirming. I believe coming out is a personal decision, and I think that all lgbtqia people coming out deserve to be met with warmth and joy.

“I’ve yet to meet a man who is immediately comfortable with my sexuality.” – Hannah Hodson, 23, Autostraddle writer

I never really came out as bisexual until after college. In middle school a bunch of girls were being accused of saying they were bisexual to get the attention of boys, so I kept my relationship with a girl under wraps. I couldn’t stand to be bullied more than I already was. In high school I tried to embrace it, but all of the girls I ever wanted to date ended up with the boys I wanted to date. I wasn’t ashamed of it or anything, but my fear of rejection prevented me from ever approaching women outside of the context of hooking up at parties. By the time I got to college, I was so used to downplaying my sexuality that I didn’t feel “queer enough” to be a member of the queer community. As a cis femme bisexual I had the was often perceived as straight and didn’t think I related to the same kinds of adversity the queers in college seemed to face. I had never been a member of any kind of queer community and was terrified of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, which did happen a few times actually. So I told people that I identified more with being a Black woman than with my sexuality, which was a lie.

Coming out to men was an experience of its own. For male friends, there was an immediate dismissal involving something along the lines of “yeah, but you’re not really gay though.” I will never understand why, because it had nothing to do with them. For male partners there was one of two reactions. The first, most common reaction was to tell me they thought it was really hot, and immediately ask me if I would consider having a threesome. One time the guy even asked me to have a threesome with the girl he was cheating on me with! I mean, obviously that guy was an asshole, so maybe that was to be expected. It’s not that I’m not open to the idea of being with multiple people, but the immediate assumption that being bisexual means that I’m into something kinkier was definitely offensive. On the flipside, and this was with the men who actually respected me, they took my bisexuality very seriously and saw it as a threat to their masculinity. It’s kind of funny actually, because after a while I would suggest that we try something kinkier, and they would jump to the conclusion that I was dissatisfied with the relationship and wanted to run away with a woman or something very drastic. I’ve yet to meet a man who is immediately comfortable with my sexuality. The latter sort of dude, though, is easier to work on.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I began dropping hints to my parents that I was bisexual. I don’t think I ever told them because I knew it wouldn’t be a big deal to them, and I didn’t want to act like it was some kind of… well, big deal. They know now. My dad couldn’t care less. Growing up my dad told me “I always thought it be really hip to have a gay kid,” dropping the hint that either he knew, or that he would embrace it. My mother actually took it harder than I thought she would. I think she mostly felt as though this was something she should have known about me and was sad I didn’t tell her sooner. I guess I’m still sort of coming out. I’m learning to embrace my sexuality as a primary part of my identity rather than an afterthought. It feels really good.

“You know how you can be attracted to a blond girl or a brunette girl, but hair color wouldn’t be a deal breaker or majorly affect your level of interest in someone? That’s how I feel about gender.” – Kadry, 28

When you say the word “bisexual,” a bunch of stereotypes come to mind for most people. So I avoided the word entirely; instead, I told people that I was attracted to humans regardless of gender. I didn’t bring out the B word until I had already given people some time to get used to what it meant.

Here’s how I explained bisexuality to my monosexual friends who just didn’t get it: You know how you can be attracted to a blond girl or a brunette girl, but hair color wouldn’t be a deal breaker or majorly affect your level of interest in someone? That’s how I feel about gender. An individual’s personality, not their gender expression or sex, is what attracts me. And if you married a redhead, you could still appreciate the attractiveness of other hair colors without feeling a burning need to satisfy your desire for brunettes. Hair color and gender are all just categories that have as much significance as you give them.

“It feels like the opposite of a coming out story; I was out and proud as a lesbian, and now I don’t know what I am.” – Rachel, 24

This article is my coming out as non-lesbian. I’ve identified a lesbian since I was in high school. Throughout high school, college, and grad school, I have been exclusively interested in women. This summer, to my surprise, my found myself attracted to a cisgender, straight guy. I’ve known him for a while, and I had never thought of him in a romantic light… until one day, as if someone snapped their fingers and put a spell on me, I woke up and was romantically attracted to him. Nothing ended up happening with this guy, but the crush changed me. It feels like the opposite of a coming out story; I was out and proud as a lesbian, and now I don’t know what I am. I don’t exactly identify as bisexual, and I still feel very attached to the lesbian & gay labels, so I’m trying to figure it out.

To help myself figure out what’s going on, I wrote a one-act play based on my experience. I’ve used the play as a coming out device. I had a reading of the play recently, and the people involved were very appreciative of the subject matter, as it’s something some of them have experienced. Before I started writing the play, I told several friends about my crush, and I received a wide variety of responses — everything from “sexuality is fluid” to “whaaaattttt???!!!!” I don’t even know if the guy knows about my crush on him, but he unknowingly changed me.

One of my favorite quotes is, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” -Mary Engelbreit. I definitely have new eyes.

“The assumption was I’d want to get settled and married, buy a house and start having kids soon, so I shouldn’t do anything that would soil that path.” — Anonymous, 35

When I came out to my mom, she told me not to let anyone know I’m bisexual. She was afraid I’d lose my job. She was afraid men I’d date wouldn’t want to settle down with me. The idea that I might want to date women wasn’t something she understood. Gay people have such a tough time in life, so obviously if you could be attracted to the opposite sex, you’d go that route, no brainer. Why be happy when you could be normal? The assumption was I’d want to get settled and married, buy a house and start having kids soon, so I shouldn’t do anything that would soil that path.

I do volunteer work with kids, and my mom said that if the parents of those kids found out I was bi or gay, they’d start looking for signs I was molesting their kids, and then I’d be sued by one of them. She also brought up the sexual abuse I’d suffered as a nine-year old. We hadn’t talked about it since I was that age, so it felt like it was from left field. It seemed like the implication was that experience had made me queer, and therefore my identity was unnatural or perverted.

It was the king of all uncomfortable conversations. That was 10 years ago, and we haven’t spoken of it since. I haven’t had a relationship with a woman that’s progressed to meeting my parents. Some day I hope to. I think it will go OK because she’ll be an actual person for them to talk to and relate to, and not an abstract concept of sexuality.

“It wasn’t until I realized I was falling in love that I came clean.” – Anica, 31

I came out almost two years ago… again. After happily living as a lesbian for years, I was dumbstruck when an evening with a male co-worker ended in an enjoyable kiss.

For me, our relationship was quite similar to many first, unexpected homosexual relationships. I only told a couple of very close friends the truth and played the pronoun game with everyone else. It wasn’t until I realized I was falling in love that I came clean.

I think it’s easier coming out as bi after you’ve been out as a lesbian, because usually the big risk is whether the person accepts non-heterosexuality. In my experience, the straight people couldn’t care less; some found the announcement hilarious, but most thought it unnecessary, as they didn’t understand its significance to my life or identity. My lesbian friends, on the other hand, well, they accepted it eventually. There was the obligatory watching of Chasing Amy and listening to “I Spent My Last $10 on Birth Control and Beer.” There were the looks of disgust, which were always fun, but they subsided.

The real issue for me being bisexual is the bisexual bias and how many women don’t want to date a bi girl. The coming out part was easy in comparison.

Anica with “the guy that messed it all up.”

“There can be scrutiny from lesbians or gay men, as bisexuals may be considered indecisive or imposters, which doesn’t always make it easy to be yourself.” – Hellcat, 25

My history of intimate partners includes partners of a range of genders, as well as both cis and trans partners, which play a role in how I present myself in society. If I have a boyfriend I’m perceived as “straight;” if I have a girlfriend I’m considered a lesbian. Regardless, I typically “come out” as bi to indicate that part of my identity so I’m true to myself and for others to realize we exist. I “come out” by mentioning an ex-girlfriend/boyfriend in casual conversation with a potential partner of the opposite sex, or I blatantly say I’m bi. Within our community there can be scrutiny from lesbians or gay men, as bisexuals may be considered indecisive or imposters, which doesn’t always make it easy to be yourself. Unfortunately, living in Texas means my sexual orientation poses a threat. Ultimately, the choice to come out is yours and your safety and wellbeing should be a priority.  If something isn’t working for you (job, relationship, etc.) you should get out of it and move on with your life. Surround yourself with people who accept you, and remember that your sexual orientation is only a piece of your full identity.

New Report Reveals Bisexual Youth Face Specific Challenges — and Need Our Support

Bisexuals aged 13-17 experience lower levels of happiness, higher rates of alcohol and drug use, and lower levels of social and family acceptance and support than their straight, gay and lesbian peers, according to a new report from the Human Rights Commission in partnership with BiNet USA, Bisexual Resource Center, and Bisexual Organization Project.

The report, out today, uses data from a 2012 HRC survey of 10,030 LGBTQ youth. In that survey, 3,808 youth identified as bisexual, 354 identified as queer, 671 identified as pansexual, and 109 identified as something else other than specifically gay or lesbian (e.g. heteroflexible) — that’s almost 40% of LGBTQ youth who identify as non-monosexual. The report revealed strong trends that bisexual young people feel less accepted in their identities than their straight, gay and lesbian counterparts. Of bisexual youth, 44% reported having a trusted adult family member to talk to, compared to 54% of gay and lesbian youth. Only 10% of bi youth and 4% of pansexual youth reported feeling like they “definitely fit in” in their communities. Bi youth were less likely than their gay and lesbian peers to know whether there was a Gay Straight Alliance at school or an LGBT service community center in their area.

via HRC

Interestingly, queer youth reported higher rates of optimism, outness and community acceptance in some areas than bisexuals.

The report — which is beautifully and accessibly presented — should be a wake up call to LGBTQ service providers, advocates, community members and allies who aren’t aware of the challenges bisexual youth face and just how big a proportion they are are of the community, said Ellen Kahn, Director of the HRC’S Children, Youth and Family Project.

“Organizations that serve the LGBTQ community need to be able to think differently about what kinds of services might address some unique needs of the bisexual part of our community,” Kahn said. “If young people are telling us in our survey they don’t feel connected to LGBT centers or don’t know about resources, what do we need to be doing in our outreach materials to reach those people?”

The numbers paint a bleak picture, but it’s important that they exist. Bisexuals are very underrepresented in research related to the LGBTQ community, and we’re often rolled into lesbian and gay numbers and programs despite our very specific challenges and needs. The HRC has received criticism in the past for contributing to the erasure of the bi community, so it makes an impact for them to ally with prominent bisexual organizations to lift up the voices of bi people. Today is Bisexual Visibility Day and part of the first ever Bisexual Awareness Week, and it’s an opportunity to take a hard look at the needs of the bi community and how we can all serve and support it better.

Yesterday, the LGBT Movement Advancement Project released a report highlighting the health, violence, income and other disparities bisexual people experience. The timing of the two reports is impactful, Kahn said.

“We’re seeing some of the outcomes in adulthood that bi people are experiencing, and with this data from young people we have a chance to try to chisel away at some of the stigmatization so that the next generation of bi adults will fare better,” she said.

Youth can speak for themselves about their identities and needs. via HRC

Bisexual youth have lower rates of being out as bi to everyone in their lives, according to the report. Kristin Russo, co-founder of Everyone Is Gay, said she originally came out to her parents as bisexual but later came out again as lesbian because she felt her parents weren’t able to understand bisexuality as a valid identity.

“What it did was close the conversation and allowed my mom to only have deep understandings of what it means to be gay and what it means to be straight,” she said. “If I had come out as bisexual we would have had more of a dialogue about sexuality.”

Everyone Is Gay gets a lot of questions from bi young people who struggle with similar fears about whether people will believe that they are something other than gay, lesbian or straight. This data creates a new opportunity to look at the messages youth are receiving about bisexuality from the media and their parents, peers and communities. One simple way to do that? “Especially with young people, we need to ask open ended questions,” Kahn said. “Young people have said to us so many times ‘I don’t want to check a box’ but we keep putting forms in front of them with boxes.”

Resolving the stigmas and social and policy pressures that hurt bisexual youth is more than a numbers game. But with powerful, clear data like this, bi advocates have an important new tool to pursue inclusion, and educators, parents and lgbtq service providers have a new resource to begin to understand that bisexual youth exist and need someone to start listening.

It’s Bisexual Awareness Week! Here Are Five Ways To Celebrate

feature image via thenextgreatgeneration.com

Bisexual people make up more than 50 percent of the LGB community, but media, the mainstream, and even LGBT groups often erase our experiences and specific needs or fold them into lesbian and gay programs and statistics. BiNet USA, GLAAD and other organizations hope the first ever Bisexual Awareness Week will be a step toward making more space for for the B in LGBT.

September 23, 1999 was the first Celebrate Bisexuality Day, and in that tradition a big part of the week aims to celebrate what makes bisexuality and bisexuals great, and honor our accomplishments throughout history and today. Organizers also want to make people aware of the stark realities non-monosexual people face, like poorer health, higher rates of sexual assault and relatively low rates of being out as bisexual — only 28 percent of bi people say they are out to the most important people in their lives, compared to more than 70 percent of gay and lesbian people.

“Bisexuals are coming together to say we can’t live with this anymore,” said Faith Cheltenham, the president of BiNet USA. “Because we haven’t been living with it — there have been a lot of suicides. I’ve lost three friends in this work since I started doing it because they had no hope.”

Bisexuals have successfully worked together to gain more visibility and pursue proactive policies and services in recent years. There are many ways to celebrate and honor Bisexual Awareness Week. Here are a few! Add your own in the comments.

1. Educate yourself about the specific challenges of bisexual people and support efforts to improve our lives.

A new report from the LGBT Movement Advancement Project uses data to demonstrate the ways in which bisexual people face specific challenges and thus require targeted solutions. The report collates a lot of data that has been widely shared and discussed on this website and many other places — and that’s because there simply isn’t much reliable data on bisexuals, said Heron Greenesmith, a movement and policy analyst for LGBT MAP. It’s startling and important to see so much data collected in one place. The report highlights poor physical and mental health among bisexuals compared to heterosexual, lesbian and gay people; higher levels of poverty; and higher rates of intimate partner and sexual violence among bisexual women.

via LGBT Movement Advancement Project

This report gives the media, service providers and bi people a comprehensive place to go to look for information and statistics about bi people. Says Greenesmith:

I’m hoping that media will use it and all the resources collected during the week to speak more competently about the LGBT movement and understand that even the LGB part is not a monolith. I’m hoping LGBT organizations will see it as an invitation to showcase their bi-specific programming and for those who don’t have any to understand the necessity and the importance of having bi-specific programming. I’m hoping that bi folks will see it and know that not only are they not alone but other people are going through the same challenges they are facing in their lives and folks are out there who are supporting them. I’m hoping that service providers and researchers will take it as an invitation to be more culturally competent and precise in their language around LGBT people and in their work.

The research presented demonstrates why it’s harmful to fold bisexuals in with gays and lesbians or heterosexual people when doing research and providing services. For example, Cheltenham noted that many LGBT-oriented health centers can’t or won’t provide bi-specific health care and may even turn away bisexual patients. The lack of information and awareness has very real consequences. As Greenesmith said, there is a dearth of research on bisexuals, and not much of what does exist accounts for the intersections of oppression that put some bisexual people, like those who are transgender, gender nonconforming or non-binary, of color or low-income at greater risk. With more knowledge, policymakers and service providers can better target their work to reach the most people and improve outcomes for bisexuals and everyone in the larger LGBTQ community.

2. Read and share books about bisexuality.

I semi-regret getting the incredible Bi: Notes From A Bisexual Revolution by Shiri Eisner on Kindle because it makes it harder to foist it upon people and make them read it. Before I read it, I was timid about identifying as bi because I felt like it carried baggage I wasn’t prepared to handle. After reading Eisner’s book, I became excited and proud to call myself bi (in addition to queer) and quote it at anyone who will listen. Now I’m making my way through Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around The World, an anthology of more than 200 essays from bisexual people from 42 countries who speak from many different experiences of gender, race, class and more. Its editors, Robyn Ochs and Sarah Rowley, are among the most trusted and active bi women in the U.S. and internationally. Next up on my list is Bisexuality and Transgenderism: Intersexions of the Other. It’s a textbook, so it’s expensive and hard to track down, but it is an important resource for people interested in the ways bisexual and transgender identities, movements and oppressions overlap and diverge. Because bisexuals are often erased in mainstream works about lesbian and gay people, bisexuals are creating our own texts, with many awesome results.

3. Donate to organizations that support bisexuals.

Although bisexual people make up a very large portion of the LGBT community, funding for bi-specific work makes up a small part of funding for LGBT programs. If you’ve got extra dollars floating around, put them toward the work of improving quality of life for bisexual people. National organizations like BiNet USA and Bisexual Resource Center are collecting resources, energizing communities and working directly with LGBT and mainstream leaders to promote bisexual causes and get information into the public. Find out if your local LGBT resource center provides bi-specific programming and give a donation marked for that program. Become an A+ member to help financially support the bisexuals who work at this website, and so you can read our staff emails where we finally explain bisexual orgasms (hint: they involve ghosts).

4. Engage with people online and in real life about bisexuality.

Cats are like “I always knew I was different but didn’t have the words to express it before.” via bidyke.tumblr.com

BiNet has a series of hashtags for the week to highlight different aspects of the bisexual movement, which you can find on their site. The hashtags so far — #bihistory and #bifacts — have provided some amazing insights and resources, so check them out on the twitters and contribute! There are also a ton of official events, like meetups, trainings and concerts, plus online activities like a Google Hangout with bisexual Christian heartthrob Eliel Cruz hosted by Campus Pride. If none of that is your bag, just paint your face blue, purple and pink and go to brunch.

5. Acknowledge and celebrate bisexuals and bisexuality.

It seems so simple, but it often doesn’t happen. Bisexuals are often an afterthought, lumped in with bigger headings like gay, queer and LGBT without being named as our own community with specific needs. Subtle changes to daily language — the simple act of naming bisexuality and actively including bisexual people and concerns in activism, policy language and service provision will make an impact. The fight is so much bigger than visibility, but reversing the damaging impact of erasure and silencing is an important first step toward caring for bisexual people and communities. Some people aren’t comfortable with using the term bisexual for themselves or as an umbrella term, and all these suggestions apply to people of many non-monosexual identities.

Bisexual Awareness Week is about more than awareness — it’s a chance to loudly declare our presence in the LGBT community and the world and work for the rights, respect and services that will keep us alive and help our community become healthy and vibrant.

Lowell’s Synth-Pop Anthem ‘LGBT’ Sends Message of Love and Acceptance

Judging by the amount of mainstream music media coverage Lowell has garnered, this openly bisexual artist is poised to be the next pop sensation or, as Rolling Stone put it, the next “Kanye West.”

Twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Lowell Boland, who records under her middle name, sings about rape culture, women’s rights, empowerment and with her most recent single, LGBT rights. The synth-pop anthem “LGBT,” the first single from her upcoming album We Loved Her Dearly is a call out to accept love in all its forms.

Photo by Norman Wong

With so many topics she’s outspoken about, Lowell makes it easy to get excited about having a pop star in our corner. It’s disappointing to see the media has focused heavily on her “troubled” past as a former stripper and getting out of it, rather than focusing on her words and successful trajectory.

The aforementioned Rolling Stone article also focuses on her former job, dedicating three paragraphs to it. Boland herself is ambivalent about it saying: “It’s a really sad industry. Seeing the number of disorders that came in there – the addiction to money and to sex, and the greed, and the horrible abuse to the women that are working there…” before going on to say that, “There can be something really empowering about it. It doesn’t have to be bad. But by making it taboo, we alienate these girls and allow this victimization to happen.”

Photo by Norman Wong

But in “LGBT” Boland’s message is clear and concise. This song, part of her “completely autobiographical” new album dropping September 16th, she proudly proclaims:

When I look into your eyes
I know that I am where I wanna be,
But he, he sings to me, he speaks to me
So sweetie,
Why are you afraid of how I feel?
L-G-B-T, L-O-V-E
Oho, don’t hate our love

The tune is jangly with a bubbly throwback sound that is bound to go viral — especially if Gaga’s “Born that Way” is any indication. And while it might take more than just a catchy tune to gain popularity within the LGBT community her message is a simple and positive one that will likely reach a lot of ears. She is part of our community with an interesting sound and voice that I will certainly be paying attention to in the coming months.

Ten Truly Terrible Pieces of Advice Offered To and About Bisexuals

Today Dear Prudence/Emily Yoffe of internet website Slate wrote some real unhelpful advice to a beleaguered bisexual lady out there. GLAAD agrees that advising bisexuals does not seem to be her strong point. Lucky for Prudence and unlucky for us, she is in pretty good company in that regard. Sometimes it’s telling bisexuals to definitely never come out ever; sometimes it’s telling them they HAVE to come out. Sometimes it’s telling them there’s no need to get all bogged down in actually calling yourself bisexual specifically because ew, labels, advice which seems offered much more frequently when the label in question is “bisexual.” Also, man, they definitely love talking about what team everyone is on! I dunno about them but I haven’t played softball since high school, so. These people sure know how to help a queer out! Here’s the lowlights of some of the worst advice given both to and about bisexuals via the internet far and wide.

1. “To announce that you are bisexual and/or put it on the Internet would be a mistake, in my opinion, because it might seem like you were advertising that you are “available.”” (Dear Abby)

2. “If your current partner is a man, they’ll assume you’re straight. In that case, to clarify things with a friendly colleague you could mention a past love, working a simple “I’m bi” or a humorous “I play for both teams” into the conversation (although a friend of mine notes that someone might want to add, “I only play for one team at a time.”)” (Civil Behavior)

3. “Finally, whether you call yourself bi, fluid, queer or something else, don’t get bogged down in the verbiage; choose instead to embrace your life as it is.” (Civil Behavior)

4. “Get yourself a refillable Xanax prescription, or get yourself an actual lesbian girlfriend.” (The Stranger)

5. “Bisexual activists like to complain that they’re the most oppressed because (1) it’s a contest, and (2) it’s a good excuse. …I’m sorry, bisexual activists, but you’re doing it all wrong. Instead of berating me for my alleged bi-phobia — and if I’m the enemy, you’re in real trouble — berate your closeted compatriots. If they all came out tomorrow, you could put an end to bi-phobia, take over the LGBT movement, and kick my ass out of it.” (The Stranger)

6. “If your boyfriend hasn’t yet decided what sex to go for, let alone an individual to direct his passion towards, he shouldn’t be attempting a long-term union.” (Dear Mariella)

7. “Let’s say you discovered a late breaking interest in plushophilia, or you now realized you were turned on by being a dominatrix. This would not be news you’d be required to announce at the next Thanksgiving gathering… I agree with your husband that making a public announcement about something so private will not be illuminating but discomfiting.” (Dear Prudence)

8. “At your young age, this shouldn’t be your main concern. You shouldn’t be telling anybody at school. Nobody needs to know about your private life right now.” (Dear Lizzie)

9. “If there ever was a rational argument for polyamory and plural marriage it is bisexuality. If we accept bisexuality as an innocent state of being, as we accept other kinds of sexual orientation, and if we wish for every individual to fulfill his and her natural gift of sexuality, then what other conclusion can be reached? If you are bisexual, you cannot be fulfilled by just one person, right? Because one person cannot be two genders, right? To have a fulfilling sex life, you will need a second intimate partner of your own gender. …Now here is a personal plea: With your choice, if you struggle to express your full being within your marriage, you can not only give yourself the best chance of being happy within that marriage but actually help change the institution of marriage itself.” (Since You Asked)

10. “If being lesbian means one wants the right to be partners with women, and being gay means one wants the right to be partners with men, what does being bisexual mean if not that one wants the right to be partners with both sexes? Does that mean just one at a time?… There may be a politically strategic reason that in this period of public attitude adjustment bisexual people do not want to raise the logical implications of their status. The specter of polyamory and plural marriage makes the public a little crazy. …It seems only logical that a bisexual person is capable of having equal and simultaneously deep, committed relationships with more than one person. …There is a spectrum of bisexuality in which some people are only mildly so. But should only the mildly bisexual be protected under the law? …For instance, we all agree that no people should be slaves. We don’t say only black people from Africa should not be slaves. No people should be slaves. Similarly, no people should be forced to live lives that contradict their deepest nature. Not just certain people. No people.” (Since You Asked)

You Need Help: Where Do I Go From Here

feature image via Shutterstock

Welcome to You Need Help! Where you’ve got a problem and yo, we solve it. Or we at least try.

Q:  Is there any way a so-called “mixed orientation” marriage can ever work? My straight, cis husband and I have been together for almost 15 years, and we have a young child together. When we started dating, I told him I was bi, but that it wouldn’t be an issue since I only wanted to be in a relationship with a man due to my conservative upbringing. I recently started therapy and I am realizing a lot of things about myself including the fact that my sexual orientation is probably a lot further to the left of the spectrum than I realized and this may be a factor in my depression.

What are my options here? I have no idea how to deal with this without destroying my family.

Oh sweetheart.

You ask what your options are. Factually speaking, you have a few: you could bury this information that you’re discovering about yourself and try to continue in your life with your family as if nothing has changed. You could tell your husband what you’re realizing and just wait and see what he says. You could tell him and say you want to leave. You could tell him and say that this doesn’t have to change anything about your marriage. You could tell him and ask if you can try opening up your marriage. You could tell him, and also tell him that this is scary and new and you need his support now more than ever, and see what he says. None of these are the right thing to do; none of them are wrong. Other people have done all of them many times before.

Knowing what your options are isn’t the hard part of this, though. The thing that’s hard is knowing what you want. When you realize that you were wrong about what you wanted in one part of your life, how can you feel sure about what you want when it comes to everything else? Once you start to think about what you want, how do you deal with the terrifying prospect of maybe having it?

I dated men for a long time, and then I dated women. That phrasing makes it sound like a very natural and seamless transition. Which it probably is for some people, but I wasn’t one of them. I had known that I liked girls for as long as I knew I liked anything, but I didn’t feel like I needed to integrate it into my life plans in any real way. I didn’t have a conservative upbringing, but I did convince myself that nothing with a girl could ever really happen. Because I didn’t know any other queer girls; because when I did, they weren’t my type; because when they were, they weren’t into me; because when they were, the time wasn’t right, the circumstances were too complicated, the moon was in the wrong phase. If a situation arose where none of these excuses were handy, I ran as fast and as far as I could. Women were something I could only want as long as I could never have them; if what I wanted was actually attainable, it was so scary the only way I could handle it was pretending it didn’t exist. The last thing I wanted were options. I know what it feels like to want to wall yourself into the safest route possible.

I’m not sure from your question what exactly “mixed orientation” means to you — it could be that you’re still identifying as bi or somewhere on that spectrum, and are attracted to/have feelings for your husband. Or it’s possible that you’re now feeling like you ID as a lesbian or aren’t interested in men/your husband really at all anymore. To answer your question: “mixed-orientation” marriages can work, in the literal sense that people of different sexual orientations can have happy marriages. Even queer-identified women married to straight cis men can have happy marriages. Faith Cheltenham, director of BiNet USA, is married to a (bisexual) man. Jennifer Baumgardner, author of Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics, is married to a man. Susie Bright, author of Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World, is in a life partnership with a man. Margaret Cho. Sia. Angelina Jolie. Clementine Ford. Amber Rose. Vanessa Carleton. I also am married to a man.

So marriages that look like yours certainly can work; that isn’t the question. I’m pretty sure you already know that; I think you also more or less know what your options are, too. It’s possible that you’ve even been thinking about one or two options in particular, fleshing them out in your head and figuring out what they would look like. That’s not really what you’re asking, I don’t think. I think the real question, the big bad, is how to be sure of what you want. And once you’re sure, how to gather up the courage to do it.

You (and your husband) have to decide, then, whether you want to be in a mixed-orientation marriage; in this particular marriage. It’s not clear from your question how your husband would feel about this. For some men, being with a “practicing bisexual” (an obviously fallacious idea, but still one that many people ascribe to) isn’t what they want. If you’re feeling less bisexual and more like you’re exclusively interested in women, then he might be even less excited about that. At some point, you will almost definitely end up having to talk to him about this, and when you do, the way he responds or reacts is totally up to him. I’m sorry. You can’t control how he deals with this. Only you.

So think about you, now. About what you want. And I don’t mean what gender(s) you want, necessarily. For some people in this situation, there is a “right” gender of person that you want to be with, but even if that’s the case, it doesn’t usually come with soul-searching, only with time. Think about what you want.

When I did start dating women, it felt like I had cracked the code. Getting there was a painful and messy process, but it was one of the few things I’ve ever done in my life that ultimately felt incontestably right. I felt freer and sexier and more like myself. But I realized after a while that despite that, things were still confusing and sometimes stupid and sometimes painful. I still had problems with partners, even when they were women. I still had personal struggles, even when my partners were women. Even with women, there were times when I was in the same room as them but felt totally alone. All of my issues with the world and myself weren’t lifted by figuring out my sexual orientation. The problem wasn’t with the gender of people I was dating; the problem was with me.

This isn’t to say that you should stay with your husband, or that you should do anything. It’s to say that there’s more to this than figuring out who you’re attracted to. It’s also about figuring out what you want out of a partner, what you want out of a relationship, what you want out of yourself. When you do, does it look like your husband? Does it look like your marriage? Does it look like your life right now? Maybe it doesn’t; maybe it does. If you do think that you want to be dating women, those questions will still be just as important.

When I first started to realize I didn’t actually want to date men my whole life, I was in a long-term relationship with one. It didn’t last long after that. We had plenty of other problems that led to our split, which I think would have happened anyways, but the enormous upheaval of self-examination didn’t help. Even if your relationship is otherwise perfect — which no relationship is — the process of peeling away layers of the person you thought you were can be explosive and it’s hard for any relationship to make it through that unchanged. For me, it turned out that while that relationship wasn’t right for me, it wasn’t necessarily about gender. I went on to date people of multiple genders and when I did find a relationship that fit what I wanted for myself, it happened to be with the man I’m now married to. What I’m saying is that finding out who you are and what you want is a practice that you continue to engage in forever, not a task that you complete once. You need to go through it right now in terms of your husband. Regardless of what decisions you both make, you’ll need to do it again the days after that and after that.

The bad news is that there’s no one who’s going to come and save you on this; no one is going to appear to show you what to do. The good news is that you are your own best and bravest rescuer. When you unearth one thing you didn’t know about yourself, it can be an opportunity to dive in and know all the things you were afraid to. It’s the scariest thing you’ll ever do and the most valuable. It’s not going to destroy your family — your family is made up of people who love you and each other as individuals, and even if you do something that upsets them, that isn’t going to change. And if your whole family’s wellbeing was resting entirely on your ability to maintain a relationship and lifestyle that’s harmful to you, things were already shaky for reasons that I doubt are your fault. We have a responsibility to keep our families safe and support them, but not to limit our own freedom and happiness to make sure they never have to deal with anything uncomfortable.

You’ve already started — even if it doesn’t feel like it right now, you’ve already taken the step of getting into therapy and asking this question, which means you’ve done the hardest part. If you don’t already know how you’re going to handle this, you will. You just have to promise yourself that you’ll be brave enough to honor it when you’re ready.

Send your questions to youneedhelp [at] autostraddle [dot] com or submit a question via the ASK link on autostraddle.tumblr.com. Please keep your questions to around, at most, 100 words. Due to the high volume of questions and feelings, not every question or feeling will be answered or published on Autostraddle. We hope you know that we love you regardless.

In Which Anna Paquin Had To Explain Bisexuality To Insufferable Larry King

This week, True Blood actress and out bisexual person Anna Paquin went on Larry King Now, presumably to talk about the upcoming and final season of her wildly popular television program. While they did discuss a great deal regarding Paquin’s acting career, her marriage to True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer and the cast’s feelings about the show’s conclusion, the interview included one particularly cringe-worthy exchange between the two.

Anna Paquin famously came out as bisexual in 2010, when she filmed a PSA for the Give A Damn campaign declaring herself as such. Although she’s told Zooey magazine that her orientation was “a minor biographical detail,” she has continued to publicly champion LGBTQ rights. Unfortunately, Paquin has also had the frustrating and all-too-familiar experience of having to explain her sexual orientation over and over again in great detail, and clarifying that her marriage to a man does not invalidate her identity.

During her sit-down with Larry, King asked Paquin if she considered herself a “non-practicing bisexual.” When Paquin replied that she was “happily, monogamously married” to her husband, King responded with, “But you were bisexual?”

Suspension of disbelief miraculously includes vampires, not bisexuals.

As Paquin good-naturedly replied that she didn’t consider her orientation to be in the past-tense, King continued to press her for more details. Finally, she asked, “Are you still straight if you’re with somebody? If you were to break up with them or they were to die, it doesn’t prevent your sexuality from existing. It doesn’t really work like that.”

“Stop with the wishful thinking,” King joked. Just like that, the sounds of a thousand groans overwhelmed the Hulu soundboards as everyone with any basic understanding of human sexuality barfed in unison.

You sad little man

Paquin answered again, “I’m just saying, it doesn’t really work like that.”

For starters, I would imagine that trying to explain one’s sexual fluidity to an 80-year-old white dude who’s been married eight times to seven women would be a lot like trying to explain one’s sexual fluidity to their cranky old uncle, which is why I haven’t really ever explained my sexuality in depth to any of my cranky old uncles. The very concept of one’s longterm relationship or marriage magically transforming them into a “non-practicing bisexual” is not only invalid, it’s damaging and hurtful. There exists a great myth that committed relationships can invalidate a person’s orientation, which causes infinitely frustrated bisexuals to be perceived as attention-seeking, greedy or not “real.”

Although she handled Larry King’s clueless questioning like a pro, this certainly won’t be the last time openly bisexual celebrities are questioned about the validity of their identities. It would be fantastic for mainstream media to accept that bisexuality is real and that sexuality can be fluid, but in the meantime it’s still heartening to see stars like Ms. Paquin and Evan Rachel Wood fighting the good fight, being proud of their relationships and calmly explaining what bisexuality means and doesn’t mean to a large audience. Thank you, Anna Paquin, for taking it in stride… for all of us.

“Painkiller Jane,” Woman-Directed Bisexual Woman Superhero Movie, Announced While Marvel and DC Twiddle Thumbs

In a time when both Marvel and DC seem to refuse to make movies starring female superheroes, it was announced today that the Soska Sisters will be directing a Painkiller Jane movie. This means that not only is there going to be a comic book superhero movie starring a woman, but that movie will be directed by two women and the character that the movie is about is a bisexual woman.

Painkiller Jane #2 cover by Amanda Conner

Painkiller Jane was created by comic creators Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada in 1995. She has appeared in crossover events with characters like The Punisher, Vampirella and Hellboy and recently had a relaunch at Dynamite Entertainment. Painkiller Jane is also known as Jane Vasko, and used to be a policewoman before being attacked and gaining regenerating and pain-tolerating abilities. This will be her third appearance on the screen. The first was a made-for-TV movie in 2005 starring Emmanuele Vaugier that aired on the SyFy channel. She was later brought to life in a 2007 SyFy series starring queer actress and model Kristanna Loken.

The film will be directed by Jen and Sylvia Soska, also known as The Soska Twins, a pair of twin sisters known for their horror films centered around women. Their breakout film was 2012’s American Mary, which was notable for its over-the-top body horror, what many saw as feminist themes and shocking visuals. It’s exciting that not only will this be a film about a woman, but a film made by women as well. No stars or release dates have been announced yet.

Jen and Sylvia Soska appearing in their movie American Mary

On the very same day, Kevin Feige, who is Marvel’s President and is pretty much in charge of what movies they make, responded to a reporting asking if he is bothered by the backlash against Marvel’s reluctance to make a woman-starring movie. ScreenCrush asked if he was afraid of facing backlash like J.J. Abrams did after the Star Wars cast was announced as being mostly male, and Feige responded by saying, “I don’t think J.J. Abrams or the Star Wars people — I have no idea — but my guess is that they were not swayed by any backlash. We’re not going to be swayed by the backlash. We’re going to keep bringing the movies out the way we envision it and the way we believe in it — and that includes diversity in all of the active films.” So, basically, they just see the calls for more representation as bothersome whining.

To be fair, Marvel could announce a female-led in the next few days (or even next few hours) at Comic-Con. But they haven’t yet, and they’ve already scheduled movies through 2019, which would be over a decade of Marvel Cinematic films with no movies centered on women. Instead, they keep on saying that they’re happy with the schedule they have and what movies they have planned. Similarly, DC is announcing a number of new movies as a follow up to their Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice film and leading up to their Justice League movie. Now, according to a leaked schedule (which, honestly, may be totally made up), DC plans on finally releasing a Wonder Woman movie in 2017, but not until they’ve already released Batman v Superman, Shazam, Sandman and Justice League.

Yes, Black Widow is awesome in The Avengers, but just give her her own damn movie already!

It’s completely bizarre that it’s taking so long for either DC or Marvel (or perhaps we should be blaming Warner Bros and Disney) to make a movie about a female superhero. When women make up 46% of comic book readers and 52% of moviegoers, you would think that catering to us would be a natural step. There’s still a chance that either Marvel or DC will announce something at Comic Con, which is currently in progress, but if they do, it’s still much later than they should have. Thankfully, we still have independent comic book titles like Painkiller Jane to make the leap from the page to the screen to hold us over until that happens.