M/F Romances Featuring Bi+ Women Whose Queer Identities and Communities are Front and Center
I recently received a lovely email with a request for Ask Your Friendly Neighborhood Lesbrarian close to my bisexual heart:
Dear Casey,
I hope that you can help me with this question and that it fits in the parameters of your Autostraddle column. I have always been a big romance reader and came out as bisexual about a year ago. It has been fantastic to expand my reading to F/F romance, including ones about bisexual women. (I feel a bit angry with myself that I did not explore those books earlier, actually). As a counterpoint, I was wondering if you can recommend M/F romances that are about bisexual women. They are more difficult to find. I am looking for content more than simply a small throw-away line that the woman is bisexual. I would love to see bisexual women for whom their queer identities and queer communities are a big part of their life and a notable aspect of the book. My longterm partner is a man, and it would be wonderful to see literary examples of how some women maintain their queer ties while in relationships with men. (If Autostraddle readers have real life ideas of how to do this, I would also welcome them).
With sincere thanks,
Angela
Thank you so much to Angela for sending me this question so thoughtfully put! I love the idea of looking to romance novels for ideas of how to live an authentic queer life. I’m not surprised Angela is having a tough time find M/F romance featuring bi+ women — I’ve had the same difficulty myself! Thankfully, I think the pool is getting bigger all the time, particularly books that really dive deep into the intricacies of being a bi+ woman in a relationship (or developing relationship, as in a romance novel) with a man, and not just a “throw-away line” as Angela says . The following eight romance novels — mostly contemporary but also a couple historical — are all excellent and lesbrarian-approved!
Small Change by Roan Parrish
In this edgy, emotionally resonant romance, Ginger Holtzman is a queer tattoo artist who owns her own shop in Philadelphia. Her whole life she’s had to fight for who she is, making her a tough, independent (business)woman who has perfected a take-no-crap attitude. Christopher Lucen is a kind, happy-go-lucky redhead who’s just opened a sandwich shop in the neighbourhood. When they meet, Christopher is smitten; Ginger is … oblivious. What’s wonderful about this story is how it flips the usual gendered dynamic: Christopher is the nurturing one who takes care of Ginger and feeds her, while Ginger is aloof and suspicious of love. Ginger is very much embedded in her queer community: she’s deliberately crafted her tattoo shop as a queer feminist space and works with fellow queer tattoo artists. She also explicitly discusses her queer identity with Christopher. A personal note: this is one of my all-time favorite romances!
Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert
This hilarious and heartfelt story opens with the bisexual main character Dani doing a spell to ask the universe for a good fuck buddy. Besides being a practising witch in need of a friends with benefits situation, Dani is also Black, British, and an overworking academic. Enter Zafir, a South Asian ex-rugby player who reads romance novels. Knowing that Dani has a big crush on Janelle Monàe, Zaf attempts to ascertain if Dani also dates guys by mentioning Idris Elba, with the logic: “Everyone who’s into guys likes Idris Elba, right?” Hibbert, at the top of her formidable romance craft, skillfully tells a touching story with thoughtful representation not only of Dani’s bisexuality, but also anxiety, grief, trauma, academia’s toxic culture of overwork, and intimacy. As for queer community in the book: Dani’s BFF, Sorcha, is a lesbian (fingers crossed for a future book that gives Sorcha her own love story!), and Dani’s ex-sort-of-girlfriend is a supporting character too. In fact, part of Dani’s journey is repairing her relationship with that ex.
A Duke in Disguise by Cat Sebastian
In Regency-era London, Verity Plum is a radical bisexual bookseller and writer whose childhood friend Ash, an engraver, has come to board with her and her brother. Ash and Verity’s friendship and intellectual connection has long teetered on the edge of romantic love and lust. But they are loathe to do anything that might ruin their current relationship. When Ash — who has epilepsy and was brought up in foster care assuming he was illegitimate — discovers he’s the heir to a dukedom, he thinks it ruins any potential future with Verity. Cat Sebastian covers all sorts of fascinating historical details like seditious journalism, naughty book publishing, 19th century inheritance law, and women-run small presses. Verity’s ex-lover / friend Mrs Allenby (also bisexual!) is a prominent secondary character. Remaining friends with your ex-girlfriend is queer lady culture, right? Plus, in contrast to what you might expect for the times, Verity is very open about her sexual identity with both Ash and her brother.
Reverb by Anna Zabo
The third book in Anna Zabo’s queer romance series, Reverb features a cis pansexual woman, Mish, and a queer trans guy, David — but, happily, it eschews bi- or transphobia as plot points, instead honing in on other issues and vulnerabilities specific to Mish and David. Mish is the bass player in Twisted Wishes, an up-and-coming band gaining fame. Recently, though, fame has come with a terrible price: Mish is dealing with a stalker whose recent attack ended up with her in the hospital. Enter David, a bodyguard Mish’s bandmates insist she needs. She is, however, more than happy to indulge in hot kinky sex with him, even if she’s not keen on him as a bodyguard. But when the situation with Mish’s stalker turns even more serious, David is forced to make a choice between being Mish’s lover or her bodyguard. In addition to both protagonists being queer and talking together about their queer histories and labels, the rest of Mish’s band are queer too!
Xeni by Rebekah Weatherspoon
Two bisexual people falling in love anyone? Xeni Everly-Wilkins is grieving the recent loss of her beloved aunt Sable, dealing with the decades-long feud that existed between her aunts and mother, who used to be famous R&B singers. Xeni is shocked to find her aunt’s will is even more strange and begrudging than she thought: Xeni has inherited her aunt’s estate, but with the caveat that she must be married first. And apparently her aunt is playing match-maker from beyond the grave, as she’s set up Xeni with a suitable husband: Mason McInroy, a Scotsman who counted Sable as a good friend and mentor. Sable has put him in a similar pickle to Xeni before he is able to inherit the money Sable has left him, which he desperately needs to pay off a debt. But even if Xeni and Mason must say I do, that doesn’t mean they will fall in love, does it? Come for the silly romance trope reimagined, stay for the nuanced depictions of bisexual identity, relationships between bi+ people, pegging, fisting, and more!
Something Like Love by Christina C. Jones
If you thought Rebekah Weatherspoon’s romance about two bi people was great, how about Something like Love, in which the heroine and hero are both bi and Black? This is also a classic opposites-attract romance with some wonderful comedy. Astrid is a yoga teacher and graphic designer with some hippie tendencies. Eddie is a tattoo artist who usually dates people in the corporate world. Astrid is vivacious and genuine. Eddie is slick and perhaps a little too self-assured. After the two meet, Astrid has a feeling Eddie is crushing on her — or at least wants to sleep with her. Eddie, however, thinks nothing of the kind. But the more and more time Astrid and Eddie spend together, the more Eddie wonders if Astrid’s intuition was right. Are they the perfect match? Is what they’re already doing the basis for a relationship? If you’re looking for a queer book that superbly tackles bisexual stereotypes and looks at Black bisexual identity for women and men, this one’s for you!
Gilded Cage by K.J Charles
Set in a richly imagined late Victorian 1890s London, The Gilded Cage is part historical romance and part historical mystery. Our bisexual heroine, Susan, is a renowned detective tasked with defending a notorious jewel thief, Templeton — who also happens to be her childhood love — from a double murder charge. Can Susan help Templeton clear his name before he’s hanged? Can they solve the mystery of who the real murderer is? Susan is a delightful character who’s easy to love: smart, competent, sarcastic, secretly vulnerable, and a little mean if the situation warrants it. Susan as well as Templeton are surrounded by queer community and family: Susan was raised by a gay couple and their extended queer found family and both of Templeton’s business partners are queer (one is asexual, specifically, and has a partner who’s a trans woman). Basically everyone in this book is queer!
Hang the Moon by Alexandria Bellefleur
Okay, so including this book here is a bit of a tease, since it doesn’t come out until May. But it is available for pre-order now, and you can get the first book, Written in the Stars (an F/F romance about a lesbian and a bisexual woman) now and get a feel for the two characters who play minor roles in that book and are the protagonists in Hang the Moon. The bisexual lady here is Annie, whose lesbian BFF Darcy we got to know in the first book. Annie makes a surprise visit to Seattle to visit Darcy — except since she didn’t tell Darcy she was coming, it turns out her BFF is away on a romantic getaway with her girlfriend Elle. Enter Brendon, Darcy’s younger brother, who offers to hang out with Annie and show her around. When incurable romantic Brendon, who’s been crushing on Annie since he was a kid, finds out Annie has given up on love, he sets out to show her romance is still alive by taking her on outings inspired by his favorite rom-coms. Will they fall in love?? You can look forward to plenty of page time devoted to Annie’s connections with fellow queer women Darcy and Elle, in addition to the central romance.
I know we’ve got lots of bi+ readers here at AS, so please, as per Angela’s request, chime in in the comments with your ideas on how to maintain a queer identity and community as a bi+ woman dating a man! And I’m sure some more recommendations for romances featuring bi+ women would be gratefully received as well. If you a question for the lesbrarian, please feel free to send me an email at stepaniukcasey [at]gmail.com. Your request might be featured in a future post!
I’m Fucking Tired of Writing About Abuse and Sexual Violence Against Bi Women Like Evan Rachel Wood
CONTENT NOTE FOR SEXUAL VIOLENCE, INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE, BIPHOBIA
I feel like I write this article every year.
In 2016, when I authored the Invisible Majority report.
In 2017, when #MeToo tore through the entertainment industry.
In 2018, when Queerty ran a piece titled “Why does bisexuality make us so uncomfortable?”
In 2019, when I answered the questions of bi+ women wondering if they’re “bi enough” to call themselves bisexual.
And now, in 2021, when Evan Rachel Wood confirmed the open secret that Brian Warner (aka Marilyn Manson) was the person to whom Wood had alluded for years — the person who raped her. The person who subjected her to constant sexual and physical violence.
I’m fucking tired of writing this article. And I know I’m not the only one. Here’s Lo Shearing in The Independent. Here’s Reina Gattuso in Teen Vogue. Here’s Zachary Zane for Bi.Org. Here’s Nicole Johnson and MaryBeth Grove in the Journal of Bisexuality. Here’s Sarah Head in the new book Intimate Partner Violence and the LGBT+ Community. Here’s Lynn Addington, a Professor in the Department of Justice, Law & Criminology at American University, writing for the University of Minnesota’s Gender Policy Report.
Same stats, over and over. I know them by heart.
From the Centers on Disease Control and Prevention, 2010 Findings on Victimization by Sexual Orientation:
- Forty-four percent of lesbian women, 61% of bisexual women, and 35% of heterosexual women experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
- Twenty-six percent of gay men, 37% of bisexual men, and 29% of heterosexual men experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime.
- Approximately 1 in 8 lesbian women (13%), nearly half of bisexual women (46%), and 1 in 6 heterosexual women (17%) have been raped in their lifetime. This translates to an estimated 214,000 lesbian women, 1.5 million bisexual women, and 19 million heterosexual women.
- Four in 10 gay men (40%), nearly half of bisexual men (47%), and 1 in 5 heterosexual men (21%) have experienced SV other than rape in their lifetime. This translates into nearly 1.1 million gay men, 903,000 bisexual men, and 21.6 million heterosexual men.
- Of those women who have been raped, almost half of bisexual women (48%) and more than a quarter of heterosexual women (28%) experienced their first completed rape between the ages of 11 and 17 years.
- Approximately one-fifth of self-identified lesbian and heterosexual women (20% and 22%, respectively) and one-half of bisexual women (48%) reported they were concerned for their safety and/or reported at least one post-traumatic stress disorder symptom (20%, 46%, and 22%, respectively).
- Nearly 1 in 3 bisexual women (37%) and 1 in 7 heterosexual women (16%) were injured as a result of rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner.
Sixty-one percent of bisexual women experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Nearly half of bisexual women (46%) have been raped in their lifetime.
Sixty-one percent.
Nearly half.
WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS INFORMATION??
How do I hold this information in my body? The body that has also experienced sexual violence. The body that has, in the past, held my friend’s bodies, their hands, their trauma as they told me stories of their own assaults — whispered stories, shouted stories, secret stories, “was this enough” stories, “was I really raped” stories, “but I was drunk” stories, “but he told me I deserved it” stories.
Sometimes I feel like the data makes it worse; the data confirms what we suspected all along.
Violet* reached out to me on Twitter. In November, Violet was able to leave her abusive relationship, her first same-gender relationship with a woman who ended up gaslighting Violet and weaponizing her sexual orientation. I asked her how her story made her feel about her bisexuality. “I am now hesitant to pursue relationships with other people because I feel even more fragile and unsure about being bi+ than I was before coming out. My situation didn’t “look” like the abuse that I had seen on TV or in movies, so it took reading an article my mom sent me about coercive control for me to allow myself to accept the reality of what was going on, and start taking steps to leave.”
I’m sharing Violet’s story because she shared it with me, but I must also provide the context that Violet’s story is very rare. The vast majority (95% in one study) of perpetrators of intimate partner violence against women are male. I often hear from survivors whose perpetrators were female and I think it may be a call for validity. “Am I a survivor if my perpetrator was female?” Of course. You are. You are a survivor.
Male violence in the United States is an epidemic that ties Marilyn Manson directly to the insurrection on January 6th, a connection built on the living bodies of bisexual people, with a quick stop by AOC’s recent video connecting her own experience of sexual violence with the terror she felt during the insurgence.
Alex DiBranco is executive director of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism. She’s written extensively about the connections between misogyny, male supremacy, and intimate partner violence. In her piece Mobilizing Misogyny, DiBranco details how anti-feminism infects Men’s Rights Movements with rhetoric openly advocating for violence against women.
The virulent misogyny promoted by male supremacists, often couched as anti-feminism and accompanied by racism and nativism, has serious repercussions that play out on a global stage. In 1989, Marc Lépine killed 14 women at an engineering school in Montreal under the guise of “fighting feminism.” In 2009, George Sodini killed three women and then himself at a fitness class in Pennsylvania, leaving behind a website that complained about being rejected by women (and leading PUAs to coin the term “going Sodini”). Anders Breivik murdered 77 adults and children in Norway in 2011, leaving behind a manifesto attacking “the radical feminist agenda,” Islam, political correctness, and “Cultural Marxism” (see David Neiwart’s article in this issue). And in May 2014, Elliot Rodger set out to “slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up blonde slut” at the “hottest” sorority at the University of California, Santa Barbara, writing, “I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you for it.” He ultimately killed six people and himself, though he failed to make it inside the sorority.
Violence against bisexual women fits perfectly into this narrative: a group that is over-sexualized by mainstream media and isolated from community support. The ideal target for male supremacist anger and violence. Sarah Head explores the particular vulnerability of bisexual people to intimate partner violence in her new book chapter. “For instance, an abused person will experience a sense of dissonance when their experience and their beliefs about what a relationship should be conflict with each other. So, when a partner, for example, threatens to “out” a bisexual person to their children’s school to undermine how their parenting is viewed, this behavior conflicts with an abused person’s belief that their partner acts in their family’s best interest. Such an abusive tactic will evoke a degree of discomfort (or dissonance) for the abused person.”
Nicole Johnson and MaryBeth Grove offer a comprehensive theory of the outsized vulnerability that bisexual women face. (With the caveat from me that while substance use and alcohol use may be correlative to an increased vulnerability to intimate partner violence, that does not mean that if bisexual women were to decrease their substance use or alcohol use, that this would reduce their vulnerability to violence.)
The limited research to date points to several vulnerability factors, including: a cultural milieu prone to hypersexualization, objectification, and dehumanization of bisexual women; stereotypical understandings of bisexuality in women that may engender negative appraisals and resulting aggression toward this group; and an increased risk of problematic substance use, or negative consequences associated with one’s use of alcohol and/or other substances, in this population, possibly as a result of the aforementioned risk factors.
Evan Rachel Wood has talked openly about her vulnerability to Brian Warner’s abusive tactics. Wood and other accusers have come out publicly about Warner’s torture and manipulation, and his insistence on total control and sexual availability.
Wood’s bravery cannot be understated.
Violet, like me, is incredibly proud to call Evan Rachel Wood family. This is because Evan Rachel Wood saved Violet’s life. “The only reason that I am out of my abusive relationship now is because of Evan Rachel Wood. My mom went to a talk hosted by a legislative advocate that is working with ERW to extent the statute of limitations for domestic violence, at which the concept of coercive control was discussed. I had discussed some of my issues with my mom, and she had concerns of her own, so when she heard the talk a lightbulb went off and she sent me an article about it.”
*Violet’s name has been changed.
Disney Characters, Ranked by Bisexuality
Bisexual Disney characters are a lot more common than you realized when you were watching these animated films as a young queer kid. In the past, we’ve ranked Disney Princesses by lesbianism and Disney Channel Original Movies by lesbianism — and now, in 2020, we’ve decided to open up the entire animated Disney canon to a new interpretation and discover the bisexual Disney characters we’ve overlooked all these years.
Below are the 33 most bisexual Disney characters, ranked by our full Autostraddle team.
33. Sgt. Tibbs, 101 Dalmatians
Stef: ACAB — all cats are bi, I don’t make the rules.
32. Tiana, The Princess and the Frog
Natalie: Tiana is painfully straight… though, in fairness, the only other women in the movie are her mama, her boy-obsessed best friend and a voodoo priestess.
Carmen: She is voiced by Anika Noni Rose, who has played gay twice in the years since this movie premiered (first, Jukebox on Power and then Rose on Little Fires Everywhere), so I’m giving her a bonus point.
31. Belle, Beauty and the Beast
Stef: Personally I am tired of Belle asking me If I’ve ever read Sex at Dawn.
Adrian: I do not think Belle as presented seems bi — but I believe in her potential.
Carmen: I do feel like all nerdy book girls are at least 20% bisexual, but sadly for Belle I believe that’s where the journey ends.
Carolyn: I read Belle as slightlyyyy bi but I think that’s less canonical Belle and more the version of her in Emma Donoghue’s retelling of beauty and the beast in Kissing the Witch.
30. Maximus, Tangled
Carmen: Sorry I am absolutely in it for the pout!!
29. Sally Carrera, Cars
Natalie: If we’re picking a bisexual from the Cars universe, it’s Cruz Ramirez.
Rachel: I feel like I dated her in college and we had zero chemistry but were too young to figure out that was a good enough reason to break it off.
28. Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio
Malic: I’m not convinced that Jiminy Cricket is bi, but they’re definitely non-binary.
Adrian: I am thinking maybe our ol pal JC (omg is Jiminy Cricket a Jesus allegory??? sorry I’ll stop) is more of a “no labels” type of queer.
27. Merida, Brave
Drew: Merida genuinely seems to have zero interest in men. So I’d lean more lesbian than bisexual. But maybe she’s bisexual in the way I’m bisexual — into lots of genders but not men and the internet is telling her that also counts as bisexual if that’s a label she wants for herself and she’s not sure yet?
Valerie: I’m with Merida, I wish there was a good word for “into lots of genders but not men” (though I appreciate you putting that so succinctly, Drew).
Stef: I have definitely swiped past Merida on Tinder.
Carmen: The thing is, I’m actually convinced Merida is a lesbian.
Heather: A bow is a very bisexual weapon! Not as bisexual as like a staff but way more bisexual than a mace! (Everything I learned about bisexual Disney characters I learned from D&D.)
26. Rapunzel, Tangled
Drew Gregory: Mommy issues.
Riese: Not a bisexual bob.
Natalie: Rapunzel was sheltered for so long, I’m convinced she’d try anything. Probably gay til graduation, though.
Valerie: TECHNICALLY she had a bisexual bob towards the end of the movie, once she left the oppressive confines of her Tower of Heterosexuality.
Malic: Okay, but hanging from your hair is technically a circus art, and every circus performer is bi.
25. Anna, Frozen
Drew: Uh yeah pretty sure she’s the “straight” sister who spends a bunch of time with her lesbian sister’s queer friends and one day one of them says something about queerness and she’s like “but I feel that way and I’m not queer” and there’s a pause and then she’s like “oh shit am I??” Kristoff is super supportive of her exploring that, of course.
Carmen: Wow. that’s the best use of “In this essay I will —” that I’ve ever seen, Drew.
24. Te Fiti, Moana
Carmen: I would also like to suggest Te Fiti from Moana because I don’t know, I think she’s gay. This is a lot of flowers. Flowers are gay.
23. Maid Marian, Robin Hood
Stef: To me Marian reads like she’ll make out with you at parties but still dates only guys, which is frustrating.
Adrian: Oh dang, Stef, I was gonna say Marian reads like a femme bi who is always like “well as a bisexual!!!!” because everyone assumes she’s straight. Not that our two reads are mutually exclusive oops.
Stef: I’ve made out with a lot of Marians unfortunately.
Meg: Oh god as a femme bi who is always like “well as a bisexual!!!!” I feel both deeply seen and fully horrified.
22. Jasmine, Aladdin
Valerie: Jasmine had a lot of barriers to break through but you KNOW if she hadn’t had to spend so much time busting through the “I’d like to choose who I marry” wall she’d have been on the “I should be able to marry a man OR a woman, FATHER” train.
Sarah: Bi girls love having cats as pets
Malic: Jasmine seems a little bi, but Raja the tiger is the big ol’ bisexual here.
Himani: I feel like the live action Jasmine has way more queer vibes to me than the animated one.
Carmen: We can think of her as Representative Jasmine of the All Jasmines Delegation of Bisexual Disney Characters.
Himani: Haha that’s fair — I just wanted to note that bc they feel like two very different characters to me.
Carmen: They definitely were!
Sarah: Oh yeah live action Jasmine is so queer.
21. White Rabbit, Alice in Wonderland
Valerie: Maybe this is me projecting but I feel like being perpetually late is inherently queer.
Rachel: Yeah I also came here to say I couldn’t figure out why he felt bi to me and then realized it’s because he’s stressed out.
Stef: You oughta see this guy sit in a chair.
Adrian: He’s never gonna be able to keep a brunch reservation with this crowd.
20. Tramp, Lady and the Tramp
Sarah: This bi girl I dated briefly had a huge crush on Tramp so I’m pretty sure that also means Tramp has bi energy?
Stef: Dirtbag with a heart of gold, I relate.
Carmen: I relate because I always date this person and rarely does it ever work out for me.
Carolyn: +1 Carmen
Kayla: EXTREME bi dirtbag energy.
18 and 19. Pumba and Timon, The Lion King
Natalie: The Bert and Ernie of the Disney world.
17. Robin Hood, Robin Hood
Rachel: Feel strongly that Robin Hood is not bi but does exclusively date bi girls.
Stef: Oh I think Robin is a guy who is very comfortable talking about men he finds attractive and I don’t think he’s opposed to hooking up with dudes, he’s just constantly being hit on by women.
Archie: He is def being merry with his band of men in those woods.
16. Remy, Ratatouille
Drew: Pretty sure the plot of Ratatouille is Remy falls in love with Linguini, Linguini thinks they’re just friends and colleagues and falls in love with Colette instead, Remy is sad and jealous and leaves, Linguini starts to miss Remy, Linguini, Remy, and Colette end up in a throuple. No?
15. Hei Hei, Moana
Meg: This may be controversial but I feel like Hei Hei has very chaotic bisexual energy.
Carmen: Profoundly relate to Hei Hei’s anxiety. As queer people, anxiety is our time honored way of being.
Stef: I relate to Hei Hei’s admirable ability to do the same dumb thing over and over and over again, truly makes me feel like he’s one of my people.
13. Jessie, Toy Story
Natalie: I think Jessie is one of those girls who says she’s bisexual in college and then comes out as a lesbian later in life.
Rachel: Museum-quality example of the bisexual horse girl.
Meg: “When She Loved Me” has to be in the top three most queer Disney songs.
13. Megara, Hercules
Valerie: This is a very Bisexual Lean™️ in my humble opinion. Robin Hood does it too.
Rachel: Absolutely The Blueprint for bitchy bisexual women.
Carolyn: The first character I thought of when I saw we were doing this list.
12. Moana, Moana
Drew: Moana is trans and lots of trans people are bi therefore Moana is probably bi. We call that the transitive property.
Heather: Drew. “Transitive property.” *adjusts bisexual monocle*
11. Maleficent, Sleeping Beauty
Drew: I know this is technically a different version of the character. But anyone who is portrayed by bicon Angelina Jolie automatically gets major bi points IMO.
Valerie: Was about to make my case by way of Angelina Jolie but Drew already did it. Also, having a raven familiar is extremely bisexual.
Stef: Maleficent thinks the stereotype of the evil bisexual is harmful but she’s also still maleficent, an evil bisexual.
Carmen: Maleficent is bisexual in every iteration of her character, and in the following order:
1. Animated Original Maleficent, super bisexual.
2. Kristin Bauer Van Straten as Maleficent in Once Upon a Time, supremely bisexual
3. Angelina Jolie in both live action movies of Maleficent, astronomically bisexual.
10. Elastigirl, The Incredibles
Carolyn: Elastigirl’s hair: a take on the bisexual bob??
Valerie: I genuinely can’t remember if she had a canon ex-girlfriend or if I decided it so hard it became true in my mind.
Heather: She had a husband and a girlfriend in Incredibles 2.
Kayla: Elastidaddy (I’m sorry).
9. Mulan, Mulan
Heather: Name a more bisexual activity than cutting off your own hair with a sword.
8. Professor Ratigan, The Great Mouse Detective
Stef: WHERE is Professor Ratigan????
Heather: I was worried I was adding too many villainous bisexuals and people would get mad!
Stef: The amount of time he spends denying his identity as a rat plus his sinister power grabs? BISEXUAL.
Heather: You’re right, you’re right.
Stef: Listen, as a villainous bisexual.
Heather: You’re not—
Stef: I demand representation!
7. Jessica Rabbit, Roger Rabbit
Rachel: “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way” is commentary on biphobia.
Sarah: This is every bi Scorpio I know.
Stef, a bi Scorpio: I don’t want to talk about it.
5 and 6. Lumiere and Cogsworth, Beauty and the Beast
Archie: These two have literal wives in the movie. But also 👀 💅 imo.
Archie, who can only vote as high as a seven: NINE!
Stef: None more bi.
4. John Darling, Peter Pan
Adrian: It’s the top hat/nightgown combo for me.
Stef: Oh the oversized glasses that don’t even have lenses in them.
Adrian: DING DING DING!
3. Evil Queen, Snow White
Stef: Is that like a … gaiter? What is that? I’ve always been obsessed with it.
Heather: It’s like a full balaclava.
Stef: For when you have to be at the palace at 2:00, but you’re meeting with the other foot soldiers at 3:30. I bet her Corona fashion would have been insane.
Malic: The Evil Queen was an early crush of mine, so I assumed that she’s an unavailable straight woman. But now I’m convinced — she is, indeed, bi.
Carmen: Ahem, the Evil Queen, in all of her iterations, is the purest form that hot bisexual who is both smarter than you and also knows how to apply the perfect lipstick and winged eyeliner and definitely also will murder you with a knife and you will somehow like it. This was never more true than when Regina Mills was the Evil Queen on Once Upon a Time, who was so supremely bisexual that it makes one quiver at the knees. HOWEVER, since I was SO RUDELY AND UNFAIRLY forbidden from once again inexplicably squeezing Regina Mills into an Autostraddle television conversation, I will gladly accept the animated original in her place.
Heather: “Once again.”
Stef: If anyone wants to buy me that cloak w the widow’s peak situation I promise to look really good in it.
2. Li Shang, Mulan
Drew: Always identified as bi, but lately he’s been hearing the word pan and is thinking maybe that suits him better.
Rachel: Definitely bisexual, almost bi himbo representation, but I think at the end of the day is a little too smart to qualify.
1. Ursula, The Little Mermaid
Drew: Is she jealous of Ariel or Prince Eric? Does she want to fuck Ariel or Prince Eric? I say, why choose!
Stef: And don’t underestimate the importance of BODY LANGUAGE.
Carmen: My favorite thing about Ursula is that no matter the gay list, no matter the time — she will always top it.
Carolyn: In more ways than one.
Did we miss any of your favorite bisexual Disney characters? Let us know in the comments!
You Need Help: Why Do I Keep Crushing on Straight White Guys?
Q:
I’m a bisexual nonbinary Asian who grew up in Asia and currently studying in Vancouver, where is the first time I’m surrounded by many white people my age.
I’ve recently found myself having a pattern of crushing on white guys (the cishet part is also assumed). I’ve had two crushes that did not go well. One led me on and the other I found out he had an aggressive incident in the past.
I’m currently crushing on another guy that I don’t know really well, but now I just feel burnt out on having crushes. I don’t have a lot of experience myself, I don’t know how to date and I come from a completely different culture. I’m just confused why I keep crushing on white guys. Please help.
A:
Hello, fellow bisexual Asian!
I feel you hard on this one. First of all, you’re attracted to who you’re attracted to. As long as you feel safe in that attraction, you can let go of any guilt you may be holding onto. That’s just true across the board.
It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stop and think about why you’re attracted to the types of people you’re attracted to. It doesn’t mean that you can’t expand and push the boundaries of your worldview of what makes someone attractive. It definitely doesn’t mean you can’t make a conscious decision about who to actually date.
It just means you can’t necessarily control for whom your heart thumps faster. Such is the central plotline of every lesbian romcom.
Let’s get into the white boy crush thing. It makes perfect sense that you’d be attracted to white guys if you’re living in a place that’s predominantly white. It’s who’s in your dating pool. Additionally, we’ve all been socially conditioned to feel feelings for white guys..or at least know that we should be having those feelings.
Regardless of where you live in the world, the image of the attractive white, cis, straight man is a prevalent symbol of power. White men own everything. White male actors are popular all over the world. There’s no question about whether white men are considered universally attractive. Even if you, like me, generally find most white straight guys annoying, if you’re attracted to men, you’re probably sometimes attracted to white guys.
On top of that, bisexual folks may find themselves in situations where they’re in relationships with straight partners. Heteronormativity is a real thing and it’s frankly quite easy to run into attractive straight people, most of whom will presume you’re also straight and cis, literally anywhere. Straight men are just out in the world approaching women or those they perceive to be women all the time. Some of them are decent, dateable humans, too.
Having crushes on white, cis, straight men may be about proximity more than a pattern. That’s OK. What I read into your question, though, is a concern about what it means to be attracted to straight white men for a queer Asian person. As well as an observation that these potential dates so far have turned out to be not-so-great people and, like, what’s up with that?
A lot of us deal with a personal history of internalized racism. I sure did and do. Growing up, I didn’t just want a white boyfriend, I wanted to be white. I always saw myself through a white lens of beauty and, thus, assumed white boys weren’t attracted to me and also was very, very naive whenever a white boy was attracted to me.
This may not be your experience, growing up in an Asian country. However, you should know this is the way that many white boys in Canada grew up, with racist stereotypes about Asian women, with fetishized ideas about Asian women rooted in colonialization and violent histories, thinking that Asian women are doll-like and passive and being attracted to that imbalance of power. Not all straight white men are gross predators with so-called “Asian fetishes,” but all straight white men were brought up in a white supremacist and racist culture that imbued them with these ideas about Asian women.
You’re not imagining that the dynamic between white people and Asian partners is uncomfortable. Regardless of gender and sexual orientation, there are a lot of white people who fetishize their Asian partners. Whether someone has a gross self-proclaimed Asian fetish or not, there’s always a worry that they’re interested in what you represent, not who you are. Even when you’ve met a really good, honest, kind white person who doesn’t have a history of fetishizing Asian partners, that worry’s still there.
On top of that, there’s the pressure within some Asian communities to date within your race. Not just the pressure from parents and family, the pressure from the larger world. Look at American celebrity, Constance Wu, and all the unnecessary shit she gets for dating a white man when, in fact, she advocated to delete a line from the film version of Crazy Rich Asians in which her character said she didn’t date Asian men. On top of all the white supremacy stuff, there’s a level of shame in dating a white partner instead of an Asian partner within Asian communities.
Enter you, a nonbinary, bisexual Asian person who’s suddenly getting heart flutters for straight, cis, white men. There could be a lot of things going on. It could be that you are being hit on by white men who are, on a conscious or subconscious level, attracted to Asian partners for racist reasons. It could be that you’re just meeting a lot of white straight guys because they’re literally everywhere around you and it’s cultural pressure that’s making you feel weird about it. It could be that you have some internalized racism or internalized homophobia or internalized transphobia to work through and that has drawn you to see cis white men as super attractive status symbols. It could just be a random occurrence that you have had three crushes on three hot straight guys in a row and maybe your next three crushes will be on hot Asian queer folx.
There’s nothing wrong with you for being attracted to white men. There are things you should watch out for to protect yourself from getting hurt by the wrong kind of white men. Watch out for things like race-based compliments, a history of dating only Asian partners, a history of intimate partner violence, and any sexist or racist behavior.
I don’t know what your queer community looks like for you in real life, but I’m also going to throw in this final bit of advice. Consider seeking out and immersing yourself in queer spaces as often as you can. If there aren’t queer Asian spaces available to you, look for BIPOC queer and trans spaces. You may find your crushes become more varied when you have more options to crush on. Not that racism can’t happen in BIPOC spaces, but you’re less likely to have nagging anxiety around white supremacy. I know finding those spaces in a new place can be hard. If you are still seeking out your queer community, you can start small-ish. Join an online community. Follow more queer and trans Asian folks on social media. Attend a virtual meet-up. You’ll definitely make some new connections and, just maybe, find some new cuties to crush on.
Fashioned with New Language: A Conversation on Bisexual & Trans Shared Experience & Solidarity
It’s been a few years of a lot of cultural progress in some ways around queer & trans people; in a lot of ways it’s also been one of intense and concerning backlash, with a rising right-wing white supremacist movement and a very active companion TERF community, both of whom have a deep investment in a very regressive and dangerous ideology of gender & sexuality. In discussion about the sometimes-overlapping experiences we’ve had as bi and trans folks with these kinds of ideologies, we realized we wanted to take that conversation about what shared experiences & insights we have to a more public forum so we could hear from others too! This conversation features the following people:
KaeLyn: I’m a Korean-American cis bi woman and writer at Autostraddle slash nonprofit leader slash a few other hats/gigs/projects. I’m thrilled to connect with other bi folks to talk about the “B” and the “T.”
Heron: I’m the Senior Research Analyst for LGBTQI Justice at Political Research Associates where I monitor and write about anti-LGBTQI rhetoric, advocacy, communities, and leadership. That means I spend a LOT of time thinking about the whys and hows of anti-trans advocacy specifically.
Rachel: I’m managing editor at Autostraddle and a bi cis woman.
Xoai: Xin chào! I’m Xoài. I grew up on land that was cared for by the Tongva people before Spanish invaders arrived. I grew up knowing this land to be called Orange County, California. As waves of Vietnamese refugees made their way to the United States due to the war in Vietnam, so came my parents. My neighborhood was called Little Saigon, where the largest concentration of Vietnamese American people currently live. My upbringing in what I call “the brown part of OC” was vastly different from what people see on TV about white families in beachside mansions. I was involved in narrative strategy, community organizing, and digital storytelling since 2014. I have worked on a national scale to lift up the voices of trans people of color and sex workers. I’ve facilitated workshops and given keynotes around interpersonal violence, imperialism, and even dating.
Rachel: I think we’re all interested in talking about overlaps and points of connection or solidarity between bisexual and trans experience (especially by and as observed by bi trans folks), and related, points of overlap between how bi and trans people are similarly targeted, stigmatized, fetishized or experience unique impacts of othering, whether at the hands of the state, mainstream cultural values, TERFs and more.
I’m really honored & empowered by the overlap between bi & trans communities; I’ve also historically felt really aware of the ways that non-bi folks’ anxieties or baggage with me as a bi person is often linked to their transphobia, or anxiety about gender that gets mapped onto trans folks, and I feel a lot of kinship with the experiences my trans friends have had dating cis queers and called to be in solidarity with trans folks in specific ways around that. It feels to me like there’s a lot of power and connection in talking about how all of us disrupt a lot of fixed narratives about sexuality or gender, and that the way both cis bi folks and trans folks (and especially bi trans folks) are subject to marginalization from a lot of the same groups really speaks to how much potential there is!
KaeLyn: There are a lot of shared experiences in terms of invisibility/hypervisibility, questions about the authenticity of self-defined identity, and exclusionary politics. There’s also a lot of joy and badassery implicit in approaching all binaries as fully optional and disrupting gendered norms. I’m especially interested to articulate the ways cis bi folks could be better building power with trans bi folks and just trans folks in general for our collective liberation.
Heron: Personally, I am an agender bisexual person with a LOT of bi+ friends and family. I guess I’m part of the bi+ advocacy community that blossomed in the early 2010s, and I went to the White House three times to talk with federal agency officials about how they can remedy the discrimination that bi+ communites face through administrative advocacy. I’m also the author of the Invisible Majority report that came out of that work, and the companion report on the lives of bi+ trans people. Since bi+ people face such start disparities in specific areas compared to our gay and lesbian peers, I was sure that bi+ trans people would as well, compared to gay, lesbian, and straight trans people. Though there’s little data, we were able to look at some of the data from the US Trans Survey to find that yes indeed, bi+ trans people face very distinct disparities in the areas of economic security, health, and violence.
In my current work, I think and write a lot about how the Left’s silence on sexual and gender fluidity allows the Right to dominate the conversation, particularly around conversion therapy. For example, the Right’s use of “detransitioned” people to illustrate that the trans medical establishment is somehow providing “too much care” for trans people. Instead of inviting people on every step of their gender journey to help us illustrate the incredible depth and breadth of the queer experiene. Imagine if gender fluid and sexually fluid people were invited by their community, their loved ones, and their health providers to just be THEMSELVES at any / every moment, instead of feeling like they had to perform a specific version of themselves or be kicked out of queer community.
As someone who is constantly in doubt over whether I’m bi ENOUGH or agender ENOUGH, I can’t imagine how it feels for someone whose gender journey evolves that significantly to be “kicked out” of queer community and then embraced by the anti-LGBT Right as a token of the failure of queerness.
KaeLyn: I really enjoyed reading the LGBT MAP report on bi+ trans people, Heron! Thanks for sharing it with us. I used to be a sexuality educator and I think in that space we too often talk about “B” and “T” as separate groups of people, or at least get really focused on helping people understand that sexual orientation and gender are very different things. We don’t talk about the actual people who are both trans and bi+, though, just that their existence is possible. I wasn’t surprised to learn that many trans people identify as bi or pan and I’m assuming some queer trans folks would also identify as non-monosexual. It’s also not surprising that bi+ trans people are experiencing the very same issues that cis bi people are in terms of sexual violence, poverty, and racist disparate impact. It’s disappointing, but not surprising and I think it’s something that’s not talked about much at all.
At the cultural level, in the US at least, when you say someone is bisexual, the image that automatically generates is of a cis bisexual person. The double erasure of bi+ trans people is something that really hurts and also makes a lot of sense.
How do you think we could shift the collective consciousness around cisnormativity within bisexual dialogue?
Rachel: That’s such a good question, KaeLyn, thank you for bringing it up! I think from my experience and instinct, a lot of that cultural imagination of a cis bi person is compounded by the fact that they’re often imagined to be a cis bi person who dates cis men and cis women, often in some perfect 50/50 ratio – I think about that cover image from the controversial NYT story “The Scientific Quest to Prove Bisexuality Exists,” a cis person perfectly centered between two other cis people of different genders. I guess what I’m saying is that it feels like the way bisexuality has been culturally made legible is as a sort of cipher for fixed, binary gender essentialism — these are people who date Men with a capital M and Women with a capital W, and we can take bisexual folks’ attraction to those genders as confirmation of what those genders categorically Are. Which obviously is wrong, both in the sense of being incorrect and being objectionable!
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I think there’s a lot of potential for bi folks (especially cis bi folks taking advantage of the power of our positionality in that respect) to disrupt narratives of gender a bit. I think there’s obviously a responsibility to reject gender essentialism and the cissexism of assuming bisexuality exists in reference only to cis men and women, but to also specifically name and push back on the baggage about gender that a lot of cis people are externalizing when they bring up these questions, which is an engine of transphobia also. I’d love to push cis bi folks (myself v much included) to work on recognizing the transphobia often inherent when someone is biphobic toward me; when someone expresses, for instance, concern about “men in queer spaces” with the pretext of bi women’s partners, this can impact transfeminine and nonbinary people and people impacted by transmisogyny in ways that are more violent than the way they impact me, making them unwelcome or unsafe in queer spaces. I think it’s important that as cis bisexuals we see that and name when it happens – not because it provides a bolster to our own issues or we can bring up transmisogyny as a disingenuous gotcha, but because gender essentialism hurts us all, and trans people uniquely.
I think that doesn’t totally address your question, KaeLyn, and I’d love to hear more about it from others – what would it look like for bi+ trans people to be more successfully & meaningfully centered in bi community?
Heron: KaeLyn and Rachel, your questions intersect for me. I have two major groups of bi+ friends/family: one which is comprised mostly of cis bi-identified women who are looking for community outside of their core friend and family groups, and the other of which is comprised of SUPER QUEER BEYOND-GENDER friends who truly don’t see gender when it comes to their relationships. The former group was so important to me when I was first coming out as bi+, when I didn’t have anyone to turn to. And the second group has become so important to me now, as I come into my own BEYOND-GENDER-NESS.
What I’m trying to say is, I think that bi+ trans people and bi+ agender people like me, and bi+ gender queer people ARE out there and they are providing such an important space for people figuring out their shit, but they’re just not getting put in front of mainstream advocacy movements, like Rachel said.
There’s the added invisibility of bi+ people of color of all gender identities and gender presentations. Like, that Time cover is two white people. But in fact people of color are more likely to identify as bi+ (and are more likely to identify as LGBT in general), probably related to white, religious settler colonialism that erased complex indigenous understandings of gender and sexual orientation in order to promote white supremacy. There’s some analysis of the 2018 General Social Survey that really blew my mind. It found that the group of people *leading* the increase in LGBT identification in the US was young, bisexual, Black, less-than-high school educated girls. These young Black bisexual girls led the increase in identification for the ENTIRE COMMUNITY.
Rachel: Ah Heron that’s so amazing to hear about the youth! I’m really interested in that especially in light of how many other major global movements right now are youth-led, like the incredible energy around climate change, or the youth organizing against gun violence and the Sunrise Movement. I feel like from the overall discourse and coverage of those movements it’s always been kind of a given that a lot of those youth are queer (as there are always queer folks leading social movements!). I’m interested in the idea that youth are IDing intentionally as bisexual, as I guess I always wonder where Gen Z lands on that specific label; as a millennial, it sometimes feels like Gen Z both embraces labels more than my generation did and is less interested in policing them. This is also the generation that I think we’re seeing have a really different experience of trans identity in some ways than ours did; obviously it’s not uniformly great or even mostly okay, but thinking about the Atlantic story that was bringing up ideas of ‘trans teens’ in 2018 and is now only two years later a public example of journalistic malpractice for trans teens, it feels very much like this microgeneration is being made the lightning rod for a lot of America’s anxieties about what trans identity and living life as a trans person means. I’m curious to hear from everyone who feels like they have any insight into it — what feels like it might be possible for this generation around these intersecting identities? Are there horizons or kinds of experience or community they might be able to build beyond what we had or have?
Xoai: What immediately comes to mind when we talk about sexuality is that it’s flawed — it’s flawed because it operates at least in the US as an offshoot of one’s gender. As in, who are you and who do you like? It’s the relationship between one person’s gender and the gender of the object of their attraction.
A less clinical understanding of gender and sexuality feels most prevalent among both bi folks and trans folks, more so than cis gay and lesbian peers. I think bi and trans folks are leading the way in terms of our sexuality operating more expansively — we see attraction as less anchored in the gender-to-gender relationship. I myself find that it feels easiest to just say I’m attracted to masculine energy, because that energy can show up in all kinds of people with all kinds of bodies. And yet, masculinity is gendered because people only perceive of masculine and feminine energy as it’s contained within the gender binary of male versus female. I think it we named masc and femme as blue and green, it’s easier to see that this energy doesn’t have to exist as two opposites. Gender and the energy/aesthetics/experiences we associate with it can be fashioned with new language. It’s not a coincidence that so much new language on gender that has entered the mainstream has been created by trans people.
I think the American project to pinkwash its imperialism and pretend that it’s the leading voice on trans issues erases the Indigenous knowledge that rests in our bodies and our instincts. American clinical understandings of sex, sexuality, and gender overshadow the knowledge that we as humans have always thought about gender and sexuality more expansively — our souls are capable of so much more than boring cis, heterosexuality! It makes sense that young Black girls who haven’t been indoctrinated by American education are the ones who are returning to the roots of that knowledge.
KaeLyn: I love the imagery of masc and femme energies as blue and green, Xoai. That’s such a clear visual example of how limited and irrelevant a binary, opposite view of gender is and I’m definitely going to quote you in the future.
As we wrap up this conversation, I’d love to hear your final thoughts on how we move forward together, or if that feels too squishy and undefined, what your vision is for a world where bi and trans people and especially bi trans people are fully liberated. How do we get there? What do you think are the most important next steps?
Heron: My gratitude for spaces like this makes me think of the folks who DON’T have spaces like this–folks who live at other intersections of marginalized identities, like asexual bi folks, asexual trans folks. And as a white well-educated person, I think of the privilege I have that *didn’t* put up barriers to my accessing this space here today.
So as an agender bisexual person, I commit to being loud and proud and using my loud pride to lift the voices of those who aren’t here today. I really recommend you check out AS’s ace* resources like this list of books and Jessica Vazquez’s piece about coming out as ace.
KaeLyn: I am so grateful for all that y’all contributed to this conversation. I’m absolutely awed by how dang smart and generous and badass you all are. I’m just happy to be here! I commit as a cis bi person to be a better ally to trans people (regardless of sexual orientation) and to make sure any bi space I’m welcomed into is also welcoming to trans and nonbinary bi folks. Bi and trans folks and bi trans folks are what make the LGBTQ movement strong and we’re the ones pushing our own LGBTQ communities to expand, grow, make space, be better. And that’s exhausting work. My wish for y’all is that you have the time and resources to take care of yourself, that you have community with folks who love and embrace you, and that you give yourself grace and space to experience joy more often than you experience rage.
Rachel: Thank you all for letting me be part of this; I’ve learned so much! I’m rereading what we’ve talked about and am thinking about what Xoai’s observation about bi & trans communities as examples of places where sexuality & gender are both spaces of possibility, and also Heron’s observation that the far right is clearly fixated on questions of fluidity and change in both gender & sexuality. One of the reasons I was so interested in this conversation was because I wanted to think about why both trans & bi folks (but especially and very violently trans people) are being so pointedly targeted by the Right right now – obviously transphobia is hardwired into conservatism in general, but I think there’s something key about how necessary colonial ideas of gender essentialism are to right-wing ideology and the state violence associated with it. In what ways can the ideology of the colonial state be destabilized by embracing the expansive experiences and values of bi & trans communities? And most critically in building material ways forward based on trans leadership? The most powerful vision I think I can imagine around bi & trans liberation (which is of course linked to everyone’s liberation) is one where we continue to support each other in advocating for the needs of our communities and talking honestly about our lived experiences, even and especially when these run counter to established narratives about gender and suffer backlash; I feel strongly that there wouldn’t be so much right-wing fear and anxiety around us talking openly about these complex experiences, and enormous amounts of resources trying to block our communities from getting the resources we need, if it didn’t hold a lot of potential and constitute a major threat to the institutions of power when we’re able to do so.
Xoai: What I want to emphasize: FUN! I think one myth about politics and movement work is that it has to be dreary, that changing lives can’t be pleasurable. Surely, there are moments where I want to unsubscribe from everybody, but I take so much pleasure in conversations that excavate our culture and us as individual.
I also am very pleased thinking about the idea tomorrow, everything we just said could change! We are a part of nature. We evolve like the trees, the whales, the hummingbirds. If anything, trans people have shown us just that. That we don’t have to have it figured out, and changing our minds doesn’t mean our prior states of being aren’t true.
When I listen to my pleasure as a compass, it feels so much easier to exist as an expansive divine force, in connection with my people and natural surroundings. I want us to be guided by that natural instinct in our bodies. That compass was taken away from us as young people. It’s time to return to that.
Where Do We Go From Here? Our Questions on Bi Community and Identity
As we mentioned in yesterday’s roundtable, it can seem like other people (especially the ones on the internet) have ~all the answers~ when that is generally and in specific here DECIDEDLY not the case. In talking about what felt special or vulnerable to share and discuss during this bi+ week, we talked about how scary and challenging it can feel to talk about what we’re still unsure about or questioning when it comes to bisexuality and bi community — especially because as bi folks we often feel a specific and intense pressure to be “sure” or that we won’t change our mind. Here was what came up for us – what about you?
Oh Cool, Me Too: What It’s Like for Bisexual People to Date Each Other
We all know about the stereotypes and assumptions attached to bisexuality”: “greedy bisexuals,” all bi women are faking it, all bi men are just gay, bi nonbinary people are … Nonexistent? (Proud to be bi and nonbinary and nonexistent!) As Bitch Magazine’s Rachel Charlene Lewis wrote about the dictionary definition of bisexuality finally getting updated in 2020, “We’re in a time when bisexuality is on the rise and is still simultaneously erased and questioned on a constant loop.”
Given that on Twitter so much discourse is spent on bi people in relationships with partners who aren’t bisexual and perpetuating problematic and sexist myths about bi people, looking at relationships between bisexual people can be an opportunity to look at more expansive perspectives on bisexuality. This isn’t to place higher value on them, but to point out their existence. Relationships between bi people are usually forgotten in these intra-community conflicts. For Autostraddle, I spoke to several bi people across the gender and sexuality spectrum about their experiences with bi partners.
At the very least, there was significant agreement among many of those interviewed that having a partner with a shared identity saved them from having to legitimize that identity. “Many people will hear [that I’m LGBTQ] and assume that means I am a lesbian, which is a great thing to be, but it is not a thing that I am,” said Morgan, 26, of Victoria, Canada. “I’d prefer people assumed I was a lesbian rather than straight, because then at least I’ve been clocked as queer, but it’s still not right, because I’m bi. I have to insist on that identity not just to other people but also to myself.”
“I didn’t really come out to myself until last year even though I had recognized my attraction to women and non-binary people for years prior. But because I had never been in a same-sex relationship, I didn’t feel like I was valid in my queerness,” said Daysia, 21, from New York City.
“Now, being in a relationship with my partner who’s also bisexual and understands this same feeling of queer imposter syndrome, I feel seen and supported in my own experience navigating my sexuality.” In a polyamorous relationship, both Daysia and her partner are navigating online same-sex dating for the first time, and she says that being able to share that experience with him has made them closer.
Emily, 34, in Chicago, was married to a straight man before entering into a relationship with her current partner, who is bi. “My bisexuality was a big secret when in hetero-presenting relationships,” she recalled. “None of our mutual friends knew, his family never knew, and my family pretended they’d never known.” With her current partner, Emily said the biggest problem is with those “external to [their] bubble.” “There is often an assumption that we are “just gay” and the realization that I’m bi only enters the conversation when I mention I was married to a cis man previously. There is also an assumption that I “switched teams” instead of holding this attraction regardless of gender all along.” But within their relationship and social group, she said, “We can talk openly about things that impact our lives and learn from each other without becoming defensive immediately. Our friends are learning to frame sexuality in a different way as well.”
For some sources, the awareness that their sexuality was untethered from gender made it easier while exploring their own. For Fin, 26, in Wisconsin, their partner’s bisexuality helped them during their transition. “As a genderqueer person, I’d struggle to date anyone who felt like they could only date men or women,” they said. “Having a bisexual partner was reassuring as I came out, started changing my presentation and went on HRT – I knew my gender wasn’t going to be a barrier for him.”
While of course regardless of identified sexuality or gender, people across the sexuality spectrum face gender transitions with grade and love, the knowledge that their partner’s sexuality wasn’t defined by one gender or another was freeing.
Charity, 23, in New England, echoed similar sentiments. “Being with another bisexual person has made me appreciate the complexity of people’s gender (or lack of gender),” they said. “It also made me appreciate myself as a whole person, and helped me realize that I’m trans, and I don’t have to cut parts of myself off because they don’t match others’ expectations.”
More than one couple referenced that a mutual awareness of each other’s bisexuality actually enabled them to play with gender together. “The fact that we shared a common sexual identity and understanding of gender, and talked about these things regularly, made the relationship a safe place for exploration,” shared AJ, 24, Charity’s partner.
“My partner is fluid in a way I don’t always have the confidence to explore myself, but he’s made it safe to try new things and be bad at them or decide they don’t work for me,” said Liz, 37, in Sacramento, CA.
And some suspect that the openness in their relationships otherwise coded as “straight” (between a cis woman and cis man) empowered their partners to begin sharing their queerness outside of the relationship for the first time.
Lynn, 26, in Queens, New York, has been with her partner for several years, but they came out to each other as bisexual at different stages. “I have always found validity in my bisexuality, even before my partner came out to me, and I didn’t feel that my bisexuality was more “worthy” or “acceptable” just because I had a bisexual partner,” she said. “When he came out to me, I felt very proud of the space and community we created together. It meant that he felt comfortable enough to let me know what he discovered about himself.”
For those in polyamorous situations, their bisexuality was an integral part of their relationships. “The more I think about this, the more I believe that being bisexual and dating a bisexual has opened up my perspective on how I understand relationships, different levels of intimacy, and my own capacity for being with others – and caring about myself!” shared Lynn from Queens. “The combination of being bisexuals, and being non-monogamous gave me an opportunity to rewrite how I think about relationships and community and who I chose to give my love to and how I do it.”
“Being non-monogamous, I feel like I’ve been able to reclaim the “greedy bisexual” stereotype for myself by letting myself experience love more expansively, with multiple people of multiple genders,” said Angie, 26, in Tacoma, WA. “I’m not greedy, and if I am, is it such a bad thing to be greedy for love?”
But of course, for some relationships, being bi never really came up between them. “Neither [I or my husband] think that this kind of shared identity-configuration automatically or universally provides some kind of heightened understanding or compatibility,” said Julian, 31. “At the same time, I do think you see less discussion about bisexual men, and particularly bisexual men in relationships with each other, and there are probably a number of reasons for that. So it’s not nothing, either, or else it wouldn’t be so absent.”
Relationships between bi people aren’t inherently better or worse than between bi people and people of other sexual alignments — they exist, and can be a perspective-broadening experience for those in them. “Even in the time we’ve been together, I’ve gone through phases of feeling more gay or more straight despite being in a same-sex relationship throughout,” said Kiera, 25, in New York City. “Since we do both hold this identity and are open to this fluidity, I think we are able to have candid conversations about it. Being with another bi person makes it easier to hold those nuances and feel confident in that identity regardless of the social pressures of appearing “just gay.””
Kiera’s partner, Paola, 26, agreed. “I think my relationship with Kiera has further strengthened me to not hide and to allow myself to be bisexual. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone else, and that’s is luckily something that has been super affirming about being with someone who also identifies as bisexual,” she shared. “It gives us space to just relate on our journey of accepting our queerness and then also allowed us to be great supporters for one another.”
How Did We Get Here? 6 Bi People on Coming to Their Identity for Bi+ Week 2020
It can feel like people on the internet ~have it all figured out~, and like the stuff that’s amorphous and opaque from your end of the screen is neatly categorized and easy breezy on the other. As is so often the case, however, that is merely an illusion created by the funhouse mirror of our digital universe! As an example, here’s some bi+ members of our team sharing their journey of how they arrived at their current place of bisexual identity, such as it is.
8 Books Featuring Bi+ People in Longterm Relationships
In honor of Bi+ Week 2020, in this month at Ask Your Friendly Neighborhood Lesbrarian we are focusing on a topic we know our bi+ readers would like to see more content about: bi+ people in longterm relationships!
Given that identities are often assumed based on the gender of a person’s current partner(s), how do bi+ folks navigate longterm relationships? What effect does being in a longterm relationship have on a bi+ person’s understanding of self? How does their bi+ identity interact with intersecting identities and those of their partner(s)? How do poly and monogamous relationships differ for bi+ people? All those questions and more are explored in these fiction and non-fiction books about bi+ people!
Wow No Thank You by Samantha Irby
Irby’s latest collection of very funny personal essays dives deep into her longterm relationship. Her life has in fact changed significantly as a result of this relationship: she’s a Black, bisexual woman now married to a white woman, living with step-children in white, small-town America. Adjusting to all these changes makes up the better part of the book. Irby describes going from being a lifelong renter to the perplexities of having to fix things yourself in your home when they break, learning to make food that kids will eat, living with your partner’s oddities (her wife is the type of person who charges her crystals monthly under the full moon), new friend dates, and lesbian bed death, in a hilarious take on “sure, sex is fun, but have you ever…” She tries to reminisce fondly about her young days partying — including a hilarious misunderstanding with a dude she was dancing with at a club — but she can’t quite muster it.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Okay, I know that the title of this sweeping historical faux memoir might suggest it focuses on anything other than lasting longterm relationships, but it’s a trick! Old Hollywood starlet Evelyn Hugo does in fact have seven husbands over the course of her fascinating lifetime, but the person who held her heart the longest was a woman she eventually called her wife. As she climbs with ruthless ambition from her life as a poor New York Cuban girl to a glamorous white-passing Hollywood actress, one of the only constancies in her life is her relationship with a fellow actress. There is a wonderful bi-affirming moment when Evelyn reject the monosexist assumption of the journalist to whom she is telling her story, asserting the consistency of her bisexual identity with her lifelong love of a woman. Make sure to have tissues handy, as this is an, albeit heartwarming, tear-jerker.
The Change Room by Karen Connelly
Eliza Keenan is living the white upper-middle class dream in Toronto: happily married to Andrew, a math professor; running her high-end floral boutique; doting on her two young sons; on the move literally every day from dawn to falling into bed exhausted. The only time she takes for herself is her twice weekly swim at the community pool, where the light coming in through the windows onto the blue water reminds her of youthful travels in Greece where she had a whirlwind affair with a woman. Enter Shar, a mysterious woman Eliza meets in the pool change room. Shar and Eliza share an instant mutual attraction. Their ensuing relationship makes Eliza question how much monogamy actually suits her and ask why sexual pleasure has fallen to the wayside in her life. The Change Room is a rare literary novel that lingers often in sex scenes like erotica.
An Accident of Stars by Foz Meadows
Bi+ people in longterm relationships exist in fantasy novels too, did you know!? In this epic fantasy set in the magical world of Kena, bi+, poly, and/or aromantic characters are front and center. Gwen, in particular, is a delight. She’s an older bi aromantic woman in a poly triad with different genders. Attention is paid particularly to how her relationships are respectful of her aromanticism. Saffron, the young woman who arrives in Kena via portal, is just figuring out she is bisexual too! Here’s the plot: Kena is on the brink of civil war, and Saffron with her new friends Gwen, Zech, and Viya are forced to flee the evil King Leoden by hiding out in a neighboring matriarchal society. Can Kena be saved? If you love this book, don’t miss the sequel A Tyranny of Queens.
Something New: Tales from a Makeshift Bride by Lucy Knisley
Bisexual cartoonist Knisley’s graphic memoir about planning her wedding and getting married is as charming and intellectually curious as her work always is. Her personal story is interspersed with fun facts about wedding traditions around the world. She gives helpful tips about creating your own crafty wedding decorations, talks about fighting with her mom trying to stop her from inviting the whole neighborhood to the party, and tells the background story of how she and husband-to-be John got together. My personal favorite part and the most relevant to our purposes here is Knisley’s discussion of reconciling her bisexual feminist identity with the hetero/sexism built into the institution of marriage and marrying a cis, straight man.
For Sizakele by by Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene
Taylor is a femme bisexual Nigerian American college student and activist in a relationship with Lee, a masculine of center African American basketball player. Lee and Taylor’s partnership, however, is full of conflict and far from healthy: Lee is recovering from familial abuse and this trauma emerges in the form of intimate partner violence. Another issue is Lee’s jealousy and insecurity about Taylor’s bisexuality. Bi+ readers who have dealt with biphobia from a partner can find solace in Taylor’s passionate defense and validation of her identity. Into this thorny situation comes Sy, a photographer from Cameroon and Taylor’s new friend. As the nature of Taylor and Sy’s friendship begins to turn romantic, Taylor is put in a tight spot in between the two most important relationships in her life.
Naamah by Sarah Blake
In this queer feminist retelling of the Biblical story of the Great Flood, Blake focuses on Naamah, the matriarch of the Ark and wife of Noah. The story takes place very much in Naamah’s mind, as she lives in a kind of dreamscape. She relives moments with her former lover Bethel and mourns her death in the Flood, converses and makes love with an angel who has built an underwater home for the children who died, has visions of a talking bird named Jael, and meets her future descendants. She is also busy feeding and caring for the animals on the Ark and having sex with her husband (they have to repopulate the Earth after all). This novel has dreamy lyrical writing as well as plenty of steamy sex scenes, between two women and between a man and a woman.
Sing the Four Quarters by Tanya Huff
Sing the Four Quarters is old school elemental magic fantasy at its best. And because it’s by Tanya Huff, queer characters abound and the world, while typical Western fantasy otherwise, is free of homophobia and sexism! Not only that, Huff has created a unique plot that revolves around the heroine’s pregnancy and a fantastical world where bards’ skills are seen as, rightfully so, just as bad-ass as a warriors’. Annice and Pjerin are our two main characters, bantering and bickering friends who made a mistake and had a one-night stand. Hence Annice’s pregnancy, although her longterm poly partner is a cis woman and fellow bard Stasya. But while Annice’s close relationships are intact, the pregnancy presents other problems. Namely, Annice is disowned royalty and by keeping this baby as she decides she wants to, she would be committing treason by endangering the royal line of inheritance. Uh-oh!
Do you have any books about bi+ characters in longterm relationships to recommend? Let us know in the comments! And don’t forget I am here to answer your lesbrarian questions. Drop a question in the comments below or send me an email to stepaniukcasey[at]gmail.com.
Interview With My Ex-Boyfriend (!!): Christopher
Welcome to this spin-off edition of Interviews With My Ex-Girlfriend in which Autostraddle writers get back in touch with their ex-girlfriends to ask them Five Simple Questions. In honor of Bi+ Week, we are mixing things up!
Christopher and I met our senior year of high school and were a mess at each other for a few months. We were precious repressed 17-year-olds in Dallas-adjacent suburbs (ish) who both grew up to be queer. We made each other mix CDs with The Strokes and The Format on them. We’ve managed to stay friends across time, states, and countries, and I think of our brief, never-official relationship with great fondness. I have always believed that Christopher and I were longing for something we couldn’t name and we found it in each other, in a way. Christopher shares my penchant for nostalgia and introspection and graciously agreed to speak with me for this series. We talked about being repressed teens who made out in several parks and grew up to be super queer.
Between the untimely demise of my family’s desktop and the fact that it was 2008 and we didn’t have smartphones, I don’t actually have any pictures from when we were dating. This, from the following spring, is a fairly accurate representation. P.S. yes that IS a rainbow striped dress why do you ask?
Adrian: Ok so we met at The Max, right? Which no longer exists RIP
Christopher: We were there for a local show, I was there with Zach to see a band we had gotten to know because we were also in a band, and I guess you were there for the same band?
Adrian: Criminal Shift! Was the band.
Christopher: Yes! And I was helping Doug with the merch table and we were playing a Steel Train song on a ukelele and you came up and started singing with us.
Adrian: Wow that’s precious. Yes, and I knew Douglas through Marisa who was in your band, so basically the world was shrinking in on itself. Ok so we met and then did we talk on AIM?
Christopher: No, I think we texted, I had a cell phone at that point.
[Reader, I did some follow up research and in fact we mostly talked through Facebook messenger because I had a prepaid cell phone without text messages because it was 2008!]
Adrian: Right, so we just kept talking. And then we hung out!
Christopher: You came over after church and we went to the grocery store on Lover’s Lane and bought a $1 loaf of bread and took it to Curtis Park to feed the ducks.
Adrian: Right, and it was my first date ever! I was a late bloomer in all sorts of ways. Also wow you have an extremely good memory??
Christopher: I remember stuff that’s important to me!
Adrian: Omg wow um ok that’s sweet!!! Anyway so we hung out a few times but we were never like official. Like we watched Eternal Sunshine at your parents one time. Your parents were really nice to me!
Christopher: They love you! Right and then we went and laid in the grass because there were randomly so many stars. Wow that was really romantic! And then there was the time we went to the haunted house with your friends and also we went to Chili’s. And then we went to the park by your house and kissed on a playground structure.
Adrian: They really should make a teen movie about us. Ok so like, this was fall of senior year. At that point, how did you understand yourself?
Christopher: The way I always defined myself from like 13 or 14 when I had an awareness of libido was like, straight but open. I had erotic experiences with guy friends at sleepovers. Which is like, normal for adolescent boys. I always contextualized them as like, discovery-based encounters that were fun and I never felt any shame about them. I did that throughout high school but I never really let myself imagine them romantically. I was like, straight with some bi-curious leanings at that time. All of my dreams were exclusively homosexual. My subconscious was telling me like, this is really what you’re wanting. I was really good at ignoring them or discrediting their validity to myself. When we were meeting I was a straight guy but with compassion for not-straightness.
Adrian: Wow, that resonates so much. In high school I was like very outgoing and had friends in a lot of different groups. I had the experience of wanting to be close to girls but I genuinely liked boys so I figured I was straight. There was no visibility or safety for queer kids at my high school, and it was just like, beyond what I could conceive. I like, wanted to be really good friends with certain girls, and it was not the same as regular friendship, there was longing there. But it was different than I felt about boys too, and I tried to date boys but it never really…worked.
Christopher: Haha yes! My whole high school experience I was desperately in love with and in denial about it with… Zach. And I thought I just really wanted to be really good friends with him and wouldn’t let myself play with the possibility that it could be more than that. It’s one of those open secrets that if I said he’d probably be like ‘obviously.’
Adrian: What made it so hard to come to terms with it? Was it like, your family, or the environment, or just that it’s hard to be a person?
Christopher: Those all probably relate. This is a rich question that I haven’t really processed so I’m glad we’re talking about this! There was nothing violently oppressive in the Park Cities, it’s not like guys who weren’t super macho were getting beat up or anything like that. I never felt like expressing a queer or gender non-conforming personality would make me a target of physical violence. But growing up in Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, you would say gay or faggot in a derogatory way. I don’t think The people who used those words used it as a way to spew hate on gay people, but it still had the force of the underlying homophobia. There was this understanding that being queer or gay or bi is just not a preferred way of living. I was never very introspective, I was a social butterfly who was always wanting to be around other people as a way to disappear and not have to be my own self. Throughout high school I was a little bit incomplete, a black hole of a person, never doing that much internal examination. I was afraid of what I would uncover, that I would have to come to terms with the fact that I was not straight and queer. For like Zach in particular, I felt like disclosing my feelings would ruin the friendship! I think about the brave few souls who were more forthcoming and out and loud and more certain in themselves, and like within our community, those kids didn’t have a tremendously hard time, but they weren’t seen as completely part of the rest of us.
Adrian: Well, and when you’re a teenager being part of the ‘us’ is the most important thing!
Christopher: Right. Well, what about you?
Adrian: I mean, Coppell was kind of a quintessential suburb. It was a horrible place to be different. Like it wasn’t safe and no one cared, that’s how it seemed. Not very many kids were out and those who were, and even those who were seriously suspected of being gay or queer, were bullied. Tons of my friends came out in college but not in high school. It was horrible. We weren’t allowed to have a Gay Straight Alliance or anything like that. I didn’t know anyone who identified as bisexual, it was just outside my frame of reference completely. I owned SO much rainbow shit and was like earnest about being an ally but that was as far as I could go. I wasn’t closeted, I was repressed as fuck, which I think is probably just as harmful in a different way. I wasn’t afraid to stand out or be weird, but that was about what I wore or what I did, not something central to who I was. That wasn’t really conceivable.
Christopher: I remember sitting at the “goth table” sometimes and they were like, outwardly gender non-conforming and some of the girls were bi. So like, the LGBT contingent also coincided with the fringe counterculture rule-breaking crowd. Which makes sense!
Adrian: Wow, I think a lot of our goths were queer too, I’m thinking about whether that functioned as armor in a way, or marking themselves as different outwardly so no one was surprised.
Christopher: Yeah, or like a disguise.
Adrian: Ok, so, we ended things after a couple months because you were super flaky. You kept breaking plans and the last straw was when we were supposed to watch Rocky Horror Picture Show in my friend Bethanie’s front yard, and I think I was super embarrassed because you were supposed to meet my friends and you stood me up!
Christopher: I can’t remember specific things I missed or reasons I gave for flaking, and the reasons probably weren’t false but they also probably weren’t, like, necessary. They were excuses. I was not confronting the real truth which was that I liked you but I didn’t want to engage in a dating relationship like this. I think that’s probably what was happening. I’m sorry I was a flake 12 years ago!
Adrian: Finally, the apology I’ve been waiting for [a joke]. Ok so but then like, in college you came out pretty much right away, right?
Christopher: Within the first quarter of college I was pretty, pretty, pretty, yeah, pretty out. The summer after high school before college there was a meeting of Stanford students in Dallas, and Alok was there, who was actively out and proud at that point. We became friends and when we met on campus and continued hanging out and through them I met their other friends and started to meet more LGBTQ people and I guess I had more examples and role models, peers, that were braver than I was and more developed in their sense of who they were. That inspired me to confront my feelings and own them with more pride and joy. I think that happened at the same time that I let myself develop feelings for a guy and affirmed for myself that those were feelings I wanted to have. That unlocked something! It was a slow, amorphous development ever since. I remember coming out that winter to all my friends as bi. Now I just like to say I have predilections and tend to be with men. It’s in flux. I don’t like trying to pin myself down when I’m a moving target in a lot of ways.
Adrian: So, I am thinking about when I visited you at Stanford junior year, spring 2012, and I hung out with you at your co-op and we saw Modest Mouse with Alok and it was just like sunshiny and queer and good, and like, I think about that trip and the ways that something felt possible. I was still identifying as straight them but being in a new place with people who didn’t know me, I didn’t have to map myself onto who anyone thought I would be and it set something free
Christopher: Wait really?
Adrian: Yeah, that trip was really important for me. I had broken up with my kinda long-term boyfriend a couple months before and was about to embark on a spree of dating mediocre boys while being in love with a friend and like, I was getting ready to come out to myself! Just in the most chaotic way possible. But being around a bunch of queer people who didn’t know me was really powerful. And I guess I should say that obviously since I was visiting you in another state we had managed to stay friends.
Christopher: Yeah, we started hanging out fairly soon as friends! We would argue about trying not to spend too much on lunch and then go to Half Price Books and drop $40. I think you turned me onto D.H. Lawrence…
Adrian: That’s the gayest thing that’s ever happened
Christopher: …so I bought The Rainbow. Oh that’s too much.
Adrian: There’s nothing subtle about that.
We spent a lot of time in the poetry section, and I once posted this on his Facebook wall because I missed him, back when people wrote on Facebook walls.
Christopher: It was hidden in plain sight! But yeah the the pressure was off once we weren’t trying to make it work romantically.
Adrian: I couldn’t really stay mad at you. I felt like I needed to know you, there was something very deeply held that drew me to you, it felt like we were supposed to be in each other’s lives. Is that too deep?
Christopher: No, I felt the same! I was eager to know you. There was an inexplicable, ineffable magnetism. What you said resonates.
Adrian: You always really mattered to me! So we’ve managed to see each other every couple years.
Christopher: Right, and I came to visit you in Nicaragua. That trip was really intense and important to me. And we talked there about how we don’t keep in touch frequently but when we do talk, I always feel very grateful. Picking up where we left off seems like a cliché but it’s true.
Adrian: You know, I was never annoyed that you were gay! I was just glad to know you. If it were the 1940s maybe we would have had a lavender marriage. Instead we’ve gotten to have this weird, beautiful long distance friendship for over a decade. It really feels like we grew up together even though we’ve only ever lived in the same place for a year.
Christopher: And in Nicaragua when I was there you were also like at the very beginning of naming your gender and your queer politics were evolving. So like, what happened between the Modest Mouse concert and that trip?
Adrian: So like, 2012 was a mess like I said and I made some questionable decisions. I remember when this girl started dating a girl after we had both been closetedly in love all summer, I was so jealous. I guess the jealousy was a big enough feeling to make me interrogate it. That was also the Halloween I dressed as Bob Dylan and people thought I was a guy and that was thrilling, but I didn’t think about that very hard for several years. But yeah so I dated a bunch of guys and then I came out as queer and bi at a poetry show — of course haha — and then I fell for a girl and then I moved away. In 2015, which was the last year I was living in Managua, two big things happened. I went to A-Camp and was around a ton of trans people for the first time and saw just like ALL these ways to be. And then I went to an LGBTI conference in Costa Rica and was around a ton of trans people again, and people started using -x ending pronouns and terms for me without me asking for that, they just like made the assumption which in this case turned out to be a huge gift. And then a few weeks after that, you visited with Rob and Dana and we went on that completely ridiculous hike up a mountainside that like wasn’t fully cleared? And we talked about being queer adults and all the things we were still figuring out. And it was perfect.
Am I Bisexual? Is That The Word?
Hello. It’s been a while.
It’s been a while because I’m not a woman anymore && I’m not sure I ever was && of course I was because if I didn’t have a roadmap for elsewhere, how could I have possibly understood myself to be there? && I could’ve been a woman because the category of woman is really large && I used to call myself gay && sometimes I even said lesbian even though I couldn’t figure out why the word made me uncomfortable like a too-tight shirt && one time, I did try out those they-them pronouns way before I understood myself to be not-woman.
It was on a mountain, surrounded by other queer people, plenty of whom were not-women too. In fact, it was at A-Camp (five days of activities for queer adults that this very website used to run), the first year we had pronoun stickers. We, the writers, always arrived before the Campers, to set up and gossip and be in community with each other. The lodge was still sparse and we, in matching tee-shirts, looked bright like candy against the brown carpet, each and every one so distinct from each other and yet perfect as a group. I have always wondered what our collective noun would be: a gleeful of queer writers, a panoply of queer writers, a coven, a murder, a spate, a loudness, a bravery, a swarm. Why choose only one? The tables were the tables everyone imagines at any large event—hard, textured plastic in a dirty off-white or else wood with water rings and vague hints of craft paints past inexpertly mopped up before they began to harden, to become permanent. The stickers were laid out in the registration line—fill out your form, choose this thing so unimportant && so fundamental. I looked down at my options—printed on tiny paper circles and colorful like M&Ms against the drab plastic-wood-paint-marks. Palatable. Friendly. I picked up two: she && they. Added them to my name tag. Went about my business; people used both. Mostly they used “she.”
It was easy to forget limits at Camp for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the size of the trees. Hulking firs that reach into the sky like hairy fingers, bounded only by their own strength to continue growing upward and the environment in which they’re rooted. It was easy to forget that I am only one person, that I begin and end at the edge of my skin as it meets the chill air, when faced with the sides of mountains crowded with hundreds, thousands, of the same tall tree under which I was sitting. Expanse is the word. If you have never been to a place like that, I will tell you: it is self-melting && self-atomizing; you flow to cover everything, boundless, and it tucks you in to its vastness and you begin to understand that the world is so much bigger than you ever imagined before. So much possibility. I even forgot about the stickers on my name tag. I was busy sublimating.
On the last day a Camper walked up to me, said, “I see you have they-them pronouns on your name tag. I’m really sorry. I’ve been calling you she-her this entire time.”
My whole body squirmed && I was keenly aware of it && it’s limits && my personhood && that my body isn’t really separate from me all at once. I felt like I was a glowing beacon, that everyone was Witnessing me && I felt invisible to everyone && I felt hyper-visible-invisible to myself, as though I had time traveled and understood something from my future, just the barest touch of it, that I could not yet comprehend.
“It’s okay,” I replied. “I put those on there mostly because other people use those pronouns for me, not because I feel any particular way about it.” It was honest && it wasn’t true.
I did not understand that I was filtering my identity through the expectations of others. I do not know how much of it I still do && does it matter if gender is social? Doesn’t some part of it live in the way other people relate to me? && I am using the perception of others to justify the things I want && cannot possibly admit to wanting && are so fundamental that I do not understand I am even experiencing a longing.
A partner, after I came out as trans, doubled down on the word “lesbian” to describe herself. We are not together anymore.
That is the short answer, not the whole answer.
A partner said to me that testosterone would be a deal-breaker. I put off starting testosterone for a year until I couldn’t. We are not together anymore.
That is one answer, but not all the answers.
A partner said to me “is this for real this time?” when I talked about trying those he-him pronouns. We are not together anymore.
I pressed my gender flat with my own hands to suit other people’s sexuality, to replicate the idea of who I was when I arrived in this community with open, pleading hands. That is the story. But not the full story.
I will never again cultivate a romantic relationship with a cis person on purpose, not in this life. I have been hurt too badly, too often, by too many people. T4T only. Inscrutable genders from outer space to the front, those that can be best described as “smell of campfire” && “a great pink shape.” && those best described as “a single chandelier earring dragging across your chest while we fuck.” && those who describe themselves as “common grackle sounds” && “the sensation, but not the taste, of warm tea.” && “James Dean, but with tiddies.” && all the people with all the genders I haven’t thought of yet, that no one has thought of yet, least of all themselves.
So far, only one of those genders is mine and I’ll not say which, not unless I trust you enough that you have a fist inside me, but the point is this: can I really be called gay anymore, if I am interested in so many people with genders that have little in common with mine, with each others’, save for an illegibility in the eyes of cis people? Is gay the word?
I started testosterone in January of this year. I was really scared to do it; so scared that I worked to take everything scary out of it. Scared to find the doctor; friend found the doctor. Scared of doctors; saw a trans woman. Scared of needles; got topical. Scared of quickness; low dose. All the fear in the world didn’t mean I didn’t desperately want it. I could tell because I thought about it all the time.
Two things had been stopping me: my singing voice, a partner who didn’t want me to do it. I knew the second reason wasn’t a good one, deep down, so I hung everything on how my voice felt in my body when I belted. I used to be an actor; I was a very good actor. I sang well enough to snag speaking-only roles in musicals. I was never good but it didn’t matter; I loved it. I loved ringing my own body like a bell. Loved singing the powerful songs I’d grown up singing. The day I thought the phrase, you know, do you really think you won’t feel at home in your voice? You’ll find different songs and you’ll love them just as much, I sobbed with my mouth open in my therapist’s office. Because I knew then that I would start testosterone no matter what; it was terrifying, wanting something so bad as to leap into the dark.
I somehow got through that January day with the box of hormones siren-singing to me in my backpack. Drafting an essay. A dinner with my editor and my agent. The long subway ride home. I sat on my bed and stared at the carpet and cried. “I’m so nervous,” I said, “I’m so scared.” A partner sat next to me, the same one who had called it a deal-breaker. She rubbed my back and pressed her lips into a thin line as I squinted into the tiny-print pamphlet, folded so many times it was a small square the thickness of a novel. It warned of how easy it was to accidentally dose a cis woman in bold. A danger to women and children if they touched it when wet, or anytime before the afflicted area was washed with soap and water. I became obsessed. “Don’t touch me. Did you touch me? Wash your hands.” I never slept shirtless on the nights we were in the same bed.
“Are you afraid your transition might negatively impact that partner? Because she doesn’t want you to do it?” my therapist asked me. I have an excellent therapist; she is trans, an art therapist and when I asked her once, based on her décor choices, if she was a witch, she said “I don’t self-identify as one.” My therapist’s office had a big window that opened out onto Koreatown; the façade of the building was under construction and there was scaffolding outside the window for months. Occasionally while I was crying into the plants and crystals and sets of markers, a construction worker would walk by and pretend not to see me. My therapist would close the blinds.
“Of course I am,” I said, because it was obvious. To me. To me && to her && to the construction worker, even. The one scary thing I couldn’t mitigate at all; it had nothing to do with me && my choices.
“You know,” she said, “it might.”
I am not really into computers anymore && there’s a part of me that really still is. Because time is meaningless && my past interest deeply impacts me, even though I no longer watch every Apple event with bated breath, no longer write a technology column. I find technology to be an apt descriptor && a source of magic language && a locus of stress && a way to understand a man-made world. It is in this miasma of future-present that I came across the “and” operator. &&. The logical conjunction that commands action if and only if all of its operands are true.
Every year, I teach my undergraduates a little binary on the first day of class. I make them answer questions about their lives using only true or false. I ask them to reflect on what was lost. Sometimes they tell me about a sense of frustration. I tell them that the work of my class is to wrest nuance from a machine reliant on binary, 0-1, false-true; a machine that was made for violence, with exponential advancement powered by violence’s intersection with sex. I pretend that these statements are only true about computers and not true about everything.
I don’t explain myself to cis people anymore && sometimes I am required to. In the past, I have turned to the incredibly flawed (but so simple) Genderbread Person. Even as it tries to disrupt the binary, it relies on it. But that isn’t even the main problem. In its attempt to problematize two-option thinking, it divides everything into an “or.” It separates presentation from gender from attraction. For a person who has never thought about these things before, it helps to break interdependent ideas into discrete parts && we lose something when we do && it has never been true. My gender directly impacts how I conceptualize my sexuality, and as my gender shifts and changes, so too do the words that describe who I fuck. Sometimes I feel like I spend all my time prying something illogical and giant from the grasping, minimizing hands of logic.
Even so, the && operator connotes a power to me. The forcing of a binary machine to become expansive. To say this && this && this and only if everything is yes. The && is one of my magic spell words. Abundance. Sublimation.
“You know,” the doctor who dispenses my hormones said, “she would have to lay on you every single night while it was wet to really get dosed with testosterone. You can chill out a little bit.”
But I couldn’t.
I was in pain (I am often in pain; I am chronically in pain) and the pain gave me a panic attack so I called a friend. It was one in the morning for me, but ten in the morning for him. I told him what I was writing. I barely had an idea of my argument, just that I was having a crisis of vocabulary and that generally, when I do, I write toward something messy until I make it make sense.
“For me,” he said, “I always think: why not the word ‘bisexual?’” && I thought about it too.
I would have been younger than fourteen, because fourteen is when I stopped playing the violin, and we were on the way to my violin lesson, which was truly wasted money for I was extremely terrible at the violin. I was sitting in the front seat; the interior of the car was beige or grey because I am not sure which car it was, which era of my childhood, but whichever it was, it was marked by the stale-french-fry smell of driving children to one million kinds of practice. I do not remember what I mentioned that made my mother say it—my mother, hands on the wheel and speaking casually, looking at the cul-de-sac before us. The sky was blue. It was Spring. “If you were gay, that would be one thing. But bisexuality is fence-sitting. You’ve gotta pick one.”
Maybe that is why. And if that is why, it’s not a very good reason.
Is bisexual the word for falling into the arms of trans people? Is bisexual the word for wresting nuance from binary? I am not sure. I am not sure about the accuracy of any language at all.
I painted my nails for the first time in years the other week. Black, with the middle fingers pink (fuck you, fuck everything). I used to be quite good at it back when I was a child && back when I was a girl. My friends would ask me to paint theirs, which I did. I was remarkable at never hitting skin, at always coloring inside the lines, no matter how late the sleepover, how sandy my tired eyes. It is harder on yourself, of course, and after the skills have spent a decade or more on the shelf. In the middle of a Saturday with the sunlight shining in, I got plenty of nail polish on my cuticles. But I loved the way I moved my hands—curled my fingers gracefully and held them close to my face as I gently stroked color this way and that. How I held them out and flapped them while I listened to a podcast and waited for them to dry, how I was forced to simply sit and gesture. I loved the way I talked with my hands after: dainty, fruity, limp-wristed && strong, sharp, powerful with my fingers held wide and taking up space. I loved how they looked against my yoga mat—I looked lovingly down at them while doing pushups only testosterone has allowed me to do.
Testosterone has allowed for a lot of &&. I want a caftan printed with flowers so I can walk around with my chest out and feel the silk on my scars && I am growing my hair out so I can wear a loose braid, easy, even though the hormones have made my straight hair curly && I want my shoulders to take up big space && I want to wrap my legs around someone nothing like me && when they fuck me I never want them to think of themself as a lesbian because if they are, well then, what on earth are they doing on top of me? && yes I suppose I am bisexual, if what we are talking about is kissing people who share your gender and people who do not && their desire has to be large enough to hold me, all of me: the gender && the presentation && the sexuality. The whole cookie; all of me is vast. I have never been good at picking just one && why should I be when the world is big and I am big in it?
This thing I am, my personal thesaurus of identities, cannot fit on the bright tiny stickers with letters printed on them && so much bigger than single, simple words or even a string of them && I got a taste of it when I expanded to cover the silhouette of a triangle tree against the twilight purple of a queer sky. That is part of the story. It is not the whole story. It is round and textured, not flat at all && it’s flat and smooth and goes for infinity in one direction until one direction is meaningless. It is like diving into a well I swear has a bottom && continually discovering there is deeper to go. It is continuing to find sentences that come after &&.
Pushing Daddy Harder: What Being a Bisexual Sugar Baby Has Taught Me
On my first date with William, I told him I was bisexual. We were talking about our dating history over an upscale steak dinner, and, after coming out of the closet almost four years ago, my sexuality is something I refuse to hide. In response, he slowly lifted his eyes off his dinner plate and looked at me, smiling devilishly, his chin hovering over a bloody filet mignon. “Alright, that’s it,” he said. “I’m sold.”
I am a sugar baby, which means I am essentially paid to be my clients’ ideal girlfriend. In fact, I often call myself a “serial sugar baby,” because I have been dating men like William back-to-back since I was a sophomore in college (almost four years). Though I don’t have to, I often brush off strange comments about my sexuality — my job is to boost his ego, and distract him from the stress of everyday life — not second-guess him.
William and I do many of the same things I would do with a partner my own age: a typical date includes dinner, sex, and a long night of watching movies and laughing at a hotel, because we have the same taste in dumb, early-2000s comedies. I laugh and call him handsome and dress exactly how he likes, and don’t cause any problems. I get to act like a wealthy socialite, dancing around his apartment with a bottle of Dom Perignon in hand, admiring the Banksys hung on his walls. Honestly, it’s a lot of fun.
It wasn’t until he helped me move that I learned he was utterly terrified of lesbians. As we unloaded the Uhaul, he looked at my new roommates, a sweet, unassuming lesbian couple named Hope and Angela, like a pair of monsters. He wasn’t offended, but frightened, avoiding eye contact, shuffling awkwardly around them while he carried the boxes in, and letting me answer the light, conversational questions they threw his way. Luckily, they weren’t offended. But I was.
He had never asked for a threesome, or otherwise requested some sexual act that required me to be attracted to multiple genders, which had confused me for the past three months I’d known him. Instead, he nervously asked me questions about the intricacies of lesbian sex and courtship, twiddling his thumbs and avoiding eye contact, as if my liking women was a thrilling and dangerous secret. Now, I realized these were less expressions of thrill, and more the body language of fear.
When I asked him later why he acted so weird, he answered frankly. “Oh, you don’t understand, babe,” he said. “Lesbians hate straight men.”
It’s one of many comments he’s made about my queerness that have made me pause — not reconsider my decision to take up this kind of work, nor question my sexuality or sense of self-worth, but make me wonder whether I should have found a way to use them as an opportunity to educate him. Ultimately, I think his behavior originates from a fear of the unknown, but to me, it meant more. It’s at times like this where I feel a need to speak up for my queer siblings and sisters; a deep-seated anxiety gnawing away at my hard-earned sense of self worth, formed of a mantra I’ve repeated in my head for years: “educating straight, cis men about my existence is not my job.”
I represent, for William, his most intimate experience with queerness. Because of this I often put the pressure on myself to represent our whole community well, though I know queerness describes a much broader experience than just my own. According to him, none of his friends, family members, or coworkers identify as such, so he asks me the questions he feels he can’t ask anyone else.
I am his gateway to understanding this community, and yet, when I am with him, I am merely playing a part: in my day-to-day life, I wear dickies and doc martens, speak in a low, raspy tone, and date women and nonbinary people much more than I date men; with him, I wear minidresses and heels, obsess over fine jewelry, and only comment on other women’s attractiveness when he asks for my opinion. I can be ‘out’ as a bisexual woman, but have to shed the queer part, and make my behavior and appearance palatable for a straight, cis, man. Correcting him, much less getting angry about his ignorance, is not on the menu.
Unfortunately, the current dialogue we have in America about sex work makes it so I can rarely express these complicated feelings. On one hand, admitting I do sex work at all, much more that I don’t love every second of it, puts me at risk of some Nicholas Kristof-minded “rescue” mission. A concerned family member or friend could stage an intervention, or worse, let a nonprofit that claims to fight “sex trafficking” know about the hotels and Airbnbs in which I work. More common, however, is the silencing I experience in feminist and queer spaces. Admitting sex work isn’t always fun contradicts the misled narrative, mostly written by non-sex worker feminists, that sex work is always “empowering.” Unlike the waitress who loves her restaurant but hates the table she served last night, I am not allowed to vocalize any discontent with my clients. In fact, admitting that I would tolerate the ignorance of a client for money often earns me the label of “gold digger,” or “whore,” — the very same whorephobia (that some prefer to call “slut shaming,” writing out role of sex workers all together) so many modern women pretend to fight so hard against.
In reality, negotiating my sexuality in this setting is tricky, tiresome, and oftentimes, a little annoying, and I don’t think it makes me anti-feminist or anti-sex work to admit it. Yes, getting asked questions like, “do girls really scissor?” and “who’s the man in the relationship?” is infuriating, and makes me feel like I’m in the 10th grade. If I didn’t know William and he asked me just one of these questions, I would slap him across the face. I am a woman who gets angry when people insult the LGBTQ community, and it goes against every ounce of my being to resist telling him to just Google the answers to his dumb, inconsiderate questions.
But William isn’t a paypig, he’s a sugar daddy — and none of that is part of the arrangement. Instead, I find small ways to push him towards a greater understanding of our community (after I’ve secured my bag).
In the time since William made that comment about my roommates, he’s made some progress towards a less fearful perspective. He’s met them twice since, once to take them shopping for new bikes so they could avoid taking the bus to work while COVID-19 spreads — a gesture that was very well received. Though he was nervous, we have had enough difficult conversations by now for him to have a better understanding of their relationship, and act a little more normal. He’ll read short, printed passages of Gender Trouble if I give them to him doused in my own perfume, and despite his reluctance, I think some of it has gotten through.
“When you’re not with me, how do you move through the world?” he asked me one month ago, twirling a long lock from my scrunchy-fastened ponytail.
“Not like this,” I said, looking down at the bright red heels he’d just bought. He smiled bashfully back at me, and wrapped his sweater around my shoulder. I answered truthfully, from my experience, refusing to represent anyone else. He accepted that.
This time, he had to.
I Couldn’t Find the BIPOC Queer Comedy Series I Wanted, So I Made It Myself
For years I’ve longed to see myself on television, but I quickly realized there’s a lack of BIPOC queer comedy series being greenlit in Hollywood. I realized if I wanted to see a funny, adorably awkward bisexual woman stumbling up the corporate ladder while still living her best messy queer life with her friends. I would have to create the show I desired. As an Upright Citizens Brigade alumni, I had just graduated from the improv program and decided to begin my writing journey. I wrote a three minute sketch (which would eventually become Episode 4 of #TMI) about Aaliyah Jones, a bisexual woman who tries to mend her broken heart (after her girlfriend Simone broke up with her) by jumping back into the dating pool. As Aaliyah prepares to go on a date with a guy she considers to be her next boyfriend, chaos ensues once she discovers a grey pubic hair. Aaliyah scrabbles to resolve this problem and seeks the guidance of her gay roommate Pharrell Hall, played by Donzell Lewis.
Donzell and I had so much fun shooting this sketch that I turned to him and said, “I want to write a series of bizarre and inappropriate situations that our characters are faced with and have to overcome.” I created #TMI: A series that’s like the beautiful queer love child of a throuple including Noah’s Arc, Insecure and Sex in the City. Transforming a three minute sketch to a web series was fun and challenging. As the showrunner & executive producer I had the freedom to hire my talented friends. The challenges were not having a filmmaking background. The only experience I had was directing a one-minute short that premiered at Outfest Fusion in 2019. My desire to create a funny and diverse show outweighed fear and merit.
I began to network across my inner circles, and through networking I was able to build a team. I reached out to my community and my friends were kind enough to lend me their boyfriends, girlfriends and partners. I sat down and flushed out ideas and storylines. As a writer and activist, I felt a huge responsibility to highlight how intersectionality and the complexities surrounding race, gender, sexuality, and religion play an immense role in the way BIPOC people think and operate in the world. Capturing these aspects of my life and transitioning them into a comedic setting was challenging because you’re pulling from painful and personal experiences. For example, the office scene in Episode 1 is not only my favorite scene but our fan’s favorite scene as well. For BIPOC individuals, the workplace can be a toxic & triggering work environment. This is the third time Aaliyah has been up for a promotion at the production company she works for. With over 5 years invested in the company. plus fulfilling all of the qualifications, she’s ready to transition from staffed writer to story editor. Everything is riding on this promotion. Her older sister has cut her off financially, and the love of her life Simone has moved to Berlin for a job. Never in my wildest dream did I ever think I’d be writing about code switching and generational trauma. I was terrified to write this scene, but I used my sketch background to take you into the mind of Aaliyah, who’s battling with her three distinctive personalities. Slave Aaliyah (played by Dashia Magee) symbolizes Aaliyah’s depression and generational trauma. Public school Aaliyah (played by Jacquelyn Joyce Revere) represents the warrior side of Aaliyah who’s ready to defend herself and Code Switch Aaliyah (played by David Brandyn) represents the professional side of Aaliyah. This side of her personality is ready to adapt to any situation you place her in. I’m so thankful that when Aaliyah’s three different personalities debate on whether she should stay or leave her current job, Aaliyah’s oppressed side musters up the strength to speak up and decides what’s best. Our fans love this moment, because as people of color we’ve been in these situations time and time again.
It’s surreal to revise a script several times and then see your words come to life when you call “action.” There’s nothing I can compare it to besides pure bliss. As #TMI continues to travel digitally to film festivals due to COVID-19 restrictions, I’m currently reliving that surreal experience through new fans of #TMI sliding into by DMs begging for episodes 3 & 4. Episode 2 ends on a cliffhanger that has a lot of you in y’all feelings. Trust Aaliyah is definitely in hers! I have read all of your beautiful DM’s and we will be releasing more episodes soon!
For my Bi/Pan/Fluid/Queer siblings, #TMI is my love letter to us! It showcases the beauty of Black and Brown love, queer BIPOC’s, people with disabilities, body positivity, and our beloved transgender and non-binary siblings. I believe all audiences will be able to relate to the stories that are being told. For the queer people of color who are often underrepresented, please know that I see you. I write and create for you. As long as I’m here, you’ll always be seen.
To watch #TMI, check out Bi Visibility in Film on Friday, September 18th 2:30pm PST Tickets $5.00 Buy tickets here!
#TMI will be available to watch online from Friday, Sept. 25 at 7 PM EST – Monday, Sept. 28. Tickets are $2.
Remaking Myself and My Desires on the Comics Page
Bisexuality is still very new to me. The colors are still bright and shiny, untarnished by the repeated washings that a cherished garment inevitably suffers so, forgive me if my optimistic and cuddly viewpoint of bisexuality comes across as naive. That could be true, and I’m okay with it, because the initial idealism of a new identity can contain values worth clinging to even if the world turns out to disappoint you.
My initial decision to take the leap and claim bisexuality for myself started out as my appetites expanded, but my journey into it so far has been about receptivity and empathy. When I first saw bisexuality defined as “attraction to your own and other genders,” it captured my sexuality exactly where it was: a trans woman whose dating history included other women and nonbinary partners.
The idea that I could assert myself as bisexual without being into cis men felt revolutionary, but I was held back by the knowledge that no matter what I said my bisexuality meant, it would be interpreted to mean that I was sexually available to cis men, a kind of being seen that I very much did not want to experience. Until I met the right guy: impossibly pretty, extremely queer, incredibly soft, and absolutely fictional.
His name is Indigo Hanover and he’s the warm cup of cocoa at the center of Tini Howard and Nick Robles’ wildly surreal end of life horror comic Euthanauts. The magic of fiction, and art in general, is that we can see things and try them on without the risks that go with them in real life and sexual attraction to cis men is precisely the kind of thing you want to try out in art before you do it for real, if you can. The problem, of course, is that is it takes queer creators like Howard and Robles to produce the kind of enchanting femme of center guys who entice me, and the opportunities for creators like us to bring characters like Indigo fully to life are exceedingly rare.
It’s a reality that’s been at the front of my mind as I dive deeper into making erotic journal comics about my medical transition and the ways that it’s reshaping my relationship to my body and sexuality. A blank page is a space of unlimited possibility for me to project whatever shape my desires take, which feels harder to take for granted than ever thanks to the raging COVID-19 pandemic and, as I write this, choking smoke from west coast wildfires.
When I’m drawing, I can fill in the kind of gaps in the culture that Howard and Robles did for me with Indigo, and it’s a particularly electric feeling as a trans woman cartoonist given that trans women’s sexuality is still bound up in stigma, exploitation, and extreme violence in the mainstream. In the age of bathroom bills, it frequently feels like the only time we’re granted any kind of sexual agency in the wider culture is to be framed as predators or infiltrators.
So there’s a kind of bittersweet privilege to knowing that articulating my personal sexuality in any way possesses far more revolutionary potential and the frisson of taboo than the equivalent work from any cis man could, even if he’s expressing desire for trans women. But that also comes with the weight of being seen, and making my sexuality so nakedly visible to the public brings back the same problems of inviting cis male attention that initially held me back from asserting myself as bisexual. The social dynamics and economics of hosting erotic comics about myself on OnlyFans and using them as a vehicle to open myself up to making porn means that navigating cis male attention and the dreaded male gaze, whatever that means, is going to be a prominent aspect of my professional life for the foreseeable future.
For a lot of women in the arts, cis or trans, straight or queer, the male gaze is an invisible enemy to be grappled with, to be counterprogrammed. There’s voluminous discussion about how women creators in particular strategize about how to misdirect or baffle said male gaze as a condition of expressing their sexuality in their work, and while I recognize the validity of those approaches, I find them exhausting and stifling.
After a decade of anguish and self sabotage between my initial gender epiphany and starting HRT, I resent the idea of diminishing myself or my flowering sexuality for anyone or anything irrespective of the risks attached. I don’t want to adopt an oppositional or harm reduction stance towards any aspect of my audience, it feels like a violation of my agency as both a trans woman and an artist.
Instead, I want to open up my work to everyone and anyone while keeping hold of the specificity of my queerness and desires. To me, conquering the stigmas and suppression of trans women’s sexuality means granting access to a self directed, unapologetic vision of trans sexuality. It’s a position that requires an incredible amount of vulnerability and comes with all kinds of dangers and pitfalls, but it’s one that I’m finding myself thriving in and rewarded by.
The emphasis of my personal sexuality right now is embracing being a woman with a penis attracted to other women with penises, a territory that creates all kinds of opportunities for the conventional cis het male gaze to see itself and its desires reflected in. Again, it’s a fact that comes with all kinds of potential anxieties, but I’d rather accept it and exploit it to my own ends than pull back one inch from my own desires because they have the potential to overlap with the demographic that has the most prolific history of violence against women like me.
Because when I’m drawing, I’m in control. In the same way that consuming art can be a safe way to try things on, creating it can be a safe way to reassert control. There’s always a push and pull, the commercial success or failure of my work depends on how I navigate the space between my desires and that of my audience, but I can dictate the terms in which my sexuality and the artistic depiction of my body are seen and consumed with far more confidence than under any other set of circumstances.
If I’m drawing one woman sucking another woman’s cock, I’m depicting women’s pleasure no matter who’s getting off to it, but I also get to decide what perspective I’m showing it from, which is one of the reasons why I love referencing the cinematography of porn in my work and why I’m increasingly eager to turn the camera on myself.
One of the most explicit ways that cis het ablebodied white men are centered in the visual arts is POV porn because it’s shot to simulate the world from their eyes, their penises are centered in the frame, and the assumptions about the market held by those who control the major studios mean that it’s rare to the point of extreme novelty to see anyone else shot from that perspective.
It’s easy enough for trans women with penises to transpose ourselves onto that kind of POV porn if the dynamics of the scene fit our desires, but why settle? The rising popularity of platforms like OnlyFans and current self isolation conditions means that some trans women performers can, and are shooting more from their own perspectives and it’s a key reference point for both my current comics and my future ambitions.
Drawing explicit porn from a trans woman with a penis’ perspective is a fascinating and incredible way for me to address very different segments of my audience in very different ways simultaneously. I can let trans women in my audience see themselves reflected in ways they never have before while challenging my cis male audience to see the overlap of our desires through my eyes instead of theirs, to experience the decentering of their own bodies in pursuit of pleasure not as a means of revenge, but as a means of extending an opportunity for empathy and understanding.
The spectre of cis male violence towards trans women is ever present psychologically even if I’m largely sheltered from it as a white trans woman exposing myself primarily through drawings. I can only let my guard down so far, but that’s increasingly matched in my mind by the reality that violence towards us isn’t a universal condition. That when we say that feminism aims to liberate men from patriarchy as well, one of the most acute examples of that is the pain, stigma, and violence that patriarchy metes out to cis men who are seen or thought to be attracted to trans women.
That stigma does nothing to exculpate violence or a cowardly unwillingness to be seen with us in public that cannot recognize how many orders of magnitude harder it is for us to exist in public on our own. That said, the closet is a hellish place for anyone and it costs nothing to recognize that transamorous cis men struggle with their own kind of closet. If my work provides a context and opportunity to weaken that closet, then I want to pursue it to the best of my ability. Not just for them, but for myself, my sisters, and our community. Loving trans women isn’t a painful or shameful experience. It’s ecstasy. It’s a privilege. It needs to be protected and celebrated.
It’s a perspective that I first started to come around to through trans women I was close to who were dating men at a time when it held no appeal for me. I initially had a lot of resentment about the level and kind of attention that cis men could get in the media for being transamorous, and some of that resentment was valid: transamorous cis men can certainly feed media fixations on trans women in very detrimental ways, but I was deeply skeptical that they had anything to add to the conversation even under ideal circumstances.
That changed with the experience of having the compulsion to remind a friend to text me when she got home after every time she went out to hook up with a guy she met on a dating site. She came home safe every time, but once I had someone to lose it became a lot easier to see how breaking down the stigmas that fuel transphobic violence as a community safety issue. Wanting to see my sisters safe, happy, and loved meant that I had to take the way that the men they date are talked about in the public sphere seriously, and it got a lot more personal once I asserted myself as bisexual.
It all came to a head when an artist I admire followed me on Twitter and, by visiting his profile, I noticed that he was mutuals with several of the trans porn performers that I follow. It should have been worth nothing more than a giggle, but it turned into a spiral of insecurities and anxieties instead because I’m at least as brain poisoned as anyone else into being skeptical about any interest that cis men have in trans women.
Even just trying on the idea of hooking up with a guy like that was too much because all it did was bring back the painful memories of another trans woman I knew being subjected to anonymous harassment over social media that her boyfriend was a “chaser.” What started out as an idle daydream reduced me to a sobbing wreck because, as I discovered in that moment, those stigmas cut both ways. All of the ways that cis men are targeted and demeaned for expressing interest in trans women create insecurities and anxieties in us about our worth, the nature of anyone’s attraction to us, and the potential consequences of publicly dating cis men.
It’s something that I’ve started thinking about a lot when I consider the audience for my comic and my choice to engage with and manipulate the perceived male gaze rather than work to evade it. I want to have idle thoughts about hooking up with a guy that don’t lead to catastrophizing. I want a creative space where I can work on pulling down the barriers inside myself in a context where people who are struggling with the same issues, whether from the same perspective as mine or a different one can see it. To see that they aren’t alone in struggling with the ways that trans sexuality has been violently stigmatized for both trans people and anyone who dares to love us.
Which is why I’ve come to view my bisexuality as a journey into receptivity and empathy. I want to reciprocate the sense of freedom that the validation of my work gives me, to invite desire, to dare to hope that desiring me through my work can be healing, freeing, or both. To me, embracing bisexuality as a fundamental part of my nature has meant opening up myself to new possibilities and find ways to dismantle the fear and insecurities that have kept me walled off from both myself and others for far too long.
Unlearning Stigma This Bi+ Week
Every couple of months the same conversation erupts among the queer section of social media about bisexuals. Sometimes it’s in-fighting and disagreement about whether or not bisexuals have a right to claim butch and femme as identities; other times, it becomes apparent that certain sections of the queer community haven’t yet tired of chewing on the same boring root about gold star lesbians this; unfaithful, greedy bisexuals that. Throughout my twenties, and now into my thirties – for a whole damn decade – the Internet has reminded me with stunning regularity that bisexual women are just fake gays waiting to break lesbians’ hearts, while bisexual men are in denial about how gay they actually are. And all bisexuals are transphobic, somehow, even the trans and non-binary ones.
These are all examples of stigma, and they’re particularly painful examples of stigma, since in these cases, they’re sometimes coming from within the queer community itself. This September, as we celebrate bisexuality, it’s important to also educate ourselves about how stigma hurts bisexual people, and learn the steps we can take as a community toward healing and solidarity.
Types of stigma
In my research on stigma and mental health as a social work graduate student, I focused on three main examples of stigma: Institutional stigma, cultural stigma, and interpersonal stigma. Institutional stigma is stigma that is enacted on a large scale – in our health care systems and our legal systems, on a grand, sweeping level. Stigma that is written into laws. Stigma that becomes policy. When being gay was a pathologized diagnosis in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders) as recently as the 1960s and 70s, this was an example of institutional stigma. The dearth of nation-wide comprehensive sex education for adolescents of queer identities, are also examples of institutional stigma that impact bisexual people today.
Cultural stigma, also known as socio-cultural exclusion or cultural exclusion, is another type of stigma that bisexual people face. The lack of understanding and cultural competence about bisexuality in mental and physical health care is an example of this. Consider, for example, the several awkward conversations I’ve had with gynecologists when disclosing to them I’m bisexual: One doctor, before hastily leaving the room, awkwardly blurted, “Well you can still get STDs from women,” but didn’t offer me any specific information for how to create safer sex practices, I suspect because she just didn’t know of them. Another example of cultural stigma might be the phenomenon of bisexual erasure: the assumption by others that a person is straight when they are in a relationship with someone presumably of the “opposite” sex (a problematic and cissexist concept to begin with), and gay if they are in a relationship with someone who is perceived to be of the “same” sex.
We experience interpersonal stigma in our smaller social circles and one-to-one relationships, and these are at times the most painful examples of stigma. They occur with our family members – the parents who tell us bisexuality is “just a phase” we’ll grow out of; the partners who assume that because we’re bi we’ll cheat; the straight friends who are suddenly too nervous to hug platonically now that we’ve come out. Interpersonal stigma objectifies and injures us in our most intimate relationships, forces us to embody caricatured misrepresentations of what it means to be bisexual, rather than allowing us to be seen and loved for the authentic beings that we are.
Mental health outcomes for bisexual people
As you might imagine, it’s not easy facing all these different types of stigma, both from mainstream cisheteropatriarchal culture, and within the community where we hope to be held safely, valued, and loved. Health outcomes for bisexual people reflect these challenges. According to the Human Rights Campaign, there are numerous health disparities among bisexual people, including higher rates of cancer and STIs, as well as poorer mental health outcomes. About a third of bisexual women, and nearly 40 percent of bisexual men, don’t disclose their sexuality to health care providers, as compared with thirteen percent of gay men and ten percent of lesbian women.
In terms of mental health, bisexual people are at higher risk of depression, suicidality, mood and anxiety disorders, and feelings of helplessness and exhaustion. Bisexual people are at increased risk of abuse and sexual violence, as well as substance abuse. These trends are even starker when you consider that bisexual people make up the largest swath of the LGBTQ+ community – nearly 50% of queer folks identify as bisexual – yet are deeply underrepresented when it comes to research. And bisexual people (many of whom are also trans and/or of color) are also “vulnerable to further disparities that occur at the intersections of biphobia, racism and transphobia,” according to HRC, listing several axes of minority stress. Our community is hurting, and it is heartbreaking that part of that pain comes from inside the house.
Unlearning and healing from stigma
This week is about celebrating bisexuality, though, and as such, it is important to emphasize that healing is possible. I wouldn’t be a therapist if didn’t believe, with every fiber of my being, that this is true.
While it can feel like there isn’t much we can do on an individual level about these larger forms of stigma – institutional, cultural, and interpersonal – there is one more type of stigma that is, to some degree, within our power to change, directly. Internalized stigma occurs when we absorb the negative messages about bisexuality and believe them about ourselves. It isn’t easy to overcome this. To a large extent, we still can’t do it alone: we are social creatures, and we depend on developing and maintaining relationships with each other in order to survive.
But it is possible.
For example, every time some biphobic foolishness starts kicking up again online, I also see, with a swiftness, hundreds of community members engaging with the vitriol in so many powerful ways: with righteous rage, with measured, compassionate efforts to educate those who are ignorant, and (my personal favorite) with humor. There are so many phenomenal bisexual sex educators out there, offering their expertise and doing the work to fill the gaps left out of mainstream sex education. In the creation of these narratives and lessons, people find each other: one of my favorite bicons, Gabrielle Noel has, over the past couple of years, curated a space online for bisexual people to feel seen, validated, and loved for who we are. In a recent TikTok, she joked grimly to the tune of Bulletproof, “You think you can hurt me? I came out as bisexual in a Grenadian-American family. Being gay is still illegal in my parents’ country” – an experience that resonated with many.
Therapists can at times be critical of humor as a coping mechanism, but in my opinion, it’s a coping mechanism that requires no small amount of resilience to access. And today, there are more therapists than ever who are dedicated to offering inclusive, affirming mental health care to members of the LGBTQ+ community – including bisexual people.
Stigma, in its various iterations, is heavy. The weight of it increased when your stigmatized identity can’t find solace even within your own community. But it’s important to remember – during Bisexuality Week, and every day – that you are valid in your sexuality. The way you love is real, beautiful, and sacred. No matter how isolated we can sometimes feel, remember: there are so many of us in the queer community, and the fluidity, vibrancy, and dynamic nature of our love will always make us powerful.
Did Dakota Johnson Come Out as Bisexual, or Just Hang Out With Cara Delevingne?
Guys, I’m going to level with you right now and tell you I don’t know much about Dakota Johnson. What I do know:
- She’s Melanie Griffith’s daughter
- She’s dating the boring guy from Coldplay
- She was Anastasia in the 50 Shades movies, all of which I saw in theatres because I love bad movies and hate myself
However, Twitter is currently abuzz over these recently tweeted excerpts from a resurfaced interview Johnson did with Vogue in 2017. On a recent breakup, Johnson explained, “Shit happens. I think I’m a little bit heartbroken all the time, even when I’m in a happy relationship. I don’t do casual very well, and my feelings, even the good ones, get so intense that they hurt. Can we make things really juicy? Can we say that I’m taking this time to explore my bisexuality? Or that I have given myself to the Lord following the release of my sexually explicit trifecta of films?” While on the one hand it could be interpreted that Dakota Johnson is announcing her bisexuality, she mostly appears to be making a joke.
She also told Vogue, “I’ve been in a phase of my life where I’m fascinated by young women coming to terms with their sexuality. I guess, by proxy, I have been experiencing that in my own life, and it’s very interesting to me.” It is worth noting that Johnson was discussing the 50 Shades trilogy and its extremely silly exploration of BDSM, and possibly not referencing kissing hot girls. While obviously hopeful, I am not convinced.
That said, Twitter users immediately went searching for clues, and oh boy did they deliver! For example, Dakota apparently has already experienced the Hollywood rite of passage that is “being photographed holding hands in public with Cara Delevingne.” If it hasn’t happened to you yet, just be patient.
https://twitter.com/killingvllnele/status/1283392549667954690
It is worth noting for the sake of Current Events that following her split from her sex bench co-parent Ashley Benson, 27-year-old Delevingne has been recently seen potentially canoodling with Cindy Crawford’s supermodel daughter Kaia Gerber, 18, and I don’t like it.
Other intrepid detectives discovered this interaction between Dakota and noted bisexual Aubrey Plaza:
https://twitter.com/femmeonfilm/status/1283654457822191618
Is Dakota Johnson bisexual? I’m going to be real, probably not, but we can never be sure until we have performed the ultimate test:
Rabbit Hour
I thought about the rabbits to distract myself as I drove; I would get to see the rabbits.
We had long ago stopped looking in this part of town. But the city aquatic complex was far enough away from where the loss had been anyway that it felt safe once I got to the sports fields, arrayed like pasture. The days were getting shorter, I usually didn’t get to the pools now until the enormous halogen towers were already on, though the sky was still peachy with everything else in shadow.
It took so little distance from the house to not feel anymore like I was someone who needed to be starting medication. It would be easy. I could cancel the next appointment; all that would take was another few embarrassing texts.
I avoided the men on the way back to their cars, sagging in their swim trunks. At that hour the parking lot didn’t feel unsafe, but it still looked like a place that looked like a person could be unsafe. The sense, from where? The movies or something, that a places that looked like that were where you were in danger.
The receptionist who took my five dollars didn’t recognize me without my mom standing next to me. My mom and I, who looked like the older and newer models of the same woman.
The receptionist took my folded bill, and found me in the computer, chewing on her lip. She had good makeup on, and the same logo-ed jacket as the bored lifeguards. I would have guessed she was in high school, though if I’d seen here somewhere else I wouldn’t have known her age. She looked like the twenty-two year old actress who played a high school girl in the shiny show I was watching, about teenagers doing drugs. Her makeup looked like she took beautiful photos over herself, and that she’d never been overweight. I imagined what her Tinder would look like.
Before I had come to go swimming, I had changed my profile photo, because it had seemed like everyone on there was ugly and frightening. But probably it wasn’t that the town was so bad, but that the algorithm must have brought me down a few notches.
In the earlier photo I had on a big puffy winter coat and glasses, my feet planted wide apart. In my face I could see what a great day I’d had, when the photo was taken, looking at the person behind the camera with love in my eyes on a cold street in a small town other than this one. I looked happy.
But I didn’t look sexy. Would I have swiped right on that confident person standing with her feet wide apart, looking like I knew I would inherit a kingdom? No. Even I wanted the look of the other kind of princess, the one who knows she’s valuable and about to be sold.
Alone I took a hundred photos of my face, adjusted the lights in my room, and took a hundred more. They all looked good as little thumbnails next to each other, but in each picture on its own I could see that my eyes were sad. When I tried to smile it got worse, the look I’d been avoiding in certain other women’s profiles. If I saw sadness was about to break through a face, I passed it by.
You think when you’re a teenager that you’re never gonna turn into that, one of the slumped adult just making do as best they can.
It seems like four photos and six sentences shouldn’t be able to contain all the complexities of a person. But it did, somehow. For example, when someone’s bio said, “these six sentences and this photo can’t contain all the complexities of a person,” I could tell that it had. Mine said, “want to get coffee?”
Finally one of the pictures I took of my face looked somehow sleek rather than sad, an accident of angle and lighting where you couldn’t see anything about me from my features, with a cascade of hair; enough of the right data points to be sexy.
Just the single photo, and within the hour, there were more pictures of men in suits, with six-packs, and with boats suddenly mixed in, and pretty women with good filters on, and what seemed like fewer car dealership guys and lumpy faces looking bleary in the flash.
But even then, it was always grotesque to look at that many different people in a few minutes. Especially the men who didn’t know how to objectify themselves, leaving folded chins and the blurred glass of their eyes, the grainy pixilation of upped-contrast veins in gym mirrors; as if none of us knew how to warp our images into anything except what men wanted them to be. Like video game characters, the males hulking brutes and the women creamy and hairless. Or they hid their faces behind expanded emoji and blurs and neck-downs, leaving just the folds of flesh and t-shirt. I didn’t understand why they were afraid, ashamed?
But when they didn’t know how to hide properly behind posing and lighting, it saved me from them. It was better that so many didn’t know how to hide the way I was trying to hide.
I didn’t know what anyone on Tinder would have looked like if they had known how to try to look the way I wanted them to look. I didn’t even know what I wanted them to look like.
Maybe if they had done it for me they would look like the snapchat filters where everyone was a cartoon animal, skin like pudding. No one wanted women with snapchat filters on their faces, but no one wanted them without it either.
Even me. When I came across another women’s profile who had come to it with honest rawness–intelligence in her face, the skin around her eyes faintly creased, pictures of her backpacking and dirty–even I didn’t want it, couldn’t want it, even though if you asked me what I wanted I would have said exactly that.
I looked back at the picture of myself in the poofy winter coat. No one wanted it, and so it gave me nothing. I switched my photos, and put a filter on the new one to change the colors.
The pools outside were glowing, as they always were. The sky getting dark didn’t effect the blue-blue water. And there were the rabbits. On the fake-looking grass, munching away. And then rocking in their strange rabbit walk to sip chlorinated water from the edge of the children’s pool. Solar lights in the landscaping made the whole place look like a well-lit Eden.
I wondered if the rabbits cared that they had no night, just a bright day, and a perpetual twilight. They had everything that a wild rabbit needed: grass and water and damp dark landscaping with wide leaves to hid under, and perpetual twilight. But twilight was their hour anyway, now they had more of it.
I imagined the things that came and chased them were human children, clumsy and slow. The rabbits were used to it now. You could get really close to them before they would bolt.
Did the rabbits know they lived in rabbit heaven, I wondered, or were they just as scared when they were spooked as their leaner kin elsewhere?
I felt lapine myself, swimming with a kickboard with just my nose out of the water. But I liked to put my eyes right at the waterline, where I could see the fake pool color and the extinguished sunset still reflected like printed silk.
I squeezed my stomach underwater. Since I’d lost weight, the skin pinched there weirdly, like a deflated balloon. It didn’t show up in photos; I had to take it in my hand before it deformed and mottled, and you could see how much of it there once had been.
I’d seen horrible videos coming up on pornhub recently, taken entirely in snapchat. Someone’s hairless vulva made all the more creamy, the penis weirdly mollified and smooth. I wanted to know what it meant that we had all collectively arrived at this place, though I couldn’t guess.
By the time I got out of the pool, I had five messages. Waiting at the light, the slivers of passing headlights passed over the hood of my car like sparks.
You’re hot. You have a pretty face. So you’re bi? You could have a three-way with us. What are you up to tonight? You should put up more pictures.
There were blocks upon blocks of neighborhoods over there that I’d walked through when we were still looking, when it hadn’t been so many days yet that we’d had to give up. I had left pain all over there, blotting out whole areas I was now half-avoiding on the route home.
Everything had already happened, we had already searched everywhere. There was nothing more to be done.
Before breaking up, my ex and I had housesat for someone who had a small pool, with a light you had to turn on yourself when it got too dark. He had gotten out of the water first, fumbled with the Bluetooth speaker to the soundtrack of a movie we had just seen.
And it was all still so sad, but it had made it feel better to dance slowly in the water, pretending I was just moving, until he said it looked just like dancing, and then I was dancing, dragging my fingers so they left smooth waves behind them.
I had always thought he was so pretty, but just out of the light of the pool he looked like a monster watching me. Just the wide shape of him, and the garden behind. I felt like an animal that was beautiful to be looked at. I felt wrong for feeling like that, and for liking it.
I had left for feeling like that. That pool had been so shallow, only up to my chest until the deep end.
“It will just sand the rough edges off,” the new psychiatrist had said, as if I was a piece of driftwood being shaped into décor.
How quickly was I supposed to bring that up if I went on a date with a stranger? I am a person in the process of having my rough edges taken off. You may find me more fun in four to six weeks. I could pretend until then.
You look like a fucking bitch, the first of the five messages said.
Yeah you too buddy, I wrote back. He unmatched before I could hit the button first, which felt like I had lost a small battle.
Laugh it off. How funny it was how little it took for violence to drip out of my screen. Maybe I could have turned it into a joke, somehow.
I hated that it made me feel bad, my heart beating faster just to think about it. I knew assholes exist. Why do I still care? This isn’t something worth caring about, I told myself.
The internet said that anti-depressant’s main negative symptom was “emotional blunting,” and that only half the people who reported it said it was a bad thing.
The internet said there were three-hundred and five breeds of domestic rabbits in the world. Wikipedia didn’t have images of all of them.
The air was just cold enough, the outdoor shower just far enough away to make me shiver by the time I got there. I got cold so easily now. The water ran across my scalp, getting warmer, until it was warm enough, and then delicious. The palm trees sounded like glossy magazine pages.
The municipal pool was deep everywhere, since it was only for adults. The kids had their own special pool, set into the concrete so even the rabbits could reach it to drink.
I turned off the water. There were two rabbits on the grass, jaws moving. The grass made them look so cute, like they weren’t real animals. As I got closer, one of them froze. The other one kept chewing. When I got a little closer, they both froze. Run, I thought. Why don’t you run?
They ran, but not very far. I walked away from the light with my flip-flops going slap, slap, slap, my shadow stretching in front of me.
First it was just my shape on the concrete, and as I got farther away it lengthened first into a fashion model, and then even father. The outline of a glorious, dripping Amazon, which stretching even father from that, until I became a ribbon of a dream-walker, sliding over the land, looking down from a great distance.🌋
You Need Help: How Do I Know if I’m Bisexual or a Lesbian and Find Community?
Q:
I’m obviously attracted to people who don’t identify with the gender binary, and I’m increasingly questioning my own alignment with the heteronormative status-quo (this is new to me since I’m a woman in my 40s who passes as cis, and it’s only in the last three years I’ve realized I’ve probably been queer since my late teens).
Where I’m really finding difficulty moving forward is in knowing whether I’m bisexual or a lesbian. I’m very clearly not straight, and I find I’m far more attracted to femmes and trans folx, and even to some cis women. I’m not often attracted to people who present as cis males, and the idea of sex with a man grosses me out at the moment. I’m also not at all interested in another relationship with a man. Where do I fall on the spectrum? I feel this is important in being able to find my community of like-minded folx.
A:
Hello friend,
I don’t want to invalidate your very real anxiety about not having a label that seems to fit, because that can be very stressful, and so much of our society — and especially LGBTQ culture — seems to revolve around them. But I also believe that sexual identity labels are, in my opinion, a bit overrated? It’s rare that any label actually describes anyone with 100% accuracy. Since you’re still somewhat new to the community, it can feel very important to find your “place,” and I totally get that! But it might not be as necessary as you think.
There’s who you’re physically/romantically attracted to, and then there’s who you want to date, and then there’s who you want to sleep with — and all of these can be different things, all of which can also change! Yet we’re expected to align under a single label. Most labels are also non-inclusive of non-binary and trans people to different degrees. All of this makes finding the “right” label tough.
You mention that finding the label that works for you is important to find community, and I want to very gently push back on that idea. If you’re in community with other queer women and non-binary folks, it might not actually matter much whether you’re lesbian, bi, pan, or whatever! I’m struggling to think of a scenario where whether you identify as lesbian, bi, or pan would matter significantly, except to gold stars, TERFs, or biphobic radical feminists. But do you want to be in community with people like that anyway?
To actually attempt to answer your question, though, we have to discuss what “lesbian” and “bisexual” actually mean. Women who exclusively date other women identify as lesbians, but there are lesbians who date trans men and non-binary people (note that some trans men and non-binary people feel this is problematic), non-binary people who identify as lesbians, and a variety of other configurations. Lots of people believe that bisexuals are people who date people of the “opposite” gender, but others believe bisexual means dating people of your same and another gender. Lots of people believe that pansexuals date people regardless of gender, and that it’s the only “true” orientation that’s inclusive of non-binary and trans people, while trans and non-binary-inclusive bi people disagree.
It’s so tricky! I think that, if you had to land on a label, “bisexual” would probably be the worst fit, since you’re not interested in men, and most people who hear bisexual assume it includes men. (Of course, not all bisexuals date men or are attracted to them; assumptions don’t dictate identity, etc!)
All of this is why a lot of people gravitate toward “queer” (or, increasingly, “gay”) as a catch-all term to say that they’re “not heterosexual,” and the rest is just details. If there were a label to signify that someone was interested in dating everyone except cis men, I imagine it’d be very popular – but as far as I know, that label doesn’t yet exist.
To find community with like-minded people, your best bet is to look for LGBTQ spaces, particularly queer women’s spaces (like Autostraddle!), and just meet people. I promise you’ll have commonality and find friends and lovers even if you don’t have the exact same label. And even if you do, the diversity of folks who fit under a single label means you might have more in common with some folks who doesn’t share your label than with others who do!
Here’s the tea: lots of lesbians are terrible. Lots of bisexuals are terrible. Lots of trans people are terrible. And lots are amazing beautiful people! You’re going to have to connect with real ones regardless of how they identify. And you’ll hopefully find dope people of a variety of different identity labels!
You might also find it helpful to check out other things we’ve written on bisexuality, which get into some of the questions you’re asking here. Good luck finding a label that works for you, but if you don’t, it’s totally OK!
You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.
Auli’i Cravalho Is Bisexual: “Moana” Star Comes Out on TikTok
The kids are alright, and one way I know is because Moana star Auli’i Cravalho used TikTok and Twitter to casually come out as bisexual.
A fan asked her on Twitter if she liked girls and she directed them to her TikTok, which only has three videos on it so far. One is her asking how to use TikTok since she’s new to the app, one is about her cat, and one is her lip-synching the words to Eminem’s “Those Kinds Nights” where he meets a girl who says she’s bi and checking out chicks. And that was that!
I personally love this for a lot of reasons, not only because she’s young and comfortable enough to come out publicly, but also because we’ve learned about a lot of former Disney child stars who didn’t come out until much later in life for one reason or another, one reason likely being Disney contracts. But Disney is opening up, and it seems its actors are starting to be able to as well.
Another reason this feels a little extra special to me, personally, is because the movie Moana was so relatable to my inner child. I’m an out and proud adult now, but the longing to be out in the world, that desire to figure out who you are and to BE who you are, and not who your family wants you to be… as someone who was closeted until after college, that spoke to me. Plus, in the movie, Moana joined Elsa in the No Prince Club. Her story wasn’t about romantic love, and it makes it all that much easier for queer kids to see themselves in her. Auli’i coming out as bisexual just adds to that gift. As someone who grew up loving Disney princesses, and never did grow out of them, and who is still waiting for her queer fairytale, this feels like a huge win. And any good news feels extra good right now.
Welcome to the team, Auli’i, and thanks for this moment of joy.
Making Lovers Of Friends: My Bisexual Account Of Women Who Don’t Belong to Me
First things first: I’m a Virgo femme with a Cancer moon. I have many feelings, I suppose, and I try not to get in their way; they show me how to clear a path for another way to be that I cannot yet see. This story is about a kind of freedom.
Huitzil’s arm is draped on my shoulder. Everything that’s missing is also me. (Photo credit: author archives.)
When it comes to my queer desire, my favorite feeling is a juicy lack — I don’t have the person or thing and that want tastes like salted caramel, perpetually not in my mouth. And that distance is not only enjoyable, it’s my edge. A playground, but sometimes it feels like there’s something missing. As a bisexual, afab woman I’ve wondered how to stoke my queer desire and also be in love with my partner, a cis man. Perhaps I can make friends with lovers and make lovers of friends.
Mazatl: The Deer. The Crush.
Look normal. Pretend not to fawn all over your friend. (Photo credit: author archives.)
It was noon in a redwood forest. Two women shook hands. One was wearing a beanie, the other was in a halter top. “I’m a poet,” they both said. They sat across from each other past lunchtime. Icy lake water was a few feet away.
Three hours later, they were on a bus or in a carpool; it didn’t matter because the summer had joined them. They couldn’t stop talking. The sun dipped behind the mountains. It was dinner time. Surrounded by at least 50 other people holding hamburgers, the two women did not look at any of them. The beanie listened to the halter top as if they were alone. When their stomachs complained, the halter top finally got up, and walked over to her other friend.
“I think I’ve been on a four-hour date,” said the halter top.
“Oh yeah?” the homie said. “I thought you didn’t know her.”
“I didn’t,” said the halter top. “Yesterday. But now I do.”
The halter top is me and the crush was Mazatl. I was in friendlove for the afternoon. And ever since.
I borrowed a surfboard and paddled out into the lake. I had eaten my burger and watched Mazatl walk around and talk to the other writers. Her shoulders were a little shy, her style a little flannel, and her walk was more of a strut – masculine, protective, unafraid.
In the essay, “Memories of Girlhood: Chicana Lesbian Fiction,” Catrióna Rueda Esquibel discusses a love affair that began in girlhood in the novel Margins by Terri de la Peña. A character in Margins is talking with a relative about her lover who died and the nature of their connection.
“Roni, I’m not sure I understand. I had favorite girlfriends too. We just never — ”
“Joanna and I were so close that loving each other came easily, too.”
“I remember how you girls could practically read each other’s minds…. I thought that was friendship, nothing else…. I never thought of you two — that way. I knew Joanna and you were always together, and had been for years, but I thought she was close to you because she didn’t have a sister…. All the time you girls were growing up, I was always glad Joanna had you for a friend. You’re such a good student, a nice quiet girl — never in trouble.”
For me, this passage means that the friendship between the characters was always queer but was passing as “safe” because they were perceived as straight, because they were women and sometimes in my community, we are desexualized. Esquibel’s essay goes on to discuss friendships in The House on Mango Street where the girls are not novias, but are in love, in friendlove. Esquibel’s essay gave me this: a lens through which I could re-see many of my early friendships as queer, which is a comfort and explanation for my ongoing crushing on women. Being queer looks like so many ordinary loves and not all of them are intimate and that, is okay, beautiful. Welcome.
It made me think of many of my friendships. That we are thinking partners, companions, friendloves, who are so close, closer than some lovers I’ve had. Those relationships are in Nepantla, a place of imagination, difficulty, and transformation. It always begins with friendship, my life partner told me once, when I’d panicked over being on a date with him.
Esquibel asserts that our friendships can be romantic, sensualized, and erotically fulfilling. That shit blew my mind. Oh, so you mean I’ve always been queer, even and maybe especially when I was six years old and my friend and I hiked up our panties to look like bikinis and pretended to take photographs of each other? It was natural to have a friendlove then, and it is now, too. Even if it’s fleeting, love is love and, often, maybe like my partner said, it always begins with friendship.
Mazatl: The Crush Deepens.
We were writing notes. The sunlight made long shadows at our feet. I was sitting next to her every chance I had. It was like when Margaret Cho’s imitation of her mother: “You love your friend SO much, you don’t know what to do!” Like that, exactly.
I was having trouble listening to the lecture. In one of our notebooks, I asked her, “What the hell is an apparatus?” Mazatl wrote something down, “It’s what you use to see something with, to know something.”
I was unimpressed with the presenter’s obfuscation. “Just say the thing, fool,” I wrote.
Mazatl stifled a laugh.
She has a doctorate and loves language in ways I don’t, and describes it with words I crave: fricatives, for instance. I love that she knows things I do not because we will never know everything about each other. We will remain mysterious through language. But not in our notes.
We kept writing each other notes during someone’s long lecture on race and writing. I will lace my attraction for her onto a poem I’ll write later that week: The Apparatus of Love. At night, I’ll scribble verses around the shape of a model in a magazine. This is as close as I get to touching her.
“Being queer and middle-aged means we end up on the Internet.” A fellow bisexual poet said this to me in a van driving to Berkeley from Monterey. I was critiquing myself for watching all the seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race because I wasn’t going out to gay clubs as much anymore. And so it is. I will watch/perform/enact middle-aged queerness on and from my laptop. Mazatl will give me the password to her Starz account so I can watch “VIDA.” This is the kind of sex I get to “have” because of her.
My TV: A femme top straddles a face and gets off when she’s done. The same femme top makes out with a boi-ish bartender in a graffitied bathroom.
Me: [Extreme blushing. Rewinding. Replaying.]
A different episode on my TV: The femme top has a hard conversation with her new friend about belonging in a fictionalized Boyle Heights.
“Relax, New Mestiza,” says Nico. She’s the ropey-armed, smoldery bartender in season two of VIDA.
Me: [I cackle.] “There I am!” I shout. “I feel seen.”
Why hadn’t anyone sexed Anzaldua sooner?
Nico is played by Roberta Colindrez. Call me. Via the Internet or your acting.
“We should get together, you know,” said Mazatl. “My girlfriend, you and your boyfriend.”
She said this as I peeled off my pants and got into the frigid river water.
“Yes,” I said. “For sure.”
This was the third or fourth time she’d mentioned her girlfriend. I knew what she was doing; I do it when potential beaus show undue interest in me. I drop the girlfriend, husband, partner line casually so they know I’m not into them. But some motherfuckers don’t know what that means or don’t care.
At that moment, I was that motherfucker who didn’t care either. I thought she liked me too. The tension was living in the safety of our relationships, the boundary, the naming of the people we were committed to: the tension was the thing to taste.
The water was too cold for me. I got out fast.
Hold up, though. Why am I still falling for unavailable femmes? Am I afraid to get closer to that desire? I don’t want to hurt anyone.
Mazatl on the phone one night: With men, I don’t have any problems with power or trauma coming up. With women, it’s so much harder. Everything hurts.
Me: [I nod. I wonder why this is true. I’m in my garage and the automatic light turns off over head.]
It’s our last night at poetry camp. We walk in the dark with friends along an empty forest road. The moonlight tells us vaguely where we are. We’ve all had a few drinks except me. I am awake for all of this. Mazatl is walking on the outer part of our group, on the road. A wide pick-up truck, a newer model, barrels up the road in the opposite direction. It comes close, we see it and move away in time. This was not enough for her.
“Hey!” she screams. “Watch it, you asshole! These are my friends!” And she runs after it a few steps, maybe throws a few rocks.
She was really going to fight the four-wheel drive. My heart is racing, both thrilled and terrified. It’s a very old feeling, like the land we’re on. The thrill is a small fire in my chest: yes, bitch, I am protected. And then, my gut speaks up and I know why I love her – she is full of rage and stones, which reminds me of the masculine bodies in my life who loved to fight. Of my own masculinity that will defend everything I have with my bare hands.
My first girlfriend threw a punch at me once we were broken up. She thought I was being slutty by flirting with boys. Another ex liked to punch things when he didn’t get his way.
Hijo de la chingada! A mí no me hablas así. That’s my dad, talking to some fool at a bar in 1972. And then someone has a bottle cracked over their head and is limp unconscious. Dad is in handcuffs. This is his language and field of care. A lifetime of shot-out fuses and cracked glass, a woman always cleaning up the shards behind him.
I had been that person: waiting patiently for someone’s rage to come, or engaging it with rocks and losing. I did not want to let my desire be about that anymore. It does not mean I wanted Mazatl any less. It doesn’t mean that she would be like them. It meant that I had to teach myself to better see the roots of my desire for the unavailable, fiery, eyelined, brilliant femmes and masculine bodies who did not belong to me.
I gently pulled Mazatl back to our mass of bodies. She came. Then I slept in her top bunk bed, awake all night like an owl, my body a window of moonlight into another way to love.
Mazatl is in town. Two years since my summer camp crush first began. How did I get to be queer and engaged to a cis man? Like this: I take my crush to buy a wedding dress, along with my mom who I am not out to.
My deer documents the event: my mom really likes a short white dress with ostrich feathers. “Ay mija get that one!” she says.
Mazatl photographs my mother and I smiling the same toothy grin. (Photo credit: Mazatl’s cell phone)
Mazatl tells me to walk around in this orchid gown: I obey. My train catches a little wind. Mazatl is loving this too and I am so happy to share this with her: my love with my boo, my love for my mom, and my love with her. She is my witness, my historian. Later, she will even help bake our wedding pies.
I was trying on wedding dresses in a store with my mom, who is surely my first love, and a friend with whom I was making another kind love — a desiring machine. Who and how we love is as tender as we need it to be: intimate as a dressing room with your mom in the next room and a poet adjusting your train, one whose eyeliner you worship.
But that wasn’t the day I found my dress. I was fated to go another day with my ex, Huitzil.
Huitzil: A Hummingbird. My One Ex.
Huitzil and I were on an island once, learning to surf and fighting on the freeway because I didn’t like PDA. For the record, I don’t like PDA with anyone, but she thought it was because we were queer. We are on different islands now: suburbia for her, suburbia adjacent for me. Now, she’s the hummingbird. The Huitzil who also got married to a cis man.
We are leaving our islands to buy me something, because this is how you get married when you’re queer: you take your ex to the wedding dress store to help you pick it out. Earlier that week, we had dug up the dirt on why we broke up. The gayest thing I did that day.
The oaks were relentless. They line nearly every street we walk in Pasadena.
“You always thought something was missing,” Huitzil says. What she means is that a man was what I was missing. But to be honest she was more masculine in her desire towards me, a big top if there was one, than of all the cis men I’ve ever dated.
On the corner we wait for a green light. I touch her arm and slowly move into her vision.
“No,” I say, “I always loved you. I just did not know how I could be queer and just love one person. I didn’t know it wasn’t about who I was with. I didn’t know how to fulfill myself.”
“Huh,” she says, approvingly.
She heard me, I thought. I’ll take it. That’s good because it’s true. The light turns and we continue.
I’m not gonna lie. This ex is hot like a cliffside train ride along the central California coast. But in the wedding dress store, she is totally appropriate. In my fantasy, I keep thinking, Is she gonna come in here and help me with this bustle or what? These satin buttons need fastening and I need some nimble fingers. Pero no.
What she does do is sit on a quilted couch and say, “Ah, Vick, that’s so pretty!” And, “That’s not your style” to the one that had a long circle skirt (which I have to hold on to just to walk). Fine then. I taste the salted caramel, she is far enough away for me to enjoy from an appropriate distance.
“That’s the one,” she said.
I milked the moment: I sashayed in the three-way mirror. Pumped the hair a little. Then she caught me just being myself: awkward and unassuming.
Huitzil’s favorite shot she took of me.
I could’ve drowned in all that expensive hetero wedding finery, and my queerness at times felt as distant as a $10,000 dress. But having Huitzil there was all the reminder I needed: staying friends with your exgirlfriends = so gay.
We dated 14 years ago. Fifteen pounds and six lovers ago. One death that will forever hurt and that is not mine to speak of. Losing all of our common friends to distance and possessiveness, and yet there we were, in a room full of rhinestones, still salty and still in friendlove. It is not the love we had, but one we are in the middle of making, with white streaks in our hair, with less gay bar stamps on our wrists. This is the queerest thing of all: Huitzil and I are re-creating, re configuring, bending and flipping love, friendship, and commitment. And that felt fucking great. That is not going anywhere.
Belgian psychotherapist and writer Esther Perel says that every person should cultivate their own private world of sensuality, desire, and fantasy. In my world, there is a lot of tulle and women who don’t belong to me.
Mazatl: The Desiring Machine.
Brujas who like to text.
One Wednesday morning, a few years after we meet, I write Mazatl a note I will not send. Just a few minutes later, my cell phone dings. It’s her, I think. We don’t text frequently, but this happens to us a lot: I think of her, or she will think of me, and then, magic, text materializes. I put the notebook down and walked over to pick up the sound.
On the screen: A series of photos of a sun setting along a horizon of water. There are no trees obstructing the light. The water is serene.
Me: “I was writing to you! You must have heard me.”
Mazatl: “Loves” my message.
Another day, I text her a photo of my presentation title for a panel I’ll be on later: “Friends and Lovers: Queering Latinx Friendship.”
My Deer Mazatl writes: “I love this. Friendloves.”
“Exactly,” I text back. I send malas and hug emojis.
Mazatl: “I am grateful for your desiring machine of a friendship and all of its unique intimacies.” A wink emoji. An XO.
A beat.
A deep breath in my room from, which you can see the Eiffel Tower.
Then Mazatl: “Also you’re always right about my girlfriends LOL.”
I text her my laughter, a long ribbon of it. I’m always right about how her love interests aren’t good enough, and then they show their ass. Her suitors need to step it up; I’ve raised the bar, dummies.
My reaction to the opening scene of season 2 of VIDA.
Mazatl let me use her Starz login so I could watch VIDA’s exquisite sex scenes. In the text above, “mss” means manuscript. I sent Mazatl my second poetry collection to get her feedback. But also ain’t “mss” mean “mess” too? Ethereal, missed-connection, lovely mess.
Apparently, my text persona is the hormonal 12-year old version of myself.
The next week: I make the Deer a playlist. “Happy birthday, Fire Starter.” She’s an Aries (and so is Huitzil. Coincidence? Of course not). I text her the link. On it, breathy women sing about “crying for another” over hi-life melodies. Someone in another song wonders if “you look both ways/when you cross my mind.”
The Deer writes: Very strange. I was just about to text you. I was driving and thought of our park outing and how that was my entire highlight of that trip. Hanging with you!
I get sentimental and dig up a photo of us the first day we met: in the redwoods. There, she also told me about how people fall in love with her without her consent.
I don’t want to be that fool.
I want to be full.
We had walked to the stream mid-friendlove affair. Along the stream there were outcroppings of rocks and nooks to sit in. We passed two young people, who could be girls if that’s what they identify as. I looked at Mazatl and we exchanged knowing looks. Let’s keep going and leave the baby gays be.
I got this figured out, I think. This friendlove feeling is for me. Even if Mazatl is feeling it or not, the feeling I was cultivating in that freezing water was for and about me. Don’t forget you are gay, the feeling said. Don’t forget me, girl. I got you this far and I will punch you in the teeth if you forget me.
Mazatl wasn’t trying to kick it to me and I was thankful for the boundary. She was just interested in what I had to say. Plus when she listened, she smiled like it was her birthday, but it was just me talking in a holey cashmere sweater. She still does: holds the information, the body of my desire in her hands and does not judge me, does not scold me. Mazatl reflects it back to me.
Occasionally, on full moons, I am full of my desire, for which, to which, through which I am responsible for myself.
One dawn, I’m between sleep and the day. On the phone the night before, I shyly asked Mazatl, sort of not really, about whether she was attracted to me, AKA, did she think I was cute? “If we didn’t have partners,” I said. “If we were in another universe, perhaps I’d be in some other kind of friendship with you.” It was beyond roundabout. It was stepping over cracks in the earth that I didn’t want to fall into.
Then she said something about how she had also felt changed by our meeting that summer in the redwoods. She still has my old letter, she said. In it, I had thanked her for reminding me about a part of myself that I’d been ignoring.
She said I’d also helped remind her of some closed off parts of herself, too. So if you read between the lines no, she wasn’t reciprocating a sexual charge with me, but instead a social emotional change and a kind of reenergizing in her life. An exchange of energy. A friendlove charge. I smiled and was grateful. I still am.
What I realized is that I am still only attracted to women who I can’t have. It’s because it’s more romantic. It is safer and easier to love and want someone from far away than finding someone who is available and into me, with an open calendar ready to schedule me in. Perhaps I am lazy, or afraid, or tired, or all three. What I do want is to fulfill that desire as a shy, Catholic/not, to allow myself to be free to try. I know those places in me need to feel safe and loved to experience different or new sexual environments.
How will I get there and what’s that place look like? Vamos a ver.
My Cancer moon had me fucked up yesterday. I asked Mazatl if she would date me if I wasn’t married. She was like, “Stop asking me that. You’re amazing.”
I was like, “No, shit. I mean. What do you wish we had now?”
She wrote: Oh you’re for real. To be honest, I have such a hard time imagining being romantically or erotically attracted to people who are my friends, it’s hard to imagine. I need the clear boundaries/ delineation.
I thank her.
Then, she writes: Girl crush / friend crush right back. Xo.
That is a love in which our friendship can be romantic, sensual, and erotically fulfilling. All of me is welcome at my door.
If I don’t have sex with the women who share their beds, with my friendloves, but there is a romantic tension I enjoy and respect, what do I have today?
From those nights and that text: a radical Victorian corset fire, reciprocal long-distance crushing and monogamy.
And finally, this: I am tending to my queer desire and it’s getting fulfilled in the safest, most sexy way possible for me.
I had a dream Mazatl was walking up to me in a grove of ferns and oaks. I was so happy to see her face. I text the link to her birthday playlist.
Mazatl: How strange that you are texting, I was just thinking of you.
She sends another photo: The deer almost smiles. She is on a ferry. Her jacket is army green. Her eyeliner is immaculate and disappearing.
I send her a photo, too: I lean on the hood of a ‘69 Ford Mustang convertible in a denim jumpsuit, my leg elongated across the body.
I type: I had a dream that you told me I was waiting for a woman to love me. You said, “You shouldn’t have to wait for anyone.”
She writes: I would say that.
She’s right. I should not have to wait for anyone. I am not. I have the love I’ve always wanted, a home in which I can write all of this, to which I come back to.
My editor thinks the real question here is this: What is my desire for women that makes me want to approach them into infinity and never meet?
At the moment, what matters to me is being safe: safe to desire and what that looks like is admiring from afar, respecting and loving limits; to engage in tense textual desire with my friend who loves me and does not want a physical relationship either.
Mazatl keeps her boundaries tight and that is the playground in which I wish to play with her: in notes, in text, in care packages that smell like copal. This enacting on a cloud, in the textual expression of friendship, completes me.
It is and I am, enough.🔮
Edited by Kamala
