Let’s Discuss This Very Bisexual Pride Episode of “Vanderpump Rules”

Vanderpump Rules aired its annual Pride episode. Perhaps for you, like me, those words carry a lot of meaning and inspire haunting flashbacks to the alleyway behind SUR Restaurant. Perhaps you, like me, have lost approximately twenty thousand hours of your life to this Bravo reality program, about 40% of which has specifically been lost to thinking about the Pride episodes.

For the uninitiated, here’s a quick rundown on what exactly Vanderpump Rules is. Vanderpump Rules is a spin-off of Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills, focusing on the current and former (because they were fired) employees of Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurant SUR Restaurant & Lounge (SUR stands for Sexy Unique Restaurant, so its government name is Sexy Unique Restaurant Restaurant & Lounge). It is a show about a bunch of beautiful liars navigating their lives and all the lies they’ve told. It depicts one of the most dysfunctional group of friends I’ve ever seen in my life (the main cast includes four Cancers, two Aquarians, a Pisces, a Libra, and a Virgo), and everything I know about heterosexual culture I’ve learned from this show.

The Pride episode is an annual tradition, set during Los Angeles Pride. SUR sits along the parade route and turns into even more of a hot mess than usual for Pride, full of patrons who likely are here specifically because they want to be a part of the annual Pride episode, which despite happening on the earlier end of each season is usually a pretty climactic event. The Pride episodes are a dark corner of the series, one that me and my fellow gay lady friends who are fans of this show (Bravo Lesbians: there are DOZENS of us) hold in contempt and awe. Mostly focusing on the mostly straight cast of liars, Vanderpump Rules’ Pride episodes are an EXTREMELY ACCIDENTAL critique of the modern commodification of Pride and rainbow capitalism.

Season eight’s Pride episode was a lot of the same, although now there’s the added layer of main cast member Ariana being out as bisexual. This was the first Pump Rules Pride episode that Ariana was out for, and in fact, it was her first experience being out at Pride event in her life, something she talks candidly about in the episode. It’s not the first time a Vanderpump Rules Pride episode has shifted some focus to actual LGBTQ people. One Pride episode introduced new recurring character Billie Lee, who is a trans woman and who often used her platform on the show to discuss the prejudices and challenges she faces. But Pump Rules’ track record with dealing with LGBTQ issues has been messy at best. Billie Lee, in fact, accused several of the main cast members of transphobia when they excluded her, and the show never really grappled with that, because everyone’s approach to conflict resolution on this show is to 1. Scream 2. Lie and 3. Scream lies.

That’s why I was thoroughly surprised to see a very queer — and important! — scene in last week’s follow-up to the Pride episode, “It’s Not About The Pastor” (the episode’s title is a brilliant in-joke/callback to a previous nonsensical fight on the show, and if you want to be in on the joke, I implore you to just watch the entire series from the start and join me on this demonic journey). In it, new girl Dayna approaches Ariana at the bar and says that she was inspired to come out during Pride this year. Ariana and Dayna then have a conversation about their bisexual identities and some of the reasons it took them a while to come out.

Two bi women talking about being bi without anyone else in the conversation?! I can’t recall ever seeing that on television, especially since Ariana and Dayna aren’t in a relationship. Just two bi friends being bi friends! More of this on television PLEASE! And less of Dayna interrupting herself to center her straight dude boyfriend’s reaction to her coming out, please, but I’m going to chalk that up to her still working on some internalized stuff.

In addition to its bisexual bonding scene, “It’s Not About The Pastor” also confronts another queer issue head-on when Jax (the show’s resident Liar In Chief) and Brittany (Jax’s fiance) have to reckon with the fact that the pastor who is supposed to perform their ceremony is homophobic. In actuality, they do very little reckoning. It isn’t until they receive pressure from their friends and Lisa Vanderpump herself that they pivot from a homophobe marrying them to ?LANCE BASS? marrying them.

Watching Jax and Brittany initially defend themselves by saying they weren’t totally aware of the comments the pastor had made on social media is incredibly frustrating but also familiar. As with most reality shows, everyone has stock types that they fill and lean into, because the name of the game is ultra over-the-top melodrama. Brittany often positions herself as the sweet farm girl from Kentucky, and an insidious side of that crops up here when she tries to say that she knows this pastor and knows that he’s ultimately a “good guy.” Ariana isn’t buying it, and neither am I. Interpersonal relationships do not trump bigotry.

But this is an extremely relatable situation that queer people often find themselves in: having to deal with someone who is complicit in homophobia while simultaneously trying to distance themselves from it or downplay it. So many straights will only stand up to homophobia when it’s convenient to do so, and that’s exactly what’s happening here. Jax’s issue isn’t so much with the pastor’s beliefs but with the fact that he had made them public. I can’t believe I’m about to say something positive about Tom Sandoval (Ariana’s boyfriend), but even after Jax and Brittany pivot to Lance Bass, he pressures them to explain why they didn’t do something sooner. This immediately devolves into a classic classic Vanderpump Rules episode a.k.a. lots of drunk shouting, emphatic finger-pointing, tears, frustration, and nonsense.

Through it all, Ariana does not back down. Jax and Brittany don’t get any passes just because they finally did do the right thing. Honestly, Ariana and Sandoval are challenging their friends in just the slightest way, but the reaction is outsized—partially because outsized reactions are necessary for good reality TV but also partially because of the actual reality of most straight, white people never wanting to be challenged ever.

So yes, “It’s Not About The Pastor” is a very special episode thanks to that little moment between Dayna and Ariana that, despite many victories for bisexual representation on television in recent years, stands out in the way it centers bisexual identity between two friends. But Ariana’s queer identity also comes into play throughout the episode, forcing a group of friends to face the limits of their allyship. Does anything get actually resolved? NO. I’m not holding my breath for Brittany and Jax and the slew of friends who rush to their defense to actually engage in some introspection. Historically, Vanderpump Rules is more about people performing their worst qualities in perpetuity versus learning from them (BLEAK, but there are at least a few exceptions). But at least Ariana and Sandoval don’t shy away from naming their friends’ failures. Expose! These! Heterosexuals!

Anyway, it seems like Ariana’s entire arc this season is 1. Being queer and 2. Being depressed, and I for one feel incredibly seen.

You Need Help: How Do I Navigate Being Monogam-ish With My Bi Girlfriend?

Q:

I’m a lesbian and I’ve been dating the most amazing woman for almost two years now. We connected instantly and when we met, we were both looking for something fun and open. Very quickly though, things escalated (as they do) and we decided that we wanted to be monogamous (well, monogamISH, meaning that we have open communication and that we want to tell each other if we have feelings for other people… it’s okay to talk about but we are sexually and emotionally exclusive).

I’ve only ever been in monogamous relationships, whereas she’s pretty much only been in poly[am] ones. It’s important to note that my girlfriend is bi and we’ve been going through a bit of a rough patch because she told me she has a crush on a guy that she knows. For some reason I felt terrible and even cried when she told me. I’m not sure why I felt so sad about this. We’ve talked openly and honestly about past partners and I’ve never felt weird about her dating men, it’s a part of her sexuality!

We’ve always said that group sex is okay as long as we are both present and consenting obviously, but I don’t think I could ever be with a man sexually. It makes me feel weird and gross. I know she likes the idea of having a threesome with a man, and I want to make her happy but I don’t know that I would feel comfortable with that.

We recently had a conversation with her friend who is also bisexual, who posed the question “can bisexual people be monogamous?” Because she ends up missing sex with women when she is monogamous with men and vice versa.

Do you think this is the case? I’m feeling at a loss. My feelings are confusing me and I know I’m hurting her when I react so strongly to her attraction to men. HELP.

A:

Hi! Right off the top, it’s crucial for me to say this: being monogamous and being bisexual are not mutually exclusive. This is a really problematic stereotype that has to go, like yesterday. Bi people have enough problems being accepted in queer community without these myths.

Your friend who “misses men” when they’re with women and vice versa probably shouldn’t be monogamous. If you miss other partners when you’re monogamous with one partner, to the degree that it causes you distress or affects your relationship, then you either don’t want to be monogamous with that partner or maybe shouldn’t be monogamous with anyone. A lot of people, non-monogamous people included, have this weird idea that they’ll eventually go happily monogamous with the right person once they’re ready to “settle down” or something. That’s another patriarchal stereotype. Some people will, some people won’t. It’s OK if you never want to be monogamous!

It’s also not OK, though, to string partners along, compromising into monogamy when you aren’t happy with it, and eventually cheating or breaking someone’s heart. Some people do this, and it has way more to do with their lack of introspection about what they need in a relationship than whether or not they’re bisexual. Cheaters are going to cheat. There are plenty of people to cheat with of every gender. Bi people don’t have “twice as many opportunities” to cheat or some other nonsense. If people want to commit to someone monogamously, they will, and if they don’t or can’t, they won’t.

Now, on to your situation. Since you said “we” had a conversation with that bi friend, I’m curious how your girlfriend responded to that statement. The omission of her perspective on this is ominous. Does she agree? If so, that spells trouble for y’all. Did she say, “No, of course bi people can be monogamous, I’m doing it right now, happily?” That would be good!

You and your girlfriend decided to be monogamish… what does that actually mean to y’all? Sometimes we say things, thinking the other person understands what we’ve said the same way we do, but it turns out we have wildly different interpretations of what the thing we said meant. You’re sexually and emotionally exclusive, except for threesomes? Was it explicit that these threesomes would be women only? The way you describe it, it doesn’t seem like y’all have actually had a threesome yet, and I’d bet you were hoping it’d actually never come up. If y’all haven’t explicitly talked about exactly what y’all mean by these things, you need to get on that ASAP.

Non-monogamous people shouldn’t “settle” unhappily into a monogamous relationship — but the opposite is also true. Monogamous people shouldn’t “settle” unhappy into a non-monogamous one. Are you sure you want to be non-monogamous? Did you do it for her, hoping that it would never actually be acted on? You have to work that out in therapy and through introspection and, hopefully, through honest conversations with her. But it sounds like the potential of your partner wanting to actually act on y’all’s non-monogamy is what’s really bothering you.

I can’t tell you why this particular experience of your partner having a crush on a man bothers you so much, except that maybe you’re jumping 18 steps ahead and imagining the threesome already and it’s freaking you out. Has she ever expressed a crush on a non-man? If not, maybe it’s the fact that she even has a crush, and it’s someone she knows, and the idea of non-monogamy is finally viable, and that’s stressing you out. And not that it’s a man.

But if she has, why did this bother you more? Is it the first time in a while, like, since y’all have been really serious? If it’s really because it’s a man, is that a result of some of your internalized biphobia or homophobia? Do you feel like she’s going to leave you for a “real” relationship with a man, that your relationship is just a placeholder or a phase or something? You really need to dig into what potentially unexamined assumptions you’re bringing into this. Or is it just about the idea of the threesome?

In terms of group sex, please don’t consent to anything that you’re actually uncomfortable with. If she absolutely needs to have group sex, with you and a man as part of it, to feel sexually fulfilled, and you’re not into it, then honestly you might need to break up. But that scenario seems really unlikely — it’s not clear from your question whether she’s actively pursuing a threesome with this male crush or any other man, or whether it’s something she’s casually floated as a general interest sometime in her life, in which case this is probably not an urgent concern. If it is, there are also other ways to approach it if you wanted to get creative. What if she fucked a guy and you masturbated in the corner and y’all kept eye contact the whole time? Or she gave you head while being fucked by him from behind? Or she got head from him while giving you head? Or any of countless arrangements that don’t involve you and him touching at all. Or, could you compromise on the “I have to be there” stipulation?

Overall, the solution here is to have a really honest conversation with her about this. Maybe you didn’t make your feelings and needs clear from the beginning. It’s absolutely within your rights to say “I want to be strictly monogamous.” Or to say, “I am OK with being non-monogamous, but only in terms of a threesome and only if the other person is a woman.” Or whatever stipulations you want to put out there. And it’s her right to say, “No, that doesn’t work for me.” Or to say, “Well, can we compromise?” It’s totally possible that there’s a great compromise that works well for both of you and you can both be happy. Or, she might say, “Babe, it’s just a crush. I only want to have sex with you. And I don’t need threesomes to be fulfilled.” You won’t know unless you talk about it!

It’s also possible that you have some hang ups that you need to explore and work through and once you do, this won’t bother you as much or at all. It’s also possible that y’all have different sexual needs that won’t be met in this relationship. And that’s OK too! It’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t work out with this particular person. You want both of you to be happy, right? Even if it isn’t together? If that’s the case, you need to really examine what’s going on here from multiple angles, and be very honest with yourself and your partner about your sexual needs, and then move from there.

You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.

People Who Helped Me Come To My (Bi)sexual Awakening: A Short Thank You List

I came out as a bisexual icon on National Coming Out Day last year, October 11, 2019.

As a freshly out bisexual Black woman, I’m doing all of the cliché things: searching high and low for bisexual merch to buy, tweeting about being bi, excessively using the rainbow emoji, and panicking about if anyone will love me. You know, the usual.

While doing all of these things, I realized that I wanted to thank the people who were, in hindsight, instrumental to my (bi)sexual awakening, which happened long before I came out to the internet (and then to my family mere hours later!).

At twenty-eight, I hope this is just the start of the life I was meant to live: a life of joy, honesty, and most importantly, hope. In order to do that, I have some people I need to thank. I figure that the best way to do that is through a list that holds no true order. These people, their art, and their existence in their own ways have allowed me to step and live so firmly in myself that it makes me emotional. I feel my most free and most raw; I feel like the best version of myself.

So let’s get to it. Thank you to…

Hayley Williams of Paramore and Good Dye Young

The love of my life and since 2005. I would marry her whenever she asked and commit to loving her like she has never been loved before. So, Hayley, I am ready when you are. I love the band Paramore and I have loved them since album one. I would marry Taylor York, another band member, too, to be fair, but this isn’t about him. Hayley has always left me feeling butterflies in my stomach and sighing like a love sick school girl. I never thought it meant anything because she’s a celebrity and back then that was my excuse. “Everyone loves celebrities! Girl crush!” I would say. In 2015, I decided after some quiet soul searching that the phrase was trash and attraction is fluid. When I came out to my friends, a few of them said, “Yeah, we’ve heard the way you gush over Hayley. It was sort of obvious.” And well, they aren’t wrong, I have no chill but I also have taste, and that’s what matters most. Which led us here to Hayley, a beautiful and talented human, and me, a Bi Icon who will probably be in love with her for the rest of my life. My future boo will have to deal.

Kehlani and her song “Honey”

I love this song so much. I was late to the party but at least I arrived and my outfit was cute, right? Before I came out and after, I’d listen to this song twice with each play and swoon, my insides went to mush and I’d close my eyes and dream of someone writing a song like it about me. I’d sing the word girl with glee because I’ve always hated when people changed the pronouns in songs and think to myself, I want to be loved like that, I want to be that pretty girl. At least, until I realized that I wanted to be with her as well.

Lupita Nyong’o

Lupita is simply put: a vision. She’s gorgeous and talented, of course, but she also seems like someone I would like to be friends with? It’s wild because I don’t have genuine crushes on my friends but I find that I would be happy to harbor a small unrequited crush on her and still be someone she’d like to get ice cream with and gush about her own crushes while I gas her up to go for it because she’s freaking Lupita Nyong’o and they’d be ridiculous not to feel the same way. Sure, I’d tell her she smells nice and looks pretty from time to time but I tell all my friends that because they do. She’d smile at me knowingly, because I never said I was good at keeping this crush secret from her, while we share a ride to some amazing event and then continue on with her story. Crush aside, because she knows I’ll phase out of it, we leave the car ready to pose for a few photos and head inside to dance until my feet hurt. When they hurt too much to stand, we’ll dance in our chairs and she’ll mention that she knows the perfect person for me to date.

Shanola Hampton

While everyone was gushing over other characters on Shameless, I was steadfast in my love for “V,” a regal legend who is the kind of neighbor and friend the Gallaghers don’t always deserve. Both V and Shanola are also really attractive, so, shout out to them for that as well. I stopped watching the show quite some time ago but my love for Shanola has never waned. She’s got adorable children and a handsome husband so I’m happy for her, truly. Husband and kids aside though, she’s a whole babe and this list couldn’t exist without her.

Alisha Wainwright and Madeleine Mantock

Whew. I try to mind my business; I swear I do, but ever since Alisha appeared as Maia on Shadowhunters and Madeleine on the Charmed reboot I have not known peace. And I LOVE IT. They are both so fine that it makes my eyes hurt a little. Watching Alisha on Raising Dion and Madeleine on Charmed has made it super clear: I have a thing for dark haired, passionate, self-assured women whether they’re protecting their child with superpowers or fighting evil as a half demon-half witch with their sisters. Plus, as with every woman on this list, they’re gorgeous and so out of my league. The reason I paired them together is because I didn’t want to say the same thing twice: Please thank your parents for me because they did what needed to be done. I’d slow clap but I think that would be going a touch too far. So, if you’re ever looking for a cute black girl with great taste in music, a wide smile, a soft heart, and great boobs, it’s me, I’m here. I love you both, okay, bye.

A few of my Twitter mutuals who shall remain nameless but they know who they are

How do they know? I told them I was attracted to them long before I came out. A thing to know about me is that I flirt with everyone because you have to keep the mind fresh and since I believe absolutely no one (outside of actual grandpas in my DMs) is interested in me, I don’t get my hopes up because it’s not a matter of if I will be rejected but when I will be rejected. In knowing that, I turned to a few of my queer friends on Twitter to ask them questions about when they knew that they weren’t straight and they were so kind and supportive when I was questioning myself years ago. When I came out, they were some of the first people to send me hearts in support because they are genuinely happy for me. And, sure, they are still absolute smokeshows but what’s even more important to me is the friendships we’ve cultivated once my little crushes faded. Thank you for being my first IRL female crushes. I couldn’t leave this article without shouting out my wives and husbands on Twitter! I love you all.

In all seriousness, being out isn’t easy, so I don’t want to pretend it has been a bed of roses, but I love living as I do now. I’m a Black, disabled and cute, iconic bi woman who is ready for both love and heartbreak, for adventure and quiet nights at home watching my favorite movies with a person I care deeply for. Now, whether that person is a man, woman, non-binary, or no gender at all, is not a concern for me. Whatever is meant for me is meant for me. Until then and for always, being Bisexual is lit!

You Need Help: Why Am I So Tempted to Cheat?

Q:

I’m a pansexual woman in a het-monogamous marriage to a cis man for more than a decade. He knew my sexual and romantic attractions at the outset of our relationship and was (still is) accepting, and I was sure that I would always be able to be monogamous. That said, my attractions to women and trans men have kept gnawing at me and I have asked my partner for an open relationship in any form (d.a.d.t. or open/poly), but he refuses. A few years ago, I cheated with a woman – I couldn’t help myself – I didn’t want to end the relationship, but I was going crazy. My husband found out, initially was furious but then seemed to understand what I was going through. While the debacle initially opened up conversation, it’s now back to total silence about this. My husband refuses to acknowledge my attractions and the frustration of constantly denying them and I am at a loss of what to do.

I am tempted to cheat but be more discreet this time, as a way to release the pressure valve, so to speak. I know that sounds awful, but I feel like maybe it’s less awful than blowing up my marriage, home – our kids’ lives.

I don’t know what to do. But I know that this is unsustainable and I will end up cheating again, not because I don’t love my husband and not because I’m not attracted to him, but because this straight relationship is just not enough for me. Help!

A:

Your letter reminded me of a interview of Myrna Kurland, who was not straight and married to a man in the 1940s, from the book Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall by Marie Cartier.

“I would get up at one or two a.m. and I would call every gay bar I had the number to from the 1940s. I wouldn’t say anything. I would just stay on the phone and listen to the sounds in the background. I would stay on until they hung up, and then I would call another one of my numbers, until I had called all the numbers I had … That phone. Those numbers. That was my lifeline … It meant there was a place somewhere — even if I couldn’t go there — that place was out there. I could hear it. Freedom.”

Myrna called the bars two to three times a week like this, for fourteen years.

You are this woman. Your affairs – the ones in the past and the ones in the future – are your phone calls. You will cheat on your husband again. And probably more than once.

It is not hard to cheat. Cheating is easy. Cheating is also really sexy, something about the taboo and the secrecy, it can feel really hot. Hell, even getting caught cheating can feel good. Cheating can feel good because it scratches whatever itches you might have. You can replay a night over and over, drinking up the memory of the affair until there’s not a drip left and then you can go out and get another cup. It sets our imagination on fire. Cheating is a form of escape from our current situation, it allows us to momentarily be with someone else, maybe even be someone else, for a night. Honesty has consequences. Cheating, if we don’t get caught, does not.

Cheating has nothing to do with being bisexual or pansexual in and of itself; but it is what we do when we feel like we’re out of choices. It’s an action for when we feel stuck. We are helpless in our situation – my husband will be devastated, my children will be hurt, my livelihood will fall apart, my family will be destroyed. Why ruin good things, why hurt others needlessly?

I do not believe in demonizing people who cheat. Maybe this is because I’ve been there, on both sides, more than once. Maybe because I believe people are good, even when their actions hurt. Or maybe I just know how complex and nuanced a life can be and how sometimes our actions–even bad actions or painful actions–seem to make sense at the time.

You are not a bad person for cheating on your husband. You are not a bad person for contemplating doing it again. What you are is unsatisfied. What you are is unfulfilled. This is of no fault of your husband, or of your family, or of you. It doesn’t matter why you’re unsatisfied and unfulfilled, but it is important to recognize it. You say yourself in your letter it’s “just not enough”.

You have a choice, though; we always have a choice. You can do several things. You can choose to let things stay the way they are, you hooking up in secret until you get caught again and it’s painful and disastrous for your family; hooking up in secret until you catch feelings with a person and it’s painful and disastrous to you. Or you can confront your very valid needs and discuss them openly, letting your husband know this isn’t just a desire but a need you have. And go from there. And don’t let the conversation fizzle out until you both reach a solution – and that solution might be that the two of you separate. Your husband is a capable adult; trust he will recover. Your children are resilient; show them what it’s like to not settle, show them what it’s like to embrace who you’ve grown into. When they are your age and unhappy in a situation, wouldn’t you want them to be brave enough to change it? What is the point of compromising ourselves for others when in reality everyone involved – you, your family – will be hurt. What are you saving by self-sacrificing your desires?

You are not a bad person for cheating but you are also not a brave person. You don’t have to rock the boat, you don’t have to confront these feelings or share them with your partner honestly. You don’t have to make a plan, move in with a friend or a parent for awhile, you don’t have to acknowledge the impact it will have on your husband, you don’t have to deal with the headache of paperwork or splitting finances, you don’t have to fuck anything up — because that’s what brave people do. Brave people fuck things up and we are all better for it in the long run.

You might think you and your family has a comfortable life, but it’s not comfortable. You’re buzzing with the things you’re denying yourself. Not just physical intimacy, but perhaps more. Think about what’s on the horizon — let your imagination lead your way forward. Going on dates, being in public with a person you’re crushing on, physical intimacy over a longer period of time than an affair would allow, being out in the queer community, holding hands while walking down the street.

Wouldn’t you rather hang up the phone and join the party?

Bisexual Ice Dancer Karina Manta on Leaving Competitive Skating and Joining the Circus

Karina Manta should probably be writing this instead of me.

If Autostraddle readers don’t know her for her prowess as a (recently retired) professional ice dancer, they may know her for her aptitude with words.

Writing has played a major role in how Manta and her fans have connected. In 2018, she came out as bisexual via poem, in a touching video accompanied by her partner, Aleena Gomez. In doing so, she became only the second out female figure skater ever (another still-active American skater, Amber Glenn, came out as bi/pan in December 2019) — the first to come out while still competing, and half of the first out all-queer ice dance duo with longtime skating partner Joe Johnson.

Her words have even reached the readers of the New York Times, through a heartfelt, thoughtful Modern Love essay how loving her girlfriend impacted her relationship with her own body:

“I had always known Aleena and I were similarly sized, but lying there in our underwear, I saw it with much greater clarity. Her body was so breathtakingly gorgeous I hadn’t even considered how much it was like my own. On her body, I saw how ridiculous it was to wish for a gap between her thighs,” Manta wrote. “I saw how much of a waste it was to want her hip bones to poke out from her skin. She had so many of the same features I hated in myself, but on her I found them stunning.”

Manta says she was touched by readers who reached out to tell her that her words resonated. “Even as someone who has been writing, it can be really scary to be vulnerable in that way,” she says. “Maybe I’m the kind of person who thrives off of vulnerable and intense situations. I feel about writing now the way I felt when I first discovered ice dance, like a whole world opened up.”

Connecting with an audience in an emotionally resonant way is something Manta and Johnson excel at. Throughout their first season competing after both coming out, their free dance, to two different versions of the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams,” quickly became a fan favorite, particularly following their career-best performance at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January 2019.

In the final third of that free dance at Nationals, the duo break into an exuberant, Vogue-inspired step sequence. As a skating fan, seeing two queer skaters having fun and being themselves, while incorporating a dance element that is so tied to queer history in ice dance, the most heteronormative of the figure skating disciplines, is a thrill. The audience is absolutely living for it in the moment, but more importantly, you can see the bright smiles on Manta and Johnson’s faces. They’re having a blast, they’re owning it, the career best score and standing ovation some well-deserved bonuses.

Manta describes the “Sweet Dreams” program as her and Johnson’s baby. After a difficult time choosing music, their choreographer, former British ice dance legend Christopher Dean, brought back two different versions of “Sweet Dreams.” “[It was] me and Joe messing around and having fun and going to our coaches and asking, “Please, can we keep this?” There was a lot of ourselves in the program, maybe the first time we had input in the movement we were doing to a pretty big degree.”

To say Manta has had an eventful 2019 would be an understatement. Just a couple of months after that iconic Nationals performance, she and Johnson made the decision to retire from competitive ice dance; she graduated from college and joined the cast of AXEL, Cirque du Soleil’s new on-ice show, which is touring across the United States and Canada through the summer of 2020. Oh, and she published the aforementioned Modern Love essay.

For me, just now, even reading that last sentence was tiring. How’s Manta feeling about everything? Good, she says.

“Someone recently asked me about coming out and how it’s been different over the past year,” she says. “It’s interesting because in a lot of ways, I was out in my personal life for a long time. My identity didn’t change. In the last year, I stopped being a competitive figure skater, stopped being a student. That’s been a big change in how I see myself. I think the change has been fun.”

Manta and Johnson have spoken before about being out in ice dance, which in a sport that’s all about storytelling on the ice, is still extra heteronormative. Skating in general, even as it has evolved (skaters can use music with lyrics now!) and the competitive field grown incrementally more diverse (though not enough by far), is still conservative — particularly in how skaters are expected to present themselves. “As far as how you present yourself physically and aesthetically, it can be really hard in skating to do that authentically because of all the external factors and the fact that you are being judged, not necessarily on your appearance, but on the piece of art you put out there which involves your body and your hair and your makeup,” she says. “It’s hard to figure out how to genuinely represent yourself.”

Manta says the nature of skating as a judged sport meant when she competed, she was focused on presenting herself in a way she felt was most advantageous for competition. She’s been frank about her experiences with the sport and their impact on her health, including her battle with an eating disorder when she was a teenager. As she began competing more on the senior circuit, she knew she wanted to represent herself more authentically.

“I wanted to be somebody that younger skaters could look to and say, ‘She’s successful and doesn’t necessarily look like what other skaters have to look like,’” she says. “If I wanted to be successful in skating, I wanted to do it on my own terms. I wanted to make my programs and my art and my work as an athlete about fitting a typical heteronormative beauty standard. I love the makeup and I love the dresses. That was one of my favorite parts of skating. But I wanted it to be about what I liked rather than what other people in the sport were telling me to do.”

After that iconic performance at Nationals, Cirque du Soleil contacted Manta and Johnson to invite them to be part of AXEL. A number of factors impacted their decision to “run away and join the circus.” There was the reality of the financial burden of being a competitive figure skater — many elite-level skaters even have crowdfunding sites to offset expenses related to competing — but there was also the opportunity to get creative with such a well-known artistic entity. “We loved competing, but it was cool for us to get to explore another outlet without the same restrictions and roles as competition,” she says.

Manta was used to uprooting her life for a new, intense chapter. She first moved away from home at 16 to train in Colorado Springs, taking on all at once all the necessary skills and adaptations that come with a big move at a young age. She’s had to apply those same lessons to joining the cast of AXEL when she was ideating the show in Montreal this past summer.

“When I moved away, I didn’t know a single person in Colorado Springs,” she says. “I had to learn very quickly how to meet people and how to come out of my shell a bit. I didn’t have anybody to fall back on. Those years were hard and I’m still sort of a shy person. I like attention when I’m on the ice. When I’m off the ice, I’m still sort of a wallflower. Being thrown into this intense, brand-new environment has taught me how to come out of my shell a little bit more. It’s good to have that practice of being around new people.”

AXEL as a show looks in a lot of ways like vintage Cirque du Soleil, heavy with whimsy and sensory overload. There’s an arena-rock feel, with a more contemporary pop music style, neon aesthetics, bold makeup and costuming, lasers and pyrotechnics. Manta and Johnson are not the only former competitive skaters working alongside the show’s many musicians, acrobats, aerialists and clowns — some, like Manta and Johnson, came straight from the competitive world, others from the circus world, others from long careers. The result was an intense process that encouraged the artists to push themselves. There’s even a number where the skaters use harnesses and fly, getting their own classic Cirque experience.

“Creation days were packed,” she says. “We’d show up to the arena at 10 AM, and we’d take breaks but we’d go home at 10 PM. We’d work with all different types of movement, playing around with the other artists. Joe and I are excited about how much we’ve learned and can take away from the creation. It opened up the art of skating to us in a totally new way.”

In addition to connecting with their castmates, living and working in Montreal while creating the show allowed Manta and Johnson to be close to their former ice dance competitors and get to know them in a new light. We’re in the midst of the competitive skating season now and Manta said she was looking forward to getting to watch her peers and appreciate the sport as a fan rather than a competitor. “It’s funny, as far as the competitive environment goes, everyone that’s in this sport, they’ve been our friends,” she says. “It’s never been a relationship that was intense. I want everyone to do well. I’m excited to see their programs. It’s fun to watch now.”

She describes Montreal on her blog as a city that “tastes like prosciutto and wine, like bread ripped apart by our hands.” She and Johnson fell in love with the city and were looking forward to returning around the holidays. Touring with AXEL has been an adjustment — ”I have way too much luggage and am going to need to consolidate,” she says — but traveling from place to place with the same people has allowed the cast to bond, and brought her closer with her longtime skating partner. “The circus is like a family, but really it’s been cool because Joe and I are on this adventure together. We know each other as well as two people can, and it makes it feel not so foreign or scary to be in a new place every week. We have these people who feel like home.”

What Katie Hill’s Resignation Means for Young Queer People in Political Life

Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA), a bisexual woman, was a representational and political win for the LGBTQ community when she flipped a House seat from red to blue last year. But less than a year later, after the beginning of divorce proceedings and the release of texts and nude photos without her consent, she has resigned. And although her choice to get involved with at least one subordinate can’t be overlooked, it would appear that her gender, her sexuality — and to some extent her non-monogamy — singled her out.

The resignation of Katie Hill from Congress felt nothing short of gut-wrenching for me, for many other millennials, LGBTQ people, non-monogamous people, and for women. It tells many of us that we don’t belong in government and that straight cis men who have been accused of far worse personal conduct will pass muster nearly every time.

In her speech on the House floor on Thursday, Hill said, “I am leaving now because of a double standard… I am leaving because I didn’t want to be peddled by papers and blogs and websites, used by shameless operatives for the dirtiest gutter politics that I’ve ever seen, and the right-wing media to drive clicks and expand their audience by distributing intimate photos of me taken without my knowledge, let alone my consent, for the sexual entertainment of millions.”

First, one has to understand what led up to her resignation. Hill told her husband, Kenny Heslep, that she was leaving him in June, according the Los Angeles Times, and then the couple moved forward with divorce proceedings. Then RedState published multiple articles about Hill’s alleged relationships with people she worked with. One October story quoted Heslep, who claimed on social media that Hill was involved with a male Congressional staffer. According to the Times, Joe Messina, a former campaign adviser for the Republican incumbent she challenged, Steve Knight, received nude photos of Katie Hill as well as texts. He did not publish them on his blog but noted that he received them. He also reportedly checked in on the National Republican Congressional Committee to see how widely they’d been circulated and learned that “they were all over the place.”

Soon, RedState published a nude photo of Hill brushing a woman’s hair and texts that RedState said were exchanged between Hill and Heslep, in an article from Jennifer Van Laar, a former advisor for Knight’s campaign. RedState never disclosed in the piece that she worked for the former Congressman in 2014. The Daily Mail published a story with multiple nude photos of Hill. The RedState story included information about Hill’s relationship with a 22 year-old female campaign staffer — a relationship that included her husband — which Hill has acknowledged. Hill and her husband are both in their 30s. Hill has denied having a relationship with a Congressional staffer, Graham Kelly, a relationship that would have violated House rules. As for Heslep, he told his parents that he his computer had been hacked just before the publication of the photos, according to BuzzFeed.

Following the release of these photos, Hill characterized her relationship with Heslep as abusive. She wrote in a letter, “This is what needs to happen so that the good people who supported me will no longer be subjected to the pain inflicted by my abusive husband and the brutality of hateful political operatives who seem to happily provide a platform to a monster who is driving a smear campaign built around cyber exploitation.”

When Rep. Hill mentioned this alleged abuse, I immediately thought of the research on abuse of and sexual violence toward bisexual women. Although we don’t know for sure whether Heslep released the photos or precisely what his relationship with Hill was like, it’s difficult for queer women and nonbinary people not to be affected by Hill’s description of an abusive marriage and by our knowledge of intimate partner abuse of bi women in relationships and the high rates of sexual violence bi women experience. The Centers for Disease Control’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence survey found that bisexual women have a higher prevalence of intimate partner violence than heterosexual women. Bi women are 1.8 times more likely to report intimate partner violence and 2.6 times more likely to report having experienced sexual violence from intimate partners compared to straight women. Eighty-nine percent of bisexual women reported that they experienced intimate partner violence, rape, stalking only from male perpetrators. And of course there are other kinds of abuse, such as emotional and verbal abuse, that may be higher for bi women as well. According to a Lehigh University researcher’s 2017 work, unique considerations for increased sexual violence against bi women are “social construction of bisexual women as especially worthy of distrust, jealousy, and other emotions” and the hypersexualization of bi women by men, which is reinforced by media representation of bi women.

Hill stated herself that she was fearful that people would continue to release similar photos and texts if she did not step down. In that respect and others, the power dynamics of the situation and the actors involved in it are different than many other situations in which lawmakers are asked to step down over some kind of inappropriate relationship or sexual misconduct. Hill’s bisexuality and all of the stereotypes that people continue to identify with it — deceptive, promiscuous, greedy — are all amplified by similar stereotypes that people apply to polyamorous and other nonmonogamous people. This all occurred after outlets slyly accused her of not being queer enough because she was married to a man.

Her bisexuality and relationships with multiple people are surely judged more harshly because of her gender. Women in Congress are not supposed to show that they have any sexuality at all, much less a queer sexuality or non-traditional relationships. We’ve seen this slanted coverage of bi women before. Following Amber Heard’s abuse allegations against Johnny Depp, tabloid media frequently referred to her bisexuality to discredit her. Add to this that women in political life are certainly not supposed to be seen in nude photographs, and when they rarely are soon nude, are dismissed on both sides of the aisle. Many so-called progressives with #Resist in their Twitter bios enjoy calling out First Lady Melania Trump for posing nude as a model rather than her support of her husband’s birtherism. It’s not surprising then that when biphobia, sexism, and judgment of polyamory collide, you have someone as prominent as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) putting the onus on young people to stop taking nude photographs if they want to be major players in government.

In a press conference after Hill’s resignation, Pelosi called the release of the photos a “profound violation” but also said, “I do say to my own children and grandchildren, especially young children, you know, some of these–I don’t know what to call them–appearances on social media can come back to haunt you if they are taken out of context and that. But I do think that we have to be careful.”

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) said that the release of the photos will surely deter young women from running for office. It isn’t a question of if what happened to Hill will happen to other young women who run for Congress, but when. Twelve percent of people 18 to 29-years-old said people shared explicit images of them without their consent, compared to 5 percent of those who were over the age of 30. This issue is not going away for future generations of lawmakers. Instead of telling people that they must never share nude photographs if they want to be part of political life, political leaders need to gather the moral courage to tell people that nude photographs are not in themselves disqualifying. Women and femme nonbinary people and queer people’s nude bodies are not disqualifying.

Katie Hill said in her Thursday speech, “I came here to give a voice to the unheard in the halls of power. I wanted to show young people, queer people, working people, imperfect people that they belong here because this is the people’s house. I fell short of that and I’m sorry.”

If Democratic leaders want their party to have a future, they need to have more awareness of the world young, queer, imperfect people currently live in, and act accordingly. I’m a bi femme nonbinary person who has been in at least one relationship that could be characterized as abusive, which involved one incident of sexual assault. For years, I asked this man to stop contacting me through various phone numbers and emails where he tried all kinds of ruses to get my attention. A decade after it first began, I still hear from him and need at least an hour to gather the strength to calm back down. I have also tried polyamorous relationships and found the judgment from people who didn’t understand my relationships, as well as stereotypes that poly people were only interested in sex, difficult to navigate. For all these reasons and more, it’s hard for me not to feel personally angry at how quickly many powerful Democrats shrugged their shoulders at Hill. I don’t believe that months from now, prominent Democrats will express regret, as so many Democrats did when they told the New Yorker that they shouldn’t have supported the resignation of Rep. Al Franken (D-MN), a man who was accused of sexual misconduct by eight women. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) and other lawmakers have faced sexual harassment allegations over the years and remain in Congress.

I recall reporting on her campaign to flip the 25th Congressional seat in California for ThinkProgress. I sat down with her in a small white room with bare walls to ask her questions for a small window of time she made available. She nimbly addressed my questions about healthcare, homelessness, education, and more. She addressed my questions about how her bisexuality affected her campaign and how she would address the health and safety needs of other bi people. Anyone who watched CNN and the Human Rights Campaign’s town hall in October, where few questions acknowledged bi people, know how difficult it is to get most politicians to acknowledge the unique safety and health issues affecting bi people. Before the House’s passage of the Equality Act, Hill spoke passionately in favor of the sweeping nondiscrimination bill, which clarifies and expands housing, employment, public accommodations, and other protections, on the House floor. House Republicans repeatedly perpetuated lies about trans people that essentially called them enablers of and participants in fraud.

Hill said, “I can tell you that no trans person is trying to game the system to participate in sports. That does not happen. And that is a sad scare tactic that has no place on the floor of the People’s House.”

She added, “You, my colleagues, are on the wrong side of history.”

A voice which cut through the noise on policy issues affecting LGBTQ people, including economic inequality and homelessness, has been lost. There are clear power imbalances in relationships between employees and their direct supervisors and employers, and the nature of the relationship itself makes consent thorny to navigate, to say the very least. There was enough of an age difference between the couple and the staffer to raise other issues about the power dynamics of their relationship. It can also be true at the same time that the people driving the conversation about Hill and her behavior appeared to be extremely invested in the gendered and queerphobic sexual humiliation of a young member of Congress in a way that suggests they’d like to deter the next Katie Hill from thinking twice about political life.

A God That Makes Sense to Me: On Bisexuality & Purity Culture

“The wife does not have authority over her own body,
but yields it to her husband.” -1 Corinthians 7:4

My mother gave me a dozen pink rosebuds when I was in high school. Pure and sweet, their petals were tight, delicate, guarded. This bouquet was presented to me alongside tears and professions of love, a way to help me understand the preciousness of my chastity. Every stem had a small card attached with a ribbon, Bible verses of righteousness and cleanliness and virtue copied in my mother’s compact handwriting. It was an apology and a reminder all in one, a tangible representation of my virginity and my separateness. Good Christian Girls didn’t date nonreligious boys, even when they’re kind and courteous, polite and respectful, artistic and gentle. And attending a school dance with a male friend, no matter how sweet he was, wasn’t allowed – he didn’t go to our church, or any church, which made him unacceptable as a partner.

You’re unevenly yoked, my mother told me with tears in her eyes, the flowers trembling in her hands. Someday you will fall in love with a boy who loves God more than you, who wants to shelter you and keep you safe. Until then, it’s our job to protect you from temptation.

She meant it as a kindness, not a threat.

I did what I was told growing up, for the most part. Went to the church my parents had planted every Sunday and to events throughout the week, took notes while my father preached, helped my mother plan religious events and weddings, volunteered in the nursery and the kitchen. Didn’t drink or swear, kept curfew, abandoned dreams of a job or a car in favor of having more time to spend on church activities. Listened to terrible Christian rock instead of secular radio, avoided the television programs my parents didn’t approve of. Was part of my youth group’s leadership team, led prayers and Bible studies, sang in my father’s choir, went on mission trips, memorized verses, met other believers around the flagpole at my public high school wearing my black WWJD bracelet. Only applied to religious colleges, so that my technical theatre degree wouldn’t be tainted or rendered worthless by “unholy” productions.

Most important of all, what gave me value, defined my life, made me a true woman of God: I dressed modestly, didn’t flirt with boys, and pledged that I would stay pure until marriage.

It’s the greatest gift you can give your husband, the preachers would say. Don’t you value your future marriage enough to stay pure in the present? A few moments of pleasure aren’t worth a lifetime of regret and shame. Adults I’d known my whole life gave tearful, heartfelt presentations to my youth group on the guilt they carried over having sex before marriage, stories and anecdotes of the damage that those few moments had wrought, the endless reasons that physical intimacy destroyed absolutely everything about otherwise wonderful partnerships. A lack of purity was the reason for divorces, infidelity, unhappiness. It was a constant refrain, a truth that lived deep within me: sex was wrong, desire and lust were ugly, faith and God should be enough to sustain us.

Illustration by Serena Kuo

Purity culture in evangelical churches has always been a central tenet, but during the years I was in high school and college it was practically an obsession. Joshua Harris urged us to kiss dating goodbye and practice courtship, True Love Waits begged us to sign purity pledges and vow to stay celibate until marriage, and religious magazines like Brio preached to pre-teen girls on the necessity of abstinence and physical boundaries. And while people of all genders were urged to commit to not having sex, women in particular have always been held to an impossible standard, seen as stumbling blocks and harlots, somehow always responsible for sexual impropriety even while being expected to submit to men, leaders, husbands. It’s rape culture on steroids, a way to blame women for any indiscretion or perceived weakness on the part of the men around them. And as a deeply closeted young woman, I internalized those lessons completely, holding myself accountable for anything and everything that could be considered a temptation. When I got called into the pastor’s office because my favorite shirt exposed an inch of skin with my movements, I cried and apologized, vowing to do better and throwing the offending garment in the trash. When I was pulled out of a youth group meeting and scolded for whispering with the guy I liked, I wanted to sink into the floor in shame, taking full responsibility for the disruption while he faced no consequences. And when a friend invited me to my first school dance, I was obedient to my parents, regretfully telling him that I wasn’t allowed to date non-believers.

Somehow it felt easier to sink into those impossible rules, that deepest form of self-loathing, than it was to question the framework I was working within. Somehow I preferred to see my every action and desire and thought as sin, rather than question why all of those seemingly natural instincts and impulses were consistently labeled as wrong. Somehow I learned to hate myself, and called it God’s love instead.

“I am convinced that the human heart hungers for constancy. In forfeiting the sanctity of sex by casual, nondiscriminatory ‘making out’ and ‘sleeping around,’ we forfeit something we cannot well do without. There is dullness, monotony, sheer boredom in all of life when virginity and purity are no longer protected and prized.” – Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ’s Control

As a child I questioned everything, wanting to understand the why of it all – why do we call it our daily bread when we only take communion once a week; why do we celebrate Jesus dying when funerals are sad occasions; why can’t we ever skip church? But I rarely pushed back on the specific and strict rules of purity, so ingrained were those messages around my self-worth, the value that my virginity seemed to carry. That obsession with controlling women’s bodies, with calling any desires that didn’t fit their strict structure impure, did more than just stifle my desire to understand – it also discouraged exploration, painting us all with the same cis, straight, obedient brush. Fundamentalism doesn’t make space for intuition, for instincts, for personal ideals; we’re to trust our leaders above all else, and any challenges to their teachings are treated like challenges to God Himself. If a verse or an idea doesn’t feel right to us, we’re told it’s just the sin influencing us, to pray, to give our doubts to the Lord. So when my pastor preached weekly on the particular dangers of homosexuality, became a public face in my state of the church’s fight against marriage equality, and labeled queerness as a rejection of all that’s natural and holy and God-given, I believed him. I was too afraid not to.

It’s easier to follow those rules of purity when you’re that deep in the closet, easier to hide behind talk of boys and crushes and who sat next to who on the bus back from the youth retreat. Queerness as a concept was so far outside of my experience, so separate from anything I’d seen or known, that I simply didn’t think about it, rejected it completely as a possibility. No one noticed when I flushed or stumbled around certain girls, how I never wanted to describe my crushes, that I was a little too obsessed with Brad from Hey Dude or the yellow Power Ranger — not even me. I was never asked to define my sexual identity, my preferences, my gender. Everything was assumed, and since the word “bisexual” wasn’t even in my vocabulary until college, I ignored those longings for women, focused instead on my occasional attractions towards men. The need for my virginity to stay in tact was so overwhelming that no one had time to worry about anything else. I followed the rules my church set, and the rules didn’t make space for anything but heteronormativity.

“It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust…” -1 Thessalonians 4:3-5

One evening I found myself in a lecture hall I’d visited many times, the place where I’d attended my mandatory freshman course on the Old Testament with a revered professor. Stiff auditorium chairs covered in dark, worn fabric, loud doors that slammed with every late entrance, old whiteboards covered in the faded, unreadable ghosts of past classes on Revelation and the gospels. Students and teachers slowly shuffled in, laughing and gossiping, ready to barely listen to the presentation and snag an easy chapel credit. No one seemed to notice me, hands trembling slightly as I clutched a beat-up notebook to my chest, the only person who showed up at every homosexuality panel, discussion, and event on campus. I kept waiting for new information, hoping for someone smarter than me to clarify the questions I couldn’t verbalize, was afraid to name even within myself. But as I sat stiffly in my uncomfortable chair, trying not to move lest it creak and draw attention to me, it quickly became clear that I was trapped in another useless session from my supposedly liberal non-denominational college.

Sex before marriage is always sin – the Bible is very clear on that, the panelists lectured. It’s essential to remain pure until marriage, even for those in relationships outside of God’s plan. And if marriage isn’t an option, celibacy is the only way to maintain purity. What was ostensibly a discussion on the Bible’s definition of homosexuality had, once again, immediately shifted into the same view I’d heard my entire life. No alternate readings of the familiar clobber verses, no cultural context or explorations or interpretations, and definitely no consideration that there may be people in the room who didn’t identify as straight, who were struggling with their sexuality or gender, who were desperate to find hope or healing. The same broad, hateful rhetoric I’d grown up with, framed as an open discussion, somehow became even more painful in a place that I’d chosen, somewhere that I’d hoped to find freedom and joy away from my childhood church. I’d done this to myself, hoping things would be different even as I chose the same well-worn path I’d always known.

I slipped out of the lecture hall before the panel had completed, creeping up to the dark, quiet rooftop of the financial aid building to stare at the stars and pray. I pled for help, for clarity, for answers. I didn’t want to be different, didn’t want to lose my family and friends and faith because of something I couldn’t control. I hated who I suspected I was, hated the secret crushes, the flushed cheeks, the endless embarrassment when I was around girls I liked. I wanted to be whole, pure, the person I was supposed to be. I wanted to be good enough that my sexuality wouldn’t matter.

“During courtship, guarding each other’s purity and refraining from intimacy are the acts of lovemaking.” – Joshua Harris, Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship

I’d hoped that years of covertly scribbling notes on certain verses, cursing Paul’s letters in the New Testament, accidentally earning a Biblical studies minor through my hunger for answers, would somehow absolve me of the paralyzing guilt I carried. I’d deliberately chosen a college with a conservative life-and-conduct-statement, one that specifically forbade sexual relations and homosexuality to help me avoid all of those questions that felt too big to answer – but my friends had no trouble breaking those rules and I found myself constantly longing to explore, to give in to temptation, to test my own resolve. My already severe insomnia got worse, depression took over, and it became easier to skip church services, to lie about chapel attendance, to let those verses that had hurt me for so many years fade into the background. I avoided conversations on God, skipped classes, lied about the guys I was fucking and the girls I dragged into bathrooms when I’d had too much to drink. I hated the way I felt sitting in those hard wooden pews, hated the feelings that welled up in me every time we sang certain hymns, hated feeling like a messy, confused hypocrite. I’d tried to be their kind of good, but it would never be enough. The Bible said I’d been fearfully and wonderfully made, created in His image, yet somehow I knew that I was still broken, that any purity I’d claimed in my youth was long gone.

So when a gorgeous, free-spirited woman started dating one of my friends, I immediately recognized the longing that welled up within me. Those familiar flushed cheeks, shaking hands, the sensation that I’d forgotten how to move with any semblance of grace – the attraction was instant, overpowering, and a few moments in her presence completely undid me. She was easy, seemed to breathe more freely than I ever had, laughed and sang and danced barefoot in the grass. R was everything I wasn’t, and I was utterly transfixed, mesmerized by her full-throated laugh, her tangled hair, her reckless sense of adventure. She had an impulsive and contagious habit of getting drunk or high and wanting to make out with whoever was around, and one particularly messy night, she chose me.

By then I was no stranger to hooking up with my friends, but I was a master of boundaries, able to separate the slightest whisper of lust from our spontaneous, carefree explorations. And yet that night those insistent kisses broke me apart, forced me to confront how much I wanted this, wanted her. R’s hands lingered on my waist, her lips soft, and I was torn between the guilt spiraling through me and a sharp desire that I could no longer deny. She seemed oblivious to my torment, to the shame and confusion engulfing me, so when eventually she pulled away, citing discomfort with my overly enthusiastic response, all I could do was slink outside, light cigarette after cigarette with trembling hands, and wish that I was anywhere, anyone, else.

“If we don’t abundantly love each other, we can’t have an abundant relationship with God. I must embrace an interpretation of my faith that requires unconditional love for queer people because any less would be to deny my own humanity and that of my community. – Adrian White,
Seeking Queer Theology And Perfect Love That Casts Out Fear

It wasn’t until years later that I could see those moments for what they were — the confirmation that I had never been the straight, perfect Christian woman I’d impersonated for all those years. After a viral round of conservative, hateful articles about God’s view on homosexuality forced an uncomfortable theological discussion with my mother-in-law, I found myself sitting alone at my cheap, scratched Ikea table, sobbing over my leather-bound New King James and an Autostraddle article I’d found through Google. The identity I’d tried to deny had a name, and I’d finally whispered it out loud — bisexual. I knew the word was mine, that this label spoke the core of who I was, that it resonated in a way that was too real to ignore. Just putting a name to that endless, overpowering struggle broke me into pieces, and the freedom and relief I’d hoped to feel were nowhere to be found. I was an abomination twice over now, both impure and unnatural. I’d never be able to put myself back together in the same way, into a person that God could still love.

I was coming up on my fourth wedding anniversary, married at 23 to a man raised in the same churches and beliefs and rules as me, and admitting my truth to him or anyone else felt absolutely impossible. I was sure he would leave me, sure that this new revelation on top of everything else we were struggling with as young married people would be the thing that finally broke us apart. I couldn’t blurt out the truth until I’d finished almost two bottles of wine, the words tumbling clumsily, my eyes fixed to the floor — a pattern that repeated over the next few months as I drunkenly came out to my closest friends, those trusted few that had been with me for so many years. The receptions were always the same, shocking me every single time — immediate acceptance, joy, even gratitude that I’d chosen them to be truthful with. No one judged me, not one single person, and no one walked away. They simply pulled me into their arms and gave me generous words of love and comfort that I could almost believe.

Illustration by Serena Kuo

For all of the pain that those evangelical spaces caused me, for all the ways the church broke my spirit and told me I could never be enough, I also found incredible people there, chosen family that made me feel safe, supported me without missing a beat. They’re still by my side all these years later, my partner and my former roommates and my oldest friends, reading my work and supporting my dreams and calling me family. They don’t care that I didn’t have answers, that I still don’t — they just love me, every single piece. It’s the most radical thing I’ve ever experienced, more pure than any love my childhood church offered me, more revolutionary and accepting and powerful than I could’ve ever imagined. Those friends taught me that sex was something joyful, beautiful, expressive, that it could be about pleasure instead of purity. They helped me discover tarot, intuition, to build and foster community that supports instead of tearing apart. I’d always associated love with judgment, and they showed me that it could be so much more.

I’m still discovering new scars, new sensitivities, new bits of shame that creep around my sharp edges even after all these years. I’ve come out to people from my childhood that aren’t so welcoming, that preferred to walk away rather than accept who I am. I’ve shared my truth with my parents and in-laws, family that’s uncomfortable with my identity and tries to avoid it as much as possible. And I’ve had to grapple with my sexuality over and over, making mistakes and constantly learning and embracing humility as a daily practice. But purity culture built a framework so specific, so inherently flawed, that when I decided to reject it I could do so wholeheartedly. My life may not follow those strict mandates anymore, may celebrate queerness and desire and inclusivity in a way that still horrifies my parents — but it’s finally real, authentic, mine. I found a god that makes sense to me, one brimming with grace and joy and magic, and I know that she loves me exactly the way she made me: queer as hell.

Illustration by Serena Kuo

At Home in Ourselves: Bi+ Women on How They’re Staying Connected to Queer Identity while Dating Men

It can take a hefty dose of self-cultivated gall and emotional elbow grease to walk around with confidence as a bi+ woman. While our broader societal definitions of what queer looks like are changing rapidly and for the better over time — and with bisexuals making up a staggering 52% of the LGB population — it’s still easy to feel, at times, not gay enough for the gays and not straight enough for the straights, thanks to the sneaky persistence of biphobia. After years of coming out and an oft-painful exploration of and meditation on my identity as a queer or bi-idenitfying woman, I finally felt I’d shed the majority of whatever internalized biphobia I had and settled into who I am — until I began a longterm relationship with a cis, heterosexual man.

On one hand, I reaped all the benefits and privileges of a straight relationship: things like acceptance (perhaps even relief) from my family, comfort talking about the person I love in full transparency whenever to whomever, always feeling safe in public together. But there was also a part of myself — a very real part of myself — to which I started to feel less entitled as my relationship grew. For a while, I stopped going to queer events, withdrew my voice in queer conversations amongst the community of queer friends I’d made, and stopped posting and sharing the gay content I used to post with some regularity online. I felt lost: I still knew who I was and what I liked, but the constant specter of invalidation and confusion I’d worked so hard to vanquish began to follow me around incessantly again.

As I began to acknowledge what was happening, I refused to bury and mourn the loss of that part of me. Whether I’m perceived to be queer or not, my queerness is still very much a vital piece of who I am, and I wanted to honor it. I also knew I wasn’t alone. I found queer spaces, online and in real life, comprised of people in the same situation. Watching others do the same, I made it both a promise and a practice to foster and engage that part of myself. There isn’t exactly a handbook for how to be Bi+ in a straight relationship, so for Bi Awareness week, I talked to other bi and multi-gender attracted women who are or have been in committed relationships with cis, hetero men to find out how they nurture and understand their queerness while they’re in these relationships, and the obstacles they face in doing so.

Jade Gomez, a bi 21-year-old writer, has been with her boyfriend for 7 years. Earlier in their relationship, the couple took a break, during which she dated other people, including a woman, but eventually ended up getting back together. However, over the past year, insecurities about her experience level beyond her relationship — and the ways in which it causes people to question her queerness — have started to arise.

“[Not being able to experiment more is] not necessarily something I’m mad about, but [I’m] realizing I wish I had the chance to kind of explore my queer identity in more emotional and physical ways than I was able to. Which isn’t to say I’m not happy in my relationship, because I definitely am. But other people like to question that, unfortunately, and be like ‘Have you ever done this? Wait, you haven’t?’How can you consider yourself gay if you haven’t done this or that?’” she remembers. “And then it was just me wondering if I’ve missed out on anything? So it’s taken some time to unpack. And working on it with my therapist and talking to some friends of mine made me realize it’s something I need to advocate for myself.”

For Gomez, a condition that she suffers from called vaginismus — which has made her unable to have penetrative sex — limits certain sexual experiences. This added an extra layer of frustration with what she has and hasn’t done and the ways in which it contributes to her sense of identity.

“As I realize I’m unable to do the things I want, it started to feel like basically another blow. Like, not only can you not do anything with your current partner, but you haven’t been able to do anything with anybody in any of your relationships, so are you even valid in that? It’s something that took me a while to work out,” she says. “And it wasn’t until fairly recently — getting on depression medication and opening up the dialogue with other people, including my own partner. Eventually opening up and being like, ‘I feel like as a queer woman, I wish I had that space to explore things and validate it.” She said her partner was understanding and receptive to this concern, and they even began a conversation about the ways she might eventually be able to gain “extra validation or confirmation or experience” while remaining in the relationship.

It’s common to face questioning or feel the need to “prove” or “justify” your bi-ness, especially when faced with criticism or biphobic messaging outside of your relationship. But for Caroline Duran, a 23-year-old barista whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, some of that invalidation actually came from behavior within a previous relationship with a cis man who identified as queer. During the relationship, she began to come to terms her own queer identity, and her partner began to make comments about being fine with her exploring her queer identity sexually with other people.

“I understand his intentions, and I think they were good, but it was also a little invalidating. Because it seemed like he thought that it almost didn’t count. Unless we were poly — which we weren’t — you would never say ‘Well, you can explore your sexuality with another man.’ And for me, my sexuality isn’t something I need to test out. I already know what it is. It’s not like I need to go see if it’s what I really feel.” She also found his implied understanding of her queerness limited to sex. “When people ask, ‘Have you been with a woman?,’ they make it all about sex. Like my last partner, when he said ‘You can go experiment,’ it’s not like I just want to go have sex with women, which you know, it’d be fine if you did. But I would want to be in a relationship with a woman at some point in my life, and that’s not something you can just go test out.”

It was a fear of similar invalidation and misunderstanding from within her relationships that kept Melodie Williams, a bi 24-year-old Creative Producer, from coming out to any of her previous partners before she came out to her husband of 3 years and partner of 6 years a couple years into their relationship.

“Growing up in a conservative family, there was always this questioning of the validity of queer relationships at all. And then there comes into the question of bisexuality and if you’re in a straight-presenting relationship, what does that mean? Why does it matter? Why do you have to identify yourself as bi at all if you’re in that?,” Williams had to ask herself. As she began to come out to her partner and to friendships in her life, she describes feeling more wholly herself when she was able to be open about her queerness to the people in her life — even if it wasn’t something that they noticed on a day-to-day basis.

“I’ve realized how much of myself I’ve been hiding because I haven’t spoken openly about it. And so if I were to say to somebody else that it matters, it’s because that’s a full representation of yourself. And although that may not be necessarily something that you’re presenting to other people, are you able to fully be yourself if you can’t accept that that’s apart of you and that’s really important?” Williams says. “So I think in my processing of it, it’s been being able to validate myself and say that this is fully me and fully myself. Being open about that is just being honest with myself and allowing me to be myself. So I would encourage other people to do the same, because how can you be fully yourself if you can’t feel that that part of you is valid?”

For some bi+ individuals with cisgender, heterosexual partners, the opportunity to engage in and explore queer sex, while being in their relationship, is important, so they turn to open relationships. Arielle Mitchell, a 23-year-old queer researcher, had dated cis hetero men monogamously in the past, but often felt constrained in those relationships. So when she began dating her partner of almost 3 years, it was important for her to establish space for queer sexual experiences.

“The men I was dating always honored and respected me, but I always felt like I wasn’t necessarily able to explore myself in the way that I wanted to. So having an open relationship this time, with my current relationship, has been really enlightening to be able to simultaneously love someone and love him and have him love me, while also being able to date and explore people that have varying gender identities,” says Mitchell. The two foster an environment of mutual openness about their attraction to others. They made tinder profiles together — she set hers to all genders — featured each other on their respective profiles and have open conversations about who they match with. If they’re together and see someone on the street that one of them is attracted to, they share it with one another. Her queerness is something she shares with her partner.

Mitchell says that her partner’s proximity and openness to her queerness has even recently prompted her partner to explore his own sexual and gender identities, something the couple has been discussing together.

“It’s been really eye-opening for my partner to be in a relationship with someone who’s queer. Because throughout our three years of being together, I’ve been really open about renaming my gender identity and using she and they pronouns, and he has come to this realization that feels really similarly — which is maybe something he wouldn’t have come to conclude before our relationship. So we’re both in this process of digesting what ‘she/they’ or ‘he/they’ would mean for us and how we would use them with one another and other people. So I think [me] being queer has been helpful for him in developing an understanding about how he feels about his own gender identity and his own sexuality and things like that,” Mitchell explains.

Regardless of their personal relationship terms or narratives, everyone I talked to regularly finds individual channels to feel comfortable with and connected to their queerness. In fact, there are a multitude of ways we seem to characterize or define bisexuality that are wholly unrelated to dating altogether. While it’s important not to seriously imply there could even be such a thing as one homogenous “bisexual culture,” definitions of bisexuality centered entirely around dating — or even sexual behavior — do begin to feel too narrow when you start to interrogate what makes people feel in touch with their bisexual identity. Conversations about the queer communities, various aspects of culture, and larger shared common understanding of themselves, their bodies, and their sexualities that bisexual groups and individuals have cultivated feels just as vital to our public discourse of what it means to be bisexual as conversations about dating. A simple twitter search of the phrase “bisexual culture” would lead you to believe being too anxious to ask a crush out on a date or the regular use of finger guns as a communication tool or the nature of your childhood cartoon swoonings were more a part of The Bisexual Experience as the gender of your current partner or the extensive variation of your sexual history.

Some bi+ folks I talked to cited playing with their physical presentation — certain hairstyles, makeup, and clothing that they find gender-bending or queer-indicative — as being a validating form of expression. Some said surrounding themselves queer friends who support them unconditionally was key. Others said consuming queer film, television, porn and music helped them feel more in tune with themselves.

“I’m obsessed with this one singer Rina Sawayama — she’s so brilliant, she’s queer, and she’s Asian, which is awesome because I’ve never had that before,” Gomez gushes. “Even my boyfriend sees how happy I am when I listen to her music, and how validated I feel. So he’ll put it on in the car, and he’s like ‘that’s your gay queen!”

Gomez also describes seeking community via sharing her queerness in online with other queer folks — but the feedback hasn’t always been affirming. She used to be active on Tumblr and recalls getting messages like “Don’t you think it’s kind of disrespectful that you’re out here saying that you’re queer when you have a boyfriend?” and “You clearly don’t understand how any of these things work because you’re dating a cis het dude, so how ‘bout you not speak on this.” She joined “sex positive, leftist Facebook groups,” which she describes as “safe spaces for people, a lot of which are queer to talk about these things,” but was faced with tonally similar scrutiny. Within these groups, some members questioned Gomez’ decision to be with a man in the first place and expressed discomfort with her claiming her queer labels.

“I was open about my struggles with trying to explore my identity — but also feeling like I don’t want to betray or cause a rift or seem like it’s anything that it’s not in a cis het relationships, more of just like me understanding with myself that I’m allowed to be curious about certain things, whether I act on it,” she remembers. “A lot of people talk down to me and think my experience level allows them to — whatever that even means, which is still kind of ambiguous and arbitrary — use that as a way to invalidate my feelings, in a hetero relationship, as a queer woman, and everything in between.”

Williams, on the other hand, cites queer online platforms — like queer online personalities, accounts, writers, and publications — as overwhelmingly positive, validating, and a plentiful source of confidence.

“Following people inside the online community that are very open about their queerness has given me a lot of strength to be like ‘I do fit into this story and fit into this space.’ It’s just a matter of surrounding myself with other stories that match mine, maybe don’t match mine, but are just unapologetically queer. And being able to read those stories or experience them second hand — reading them, seeing them, things like that — has made me feel a lot more confident to express that within myself and be confident in that within myself,” Williams says.

There’s clearly a ways to go in combating biphobia — both internalized and in the world around us. But no matter what our relationship narrative or perceived sexuality is, there are stories, people, practices and communities all around us that can encourage us to feel more at home in ourselves, because there certainly isn’t just one way to be queer.

Reading Bisexual Women of YA: 10 Recommendations for Celebrate Bisexuality Month

In 2016, a VOYA review ran a very interesting (read: troubling) warning along with their take on Kody Keplinger’s young adult novel Run. “The story contains many references to Bo being bisexual and an abundance of bad language, so it is recommended for mature junior and senior high readers.” The implication that bisexuality in and of itself isn’t appropriate for young readers (who themselves might be coming to terms with their sexuality) sparked the expected outrage, a Change.org petition to boycott the magazine, and eventually a formal apology. Though there are still those who would keep bi characters off YA shelves, there are also plenty of fantastic young adult graphic novels, fantasy books, contemporary novels, and even nonfiction collections with bisexual characters that find their way into the hands of young readers and adults who appreciate YA. Here are a few essentials to check out during bisexual awareness month.

Kiss Number 8 by Colleen AF Venable, Illustrated by Ellen T. Crenshaw

This graphic novel just received a spot on the National Book Awards’ Longlist, and for good reason. The story is a portrait of not just a teen coming to terms with her queerness (and figuring out what labels, or a lack of labels, might apply to her) but of the beauty of finding your queer community. A kind of afterword plays against still persistent ideas about what ending up in a same sex or heterosexual relationship means for a bi character, and provides, if not a happily ever after, the idea that discovering who you are can lead to happiness.

Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee

Not Your Sidekick is a fun and funny own voices book, meaning its bisexual, Asian American protagonist was created by bisexual Asian American author C.B. Lee (who’s earned a Rainbow Award for Best Bisexual Fantasy Romance). Not Your Sidekick is the first in a trilogy that imagines a world where superheroes are real, but not all teens with superpowered families end up leaping tall buildings. Protagonist Jessica Tran’s story of navigating this fantastical world comes alive even more when her various crushes are explored.

Queer, There, And Everywhere by Sarah Prager, Illustrated By Zoe More O’Ferrall

This collection of mini-biographies of queer people throughout history is written with young audiences in mind, but even if you’re an adult with several queer history classes under your belt, you might be introduced to a member of the LGBTQ community you’d never heard of. Included in the collection is Frida Kahlo, who, at least for the years after Frida was released, might have been history’s most famous bi woman.

Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

Albertalli’s follow up to Simon and the Homosapien Agenda (which became last year’s teen rom-com hit Love, Simon) is told from the perspective of Simon’s BFF Leah, a visual artist and musician dealing with some capital A teen angst. Like Simon and the Homosapien Agenda, the book grapples in an incredibly realistic way with the reasons it can be hard to come out even to people you’re almost certain will accept you for who you are. Also like Simon, this book is for fans of happy (if a bit sappy) endings.

I Hate Everyone But You by Gaby Dunn and Allison Raskin

Told through a series of e-mails between two friends suddenly separated by college, the novel’s “coming out” (but, you know, not in a big way, not that’s a big deal or not a big deal) moment is wonderfully honest, a portrayal of a teen tripping over herself to support her friend’s evolving sexuality and making many missteps in the process. Written by two comedians with a real-life friendship, the e-mail format takes a second to get used to but ultimately creates a charming and fast-paced read. Read Autostraddle’s interview with Gaby and Allison about it here!

Our Own Private Universe by Robin Talley

The novel follows Aki, a bisexual fifteen-year-old as she goes on a journey with a group of fellow teens from her church, and contains one of the few examples I’ve found in a YA novel of a queer girl grappling not just with what sex will look like for her, but how to navigate protection when she hasn’t been given much info on queer sex, let alone how to stay safe. Beyond getting that info to young readers, the book is a sweet story of romance and figuring out your place in the world.

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

It’s been described as Lord of the Flies with teen girls, but this book is so much more than an update to the classic novel that likely made you afraid of pigs, or shells, or the wrath of men. When a plane full of beauty queens crash lands on an island, a group of girls who have had their lives policed more than even the average modern high schooler finally have the time and freedom to explore who they are, including exploring their sexuality.

Not Otherwise Specified by Hannah Moskowitz

This novel from the incredibly prolific Hannah Moskowitz deals with something bi women deal with from their teens well into adulthood, sometimes feeling like they don’t belong in groups of queer women who only date women. Etta is having a hard time finding where she fits into any clique, and her quest to find a place where she belongs will resonate with any reader.

The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson

A new classic YA about female friendship, The Bermudez Triangle follows a trio of life-long BFFs as they deal with a big change—one summer two of the girls realize they have feelings for each other and start dating. From moving from friends to girlfriends to making sure their third friend doesn’t feel like a third wheel, Johnson’s take on evolving relationships is a quick, engrossing read.

All Out: The No-Longer Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages edited By Saundra Mitchell

This collection of short stories featuring queer teen protagonists is a must-read for fans of historical fiction. Readers will get sucked into the story of a girl questioning her sexuality on the floor of a ‘70s roller rink and the story of a girl looking for a midnight kiss as the world enters the new millennium. This book is packed with meet-cutes in mysterious forests and myth retellings with a queer twist.

“I’m Not Missing Anything in My Relationship”: Bi Women and Nonbinary People on the Challenges and Joys of Dating

As I sat across from my date at a bar patio, the orange hue of street lights creating a halo around her, I shared the story of an awkward date. She asked for the gender of the person. Yes, this was a man, I informed her. It seemed like a harmless question until later in the date, when she proceeded to talk about her poor experiences with bi women. At our next bar, she talked about how her previous dates and online connections with bi women eventually ended without any physical connection and surmised that they really wanted to date men. She questioned if these people actually wanted to sleep with women at all. I wasn’t sure what she imagined they wanted out of their dates with her.

There’s no comparable situation with men. The world still assumes heterosexuality as the norm and the world generally sees me as a straight woman rather than a bi nonbinary person. So men usually aren’t going to assume that my lack of interest in sleeping with them, whether immediately or never, means that I’m not interested in any men at all. When I have told straight men I’m dating that I’m bi, the reaction has often been a swift change from sharing favorite movies to overtly sexual comments. Once, within minutes of mentioning that I’m bi, my date escalated his aggressive behavior to sexual assault. I felt that the way bisexual women and femmes in particular are portrayed as performing their sexuality for men may have made it easier for him, along with other misogynistic ideas he may have already held, to justify this dehumanization. Bi people of all genders have consistently treated me with more respect, with one date waving her hand at me over a couple beers and saying “You don’t have to go through your dating history with me.” In my experience and my bi friends’ experiences, we’re often asked to share our romantic and sexual histories with various genders on dates, and it gets tiresome.

Several people who spoke with Autostraddle shared their unique experiences dating as bisexual and queer people, including the hyper-sexualization of bi people and polyamorous people in particular, the idea that bi people will always “leave them” for a person of another gender, how bi people seek out other bi people, and the ways nonbinary people have treated their bi dates and partners with more understanding. Being bi has shaped the way they have dated, such as preferring to date other bi people, the hypersexualization of bi women by straight men, managing the insecurities and expectations of other people they’re involved with, or debunking myths about their relationships in their own community. Some of the bi women and nonbinary people Autostraddle spoke with chose to go by either their first name or a psuedonym. They will have an asterisk by their name.

Bi women face a number of health and economic barriers compared to other people in the LGBTQ community. Bi women have reported poorer health outcomes and are more likely to depend on SNAP benefits and Medicaid than monosexual peers, according to 2018 analysis from the Center for American Progress. Some of bi people’s negative health outcomes may be the result of feeling alienated from all monosexual communities, internalization of the stigmas bi people face, and the loneliness that comes as a result of it, researchers say. Bi people are also less likely to disclose their bisexuality to healthcare providers, according to 2012 research from the Williams Institute. Research on sexual violence has established that bisexual women have higher rates of sexual assault than straight or gay women. A 2017 Lehigh University researcher examined why that may be the case and found that sexual violence against bi women may result in part from “social construction of bisexual women as especially worthy of distrust, jealousy, and other emotions” and that the hypersexualization of bi women by men, reinforced by media representation of bi women, is also a factor.

Fear of harassment or uncomfortable interactions with lesbians has affected the way some bi people feel about dating lesbians. Miryam T*, who is nonbinary, said she hasn’t experienced direct harassment from lesbians for being bi but the rhetoric she has seen from some cis lesbians online about both bisexuality and trans people is enough to make her wary.

“Between the combination of experiencing biphobia and experiencing transmisogyny, I don’t really interact with cisgender lesbians if I can avoid it. I don’t go out of my way to avoid them but I don’t trust that they will be really happy to see me in their spaces,” she said. “ …Most of the people I’ve seen in the past few years have been trans men or nonbinary people and there’s a good reason for that. And it’s basically because those are the folks that I feel more like they understand me and I understand them.”

Miryam T said that although gay men have expressed interest in her, she tends not to date them, and tends to date trans people and bi people she can relate to more.

“I’ve been in situations with gay cis men where they were into me and I was into them but they made me feel like they thought of me more as a man, like talking about genitals,” she said. “Mostly whatever else they thought or said, they were so genital-focused… All around I feel safer with more own niche community than trying to see what the ‘proper gays’ are up to.”

Sarah* came out in her late 20s as bi after realizing she was in love with her best friend. She has had one serious relationship with a woman and is now in a monogamous relationship with a man. She said that her girlfriend at the time said she was concerned that she might leave her for a man.

“I don’t think it was so much biphobia as to have a partner who can easily meld back into heteronormativity. I think if I were a lesbian I would fear that too. But also as the person who is dating a woman it feels a little unfair, like well maybe, but currently we are dating,” she said.

She said that when she learned her best friend had feelings for her but that she was going to date a man instead, she said she felt like she was on the “opposite side” of it.

“Is she deciding to date this man over me because that is more comfortable out in the world?” she said she asked herself at the time.

Sarah added, “Knowing myself as a person who has dated a lot of men before coming out, it is comfortable for me to date men so it was a fear that I had that women I’ve dated would not want to date me or that they wouldn’t want to be with me because my experiences were mostly with men.”

She said that partners may use bisexuality as the thing they focus on as a relationship problem when they’re insecure about their relationships in general.

“I think to some extent there is a sense of insecurity in a lot of relationships that you aren’t enough for the other person — particularly in hindsight if it didn’t work out — and gender is a really tangible thing to grasp onto as a reason you think maybe you are unsatisfying to a partner or former partner,” she said. “I think it’s often an anxiety in a relationship with a bi or pansexual person because it’s so surface level. It’s so much easier to think ‘she left me or I worry she might leave me because I’m not a man/woman’ than ‘she left me because I was an asshole.’”

Chaya Milchtein, a queer polyamorous woman and automotive educator said that being poly magnifies certain stereotypes people already hold about bi people. Milchtein’s fiancée is a woman, which also affects how people receive her sexuality.

“A lot of times people assume I will date ‘the opposite sex’ like I’m missing something from my partner and where do you get all those stereotypes of bisexual people? I identify as queer but you get those bad stereotypes — like a bisexual person will cheat on with you with the opposite sex because they’re missing that or whatever. I’m not missing anything in my relationship. It’s fantastic and it’s going great. We just got engaged and who I date who is not her has frankly nothing to do with her and is no reflection on her or what she offers.”

Milchtein said that people’s perception of her sexuality has depended on her community at the time and that trans and nonbinary people have generally understood it better.

“I never dated a nonbinary person but I had the privilege of spending many years in New York where my community was mostly flexible,” she said. “But when I came out to Wisconsin, it’s a lot more rigid. I haven’t encountered many nonbinary or trans folks who are like ‘Oh I want to know who you fuck’ but the cis women have a big issue with it.”

“I quite frankly haven’t had a serious relationship with a man in a long time but I have dated and had relations with people of other genders,” Milchtein said. “But people are really surprised like I’m betraying my sexuality or something by talking about the experiences I’ve had with men in the past or that I might be interested in in the future.”

Although she said that cis men haven’t seen her attraction to other genders as a dealbreaker, she said they have focused on her queerness so much that all she becomes to them is the potential for a threesome. Milchtein said she doesn’t have a problem with threesomes and has had them and enjoyed them, but doesn’t it want it to be the focus of a date when it hasn’t previously been discussed.

“They just turn into blubbering idiots and whatever you were possibly having a conversation about all the sudden turns sexual,” she said.

Sarah said she has also experienced this assumption that her partner can’t offer her enough satisfaction because she is bi, but from her boyfriend. She said that his anxiety about it is “pretty minor” but that “men showing more than a passing comfort with bisexuality” has been a litmus test for her in any relationship she entered into with a man.

Melanie Cristol, founder and CEO of a queer-inclusive sexual health company Lorals, is a monogamous relationship with a nonbinary partner and said they have been very accepting of her sexuality.

“Their attitude toward bisexuality is so refreshing. They don’t remotely care about the genders of my former partners, and there’s not a weird undertone of fear that I’ll leave them for someone of another gender,” she said.

Another challenge for bi and queer women and nonbinary people is assumptions from monosexual people about their relationships either erase their sexuality or don’t consider that their gender and gender presentation affects which relationships people see.

Miryam T said she calls a relationship a queer relationship if queer people are in it, and being trans and bi can certainly affect how people read your relationship.

“As a baby trans woman who was dating a person who would eventually come out as a trans man in college, we both identified as queer already and we felt super weird about the appearance of being a straight couple. When in reality we were pretty far from that.”

She added, “There’s this interesting phenemenon of two people dating each other and especially two bi trans people dating each other where we’re approaching heterosexual conventions but at a great remove and great distance. If there are two cis people who are both bi and dating each other, they’re not really heterosexual. You do things to blend in and you might do things that are conventional in some ways but there’s a good chance that you’ll both be alienated enough that it will be different.”

She said that dating a trans man she and her partner could be mistaken for lesbians and a straight couple assuming genders one way and then a straight couple again with genders assumed another way all in a matter of a few hours. She said she sees things in being nonbinary and being bi tie their experiences together.

“In gay men’s dating culture there are a lot of rigid roles and sexual interests, at least that they proclaim, and lesbians say they don’t do this but they do this too, especially with the butch-femme dichotomy. It’s something that is subversive of all sexuality to be bi. The fulfillment that comes from feeling like, when things are going well, that you embody something that doesn’t quite fit cleanly into one category or another. That is what I keep coming back to as to why bi and nonbinary and trans people are all linked. We have a lot of common characteristics and experiences even if some of us are cis and a lot of us aren’t.”

Sarah said that since meeting her boyfriend, she has felt less comfortable talking about her sexuality in queer spaces. She doesn’t feel that fear in predominantly straight spaces, where she said she doesn’t have a problem correcting straight people who believe she’s straight too.

“Well I kind of felt like I came out and started dating a woman and it lasted a few months and was exploring my queerness and wanted to be in queer spaces. And then I met my boyfriend and it was unexpected and sort of fell into this relationship,” she said. “He’s great and amazing and I love him. But I do feel like now all of a sudden, I was exploring my queer sexuality and now I’m back in a hetero relationship. I’m a little timid about exploring queer spaces and trying to be open and vocal about my queerness. It’s something I struggle with day to day.”

Bi-Suited

In elementary school I went through a phase where I wouldn’t wear dresses. My second-wave feminist mother took me to the children’s thrift store and bought me plum velvet dress pants and a salmon satin shirt.

Window shopping with my mom last year, I pointed out a moon-silver suit in the window of a grand store and wondered if it was a shade too close to white to be worn as a wedding guest. Without answering my question she told me I was too straight to wear a suit, that lesbians had worked too hard for the right to wear suits for a “straight bitch” like me to tap-dance in like the poseur I was. It didn’t seem worth it to correct her, there in the middle of 5th avenue.

It hardly needs to be said in the age of instagram identity formation that clothes are symbols, and queer dress aesthetics have always served a communicative function beyond style, gender expression, or social commentary. Queer fashion does all of that, and more, but it is also a bat symbol used to facilitate connection and build community. I can sympathize with any resentment that might be felt towards those aesthetics being coopted by straight mainstream fashion: without context, queerness, or acknowledgement.

Here are some things that I do. I tie my rainbow sneakers and wonder if they’re the queer signifier I meant them to be, or if their meaning has been lost in the piles of rainbow synthetic fabrics pumped out by H&M and Forever 21 over the past year. I feel an unfair pang of disappointment when they are complimented by straight women. I study the cool gay women I see like I’m a teenager trying to figure out how to act; how to get my sleeves to stay rolled up. I google “soft butch,” and when that’s clearly not right I google “hard femme” to see if that is a thing. It’s a thing. It’s not me.

Another thing I do is look at pictures of women wearing suits. For a garment set that is in some ways strictly defined, a suit can be so fluid. A simple black tuxedo can be anywhere on the spectrum from butch to femme depending on how you wear it. It’s powerful, but fancy. It’s decadent and practical. Strong and forgiving. Classic and modern. Exactly as sexy as you want it to be. It’s easy to find pictures of women in suits in 2019. I don’t have to search twitter for suit appreciation posts in honor of besuited Evan Rachel Wood, Janelle Monáe, Kristen Stewart, Tessa Thompson, Lena Waithe, Cara Delevingne or Ellen Page. They are given to me by the internet on a fairly regular basis. Fashion bloggers Tom and Lorenzo have been referring to this trend as the “Lady Suit,” but that phrasing feels too narrowly femme when a week ago Zendaya won the fashion news cycle by wearing the same men’s suit that Michael B. Jordan had worn to an Oscar party last February.

It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful to see Ellen Page looking so cool and so comfortable after so many years of pained and cramped looking red carpet photos. Wonderful to have Janelle Monáe work in suiting with a limited color palette for so long to show us how much creativity could be found within those constraints. Wonderful to have red carpet suits that go beyond a sexy low-cut blazer without anything underneath. I thrill when Evan Rachel Wood looks like Greta Garbo but I am equally turned on when Kristen Stewart looks like a rich kid drop-out wearing their mother’s Chanel jacket and their father’s shoes. Velvet blazers, leather pants, brocade sets, shawl collars, highlighter-neons, pussy bows, and sex in the limo dishevel. All these women. Kaleidoscopic queerness. Google it. We are finally at a time where there are enough out queer women in positions of fame that you can spend hours without repeating a suit.

So what do we do with Cate Blanchett? What do we do with Blake Lively?

The last few years have been a good time for straight actresses wearing suits. Blanchett worked some very lovely suiting to promote the regally romantic lesbian drama Carol (2015), but it was really on the press tour for Ocean’s 8 (2017) that the suit parade really began. The internet adored pictures of Kristen Stewart staring at Blanchett longingly at Cannes, as they both wore impeccably coordinated pastel suits in front of a French marina or something. Blanchett’s character in the movie, Lou, wore suits as well – glittery sexy rock-n-roll confections – and the chemistry between her and Sandra Bullock’s Debbie Ocean was rich and full of a deep potential that felt simultaneously exciting to poke at and ultimately disappointingly unexplored. A year later Blake Lively, previously known for backless takes on classic femme Hollywood glamour, learned the sartorial power of suiting on the set of A Simple Favor; another movie that felt stubborn for not being a gay movie considering how gay it got. Suddenly we get tweets like this one from @Cait_Greer : “Blake Lively’s outfits in A Simple Favor are astoundingly, gorgeously gay. The gayest. I think if she and Cate Blanchett wore suits in the same room the world might explode in gay.”

And the thing is, they’re not wrong. Those movies were gay as hell. Blake Lively’s costume designer did a whole number on me. Cate Blanchett’s whole thing does a number on me. Whether or not the actors portraying those characters were gay, the costuming (in which I am also including all the promotional drag) was playing with queer signifiers in a purposeful deliberate way. I think the question then becomes not whether or not a straight celebrity can create a queer affect — they can, and you can be as lustful or covetous of it as you feel — but whether or not using that affect outside of the character that they’re playing is appropriative (the question of whether queer characters should only be played by queer actors is another question). It can feel appropriative. I want suits to continue to signify something queer: something gay or something gender nonconforming or something outside of femme heterosexuality. It is as much a part of their appeal to me as is their comfort, or elegance, or the fact that separates fit me more easily than a dress. Of course, gender presentation is a separate thing from sexuality, but the part of me that wants suiting to be a free-floating aesthetic is the same part that is worried that I will be disqualified from wearing them because I am straight-partnered), and because coming out to my mom has always felt like a hassle that I didn’t want to deal with when I haven’t had a relationship with a woman long or official enough (I won’t say meaningful) to make it worth having, like, a conversation (hey mom). But who, exactly, is going to make this ruling judgement other than myself? The society police?

This tension between authentic and interloper has long defined the conversation around bisexuality in culture and in my own identity formation. My boyfriend and other friends refer to me as bi, and it doesn’t bother me but it’s never what I say in my head (queer feels right and good). I wonder if this would be different if I hadn’t spent my adolescence watching TV characters declare their bisexuality in bloodless clinical confessions before disappearing from the town of Tree Hill once sweeps was over. There is often a presumption of inauthenticity surrounding bi people; an assumption of performance or closetedness. These assumptions are often bound up in gender presentation: bi femmes are straight girls looking for male attention and bi butches are just lesbians who haven’t committed yet. Even knowing, even being, these tropes are pervasive. It’s why I always forget that Jane Lynch is bi (or at least more fluid than she is labeled). The kids are so much queer-er now — I’ve heard — but my own gayness often feels stuck in the 90’s when the romantic lead of my favorite lesbian rom-com ends up with a man at the end because she “wasn’t gay enough.”

I have dressed up as Marlene Dietrich for Halloween, as Westley from The Princess Bride twice, and as Oscar Wilde… also twice, and wearing the pants from the suit my father got married in. I still don’t have a suit of my own, despite the amount of time I have wasted looking at ones for sale online. Part of this due to practical issues. Suits are expensive; much more so than the leather skirts from thrift stores that have become my formal go-tos. They are also emphatically not made for curvy bodies, and my body is all convex lines. Tailoring is (see above) expensive, and tailors who feel comfortable altering women’s suits are hard to find. There are companies now who specialize in bespoke suiting for cis women and trans folk, and they do beautiful, sexy, important craftsmanship, but those companies are (see above) expensive and tend to create garments on the more butch end of the spectrum whereas my desire has always been to look like a very femme male poet (think Laurie from Little Women). I worry that my impulses aren’t correct. I worry I’m interloping.

Why don’t I afford the same credit to myself that I do to bisexual celebrities? So many of the women I listed above claim that space, and it never makes me doubt their authenticity as queer women. Evan Rachel Wood choosing to only wear suits on the red carpet for a year as part of a deliberate choice to promote bisexual visibility makes sense to me as a symbol. If anything, the suits that these women wear affirm their sexuality for me. I am guilty of far more suspicion towards high-femme presenting bisexual celebrities like Megan Fox. The notion that femmes, and bisexual femmes especially, are faking or performing queerness for a straight audience is so prevalent that it’s difficult not to slip into sometimes when my critical brain is down. I turn it against myself; the unfair feelings that I have towards Fox and others are my own worries about overstepping reflected outward. In this way, queer signifiers can be limiting and exclusionary. Applied like this they overlay a binary to queerness. There is a benefit to expanding our idea of what queer fashion could look like. Looking at photos of the Ocean’s 8 press tour I was embarrassed at how my initial queer fashion lust had hyperfocused on Blanchett when Sarah Paulson was right there the whole time; wearing strange, slightly-off proportions and acid green pipe cleaner dresses that might not read as categorically gay as a suit does, but are queer in their transgression, unbeholden to gender or fashion norms, and in their unconventional decadence. Opening the boundaries of what substantiates queer fashion could open a door between lesbian togs and a spectrum of other expressions. Again, I’m afraid I want it both ways. I hope for a queering of queer fashion and also for the preservation of old symbols, old cultures. I desire suits for their queerness, and I deny myself suits because I am suspicious of my own.

I try very hard not to be a hypocrite, and I am glad for my self-awareness, and I also regret how much I held myself back from exploring the feelings I had towards women out of a fear of being a tease, changing my mind, or otherwise treading on ground where I either didn’t belong or belonged in a way that was so liminal that I was better off just leaving it alone and not bothering anyone. I spent twelve years of my life lying to myself and living in exile from a community that no one was policing but me. It was easy to justify so many things as long as I wasn’t actually physically intimate with other women. The Halloween costumes could be justified. The songs I wrote about how I wasn’t going to kiss my friends could be justified. I watched Kissing Jessica Stein every time it came on TV and ignored how strongly it resonated. It can all still be justified and it is often tempting to do so because the feeling that I’m an imposter still lingers, despite everything that I now know and have discussed with myself, my friends, my partner, and the internet. I don’t know that it will ever go away, but I’ve gotten better at allowing myself the queer signifiers that make me the most happy. My rainbow sneakers, my unshaven underarms, chopping my own hair into a bisexual bob. Maybe one day a tuxedo shirt that sits where it’s supposed to over my huge boobs, without even one hidden safety pin to keep it from gaping.

Celebrate Bisexuality Day 2019: The Future Is Bisexual

It’s incredible the strides we’ve made and how much the world has changed since the inception of Celebrate Bisexuality Day in 1999; 20 years on, we have national bisexual+ organizations and out bi and pan politicians; Kat Sandoval wearing butch bisexual suits on TV; Tessa Thompson and Janelle Monáe doing literally everything that they do; and a new generation of youth who are ready to save the world from climate change and have no interest in maintaining the status quo of the past around sexuality or gender. What kind of world are they ushering us into! We can’t wait to find out. Here’s some of your local bi+ Autostraddle writers and pals weighing in on what we hope to see in a bisexual future. Where do you see us headed? Let us know in the comments!

You Need Help: Navigating Aggression, Desire and Gender in Dating

Content warning: Discussion of sexual violence.

The origin of this article was a question from a reader who reached out to me on Instagram with a question about her experience of violence and desire as a queer woman currently in relationship with a cis man. She wrote:

“I’m a queer woman who is currently in relationship with a cis man, and I’ve been pondering recently how to manage a shift in sexual practice since going from largely aggressive male partners to a sensitive and respectful one who often waits for me to initiate. I get confused by the lack of quasi-assault, and interpret it as a lack of interest. I’m starting to realize I experience desirability via a violation of my boundaries, and it’s a weird, murky place to navigate. I’m bi/pan/however you want to define it, but I’ve only experienced this kind of thing with cis men. With non-men, sex has been way more…expressive? There’s no dichotomy between violence and desire there, it’s somehow more connected and playful and a level playing field. I haven’t talked to my current partner about how the difference between sex with cis men and sex with other partners, but I have talked to him about the desirability/aggression thing…like after our first date, I wasn’t sure if he liked me, because he hadn’t grabbed me and kissed me, and he was like, ‘I was just being respectful.’ I guess I’m still unlearning this whole idea of, just because he doesn’t make aggressive forward initiations, then he doesn’t find me attractive or sexually appealing. Is this bad?”

Originally, I was going to answer this like any other advice column, but the nature of the question seemed bigger than that, and something that I thought perhaps a lot of queer women could relate to, especially those who from time to time find themselves in relationships with cis men. So, let’s break down some of the themes here.

First is the question of desirability, and how we interpret being desired based on our gender, and the gender of our partner(s). As bi/pan/however-you-want-to-define-it queer women, we often have the uniquely beautiful experience of being able to interact with partners of many different genders, and your assessment of how desire and dynamics shift in response to the various genders of your partners is an astute one. How can it not? We bring all of who we are, and all of the unspoken messages we’ve learned about sex and sexuality throughout the course of our lives, to each sexual or romantic interaction we have. Those experiences and conditioning then interact with the ways our partners’ learned sexuality in order to create unique and idiosyncratic exchanges. We create something new each time we partner with someone, whether that be in a long-term romantic and sexual partnership, a brief onetime encounter, a friends-with-benefits arrangement, a situationship, etc.

I was curious about how other bisexual/pansexual femmes navigated gender, sexuality, and desire, because I was certain that you weren’t the only person who’s experienced this. I put out a call on my IG asking people to talk to me about the social conditioning they received about sex/sexuality being raised and/or perceived as feminine, and how it impacted their own experience of desire. Most people responded with things like, “Oof,” or “where to EVEN begin,” or “how much time do you have? lolcry” – so clearly, the topic resonates with people. But beyond that, the answers I received where many and varied. A common them, though, was primarily one of having to unlearn toxic messaging about who we are. For example, Kit, a stripper, poet, and shit-talk astrologer, said, “I feel like I was taught to fear my femininity and sexuality as if it’d turn against me if I honed it or loved it.” Kit said that she was taught that to own her sexuality would lead to failure or disaster of some kind: “Teen pregnancies or women ‘failing’ because of their sexuality is super, super common in my family,” she said. By contrast, Kit says that she sees her sexuality and desirability as her strength and source of power – a disruptive and transformative narrative not uncommon to those who work in the sex industry. “Now with either gender I’m always told I’m comfortable or confident, so joke’s on you, social norms,” Kit says.

Another person told me that they’re “not great at identifying desire when it’s coming from other femmes” – highly relatable content, as many a meme will attest. They went on to explain that, “cis men are, like, incredibly obvious and often sort of tiresome but sometimes kind of adorable, and there’s this swaggery masc energy that I see in trans masc and butch people. But femmes are like. It’s almost like we’re all too uncertain to make our desire clear to each other?” This description seems to me moderately in keeping with your description of aggression and desire with regard to sexual encounters with cis man – not that swaggery masc energy is aggressive, necessarily, but that masculinity and toxic masculinity are a spectrum, and that one aspect of that spectrum has to do with being the active participant, the pursuer, the subject/protagonist who drives the action in the relationship. This is not to say that femmes can’t ever embody that energy, of course, but that a more toxic version of this is what you’ve felt in your interactions with cis male partners in the past, and it’s relative lack in the relationship that you’re in now might be contributing in part to some of your confusion reading his desire for you.

The fact that there’s a lot more freedom in your interactions with non-men doesn’t surprise me, from the standpoint of thinking critically about conditioning and social norms. There’s a reason that queerness and queer love is radical, and it’s because there aren’t any scripts for it in mainstream culture. Sure, we’ve all heard of lesbians U-HAULing, and lesbian bed death, and the stereotype of gay men only wanting anonymous sex to the exclusion of intimacy and emotional connection. And certainly, queer people suffer from these narratives – as a therapist and sex educator, I’ve worked with both queer women and gay men who express frustration at the way these stereotypes weigh heavy on their dating and romantic lives and serve as boxes from which it seems impossible to break free. But we’re also at the beginning of a very new generation of queer people, folks who are starting to be more comfortable talking openly about and organizing their lives around things like ethical non-monogamy and polyamory; who have more fluency when considering sexuality and romantic attraction and how the two intersect, and also diverge. We are a community for whom asexuality and demisexuality are no longer unnamable experiences but legitimate identities, and one that understands that sex doesn’t have to look a certain way (involving penetration, for example, or even orgasm) in order to be considered valid and worthy expression of authentic sexuality.

This is a distinctly beautiful and powerful place to be, and yet, as with any moment of change, transformation, and newness, it can also be frightening. I know from my own experience as a bisexual femme the pressure I felt to go back to what I had been forcibly taught and had internalized over the course of my life, especially in a fraught and overwhelming political moment. My last relationship was with a cis straight white man from a conservative family (I know, I know) and it started just before Trump was elected in 2016. I distinctly remember thinking about the ways in which identity politics featured heavily in this relationship – my extremely misplaced certainty that my proximity, via my then-boyfriend, to all these markers of power that I lacked (cisness, straightness, whiteness, monogamy, and a stereotypical type of masculinity, the very top of the hegemonic tier) might somehow extend to me, not because I wanted to be powerful by proxy, but because I desperately wanted to be safe.

I’m sure you can imagine how well that worked out.

Our identities are inseparable from the ways in which we relate. S. Tazia answered my IG post by describing how she had been raised to view her own sexuality as something shameful that had to kept secret. “As a young black female, I had several people say or insinuate ‘not being fast’ so I snuck around, kept secrets, and judged females who were more out there and maybe even missed out on great interactions because I believed so many ‘no no’ rules.” When I asked her if she experienced desire differently with cis het men versus people of other genders, she explained, “with cis het men I’m more reserved because I feel there’s always a bigger risk of being in danger…I try to keep physicality out of the conversation so they don’t think or expect sex is happening.” She, like you, reads aggression and danger into desire when it comes to interacting with cis het men, something that I can also relate to, and it informs aspects not only of dating, but even of the preliminary conversations she has with new people: “I always have my guard up to an extend but even more so with cis het men and non-POC individuals. I like to talk about sex and relationships but most men take that as a sign that you desire them and I usually just desire to conversational attention.” Hearing this made me sad at same time as it struck me as discouragingly familiar, and made me wonder at how heavy queer women’s interactions with cis men often tend to be. How can we have good sex if we don’t even feel safe enough to talk about sex with our partners or prospective partners without being on our guard? And how can we ever let our guard down when our entire lives the world has been teaching us that we must keep it up unless we want to earn the violence we all endure?

It sounds like aggression and desire for you have become intertwined because that is the experience with cis men that is familiar to you, and familiarity in our bodies is interpreted as safety. I am sorry that this has been your experience, and I am sorry that it has also been mine. I’m sorry that male aggression is so normalized – for us, and also for men, because I do not believe that it reflects an authentic part of their sexuality either. Nor is it, from my interactions with non-cis masculine folks and butch women, an authentic part of masculinity itself. I am sorry that bi women’s identities are perceived as shapeshifting in response to the gender of our partners – when we have straight male partners, we are read as straight women, even though that is not what our internal experience and identity really is. I’m sorry that we often internalize that projection, incorporate it unknowingly into our own self-concept, and have to fight to remember who we are as separate from the people we are dating and fucking. I’m sorry that sometimes it is harder to fight for the types of relationships we want when we are with men, and that cis men aren’t given the tools to create expressive, collaborative, creative, and joyful sexual relationships with bi women, the way that queer people, by necessity, often must be creative since even now, our experiences are unrepresented and erased.

I don’t think it is impossible, however, for you to begin to heal the ways in which aggression and desire have become conflated for you with regard to cis male partners, and I think having a gentle partner now is actually a great place to start. You’re not the only person for whom cis male tenderness is confusing. Another respondent, Eve Ettinger, noted that it was her own conception of what it meant to be desired that factored into some of her confusion. “Desire for me was so defined by being needed,” she told me. “It’s hard to separate it now – and of course having needs of my own is antithetical, which made me most comfortable in stone/service top kinds of modes. Having tender male desire is hard to relate to unless I put myself in feminine terms in my head and cast myself as more male in the roles — meaning, needing comfort is easy to read as desire and to work with, but tender desire from a man often feels fake to me.”

I would encourage you to do some more reflecting on what desire and being desired means to you, specifically in the context of aggression, transgression of boundaries, and violence. There’s no wrong answer here, but if it feels heavy or frightening to consider this, be gentle with yourself – and perhaps seek the support of a professional if you find that you are working through lots of trauma. If you feel safe enough to do so, talk about how you experience sex differently with your current partner, how it was with previous male partners, and with non-men. It sounds like he has at least a modicum of working knowledge of how his identity as a cis man impacts the way in which he interacts with you. Ask him to tell you more about what he meant when he said he was trying to be “respectful.” Was it rooted in slutshaming ideas about what it means for women to “put out” on the first date? Or was he truly aware of how being more “forward” or taking more initiative might be experienced by you as pressure or aggression? Ask him where he learned that. Is he willing to talk about the difference with you without feeling attacked or guilty about his own identity? Is he the type of partner who is not only conscious of these dynamics, but also curious and willing to engage with them – not only for your sake, but also for his own? Is he willing to critique the scripts of masculinity as they apply to him, and be intentional about his own experience of gender (being a cis man, though often seen as the default, is still just one gender among many and therefore should be intentionally and thoughtfully engaged with!), and the ways that it plays out in your relationship? And if he is not, what would that mean to you?

It also bears mentioning that the interplay between aggression and desire are not, in and of themselves, bad things – though it sounds like in your life, you’ve experienced them mostly as violence and harm. Part of me wonders if, because of this, you judge yourself for sometimes feeling desired mostly in the context of aggression, and I want to let you know that that is not necessarily a “bad” thing, nor does it mean that you have been “broken” by your previous experiences. The energy of aggression, when consciously and intentionally engaged with, can be an extremely potent and erotic energy. It can be exciting. That’s what a lot of kinky experiences play with, after all – a conscious willingness to transgress what our normative sexual scripts tell us are taboo, within the deliberately and explicitly stated bounds of consent. Exploring that, if you choose to, could quite possibly be a healing and empowering experience. (It also doesn’t have to be, though – it just has to be what works for you.)

The question you end on is “Is this bad?” and that stands out to me as significant. I’ll tell you what I tell all my clients who come to me seeking help for sex and sexuality issues: I truly don’t believe that there is any one “right” way to be when it comes to our sexual and erotic lives. So many of us are put in the position of having to ask ourselves if we are “bad” or “broken” for being the way we are, and desiring the things we desire, but to me, whenever I hear a client use the word “bad” to describe some aspect of their sexuality or sexual experience, more than anything else it’s a prompt to explore with them some of the normative sexual scripts they are measuring themselves against. But you don’t need to measure up to any of the things you’ve been taught are the “right” ways to be as a sexual being. There is no way to do sexuality “right” by any objective, external standard. You only have to have the curiosity, and the gentle courage, to explore what feels right, and true, for you.

Here Is Your “Are You The One?” Bisexual Dating Show Drinking Game

As we head into yet another gripping episode of everybody’s favorite dating show “Are You The One?” tonight, it’s important that we prepare ourselves in one of two ways: drinking a lot of alcohol (if that’s what you’re into) or hydrating a lot (a good idea for everybody, but also probably more appealing than alcohol for people who don’t drink!) Are you ready to find your one true love? Will it be a small serving of liquor or a big swig of water? I hope mine is Jasmine.

One Drink

Bisexuality metaphor
Three people involved in any sort of simultaneous sexual activity, incl. sex or a three-way kiss
Mention of emotional baggage
Anyone says the word “fluid”
Cast member does an interview without a shirt on
Kai’s button-up shirt is buttoned up
Danny does math
Grinding close-up
Any mention of witchcraft or astrology
Anyone is slapped on the ass
Kissing in the interview room
Nour and Amber declare themselves a match
Someone toasts to themselves in the interview room
A conversation about someone’s tattoos
Anyone says the word “boom boom room”
Jenna or Kai refer to themselves in third person
Jonathan wears colored sunglasses
Jonathan mentions his insecurity or low self-esteem
Glitter shirt
Crying
Anyone mentions that this is the first time in Are You the One history that anybody could be matched with anybody else
Anyone refers to Kansas, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan or Missouri
Paige wears a sports bra as a shirt
Any contestants wear a snapback

Heading towards a drink!

Two Drinks

Spying on somebody else having sex
Date activity involves live animals
Anybody compares anybody else to a live animal
Anyone identifies themselves as a top or a bottom
Remy goes to the Boom Boom Room
Dione Slay shows up

Just slide off your chair onto the ground and plant your face into the carpet, then slowly raise your body in cobra pose and take a shot

Someone says “my heart is in my butthole”
A match is confirmed as a match in the Truth Booth

Give us your ideas for proper drinking occasions in the comments!

We Watched MTV’s “Sexually Fluid” Dating Show “Are You The One”? and Unfortunately We… Love It?

There’s a lot to be said about what’s happening on TV for bisexual representation in general, and the unique throughline bisexuality has had in reality TV in particular, from Tila Tequila’s Shot At Love to the Bachelor contestants who found love with each other to the current season of MTV’s dating show Are You The One?, which features exclusively bi+/sexually fluid contestants of varying genders. Or, in lieu of saying those things outright, we could consider the image of Kari, a 23-year-old bisexual, laid out on the ground after biting it trying to overcome a literal hurdle labeled “fear of being vulnerable,” and arrive at similar places.

In the wave of social media buzz surrounding this season’s casting, you could be forgiven for thinking that Are You The One? is an entirely new franchise. In fact, our ragtag band of bisexuals is only the latest season of a show with truly one of the most bananas premises of all time: matches between contestants are actually predetermined ahead of time in an opaque matchmaking process somehow tied to experts and science, and a cash prize of $1 million is available for all the cast to share only if they all end up with their predetermined matches by the end of the season. At the end of each episode, a sort of lightshow semaphore system (for real) is used to indicate how many correct pairs have been made so far, although not which pairs they are. Which makes sense, because if anyone is poised to be good at logic puzzles of interpersonal relations it’s a bunch of 22-year-old bisexuals with relationship baggage and intimacy issues. Cast members can find out if they’re matched correctly by choosing to enter a Resident-Evil-style laser cybertunnel and have a computer announce to them — and everyone else in the house! Who’s gathered outside, in front of a screen, watching! — if they’re a perfect match or not. A heartwarming story to tell your grandchildren gathered around in the MTV Experience Underground Bunker in 2055!

The show’s casting is maybe not quite as groundbreaking as it likes to imagine it is – as Drew observed when we watched it together, outside the two trans cast members — Kai, who identifies as a transmasculine nonbinary person, and Basit, who identifies as genderfluid — the 14 cis cast members could be drawn from virtually any other MTV casting, and the overall level of knowledge around trans issues seems… not high. At the same time, the bisexuality of the cast members is foregrounded and discussed in frank and refreshing ways, not sidelined or exoticized; cast members talk about their coming outs, their past experiences of attraction, and their internalized biphobia when discussing their relationships and attraction to each other. The wide range of visible tattoos and their varying degrees of advisability also spoke to the bisexual experience in moving and authentic ways.

There’s a take somewhere about the underpinning entertainment logic of having 16 very young bi+ people largely occupying the “model/actress/DJ” cultural space, not a group broadly associated by the general public with successful lasting relationships, featured in a show about trying to find The One as determined by relational science and an omnipresent couples therapist with an asymmetrical haircut. The cast doesn’t seem particularly interested in that take, though, and we should empower ourselves to go ahead and follow their lead and enjoy the show on its own terms, which are both very dumb and genuinely sweet and earnest. Certainly there’s Remy, the chaotic sexually voracious Gemini that our own Drew describes as having “Shakespeare villain energy;” an extremely doomed connection between heart-eyed Jenna and little lost boi Kai, and an alarmingly intense trajectory between Amber and Nour, who are already ready to start training a falcon if the show doesn’t match them together. But as eye-rolling as the predictable queer plot conflicts might be, none of them are outside the run of the mill for reality television — any given episode of the Bachelor is more offensive in its depiction of heterosexuality than the queer representation here.

Top L to R: Brandon, Aasha, Kari, Danny, Amber, Max, Paige, Basit, Jasmine, Jonathan, Kai
Bottom L to R: Remy, Kylie, Nour, Jenna, Justin
Credit: MTV

Maybe the most surprising thing about Are You The One?‘s eighth season is that it’s… really enjoyable to watch? Maybe too many seasons of Bachelor in Paradise and VPR have given me the false impression that watching reality television always leaves the viewer staring into the middle distance trying to recoup their sense of spiritual wellbeing for hours afterward, but I’m looking forward to watching the next episode! Stay tuned to find out whether Amber and Nour adopt a pet together, and the exciting potential future of Justin the tattooed vet and Max, who Stef lovingly describes as a “sex idiot.”

As a bonus, please enjoy knowing the zodiac signs of each cast member, thanks to painstaking research by Drew and Stef.

Amber: Sagittarius
Aasha: Leo
Jenna: Aries
Danny: Sagittarius
Justin: Sagittarius
Basit: Taurus
Jonathan: Pisces
Kai: Virgo
Kylie: Gemini
Kari: Sagittarius
Max: Leo
Nour: Aries
Paige: Leo
Remy: Taurus
Jasmine: Scorpio
Brandon: Pisces

Can You See Me Out Here?

Several years ago, I spent a dream of a summer drifting around Montana with two friends. We’d been working Yellowstone hospitality jobs, taking calls amidst the rotten-egg winds of sulfur springs for a hot $7.25 an hour. There was exploitation, harassment, and too many damn elk, and we fumed constantly that we should quit. One day, we did. Our plan from there on out was simple: explore the state, and not spend well, really, any money. We figured we would live out of a rusty old car for two months, camp for free on forest land, and spend our days laughing, hiking, and generally wandering around. Somehow, amazingly, it worked. We put in our two weeks, then said screw it and busted out of there the next day. Each morning the three of us would wake up in our too-small tent, discuss our dreams, and then roll outside into mountain dreamscapes. We hiked, floated in rivers, yelled at the top of our lungs from the highest mountaintops we could find. We rarely showered and routinely ate tortillas and peanut butter for dinner. I’d never been happier in my entire life.

After the fact, I realized that those months were glorious, free, and so very, very gay. In each town we found ourselves in, we went to the local second-hand store and bought the goofiest button-up shirts we could find. In an old bunker-turned-thrift-shop with the 10 Commandments painted on the walls, I bought my first pair of denim overalls. Fittingly, I wore them with religious, daily zeal. We threw out our razors, discussed the length of our armpit hair, and were given a hatchet by an old man with genuine worry in his eyes after watching us attempt to start a fire. Hairy, denim-clad, hatchet-wielding, we roamed the Montana landscape discussing feminism and our shared dream of living on a farm together growing vegetables and raising chickens. I had barely come out to myself as bisexual at that point, and figured we were just being free-spirits. Later, Ashley and I looked back on photos from the time. So gay!!, I messaged her. ABSOLUTELY FLAMING, she confirmed.

I’d ended up in Yellowstone that summer in a very well-executed attempt at running away. The year prior, a twisted-up black-hole of a relationship had left us both in states of chaos, and in social situations I somehow had lost my ability to speak without turning red and jittery. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I knew I needed out. In the bone-deep gloom of an Oregon January, Montana beckoned, sparkling from a convenient 900 miles away. See, I’d just come out to myself as someone with anxiety, too. I felt I needed an escape from everything. Why not this?

Kindly, my therapist told me recently that “it’s not running away if you’re running towards something.” That summer, I was running towards things I didn’t even have the language for yet: space to be my anxious, bisexual self away from all of society’s judgements, and connection with others on similar journeys. As I soaked up Montana’s bright sunshine, mountain air, and the never-ending laughter and love of my friends, I felt my mental health and self-worth soar.

Talking with other bi folks, I’ve found that we often go seeking an escape from society in the natural world. We particularly need this because as bisexual people, we exist in a society that places us in boxes that never quite fit. Personally, I’ve been assumed straight my whole life since only my relationships with men have been visible to others. “Isn’t it frustrating,” one bi woman told me, “that they always think you’re straight when you’re with a man, and gay when you’re with anyone else?” This constant pressure to exist within identities that do not fit takes its toll, contributing to the alarmingly high rates of mental health among bi+ identifying folks. We report higher levels of mental illness than both heterosexuals and gay/lesbian individuals, with 58.7% of bisexual woman being diagnosed with a lifetime mood disorder, 63% of bisexual non-binary folks being diagnosed with a lifetime mental health disorder, and 27% of our young people having attempted suicide. Part of these numbers stems from the constant tension that exists between our identities and society’s expectations. “People aren’t comfortable with either way,” one bi woman shared with me, “because they can’t understand it.” Even simply attempting to successfully communicate who we are becomes agonizingly difficult, when language surrounding bisexuality fails to account for the diversity within our attractions and desires. So for many bi people, the outdoors can be a much-needed physical space we can occupy where just for once, we don’t have to try so hard to explain ourselves to others.

“You get high enough on the mountain or you get deep enough in the woods and you’re away from people,” a bi woman outlined for me, “and there’s this sense of calm being away from these structures that we are constantly living in. There are no cut and dry boxes, there are no definitions, there’s nothing like the sort of structure that we live in our lives.” That is to say, natural spaces can be a much needed respite from the otherwise constant demands put on us by our monosexual culture. As another person explained to me, “to summarize it all: in nature i can…be myself best.” For bi folks who face constant pressure to not be ourselves, this can be a radical and healing possibility.

Being in nature fills a particularly bi need for connection, too. “When you’re outside, you just feel like part of something that’s bigger,” one woman explained. When I asked various bi people how they feel outside, again and again they used words like accepted, safe, hugged, at home. Others described feeling like they are a part of “momma nature”, or one small, vital part of a big world.

“One thing that I love,” someone else shared, “is that when you’re in a forest, the ground is only 30% dirt. Everything else is roots. They’re connected, and it builds this network… You don’t think about that when you’re walking on these roots that connect all these trees, where you can’t tell where one tree starts and one tree ends. You are literally in the middle of this system of connection.” When we venture outdoors, we are a part of this, too. Every bi person I spoke with recognized this feeling of connection as one of the main reasons they go outside.

Our community needs this sense of interconnectedness urgently as we continue to be uniquely socially isolated. In straight spaces, at best we do not fit quite right, and at worst we face rejection, microaggressions, and outright violence. Yet in LGBTQ spaces we often do not find acceptance, either. Attending an LGBTQ Outdoor Conference, I was overjoyed to be surrounded by nature-loving queers, yet simultaneously felt a deep shame and anxiety knowing I was dating a man. I kept to the edges, knowing those around me might judge me or assume I was an overeager ally. As one individual explained to me, “I would love to get to a point where I feel comfortable being involved in LGBTQ+ groups, but I’ve always felt excluded and not queer enough.” Ongoing feelings of isolation and non-belonging contribute greatly to our mental health rates. “A lot of mental illnesses can stem from feeling like you’re outside in some way and isolated,” one individual explained to me. Feeling alone and bottling up yourself in those ways, “that’s like, 5 simple steps to get mentally ill,” another recognized. Research has confirmed that what these folks explained to me is true: a study from American University found that bi folks report high levels of loneliness and ‘double’ exclusion from both straight and queer communities, and this is strongly linked to poor mental health outcomes. So when nowhere we turn within society seems to see us and accept us fully, the outdoors can be a container where we can finally stop having to explain ourselves, and just belong.

There’s great relief, then, when we as bisexual folks can go outdoors and be away from society for a minute. We can feel connected and like we are a part of the space around us, and don’t have to do the exhausting work of making those around us comfortable with our identities. When all I’m surrounded by is trees and dirt, nobody asks me how many women I’ve dated or whether I’ll have a threesome with them. If we literally see no other people, I don’t have to worry that someone will see me holding my boyfriends hand and assume I’m straight. I can breathe a deep, self-accepting sigh of relief in natural spaces, and feel that I actually have a place to belong on this strange, spinning planet.

Unfortunately other people go outside, too, and bring society with them. Having to engage with outdoor recreation culture can make me feel more isolated, anxious, and depressed than ever. I found this out the hard way this past summer, when I ventured out on a new adventure: hiking 1000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. I’d read Vanessa’s warning about toxic masculinity on the trail, and Carrot Quinn’s eloquent denunciations of long-distance hiking culture; I felt I knew what I was getting into. Still, on my blog posts before heading out I wrote, “I hike for healing, mentally, emotionally… because society asks a lot [from] us, and sometimes (recognizing this as a privilege) we get to say, no, not today. Today, I’m going hiking.” I was reseeking my safe outdoors space where society couldn’t ask me to be things I simply wasn’t. I sought the kind of freeing, magic experience I’d found in Montana.

The problem was, I couldn’t find it. No, from my first day on trail, I realized that being a respected thru-hiker meant not being my whole self. Each day I had to prove my right to be there to men with light packs and deep desert tans, as my ‘mere’ 1000 mile section hike shadowed compared to their whole Mexico-to-Canada treks. A competitive energy buzzed constantly, and my confidence started shaking again, too. Welcome back, imposter syndrome. I did not feel seen, valued, or empowered by other hikers who seemed to share few of my feminist values and instead lived by a competitive, masculine, dominate-the-wilderness mentality.

One day, I realized just how much this was hurting me. I was hiking with a man I felt safe with; we lay by a lake eating cookies and watching a mountain goat disappear in and out from behind grey granite rocks. We swapped life stories; he listened when I spoke and offered no unsolicited advice, a welcome relief. When telling me about his girlfriend back home, he casually called her his ‘partner.’ The word startled me, a quick gut punch. It had been weeks since I’d heard that word. It shook me how deeply I’d missed talking to someone with the same vocabulary as me, who spoke this same language. I realized just how isolated I felt being miles away from anyone who saw and valued the whole me. This isolation played a large part in the increase in my anxiety that I experienced on trail. I had difficulty sleeping most nights, and intrusive thoughts increased worryingly. Camping solo, I came closer to panic attacks then I’ve ever been. Add into this the lack of access to healthy food, enough water, sleep, or any for-sure privacy, and so when I crossed the border into Canada, I didn’t feel like I’d gone from “lost to found” like Cheryl Strayed. Don’t get me wrong, the beauty, movement, and physicality of the trek remained almost spiritually transcendent. But I felt I’d gone from lost to still lost, maybe, and a little lonely, too.

For people like me with mental health barriers, the outdoors itself and the white, patriarchal, colonial culture of outdoor recreation can be alienating and dangerous. Personally, my mental illness presented heightened symptoms on trail that made my journey harder and less empowering; I know for many others their symptoms prevent them from every stepping foot there in the first place. “It’s a horrible cycle,” one woman noted, “because you don’t want to go outside because you’re anxious, then that makes you more depressed and that makes you even less likely to go outside.” This is particularly apt for bisexual people, as we face higher rates of mental illness than those of any other sexuality.

Moreover, we have to recognize that bisexual folks face various other barriers to having positive outdoor experiences. To start, our community faces incredibly high levels of abuse; one report finds that upwards of 46% of bi women have been sexually assaulted. When talking about the outdoors, it’s necessary to understand that further isolating bi folks with abuse histories in natural settings may not always be rewarding. Outdoor spaces continue to be heavily male-dominated, and creepy, misogynistic comments and actions are not that rare, either; in fact, Outside Online found that 53% of respondents to a large-scale female recreator survey had been sexually harassed while outside. Facing this type of harassment in a space where you are alone and far from cell reception is challenging for anyone; to someone with a history of trauma, it likely would be the very opposite of healing.

Additionally, our community faces statistically high rates of poverty. A report from the Center for American Progress found that the poverty rate for bi people is at least 2 times higher than that of straight, gay, and lesbian counterparts. This affects our outdoor experiences. Getting time off, using money for gas and equipment, and living in areas with outdoor access are privileges only available for people with relative levels of wealth. Once outside, those with fewer economic resources often feel further ostracized as their gear, stories, and knowledge are not valued in outdoor circles. For bi folks seeking mental wellness outdoors, lessened access and inclusion due to money is a huge barrier.

On top of this, our outdoor experiences are influenced by our higher likelihood of disability. According to the Movement Advancement Project, 40% of bi men are disabled, compared to 26% of gay men and 22% of heterosexual men. One report published in the American Journal for Public Health concludes that “disparities in chronic health conditions, high risk behaviors, and poor physical and mental health… contribute to the heightened prevalence of disability” in LGB communities. This affects our ability participate in outdoor activities, too. One individual I spoke with experiences physical symptoms and chronic pain that can impede her mobility. She finds that getting outdoors is often the very thing that has “kept [her] fighting,” but also is simply not an option on some days. Recognizing that ableism runs rampant in outdoor circles, and most outdoor spaces are not maintained with disabled people in mind at all, this further inhibits our ability to get out there.

Bi folks also often have lower levels of social support that make it harder to set off on large adventures that require a strong safety net: who will mail our food boxes on thru-hikes, drop us off at the trailhead, or watch our dogs while we’re gone? Additionally, racism, sexism, and transphobia create very real risks for members of our community with those intersecting identities. With all of this in mind, it becomes clear that for many reasons, bi individuals are not getting out there as much as others, and may be having bad experiences when we do.

Thus, it feels greatly naïve to reiterate the tired idea that mentally ill people just need to get into nature to heal, especially when talking specifically about bi+ communities. If I’ve learned anything from being bi, it’s that answers are usually both/all, yes/and; we hate being asked to choose just one, to deny that multiple seemingly contradictory options can exist at the same time. So, yes, the outdoors is a risky place for bisexual people due to the specific disparities we face; often we never get there in the first place because of this. And, when we do find our safe natural places, we experience a uniquely soul-filling, mind-settling feeling of belonging, connection, and freedom from society’s parameters.

Maybe we make it to the greenspace down the block, or the county park, or a ragged, windblown mountaintop; with the barriers we face, we seem to value local, small pockets of nature more than most. We find these spaces, and allow the shame and isolation we’ve been given to drift down the river, float away in the wind, sink to the ocean floor. That one summer in Montana, I felt the radical possibilities of being bi and mentally ill and self-loving, all at once, in communion with the natural world. It wasn’t about conquering mountains, no, it wasn’t about dominating at all. It was that I could be there, unapologetically, fully seen, and fully me.🌲

edited by rachel.

Abby’s Bisexual Coming Out Episode Breaks New Ground

On last week’s episode of Abby’s, things got officially bisexual when, after months of promotion, Abby officially came out on screen in the sitcom’s third episode.

It’s “Free Alcohol Day,” which has the makings of an annual season event if I’ve ever seen one. In bars all across America, reps from alcohol companies come to show off their new products. In most bars this is just an employment perk for the staff, but Abby is always thinking of her chosen family, so at her establishment everyone gets to partake.

The Free Alcohol Lady, Dani, is a local celebrity and everyone fawns and slobbers all over her – even though this year she’s pawning off some kind of All Spice flavored liquor that tastes like licking the inside of Santa’s red jingle suit.

Beth, one of the patrons and Abby’s best friend, notices it first – there’s definitely something flirty going on between Dani and Abby. Sure, Beth reads flirtation into everything, but Abby gently caresses Dani’s elbow while they talk, and that’s some high quality mid-19th century gay activity right there. Victorian era hotness. You feel me.

Bill, another patron of the bar and the noted outlier of the group (the fact that Abby’s leans right into the way I feel about most straight middle aged white men on television – that they are unnecessarily taking up screen time with their celebrated mediocrity – has ironically somehow made Bill more endearing than most) asks Abby: “Wait a second, can we back up here for a second? Free Alcohol Lady is a lady. So, do you date women? ”

Without batting an eye, she explains “And men. I’m bisexual, Bill.”

True to form, Bill immediately sticks his foot in to his mouth, awkwardly blurting, “CONGRATULATIONS!” Though to be honest – I kind of want someone to follow me around and wish me a daily congrats on my life, you know? “Congratulations Carmen, you brushed your teeth supremely queerly this morning!” “Hey there rockstar, way to gayly fold those clothes and watch reruns of Grey’s Anatomy in your underwear.” Where is that person? Let me find them.

Anyway, the joke works because Bill stands out by making Abby’s bisexuality a big deal when it’s not. Abby is bisexual and she even says the word bisexual — still a rarity on TV — and no one cares. It’s quiet and that alone is revolutionary. A bisexual Latina who is a local business owner and a military vet with a deadpan sense of humor, now as normal on our screens as it already is in our lives. There’s no after school special. No tearful coming out. No trauma. There’s also no episode long joke or gag. No huge monologue or explainer for straight people. Just a quick sentence. Matter of fact. Then it’s over. When can we say that’s happened before on broadcast sitcoms?

The bigger controversy is that Abby, who is famously quiet about her personal life, failed to tell her friends that the reason she’s so casually flirty with Dani is because they’ve already dated! They dated for MONTHS! That’s the admission that sends the episode’s comedy of errors kicking in to high gear.

When everything is over, Beth pulls Abby aside. The bar in Abby’s backyard gave Beth a home when nothing else quite fit. She thought they were friends and the idea that Abby keeps secrets has left her in tailspin. Abby’s explanation is just as matter of fact as the first time she told us she’s bisexual, but as a queer woman of color I felt it deeply, even in it’s simplicity: “I grew up Cuban in a white neighborhood, and on top of that I’m bi. I learned not to fan the flames of that intersectional fire.”

A joke, and a gentle reminder to white (and straight) viewers that they don’t get to know everything about their queer people of color friends. They can’t. And sometimes, they don’t have a right to. That’s quite the delicate thread to untangle. Abby’s does it masterfully, and with a punchline.

Pour me another of those Santa’s Sweaty Christmas Suit shots. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Broad City’s Celebration of Romantic Friendship and Bisexual Culture Has Changed TV Forever

Broad City’s Ilana Wexler cuffs her jeans, can’t sit in a chair, wears crop-tops and flannels and boy’s underpants, maintains a full bush, plasters her door with political stickers, smokes copious amounts of weed, belong(ed) to the food co-op, wears a tuxedo to the wedding, falls hard for every executive-class woman in a power suit, yells at strangers about the patriarchy, is pretty sure everyone else is queer too, has the closest thing to a bisexual bob a curly-haired Ashkenazi Jew could ever hope for, has a gay brother and a gay roommate, is in love with her female best friend and yes, is most often in an (open) relationship with one specific man, but he is, I think we can all agree, a truly exceptional man. All of these things are, arguably, part of what one might call “bisexual culture,” a concept generally rendered invisible in popular media.

Broad City, which ends its five-season run tonight, reflected an emerging queer zeitgeist but also helped construct it, delivering a breathlessly fresh take on sexual fluidity. In addition to ending its run with two out queer leads and, sadly for me and all my fellow Jews out there, increasing the number of regular/recurring lesbian/bisexual Jewish characters to ever appear on U.S. television from a whopping 13 to a whopping 15 — it did something special with its portrayal of queerness too. This included both its acknowledgment of bisexuality as an identity that transcends romantic relationships and its centering of a goofy, self-indulgent, transformational, hilarious and undeniably epic romantic friendship unlike anything we’ve seen on television before.

Ilana sitting in chairs

Television has never really excelled at representing lesbian culture and/or queer culture. We get lesbian or bisexual characters, generally enmeshed in the linoleum lives of The Straights, but rarely will a lesbian know any other queer women besides her girlfriend and infrequently will anything about the character clock as gay besides their interest in chastely kissing a member of the same sex with her shirt on. Very few programs have centered queer women’s romantic and social lives and most that have consistently portrayed what we might call “queer culture” debuted within the past few years (The Bisexual, Vida, Transparent, Pose, High Maintenance, Take My Wife).

This is doubly true for bisexual characters, an identity represented exclusively as an expression of sexual/romantic desire. A character dates a man and then a woman. Or a woman and then a man. Or a man almost the whole time, except when their splendidly-boned raven-haired ex-girlfriend returns for three episodes, leaving us slack-jawed and swollen waiting for the next sapphic dish that is ultimately never served. That’s how you know. This can be true in real life too — where being gay or bi is just about who you like. But for a lot of lesbian and bisexual women, it’s a not just a sexual orientation. It’s an actual lifestyle.

And while certain signifiers and stereotypes have been applied to lesbians — some fair, some not so much — generally bisexuals are given a few negative stereotypes and zero signifiers, which leaves the impression that there’s no such thing as “bisexual culture,” or that it can’t exist within a person who isn’t subsumed in a lesbian friend group or in a relationship with a woman. Until Ilana Wexler, whose queerness goes beyond subtext even when her primary love interest, and most of her hookups, are men.

But — even that is not true. Ilana’s primary love interest, from the webseries through its entire Comedy Central run, has always been Abbi Abrams. Indeed, Ilana’s feelings for Abbi would be aptly described by any number of 17th-19th century women writers musing on their own Romantic Friendships, a term coined in the late 20th century to describe, retroactively, same-sex relationships prior to homosexuality existing as a social category. These friendships borrowed on the ideals of Platonism, which “viewed perfect friendship as superior to sexual love.” With some noted exceptions, it is usually impossible to definitively determine which were sexually consummated and which were not, but it’s also impossible to read their poetry and letters without concluding that whether or not they ever shed their petticoats and buttered each others biscuits, they were in love, and it was a kind of love two entirely straight women couldn’t ever really experience.

“Oh Mamie if you only knew how my heart beats when I think of you and it yearns and pants to gaze, if only for one second upon your lovely face,” writes Angelina Weld Grimké to her school friend Mamie Burrell.

“Excuse me, did you see a beautiful, sumptuous model-type come through? Long silky hair like a horse’s mane?” Ilana asks the clerk at the bodega.

“Then let our flames still light and shine, and no false fear control,” wrote Katherine Phillips to her friend Lucasia in “To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship,” “As innocent as our design, immortal as our soul.”

“Bye Abbi,” Ilana tells Abbi before she goes under for wisdom teeth removal. “I’ll see you when you wake up and if you don’t wake up i’ll still see ya ‘cause i’m gonna kill myself and meet you in heaven or whatever.”

Ilana’s uninspired by the possibility of serious relationships, in general, but accidentally calls Abbi her “boyfriend,” accidentally proposes to her, accidentally reveals her longtime assumption they’ll one day wed and have babies together, openly sexually fantasizes about her, and nary an episode goes by that Ilana doesn’t blatantly hit on her best friend. And it’s never weird. Or; it’s never weirder than they already are, which is… pretty weird.

It was also never queerbaiting, or subtext. Especially given their respective romantic histories, Ilana and Abbi would be risking everything to take their relationship to the next level, and as much as I naturally desire that for any two hot women on my teevee — two hot Jewish women, at that! — truly conceptualizing it makes my stomach hurt like taking Craigslist-procured MDMA. But their relationship’s intensity was enabled by Ilana’s queerness, and, as we saw in Season Five, perhaps Abbi’s queerness as well. Often we need the possibility of more not in order to reach it, but in order to stop just short of it, which is still far beyond where we would’ve landed had it not been there at all.

That being said, I was equal parts ecstatic and disappointed by some elements of how Abbi and Lesley’s relationship played out this year. It was a treat, but also felt anomalously restrained for a series consistently pushing the boundaries of acceptable sexual discourse. Where was Ilana’s horny insistence to learn every detail of Abbi’s sexual exploits, especially when her best friend tried something new, especially when the new thing was a thing Ilana herself had done but Abbi had not? After five seasons of Ilana expressing fundamental unconditional all-consuming desire for Abbi — including her dizzy outrage upon learning Abbi had hooked up with another girl in college because Ilana had wanted Abbi to hook up with her if she ever hooked up with a girl  — Ilana’s reaction to Abbi’s girlfriend betrayed a jealousy I’m not sure was even perceptible to a straight audience. There was an opportunity there — for what, I can’t quite suss out, but for something — left unexplored in a rush to the finish line.

Still: ultimately, Broad City closed out its five-year run with two queer women leads — women who passed the Bechdel Test with scores so high you might think their parents paid somebody else to take it. Guest spots and cameos have been paid by iconic lesbian and bisexual actresses and comedians including Wanda Sykes, Judy Gold, Cynthia Nixon, Sandra Bernhard, Alia Shawkat, Lea DeLaria, Mara Wilson, Patti Harrison and the aforementioned Clea Duvall. Set designers hit up queer boutique Otherwild to furnish Ilana’s authentically New York apartment. When Abbi is trapped in a hole in Central Park after a rollerblading accident, she props up a rainbow flag from Ilana’s bag in the dirt. It certainly has had its share of problems and failures, and speaks to a relatively narrow portion of the television-viewing population, but for me, a Jewish lesbian who spent her very queer early twenties in New York, there were also more triumphs than I could chronicle in anything less than an entire book.

Whereas previous “sexually empowered [upper-middle-class white] women in New York City” narratives like Sex and the City and Girls indulged gay male camp, they often felt unrealistically prudish about sexual fluidity and sometimes downright disgusted by lesbianism, resisting any form of sexual empowerment that didn’t, somehow, represent increased availability to men. Whereas the allegedly sexually adventurous Samantha Jones’ sole foray into girl/girl scenes resulted in a sexless yet emotionally violent partnership she described as all “talk talk talk,” Ilana found plenty of girls who were DTF, and one she was delighted to talk talk talk to forever, about literally anything at all. Until, of course, Abbi chose to do the only thing that could break this relationship up — leave the city that made them who they were, together.

It’s touching, then, that Broad City’s finale, airing tonight, sees Ilana and Abbi forced to part ways — not for a baby and because they all hate each other (Girls) or for their respective husbands and boyfriends (Sex and the City) — but for, maybe, adulthood. Sure, Abbi leaving New York is about that literally, about Ilana’s fear of daily life without her. But it’s also, in a way, a breakup, and their final goodbyes feel like nothing less than that. It’s not like their friendship is gonna end — they have wigged-out cell phones and laptops like the rest of us, and boy do they use them! But Abbi moving is the end of their romantic relationship, and it’s fucking heartbreaking to watch.

Broad City’s final scene is a bit of a call-back to the final scene of the Sex and the City movie, where Samantha/Carrie/Miranda/Charlotte dine inside an exclusive venue of some sort while outside, much younger but similarly decked-out women on the heterosexual prowl wait to be let in. But for Abbi and Ilana, as Ilana exits the subway on the phone with her friend who she remains (as expected) in permanent contact with and eclipses the camera, she is followed by a diverse cadre of pairs of friends, all of them on early legs of their own twentysomething New York adventures, heading down a trail blazed by two girls we will miss very much, but not nearly as much as they’re going to miss each other.

Sunday Funday Is Confirming Stephanie Tanner’s Bisexuality: Have Mercy!

Happy Sunday lemon drops and peach pops! I hope your week went well, I hope you were able to do all of the things you wanted to do, I hope you took out the trash once at least. Taking out the trash is the worst y’all; gender is fake, but taking out the trash is a MAN’S job. Trash stinks and is heavy, it’s gross and I hate doing it. You know what doesn’t stink and isn’t heavy and gross? This week’s news. Let’s get into it.

+ One more reason to binge the new season of Fuller House is that apparently, Stephanie Tanner is a confirmed bisexual. 

+ Move over Mandarin Duck: the blind, bisexual goose has a new plaque honoring his love. 

+ God(dess) bless Janelle Monáe.

She said what She said 😎 pic.twitter.com/8DpnuQXbAm

— Janelle Monáe👽🚆🤖🚀🪐 (@JanelleMonae) December 14, 2018

+ Kendra Kobler is with us in the valiant fight for lesbian meet-cutes in holiday themed romantic comedies.

In the holiday spirit, I’ve been dreaming up the ultimate lesbian meet-cute: ‘Twas a snowy night before Christmas when Christine and Ella are each headed to the airport to fly home to their families and they get into a fender bender. While they wait for help and survey the damage, they bicker, disgruntled with their ruined Christmas plans. When the tow-truck driver overhears, he mentions his wife runs a soup kitchen downtown and tomorrow they will be short on volunteers. The next day, they serve the hungry and see each other’s compassionate side. When they decide to spend the rest of their Christmas together, sparks fly, and not just from the adjacent fireplace.

+ Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan will star alongside each other in a new romance, Ammonite

+ Creators of Barbelle, Karen Knox and Gwen Cumyn, wanted to highlight unheard queer narratives and created, “a lesbian Spice World in Toronto.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Boz6YB4A0g-/

+ Here are two instagram accounts you want to follow if you aren’t: B*witched dyke lookbook, which is “cataloguing canonically dyke aesthetic outfits worn by 90s girlbands,” and excellent Coats on Irritated Women

+ This trans dad on how his wife and kids reacted to his transitioning is a perfect touching Christmas story! They’re all wearing matching PJs!!!!

+ Miss Spain Angela Ponce is the first trans contestant to compete in Miss Universe

+ Queer Science is an outreach effort by queer and trans scientists to get younger queer and trans teens into STEM

+ Yes, it seems like queer bars are closing every day, but in San Francisco a new one is opening! Jolene’s, a new queer bar opens in the Mission in the former Dear Mom space.

I hope this good news helps your gird your loins and power through this werk! You can do it! I can do it! We can ALL do it!! Let’s go do it!!!

VIDEO PREMIERE: Alex G’s New Music Video, ‘Pray It Away,’ Creates Her Own Salvation

For a very long time, the immediate reaction to someone suggesting that gayness or queerness can simply be prayed away was to explain that this is not possible, and actually a pretty harmful perspective on LGBTQ people.

But the latest music video from Alex Blue, known to at least 1 million people on YouTube as the effervescent singer and songwriter Alex G, poses a simple question in response to the idea that prayer changes sexuality: Why would I want to pray away something that makes me whole and awesome?

Alex came out as bisexual in 2017, on National Coming Out Day in October. As a social media star known for her authenticity, the decision to come out weighed heavily in the months before doing so.

Alex G. Courtesy photo.

It wasn’t so much the fan reaction that bogged her down, though it was a consideration. Rather, Alex found herself in a conversation with the God she knew growing up in a conservative, Evangelical home, one she was taught would be very angry at her for existing as she does.

“This song for me was the first time that I kind of put down on paper this struggle of trying to reconcile what I have known about myself since I was 13 with the religion that I grew up with,” Alex said in an interview with Autostraddle. “It’s a conversation with a God that I grew up to be scared of and it marks the beginning point of me starting to have a conversation with myself about my own salvation.”

The beginning of the music video for the song includes lines from the letters she wrote to her parents about coming out, and about falling in love with and wanting to marry her wife, Torri Blue.

Alex and Torri Blue on their wedding day. Courtesy photo.

Alex, 26, and Torri, 29, were married on Oct. 11 of this year, 365 days after she came out. Her parents were not at the wedding, and they’re not in contact. Alex hopes the words at the beginning of the video, along with the images of her from childhood videos and as she grew up, can be a message that being queer didn’t stop her from being her.

She’s just a better, more complete version.

“The video itself, it’s sort of a message to my parents but it’s also a message to just anyone who just doesn’t get that queer people are the same human beings they were before [they came out],” Alex said. “It’s the same me but can you see how much more free I am, and shouldn’t you be happy about that?”

It wasn’t an easy process getting to this point herself, Alex said. Growing up with a strict idea about what is and isn’t allowed in a human being made her budding sexuality seem wrong and confusing.

“Because I’m bisexual, I just thought I was extra overly sexual and that was even worse,” Alex said. “I didn’t have words for it so I just shut up about it.”

Now a musician who has released several EPs and hopes to create a full album next year, Alex is also moving away from being known as Alex G – a name an ex in the music industry made for her because he couldn’t pronounce her last name, which was Gronlund at the time – and shifting to her new identity as Alex Blue.

Her latest video reflects this evolution, as it begins with images from childhood home videos and moves into Alex’s foray into YouTube and social media celebrity, complete with long hair, makeup, and other femme accoutrements. That was part of her journey, Alex said, but she’s cut her hair short and is trying different styles to see what fits the best.

Toward the end, the audience gets to see actual footage from Alex and Torri’s wedding.

If a new album would be “an introduction to the new me,” Alex said, her latest video is an excellent primer, an intimate view of an extremely personal conversation about how to find peace with yourself.

“Honestly, it’s for younger me who really needed to know that you could be queer and loved by God at the same time,” Alex said. “It’s important to let people know they’re not alone in this process, and it doesn’t have to go against their belief system. It’s important that people can see you can come out the other side of that a whole, free individual.”