It was a typical crisp Seattle fall evening during the pandemic. Like most, I hadn’t been out in what felt like years. A friend of mine had offered to take me out to a bar on Capitol Hill–one of my first few “gay bar” experiences–and I had pounced on the invite. Not only was I tired of being cooped up at home, bored to death of doom-scrolling, but I was also aching for connection.
After arriving, we pushed our way through the throng of socially un-distanced bodies, eventually grabbing our drinks and settling outside on the heated patio.
I was elated. Not only had I been in need of human connection, but I had specifically needed queer human connection. And here I was, out at a new bar with a good friend whom I hadn’t seen for months due to the pandemic.
Some acquaintances of my friend showed up. Folks I’d never met before, but was eager to engage with after months of isolation. I inhaled the chill of the autumn air and wondered if things could possibly get any better.
Conversation quickly shifted from introductions to backgrounds, and everyone seemed to be getting along well. My friend stood up and went for more drinks as I carried on the conversation.
Things were going perfectly, I had to admit. I was out, engaging with my people, and I felt like I was a part of my own culture for one of the first times. My mind reeled with the possibilities of all the new queer friends I might make–the karaoke nights and drag shows and Pride events we’d all go to! It was going to be the start of me finally feeling like I belonged in my culture, not just as some bisexual outsider who just didn’t quite fit.
A few minutes later, my friend returned with more drinks, gently nudging his way through the tight outside seating area.
As he passed by one of his friends, they exchanged words.
That’s when I heard it.
“I see you brought your straight friend out.”
My blood boiled instantly. A microsecond later, I was up in his space, asking him to repeat what he had said to me to my face. When he wouldn’t, I called him a few choice names and let him know that he should probably find a different spot in the bar to hang out at.
I won’t say I handled the situation with grace, but I had come to commune with queer society after a year of watching grass grow and paint peel in prime time, not to have my entire sexual identity erased by some gatekeeping prick.
Problem is, stuff like this happens all the time to bisexual people. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to me, and it wouldn’t be the last.
The worst part?
It’s all been from my own people.
***
The scenario described above is called “bi-erasure,” and it involves invalidating or erasing the identity of those of us who identify as bisexual.
Erasure can come in more causal forms, such as someone joking about bringing the “straight” friend out, thereby invalidating and erasing their sexuality. Or it can come in more direct forms, such as Brenda Howard (a bisexual icon who’s early work after Stonewall metamorphosed into what we now know as the global Pride movement) being erased from the Wikipedia entry on LGBTQ Pride as the “Mother of Pride,” a term commonly attributed to her. Even the vaunted Lord Byron had his memoirs burned after his death by his publisher to conceal any trace of bisexuality.
And then there’s the non-monogamous married couple trolling the internet for bisexual “unicorns” (generally a bisexual woman, but also men) to fulfill their sexual fantasies. This type of erasure makes people out to be play things, dehumanizing them and fetishizing them only for their bisexuality.
I’ve also read some particularly disturbing things online about bisexuals in heterosexual relationships or marriages, much of it tied to the idea of passing for straight or not knowing they’re gay, and all of it coming from within LGBTQ+ culture.
Despite being a flawed and toxic concept, “straight-passing” or “straight-passing privilege” is often used to erase and minimize bisexuals and bisexual struggle. I have been personally told that I possess “straight-passing” privilege simply for being bisexual. This is also to say that the internet is replete with similar anecdotal stories, such as this Reddit poster who wrote, “I’ve been told that I’m not bi because I’m in a straight-passing relationship. I’m still bi regardless of who I’m with.”
These are not isolated incidents, either. According to another Reddit user, his mom refers to him as her “gay son” despite being bi and married to a woman, saying, “It’s like bi people only exist if they’re not dating or married and as soon as they are, the bi-ness vanishes.”
There are other ways that bisexual people can be erased, too. For example, I have often been told that I just don’t know that I’m gay yet (apparently that one’s fairly popular). This isn’t logically or functionally true, yet I’ve heard and read it multiple times from people in our community, leading me to draw some unfortunate conclusions about the pervasive nature of bi-erasure in queer culture.
In reply to a question about whether bi-erasure is real or not, posted in the “Ask Gay Bros Over 30” subreddit, another Redditor wrote, “As a bi guy, I’ve had so many gay people telling me that I’m just gay but in denial because they couldn’t understand that I still find women sexually attractive.”
Knowing all of this, it’s no wonder bisexuals have higher rates of anxiety, depression, mood disorders, heart disease, and cancer than both lesbians and gays.
And, considering that bisexuals make up the largest demographic in the LBGTQ+ conglomerate by far (62% to 38% gay/lesbian), I think it’s time that somebody called bullshit on the entire thing and brought us back to reality.
***
So why do we shoot our wounded in the queer community, anyway?
The answer to that seems to be a complicated and minimally-studied question. One of the oldest educated guesses comes from a Yale law professor named Kenji Yoshino, who published a paper called “The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure,” in 2000.
In simple terms, Yoshino’s argument for why we do what we do is basically that people feel threatened by what they don’t know.
He proposes is that there is an unspoken social contract by both queers and straights to support and uphold the sexual, gender, and monogamous norm at all costs. And unfortunately for us bisexuals, we don’t fit in with the monosexual binary and must be silenced or erased.
Juana María Rodríguez, professor of Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Performance Studies at UC Berkley came to a similar conclusion in 2016. She argues that bisexuality inherently challenges the binaries and norms by process of existing, and that this is a significant reason for the resistance towards it.
They’re not the only ones who think similarly, either. Multiple academics from different universities and fields such as psychology and gender studies agree that most of bi-erasure stems from bisexuality’s inherent disruption to the norm.
This theory is, of course, in line with a primordial part of human psychology–that we fear what we don’t know or understand, and that we dislike change. Both are situations that I am highly sympathetic to as a fellow human. Where the identification stops for me, however, is somewhere far short of requiring me to act out towards another in fear.
***
I think it’s prudent to be very direct in saying that I’m not really sure that we will ever stamp out bi-erasure completely. I happen to agree with both Yoshino and Rodríguez in that bisexuality is a sort of victim of its own paradigm-bending existence. Bisexuality meets resistance by nature of simply being different (because it is), and it will always be hard to present it as anything less.
To be clear, while I personally am not sure if we’ll ever get rid of bi-erasure in the queer community, that doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t try our best, despite that. And I’m no academic, but I think a good place to start is simply by believing bisexual people.
That means believing us whether we’re in a heterosexual or homosexual relationship. That means believing us when we say that we’re not gay, and we know it. That means believing that we are a part of the community (the largest), and that we belong here. That means believing that bisexuals have contributed to queer culture just as much as monosexuals. But it means more than that…
It also means increasing bisexual visibility in media, calling out those in the queer community when they say biophobic things, and using inclusive terms such as “LGBTQ+” or “queer” instead of “gay and lesbian.” And it means not repeating or playing into stereotypes that bisexuals are hypersexual, polyamorous, or indecisive in relationships and will cheat (to name a few).
It means all of that, and it’s going to take all of us to do it.
Bisexuals can’t do it by ourselves, and we need your help.
***
That night at the bar during the pandemic wasn’t the first time I’d ever been erased, and I’ve since run into it again, though luckily not often. As a direct result of that night, I swore off that bar and the rest of the Seattle queer bar scene. I was not impressed. Rather, I was hurt, deeply. And, quite frankly, I was angry at being woken up to the truth about the pervasive, systemic discrimination against queers by other queers.
It took three years for me to go back to that bar. And when I did, it was only because an older gay bestie of mine swore to me that it wasn’t like that and was determined to change my mind, which he did in the end. But that night had caused its damage.
And even now, four years later, despite having spent much more time immersing myself in the Seattle queer scene and queer culture in general, I still hear the voice in the back of my head when I go out:
Do I look queer enough?
Do I sound queer enough?
Will they call me straight again?
And the only way I’ll never hear that voice again is to live in a world where I won’t be erased for who I am.
