I realised I was bisexual at 15 years old, and have been proudly speaking about being bi since then. But as it’s Pride Month, and since I’ve been in a happy relationship with a man for almost two years, I’ve been reflecting on the uncomfortable feelings that not always presenting as bi bring, and on my evolving expression of bisexuality now that I feel settled in this relationship.
Why ‘bi’?
Talking about sexuality and gender means, inevitably, talking about labels. In both my research on and experience of Queer spaces, people have often disliked labels, preferring a more flowing and free approach to their sexual preferences and self-presentation. But I come from a place and a generation where searching for labels helped at least to understand what I was going through, as well as find information and like-minded people. So, whether people like it or not, I am going to use those labels, with the understanding that in the LGBTQIA+ community these aren’t monoliths.
When it comes to bisexuality, I like this information and definition provided by The Trevor Project, a non-profit suicide prevention organisation that provides 24/7 crisis support services, research, and advocacy for LGBTQ+ young people:
“Bisexuality is a sexual orientation, and bisexual (commonly abbreviated to “bi”) people are those who have the capacity to form attraction and/or relationships to more than one gender. Bisexual advocate Robyn Ochs’ popular definition of bisexuality is, “The potential to be attracted — romantically and/or sexually — to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.”
Here, The Trevor Project discusses a key Queer debate: while some may think bisexuality reinforces the gender binary because it uses the prefix “bi-,” which comes the Greek prefix for “two” (a hangover from times when gender binaries were the norm), the current definition of bisexuality is not specifically binary, because culturally and historically it has always referred to more than one gender. With this, The Trevor Project makes an important point about language and meaning evolving with culture and history. Ochs’ definition also draws a line in the sand: you are bi even if you are potentially attracted to more than one gender, and even if you are not attracted to more genders in the same, equal, 50/50 way.
This is partly the reason why, although a lot of people prefer to use the word pansexual (aka attraction to any gender or to people regardless of their gender), I have still stuck with bi. The other, even more important reason is that while more and more people identify as bi (including 75% of young LGBTQIA+ people), bisexuals still face discrimination from both within the Queer community, and harassment from outside.
According to Diva Magazine, “while public attitudes to lesbian and gay people have markedly improved over the last 50 years, attitudes to bi+ people are much less positive.” Biphobia within the Queer community results in many Lesbians not dating bi women due to stereotypes around indecision, lack of trust and bisexuality being a ‘phase’, reducing the sapphic dating pool (and bi people’s sense of belonging in LGBTQIA+ spaces). As a result, 88 per cent of bi people are in opposite-sex partnerships, also because there are more single straight men who are dating than women or nonbinary people who date women. As a result, a survey by dating app Her (where I found my first girlfriend) found that 48.3 per cent of bisexuals are assumed to be straight or gay based on their partner. And let’s not forget bi men, who are often discriminated against or erased due to toxic stereotypes about masculinity and homophobia.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales has also found that 1 in 10 bi women have experienced domestic abuse, for reasons including stigma and biphobia. I was one of them, and even though my bisexuality was not the main reason for the violence I faced, it was always used against me during fights motivated by jealousy, as mistaken beliefs that bi people are hypersexual have been often linked to instances of intimate partner violence.
Because of all the above, it’s important to me to be proud of my bi identity and sexual preferences. This feeling has been reinforced even more this year, when I have sometimes felt ill at ease when hanging out in or performing at Queer spaces due to discourse around bi women who are dating men. The horrifying comments on Katie Baskerville’s Gay Times piece about biphobia against bi women in heterosexual relationships, as well as other instances of Instagram drama, have made me double down on my bisexuality.
A disclaimer is in order: biphobia is real, it hurts, and it erases the difficult experiences – as well as the joy – that have characterised my identity and sexuality. However, we live at a time where especially trans women and non-binary people experience horrific hatred from coordinated, billionaire funded groups translating into real-life violence. This is happening in the UK, as well as in my native Italy. Similarly, LGBTQIA+ worldwide are still not safe, even if somewhere attitudes towards them may be improving. In this context, potentially passing as straight can be a privilege and an added safety that many people can’t get. So while the stats above may seem a bit ‘woe is me,’ they are just my reason why it’s important for me to be proud about being bi, and not the main topic of this post, which is about navigating my experience of bisexuality throughout the years
What being bi means to me and how I got there
For me, being bisexual manifests in feeling way more attracted to women than to men, even though most of my relationships have been with men. I wouldn’t say my sexual partners have been 50/50, but to be honest I’ve also stopped counting because once you go to play parties, you sort of lose track… and body counts are giving manosphere anyway.
What matters to me is that I seek affection from and am sexually attracted to men and women as opposed to just one gender (and this to me includes people outside the gender binary, or trans folks – even though I haven’t dated them).
This extends to my identity and self-presentation, because while I would say I generally present as femme, and I am more attracted to femmes, I also like playing with more masc self-presentation, and have in the past (especially in my teens) only worn boy clothes, much to my mother’s horror at my oversize metal band t-shirts. I’ve kept that approach through my dancing, not so much through the clothes I wear, but through the sharpness of my dance style (see below some latest performance shots).
I love watching slow, flowy dancers, but that is just not the style I like to perform. And since pole dance was a huge vehicle for my sexual expression from the days I was recovering from my abusive relationship and didn’t really date, it has remained a place for me to express myself sexually in multiple ways.
Playing with these elements of self-presentation is incredibly important to me, because there are many aspects of gender norms or markers connected with womanhood – softness, periods, motherhood, being ‘put together’ – that I have always resented and fought, because they felt limiting in my work and personal life.
My experience with bisexuality
I’ve known I was bi since the age of 15, when I fancied a girl for the first time during a study holiday in the UK. At the time, it didn’t feel like this big awakening: it just seemed like I fancied her in the same way I fancied boys, and that was that. My parents worked for an airline, where Queerness was fairly represented (although usually in terms of gay men), so it didn’t come as a shock to me that women could also like women, even if I wasn’t exposed to any Queer woman (that I knew of) at the time.
What did come as a shock at the time was that my parents were shocked when they found out.
It wasn’t a big coming out moment. I had not felt I had to come out to them because I’d assumed they’d be fine with it, but they found out either way because I was spending quite some money in extra-regional phone calls (showing my age here). At the time, they were shocked because I hadn’t been with a boy before, so… how could I know? My dad was, instead, distraught, because he was afraid I’d be bullied, or that I’d miss out on opportunities because of discrimination.
My mum has since apologised for all the above, and I now understand that their reaction comes from growing up in the patriarchal, heteronormative society that is Italy. It’s interesting, however, that none of these thoughts had crossed my mind before they raised them, because I grew up in a progressive household and I just assumed that would extend to normalising my sexual orientation. I had the privilege of not having lived in fear, so I assumed these things would just not affect me.
It turns out these reactions lived in my head rent-free but hidden for most of my teens and early twenties. And even if I was always out and proud as a bi girl, with my friends or at university, sometimes making out with girls, it never really went further than that until I had a proper conversation with my dad about the effects of their reaction to discovering my identity in my early twenties.
Now, as an adult, I realise that being a late bloomer on the bi side is quite common, firstly because of the aforementioned heteronormative expectations everyone around me placed on me in my developing years, but also because being socialised as heterosexual and growing up somewhere where Queer spaces were non-existent made reading cues quite hard. Only now do I understand that a big friendship break-up I had in my teens was probably due to sexual tensions on both sides (and certainly on mine).
The imposter syndrome of not knowing “how to do it” – be that flirting or straight up sex – added to all these factors.
And don’t get me wrong, I grew up on the internet and with shows such as Buffy and Xena, rife with Queer subtext. But the internet – while absolutely necessary for Queer kids, did you hear that, Keir Starmer and Anthony Albanese? – can’t compare to offline interaction in third spaces, which are dropping like flies (if they ever existed, for LGBTQIA+ kids).
Now, as an adult living in London, I’ve had a few relationships and many experiences with women and live at a time when Queer nightlife is… not necessarily booming due to the threat Queer spaces are constantly under, but at the very least available to me. In Hackney, where I live, there are two bars for women loving women that opened due to popular demand. There are sapphic sex parties, or sapphic pop-up nights and shows. I can see, as well as experience, Queerness in a way it wasn’t possible for me growing up.
Still, now that I have been with a man for almost two years, my relationship with these spaces is evolving, sometimes well and sometimes in challenging ways.
Being bi in a monogamous relationship
Before my current partner, I had a very tumultuous relationship history. Aside from a very wholesome first love, I always ended up in unstable scenarios with emotionally unavailable people. The need to be cared for and loved, and the loneliness arising from this need and from having moved abroad alone at a young age, catapulted me into an abusive relationship in my early 20s. It kinda went like the lovebombing meme: of course I thought he’d be obsessed with me until… it all went wrong.
The abusive relationship made me emotionally unavailable, always ending up in relationships I knew wouldn’t work just because I felt I needed a way out. This included a middle-aged married man who found me on the internet, pursued me a lot, but who (surprise surprise) didn’t actually want to stick with me when things got real. The above experiences made polyamory or non-monogamy something I can’t see myself really considering (not because he was poly – his non-monogamy was very much unethical, but I became tired of never coming first in his roster of partners).
Still, this tumultuous history meant that my chances of being in a Queer relationship were always 50/50. I was always “looking”. It was always a possibility, so it felt “realer” to be bi in Queer spaces, it felt normal to attend sapphic parties and events without feeling like an imposter.
Now, I’m in a relationship that feels real and something to stick to. We had been best friends for over a decade before it, and the partnership and companionship I feel with my partner has no match. We have watched each other grow up, and he somehow has been better at understanding my bisexuality than anyone: he understands my self-presentation, my two sides, and doesn’t want me to perform femininity (like many men have done, particularly since I became a pole dancer) or a more masc side (which I’ve often been pigeonholed in in some Queer relationships or interactions… maybe it’s the arms). So I feel comfortable here, in ways where I get to be myself and I don’t need to “look” for others anymore. Love, very much like in Heated Rivalry, trumps sexual orientation.
But this has meant that the possibility of a Queer relationship, or even a one-night stand, is out of the picture, and that sometimes I can feel like an imposter in Queer spaces. This is, I’m sure, partly due to the social anxiety I feel in many party places as I continue moving through this transition period of living a calmer, more comfortable and sometimes even more “boring” life, where I fight for the job and relationship stability I’ve never had while still being tied to the people and spaces that made me.
Because of this, Bi erasure has sometimes felt realer, and I’ve been more sensitive about it particularly on the back of articles I mentioned before, or in discussions I’ve seen online about who should and shouldn’t be platformed on Queer stages or events. These discussions have not been about me per se (I think/hope), but they have made me question whether I should be there in the first place even when they were about others.
To be clear, erasure is not as harmful as the violence that many LGBTQIA+ face, particularly across intersections of race, class, disability or work – and especially Queer sex workers face stigma and discrimination I will never experience.
Still, I think I’m allowed to say it hurts when you consider the experiences I have shared above.
Of course, being bi doesn’t mean you have to have ever slept with a woman, or currently have to be sleeping with one. In fact, this is the element of labelling I find unhelpful: of course, who you like or love, or how you present is a huge part of your identity; but if we were to be defined by the people we’ve slept with (or haven’t slept with) alone, life would feel very reductive.
Nonetheless, when the in-group/out-group experiences mean bonding over hardship, stigma and discrimination, it’s easy to see why groups that have been subjected to so much harm would look suspiciously to those who pass. But I’ve always been about finding shared causes and experiences, and ideally joy, when possible, because trying to separate our own communities when they’re already under the far-right, evangelical threat seems like directing our anger to the wrong place.
Coming to terms with the evolution of my bisexuality
Luckily, I have been blessed with a mainly Queer – and often Lesbian – circle of friends who have lifted me up at times when I felt I shouldn’t hang out in those spaces. They provide wholesome, real and diverse examples of Queerness and femme relationships, showing me it can be done even if it didn’t happen to me.
Never have my Queer and Lesbian friends made me feel lesser than, and it’s thanks to them that I now feel comfortable to discuss how my bisexuality has evolved now that I’m settled in my relationship.
- Being bi to me now is about self-expression, consuming Queer media, hanging out and performing in Queer spaces.
- A lot of this comes out in my performances and dance style: I’ve never performed softness, and even though I like to watch it, that’s just not me. Not evening out the edges helps me express my identity better.
- My partner always jokingly “times” how long it takes me to tell people I’m bi in a conversation – I did it the first time I met his mum or some of his friends, sometimes less than an hour in. And yes, it’s exhausting to always have to “come out,” but given that so many Queer people have to hide and that I have the privilege of (sometimes) passing, it’s important to me to fly the flag.
I think I’ve never been less apologetic about being bi as I have been now, and this is undoubtedly thanks to growing up, going to therapy, being outspoken, and to the love and care of my friends and my partner. Maybe because I’ve been so unapologetic, women still hit on me (#humblebrag), and this feels like a nice change and achievement from when I used to be ignored even in Queer spaces years ago.
My bisexuality and bi identity will no doubt evolve as I age and reach different milestones. I hope I will continue to feel seen by my peers, but I will never stop shouting about it – especially as I come from a very homophobic and heteronormative country, and currently live in a place, the UK, where LGBTQIA+ rights and safety are backsliding.
Happy Pride, friends and Bicons ?????
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