My 13 year old son is aware of my sexuality. He says he’s straight but he doesn’t mind how other people identify. To him, homophobia is just another type of bullying and he doesn’t like bullying.

But I still want to protect him from teasing because of me, so while I’m out at work and in my own spheres of life, I don’t self-identify as queer at my son’s school. Teenagers can be cruel if they identify a potential chink in the impression of normality.

But. But. It was the very invisibility of bisexuality — real, sometimes monogamous, nuanced, sometimes straight-partnered bisexuality — that made me so confused for so long (ok, not long compared to some — I came out the first time when I was 14 — but far longer than I’d've liked). There was straight, and there was queer, and never the twain did meet in my knowledge (except in mega-uber-nympho-slutbunnies/psycho killers of bad b-movie infamy), and so I had no idea where I fit. And I know I’m not the only person for whom that is true.

It is ONLY by coming out as bi — all of us, male partnered, female partnered, not partnered, polyamourous, monogamous, serialist, low sex-drive and nymphos alike — that we can do away with that invisibility, and make it easier for the next generation who know they’re not quite gay and not quite straight and need a name and thus an understanding and acceptance for who and what they are.

Just like when I feel out of place in feminist circles because of my life circumstances — taking care of the Boychick during the day, being financially dependent on The Man, not having a degree and a back-up plan — I refuse to allow that to shut me out, because I am feminist, and I am queer, and it is ultimately kyriarchy that creates the systems that would shut me out. I’m a cis white feminist, and a bisexual woman with mountains of straight privilege, so I need to not insist on being centered in those spaces, and to be sure to center others whose voices are more marginalized, whose lives are more at risk. But I will not give up my right to being in them altogether, because that too is a concession to kyriarchy, which would have us be divided and therefore weakened.

Which is not to try to tell you — or anyone else — what to do. I’m not in your shoes, your life, so I can’t know all the factors in your decision. But that’s how I’ve answered those niggling voices (“but you’re not really queer, here, let me chop off that limb for you”) for myself. For whatever that’s worth.

Although I’m not a parent a lot of what you’re saying struck a nerve with me and is exactly what’s going through my head at the moment. I’m in a similar space to Karen in that I never applied the word bisexual to myself until recently and only my partner and a close friend know. It seems a strange middling place to be in which I have so much hetero privilege I hardly feel I’m allowed to claim the title, but to ignore it feels like trying to ignore my left arm. I recently had an argument with the same close friend because she totally feels she can lay claim to the title despite also being in a relationship with a man (the argument was my fault, I was an arse). I can’t shake the feeling that while bisexual people are represented on the GLBTI spectrum, I can’t claim a place in it while I still exercise hetero privilege (whether I want it or not).

Anyway, this has been circling my mind for a long time so these thoughts might be a bit rambling. Thanks for writing the post at any rate. I’ll bookmark it.

He just read this comment and has informed me matter-of-factly that this wish is a result of our Culture of Dissatisfaction. :)

Anyway, I feel like my dreams where he is a woman are a direct result of that. I have this desire, which I feel is disrespectful to my husband. I would be sad if he wished I had, for example, larger breasts (I have very small breasts), and had dreams that I had larger breasts, so I feel guilty when I have fantasies (or dreams) about changing his body.