Happy Celebrate Bisexuality Day!

Many thanks to Lucy for pointing it out to me. It’s like an unexpected late birthday present!

Apparently, September 23 has been the date for Celebrate Bisexuality Day since 1999. I have to admit I blubbed a little when I heard about it: while I do think events like Pride Day ought to include me and mine, we bi/pan/omni/ambisexuals (and even more so, our trans sisters of every sexuality) are too often excluded, ignored, invisible, even at GL(btq)(rarely i) events. So having a day that explicitly and overtly is for me… well, that’s pretty fabulous.

Since I’m not really up for creating new content at the moment (and the end of Children of the Earth sort of crushed my will to do a nice ranty post on sexuality and slutbunnyism on Torchwood, which is the topic that’s been bouncing around in my cranium for months), here’s a recent comment exchange on an old post of mine on bisexuality, Passing for straight.

Shinynewcoin raised her concerns about coming out as bi while in a monogamous relationship with a man. She says “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 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).”

My reply to her:

I’m altogether too familiar with that feeling (the “can’t still claim a place while exercising/possessing hetero privilege” feeling), and I can’t entirely dismiss it, because there is something there. There ARE those who, it seems, claim the title for titillation then run back into a privileged world because it’s easier. (When I’m not frustrated as hell with them, I can almost feel compassion, because the kyriarchy has created a system in which to be queer really is that scary and sometimes that dangerous, and it is so much easier to pass for straight.) And no amount of waving my queer flag is going to eliminate my very real, very copious hetero privilege.

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.

And that’s what this day is about: visibility. Recognition. Saying we exist. Sure, it’s just a day, that few know about. But nevertheless it feels so damn good to have a space at the table, even just 1/365 of the time.