That was just a phase. I've only ever been with my boyfriend and one woman, so it was a big deal when I wrote down that I was bisexual on that form. At least for me; it was the first time I had identified myself in that way. A year or so later, when I got pregnant, we went back in to the doctor to confirm and after we had heard our baby's heartbeat for the first time, seen that it was a real being, that our lives were about to change, the nurse comes in to do my examination my boyfriend had left at this point and tells me in a sly voice, 'I guess we can cross the bisexual off your chart, can't we? That was just a phase. I grew up in a Christian, conservative family. My parents never said that homosexuality was wrong, but they never really said it was OK either. I think they didn't want to address it. But my church made it clear to me as a young person that it was only OK to be straight. Since I was attracted to boys, I just assumed I was straight and ignored the attraction I felt for girls. I never gave myself the chance to think about it because I was safe where I was. Shortly before I married my husband, I finally left Christianity behind, for many reasons. This started a period of self-exploration for me. I was finally able to think about who I really am and what I really believe without some old white guy telling me the 'right' answers and condemning me for any deviance. It's been wonderful and freeing. Part of this was learning that I'm not straight. I realized that I was falling in love with one of my female friends who is also bisexual. I also started to realize that strict monogamy may not be the best idea for me. I would very much like to be able to love more than one person, but my husband is and wants us to remain strictly monogamous. He never even seems to notice anyone else! I think my parents would accept my bisexuality, especially since I'm married to a man and therefore not actually dating women, but they're still busy processing the fact that I'm not Christian. In a way, marrying a man makes it easy to 'hide. It can be freeing not to have to worry about people's negative reactions to even just seeing you with your partner. But on the other side of the coin, it makes me sad that I even need to hide or worry about these things. It's like coming out all over again and I've experienced resistance against it. It feels like you are mistrusted, that people think you have actively chosen to take the route of most privilege without considering the ways in which you are now held at the margins by the community you most identify with. I am new to this relationship and still trying to navigate how to move through both worlds. Even with friends, I've faced microaggressions in the form of jokes: 'How does straightness feel? Just before I met my current dude 4. I know nothing is that simple, but it's kind of Frostian: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood — except the woods are full of various genitals. One of the reasons I waited so long was that as a fly-on-the-wall 'straight' woman, I heard so much bullshit against bi people from other queer folks that I felt completely unwelcome in the queer community. I love activism and I love running my mouth but even now, being out, I don't feel like there's a place for me at queer events. It doesn't mean much to me. It's just the way it is. Unfortunately, language boxes us in. On paper, I'm straight I'm in a long-term relationship with a man but I'm attracted to both men and women. I tried explaining this, but I was called 'selfish,' 'confused' and 'doing it for attention. I explained the Kinsey scale, to no avail. I asked him if he liked tits, he said yes, and then I said, 'Well, so do I! Now we understand one another. He's 15 and his older brother is 18 and hasn't been told and I'd been wondering for a long time about how to address it with them, if I needed to address it, or if I should just let it be. My husband and I have been together since college — 29 years this past February — but I didn't realize I was bi until after we were married 25 years this October. I told my husband as soon as I made that realization. It's one of those things that when you put the pieces together and suddenly you're like, Ohhhhhhhhh! You know that you've hit on the truth. And, for most of our relationship, all it's really meant is making some past relationships with women make a whole lot more sense. In the past year, my younger son has started asking some really insightful questions about gender issues and sexual orientation like, 'Why is sexual orientation defined only by what body part goes where? A couple of weeks ago, during one of our conversations, I knew I had an opportunity to share this facet of myself with him. So I asked him, 'What do you think I am? His only real questions were if his dad knew yes and if his brother knew no. For him, it was just another thing to know about his mom, to file with things like my being a writer, growing up in Connecticut, etc. But for me, it was an amazing experience of feeling like he was finally seeing a more complete picture of who I am. Plus, honestly, it felt good to say it out loud. Even living in San Francisco, the assumption people make about me is that I'm straight. Often, when folks discover our sexual preferences it's met with positivity and support. But every now and then someone will look at our relationship and assert that they are the ones who get to categorize us. Lesbians often do not think that I am gay enough or that I am pretending, or see my current relationship as me hiding my true self to blend in. My partner too gets similar remarks. I think, based on our conversations together, that he gets remarks like these more often than I do. Our sexuality as a couple, too, has been made into a fetish by straight folks thinking that our relationship is a gateway to their forays with threesomes. When we moved into our new house, which is in a pretty normal sleepy community, it was almost Fourth of July and everyone had American Flags so we got a rainbow American Flag and put it out. I kind of held my breath waiting for neighbors to react, but they were like, 'Yay! It was the first time I felt like I was masquerading as straight. I think i've only ever been acknowledged and respected for who and what I am via writing — in the territory of textuality — where apparently other writers and artists will let my sexuality be what it is. In the world, not so much. What's surprising to me is the amount of people who follow up with questions about my experiences with girls, but not guys. For example, it's not usually appropriate at least in our circle of friends to ask how many guys a girl has been with or how many girls a guy has been with, but the moment I shared that I had been with girls, there was no hesitation in asking how many or how often or how far we had 'gone. Currently because they think it's funny , two of my guy's friends have a wager on how long before I 'hook up' with a single straight girl in our circle. It doesn't seem to matter to them that I'm in a relationship with their friend and if there was a single straight guy in the group, that suggestion would be offensive to everyone involved. I'm definitely still figuring out where I land bi vs. That said, being in a very typical-looking straight relationship means people assume I'm straight so there hasn't been much 'coming out,' and it has been a struggle for me to identify and be active in any community because of my relationship status. I've talked a lot in interviews that are available online about being bisexual, and anybody who picks up the book can read some lesbian sex scenes I wrote. So I feel as though people often know I identify as bisexual, but whether or not they take my identity seriously, well. Not always sure about that. It's also complicated because I felt compelled to hide the side of myself that is attracted to women until my early twenties. I grew up in the South and, for example, after fooling around with a friend from school, I got teased and called a lesbian. I think this is part of the reason I want to so fiercely claim my bisexuality now. Making up for lost time, I suppose. I have barely any straight friends. My longest, most serious relationship was with a trans man. But deep down I feel like bisexual people are especially mistrusted in my community, particularly when we're in functionally heterosexual relationships. I felt like I couldn't bring my previous boyfriend around my friends because he was so painfully straight and not well versed in culturally queer things. And I admittedly feel insecure about dating men and not being 'queer enough' to hang. They talk to me as if I'm straight... When I mention women I dated in the past people sometimes say, 'Oh, were you a college lesbian? Which is, y'know, hurtful. This whole piece of my identity, and relationships that mattered to me, are being treated liked ghosts. More like something that never existed. But once I found a man attractive, and acted on that attraction, I felt as if I had betrayed these other women and trans guys who had become my friends. This included not only people my own age, but mentors in my field, as well. When I began dating a man who is now my husband and told my gay female friends, the response was, as you might imagine — but I hadn't imagined — not positive. One friend said, 'You aren't allowed to switch teams. Others stopped taking my calls or inviting me to parties. Some of these women are still my friends, but we are nowhere near as close as we once were. And then a trans man. And then my friends stopped talking to me and I was called breeder and I was excommunicated from the gay and lesbian community. I have been in relationships with many biological men and biological women, many trans men and women, and a few gender neutral lovers have come into my life as well. I feel like I can't go to queer dance parties and I can't talk about my love life with my closest friends, who are gay or lesbian. My queerness is less valid than other people's when I love a man. I can see why you thought that, but I'm bisexual. He was telling me about a conversation he'd had with a mutual acquaintance of ours. I had come up in this conversation, and my colleague, a gay man, had told our acquaintance that I was straight. After a shocked moment of silence, I interjected, 'Actually, I'm not straight. I can see why you thought that, but I'm bisexual. I don't feel disconnected from my bisexuality. It is very much a part of who I am. But there isn't a friend or family member in my life, outside my husband, who would identify me as bi. At least I don't believe so. I've basically skipped from one monogamous relationship with a man to another for about six years, and had very little time in between to figure out what to call myself or how to identify. Sometimes when I am particularly anxious, I find myself questioning whether I'm actually attracted to women, or if I'm just buying into the patriarchal, heterosexualized image of Woman, if that makes sense. It's hard to navigate the divide between being attracted to someone and admiring someone, I guess. We've been together for seven years and so far I've been able to restrain myself from cheating, but I guess there's always next year. I've gotten into the habit of referring to my husband as my partner, both because I don't think our marital status is the most important part of our relationship and because my partner's gender matters less to me than that he's my love and support and friend and partner in all things. My social circle is fairly progressive but I've seen snide comments on Facebook about bisexuals being greedy or indecisive, and I've struggled with slapping them down without outing myself. At the same time, I struggle with why it matters whether I out myself or not, and how much I can and should contribute to bi visibility when I'm in a monogamous partnership. Offline, it is even more difficult. I'm a licensed therapist, and in grad school we were encouraged to identify our own biases and learn about diverse populations. Enough of my classmates were conservative that I didn't feel comfortable being out to the whole cohort, but it was important to contribute my personal experiences to a room full of privileged straight people who mostly tried to be accepting but couldn't understand why they couldn't 'love the sinner, hate the sin. When I graduated and began working with children, I understood her reluctance to come out. I trust my co-workers but I need the trust of my clients and their parents. Unfortunately that means being seen as straight. He was not 'straight-acting' and at the time I 'looked like a dyke' and was very politically active in the campus gay community. If anyone was the butch in the relationship it was me. People were like, 'So you're straight now? I recently got introduced as a party as someone who is 'intellectually queer' and I was hella pissed. To quote Harvey Milk, 'Fuck that, motherfucker, I'm GAY. I have compassion for people who are confused; I know it is complicated. But I can't help but be pissed off when I'm not given the chance to be seen as my whole self, complications and all. We had several breakups before we were married during which I had relationships almost exclusively with women. Altogether, I was with my husband for almost 14 years, and we were married for almost six. Right now we're going through a divorce because the relationship had become problematic for several reasons. I began to discuss this with people, and found that many of them didn't believe that bisexuality exists, not really — several close friends of mine were like, 'Oh yeah, you are a dyke, just come out,' and others were like, 'Maybe you're not really gay,' and others were just skeptical that I can truly be attracted to both men and women, and enjoy sex with both genders.
