I’m caught in a strange place. I’m stuck somewhere between angry/sad and it doesn’t feel good. It’s Pride Month and I’m full of conflicted feelings. Is there a word for the opposite of ‘coming out’? Because I want to go back ‘in’.

I have struggled with my sexuality for a long time even though I’ve always known I was bisexual. My first consensual sexual experiences were with girls and there was more “experimentation” in my late teens. As an adult I have had romantic and sexual connections with women. Bisexuality has always been there, but for a very long time I wasn’t ready to talk about it or ‘own’ it. All of my experiences happened on the sly which led to all kinds of shame and confusion that I’m still working through. I used to identify as “straight” with the caveat that I was only into some women, and only sometimes. By that logic, I wasn’t really bi enough to justify calling myself bi. I felt like an impostor. Was I appropriating a label that I hadn’t earned? Was I too straight? Could anyone tell?  I quickly just learned not to talk about it. 

Coming out

Last year, I started dating a woman. At first my bi-ness felt completely validated for the first time in my life. It felt amazing, but as time went on I began to struggle more with my bi-identity. Ultimately I had to take responsibility for ending the relationship: I simply wasn’t as secure in my sexuality as I thought I was. When she and I were dating and Pride began, I wrote this post. Reading it now makes me so sad. I was so full of confidence and happiness and so ready to accept myself and feel accepted. She was so much of that strength and excitement for me, something I will always be grateful for. 

As June got closer I was reminded over and over how I don’t identify with anything about ‘bisexual culture’. I also don’t feel like “queer” fits me on the inside or the outside. That, plus general bi-erasure and the cult of “queerer than thou”, has left me rather disenfranchised. It doesn’t feel like I’ll ever find my place under that big rainbow umbrella.

Prejudice can be an inside job

Exclusion and gate-keeping in any community is exhausting, but division among the marginalised seems ludicrous to me when everyone has common goals and a common oppressor. Rejecting and excluding people on your own “team” is very counter-intuitive and I just plain don’t understand it. Obviously, not everyone believes everything and every group has it’s radicals but the policing of queer folks, by queer folks, really astonishes me.

• Word on the street is that kinksters are no longer ‘allowed’ at Pride events and are being ostracised within the LGBTQIA+ community because won’t anyone think of the children but also let’s conveniently forget history. 
• Asexuals apparently can’t identify straight? (Except yes they can, I’m married to one.) 
• Rumour has it that bisexuals are less valid than pansexuals.  Something about pansexuals being more inclusive, as if it’s a choice.
• Bi-erasure in the LGBTQIA+ community is bisexuals not having a place in queer conversations, spaces or dialogue, despite being the 3rd letter in the initialism.
• One very opinionated gay woman informed me that I’m “just a closet lesbian” because I’m attracted to women. However, in the next breath, I was also told that my attraction to women is invalid because I’m also into men.

As a bisexual, you just can’t win.

I feel far less restriction and anxiety playing it straight in the hetero world than I do being my bi self in the queer world. And that makes me unspeakably sad.

The privilege is strong with this one

This schism I’m experiencing is not the fault of the LGBTQIA+ community. I think my expectations and perspective as an ally caused me to romanticise the degree of acceptance and empathy in the queer community. I was ready for a rainbow coloured utopia of love and freedom that didn’t exist. What I experienced was uncomfortable and I didn’t fit in. Perhaps because my ‘journey’ has not been as intense, devastating or dangerous as the journeys of many others. My “straight passing” lifestyle has shielded me from potential harm my whole life. I understand that it’s not possible for everyone to move through hetero-normative spaces  safely and that is privilege in action. Surely, many, many people have found comfort and acceptance in the bosom of the queer community. I wish that had been my experience.

It is upsetting to me that the resistance that queer people navigate in the hetero-normative community, appears to exist in its own version, within the queer community as well. It begs the question: Why would people perpetuate the pain and exclusion that they suffered as LGTBQIA+ folks, just to turn around and inflict that on other LGBTQIA+ folks? 

The same goes for the kink community, and the polyam community. For open-minded, alternative communities, there are a lot of people with closed minds and stifling views, ready to tell other people how to live. 

Back on the straight and narrow

I don’t feel connected to queer culture and I don’t feel represented within it, so I’ve decided that I’m not going to publicly identify as bisexual anymore. Being “out” for a year was interesting but ultimately I just felt more lost. By coming out, I felt pressure to engage in the queer community in a new way but I was never comfortable, I felt out of place. I’m not straight, never have been, and I will continue to support queer folk and do my best to use my perceived straight privilege for good. 

Maybe someday it will feel right to outwardly identify as bi again. For now, that’s not something that I want to live out loud. Even though I’m technically a card-carrying member, it’s just not a group that I feel I can be a part of right now.  At the end of the day, I know what and who I am, and that’s really all that matters.

Do some good

Protect and Support LGBTQ Youth by donating to The Trevor Project: the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning (LGBTQ) young people under 25.
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