autismserenity:

autismserenity:

butchcommunist:

There is a massive difference between expressing your discomfort with dating women because it is objectively, numerically harder to find partners, and socially much more difficult to walk down the street or get an apartment or go to the grocery store in a relationship with a woman, and sexually more difficult to learn about the kinds of sex you want to have with other women and even get access to information about safe sex, and how those have impacted your dating choices and discuss some sadness around that (a very, very common problem, one major reason “bi women always end up with men and therefore don’t experience homophobia” is so wrong because that RESULT itself is often due to how those women are impacted by homophobia and how it manifests wrt their sexualities and dating choices) and saying, “I am always in straight relationships and it makes me feel Less Queer” and expecting lesbians to bend over backwards to express how that’s so valid and how we are so sorry people don’t harass or stare at you when you walk down the street with your partner. Of course sometimes the wires get crossed, and one message is expressed as another, but the whole trend of focusing on m/f relationships as valid sites of Queer Love is so silly when those relationships have always been legally validated, and it does absolutely no good to people in same gender relationships, who desperately need prioritizing and access to resources- including bi women!

The second message is being deeply misunderstood by the lesbian community.

When bi women reference “not feeling queer”, they’re not saying, “gosh, all this straight privilege is sure getting me down! I wish I could have it AND be included in the lesbian community! ”

They’re saying, “I am suffering from severe effects of oppression even when I am in relationships that are perceived as straight.

“And there is so little acknowledgment of this in the queer community that it not only means the problem isn’t getting addressed,” (like the fact that less than 1% of LGBT grant money goes to bi-specific issues), “but it also makes the psychological effects of the oppression much worse.

“To the point that I don’t even have the words to explain this to you, and you don’t have the information to put it together.”

The repeated message that bi/pan/omni/ply people are only oppressed/“actually queer” when we’re in same-gender relationships is a huge part of the constant erasure of bi experiences.

That erasure contributes both to the fact that bisexuals are consistently poorer, more suicidal, more likely to be mentally ill, and more likely to experience relationship violence and sexual assault than our gay and lesbian peers.

(Same thing goes for aces, for that matter. People say, “well why would anybody know you’re ace on the street, you aren’t oppressed unless you ‘look SGA’.”

Meanwhile, both bi and ace people have extraordinarily high rates of suicidality, homelessness,
poverty,
harassment, and assault. And nobody knows, because both groups are so erased. Don’t even get me started on intersex people….)

For example, 25% of bisexuals in the US are on food stamps; around 13% of gay men and lesbians are.

(This is actually worse than it sounds, because there are also more bisexuals – so it’s a larger percentage of a larger group.)

If the only kind of oppression you can see is whether someone can marry their partner and how people react to them on the street, you leave out most of what gay people experience as well as the rest of us.

A lesbian who breaks up with her girlfriend doesn’t suddenly stop being oppressed. A lesbian who puts on lipstick and goes shopping alone doesn’t suddenly stop being oppressed.

For that matter, a passing, gender-conforming trans person doesn’t suddenly stop being oppressed.

Passing as a cis and straight person doesn’t even mean any of those folks will feel safe on the street.

Cutting our oppression down to “how likely are you to get assaulted or harassed on the street” is handy for gatekeeping all sorts of people. But it screws absolutely everybody over.

I didn’t realize how much amazing commentary people had added on to this on the notes until I happened to see virgodura’s dissenting reply just now: "there’s nothing queer about being a cis woman in relationship with a cis man. Grow up.”

So I’m glad for that because all the commentary I had missed looks fucking awesome, and I’m looking forward to reading it in detail.

But this is also hilarious to me because I’m literally seeing this as I’m in the middle of a discussion with two other bi people, one of whom is a cis woman, about what’s different about being bi vs straight. ( @ellainflight and @rivergst)

Like, specifically, how it is VERY different to be a bi cis woman in a relationship with a cis straight man (never even mind with a cis bi man!) than to be a straight cis woman in the same relationship.

Because what I hear from every bi cis woman I’ve talked to in that situation is:

* the gay people around you consistently say horrible, horrifying things about bi people, to the point that a lot of these women don’t come out to them as bi

* (this is part of why something like 23% of bisexuals are out to the important people in their lives, even though a pretty high percentage of gay people are out to at least the important people in their lives)

* the straight people around you can tell that you are violating heteronormativity, but they can’t put it into words, and they FUCKING HATE IT.

* what this ends up meaning is that you are constantly given very clear and intentional messages that what you are is wrong, even though they may consciously assume you’re straight

* I’ll do detailed examples later, when my Tumblr app isn’t acting up and it’s not 1am. But it’s very similar to being a stealth, passing trans person.

* Specifically, you’re surrounded by people who are actively pressuring you to pretend to be both cis and straight, who constantly make sure to let you know that if they figure out what’s “off” about you, you’re totally fucked.