btw, yes it IS biphobic to “politely” try to find out if a bi person has kissed/had sex/been in love with people of different genders even if you’re not outright telling them they’re wrong. leave bi people alone if someone says they’re bi they’re fucking bi they don’t need to prove themselves to you regardless of how “nice” you are about it.
To the people asking “why not?”.
Some people do ask just because they are curious. But it stems from biphobia even if they don’t directly think they are being offensive. It comes from how society teaches us that bisexuality isn’t a real thing. That is just straight people or gay people wanting a bonus or something. So while the individual may not mean any harm, this post was to make those who are not bisexual aware that asking a bisexual person these questions is likely to make them uncomfortable.
Even myself who is attracted to all genders find myself questioning if I’m faking it and even with other people who I find out are bisexual/pansexual part of me wants to ask about their experiences because of internalised biphobia that for some reason says we need “proof”.
And the worst thing is if you talk like this to bisexual people then they’re probably not going to want to be your friend which would suck because bisexual people are awesome.
This is also part of some larger patterns with intrusive personal questions, wrapped up in some dodgy power dynamics.
Is your curiosity about things that don’t even directly affect you, and are really none of your concern, more important than the other person’s comfort and possibly safety? That’s what it boils down to.
If you’re not even considering whether this situation you’re creating is liable to be awkward for the other person? That right thete indicates something about who you’re viewing as important, and deserving of consideration.
– freddie mercury was a self-identified gay man and not bisexual
– people only think he was bisexual because he wrote songs about women (obviously because he was the frontman of a rock band in the 70s and 80s – one of the biggest bands in history) and because he publically dated a woman once, who he constantly referred to as his best friend and later broke up with because he wanted relationships with men
– the idea that he’s bisexual is maintained and aggressively argued by people who cannot fathom that a man can be worthy of respect and admiration while not liking women. straight people call him bisexual instead of gay because it’s an easier pill to swallow for insecure men who like the band
– when his bandmates and close friends say that he’s gay or that he literally told them he was gay himself you should trust that more than your own uninformed judgement
– forcing the bisexual label onto him is purposeful gay erasure and homophobia
and that’s the tea
it looks like tumblr ate my response to this watery bitter tea so in a nutshell:
he said he was bi
if you think bi people don’t call ourselves gay as shorthand for straight people who don’t believe bisexuality exists, you’ve missed every bi blog here that endlessly says “I’M SO GAY” when a hot celebrity comes along
people continuously tell bi people that we’re either straight or gay. Freddie Mercury got it too; one ex girlfriend insisted he was gay, another one insisted he was straight. lady gaga gets called a straight ally all day long, the advocate called Anthony Rapp gay on its March 2018 cover, it. is. constant.
he said “Love Of My Life” was about Mary Austin
and Mary said they broke up because they grew apart when Queen got big and he was always either out touring, or out rehearsing
he dated other women, like Rose Pearson
even his obituary said he was “a self-confessed bisexual”
and I’ve never, ever heard a straight person acknowledge that he was bi. they insist that he was gay because they don’t believe bisexuality exists, and you believe it because they starve all of us of representation
and lastly: can you fucking imagine how pissed-off you would be if you had to deal with this shit your whole life, you managed to get it into your obituary that you were bi, and people still refused to believe you and took your friends’ word over yours
(unsurprisingly, OP is an exclusionist)
(Also I refer to my partner as my best friend too O CRAP MAYBE I’M SECRETLY STRAIGHT)
there used to be fewer winning zip codes though; I grew up in an extremely liberal post-hippie town in a blue state and it was still pretty much like “if this then best move to SF or maybe NYC fucking asap, maybe up to and including running away from home as a minor” wrt being gay in the late 80s and I do feel like that’s changed quite a bit for sexual orientation stuff
gayness in the late 80s
there were 450 people at my grades 9 through 12 high school, and I can think of 4 that I was aware were gay at the time, and not because they were all proudly out of the closet
one was a super obvious, really sweet guy who cultivated a highly vocal crush on Madonna and we all liked him so we just let him do that because that’s what felt kind. one kid was What? I’m a Theater Kid, Theater, Also It’s The 80s I Can Have A Forelock If I Want, one there was just heavy rumor, one was my friend P who was a nice sad closeted preppy boy I wouldn’t ever have clocked if I didn’t hang out with him and even so we never talked about it, not once. no girls at all, although looking back now I can’t believe I didn’t connect the dots wrt one
basically? nobody came out till they went away to college. that was just how that was. you wanted to get out of the immediate social and family crucible first. we didn’t have internet yet, the couple hundred people around you were the only world you had. at some point in my thirties I found out my old high school now had a gay/straight alliance and I think I literally cried
again: this was a small sheltered private school in a lefty hippie town in Massachusetts
Do any other 80s kids (or older, but I think kids got a lot of it) remember the basic health information type brochures on HIV/AIDS and how intensely heavily they blamed the epidemic on bisexual men?
Because I sure do remember feeling suspicious of bisexual men and wondering why they would be so terribly irresponsible and so hurtful to all the rest of us as to spread the plague in ways even gay men didn’t.
If anyone is wondering why I immediately shut down someone the other day for telling a bi man to shut up about homophobia because wlw have it worse?
That shit is why.
Do not try to tell me, someone born in 1979, that homophobia and biphobia against bi men wasn’t as bad as anything else because I will pee in your cereal bowl.
“bi men are responsible for spreading HIV” totally yes, but it was actually worse than that
it was “actually there’s no such thing as a bi man and anyone who says he is one is lying because he doesn’t want to admit to being gay, therefore he’s exactly the sort of terrible deceitful person who would selfishly spread HIV”
with a hefty side of “oh and bisexuality doesn’t exist period, it just extra specially doesn’t exist in men, in women it’s sort of a thing but only in a totally fake immature phase bullshit way”
and both of those messages were coming from the gay community just as much as or maybe even more than from the straight oppressors
tea.gif
Yep, that’s true.
Also there was a heaping spoonful of racism mixed in, at least from what I remember. People did a lot of sensationalist talking about black men “on the down low.”
Reblogging again to add that I also remember too well when bi women were supposedly bringing Filthy Diseases to unsuspecting Decent Lesbians. At least partly thanks to proximity to bi men, I can only assume, though I don’t recall hearing it outright. Any men were bad enough.
(That would of course be besides the health threat to straight men, because assumed promiscuity and lack of selectiveness. Plus likely the association with plague-carrying bi men, again.)
It was a total fucking mess well up into the ‘90s, that I saw directly.
Re: Massachusetts.
By the early 2000s you could be gay in public high school but you would still likely be stuck with a smaller amount of people who find you acceptable.
My mother informs me as of when our gay marrige bill passed over a decade ago now, non of the adults she knew were ok with it and at most supporrd civil unions. Again. Liberal eastern MA suburbs. One of my friend got kicked out for being a lesbian.
Things are better now but to be clear: the law forced people to accept they were on the wrong side. Not the other way around. The same people who objected will now act like they have always supported gay rights now because it’s now not acceptable to admit you didn’t.
I would add that of course it wasn’t all lesbians acting like that. Just essentially the same dodgy political subset who still prefer to act crappy about assumed proximity/“availability” to men in general.
That nastier ramped-up version was just as hard to avoid encountering, though.
There are also reasons some of us still react very, very badly to the same old shit minus that specific embellishing touch. And apparently we’re not supposed to remember that ever happened.
there used to be fewer winning zip codes though; I grew up in an extremely liberal post-hippie town in a blue state and it was still pretty much like “if this then best move to SF or maybe NYC fucking asap, maybe up to and including running away from home as a minor” wrt being gay in the late 80s and I do feel like that’s changed quite a bit for sexual orientation stuff
gayness in the late 80s
there were 450 people at my grades 9 through 12 high school, and I can think of 4 that I was aware were gay at the time, and not because they were all proudly out of the closet
one was a super obvious, really sweet guy who cultivated a highly vocal crush on Madonna and we all liked him so we just let him do that because that’s what felt kind. one kid was What? I’m a Theater Kid, Theater, Also It’s The 80s I Can Have A Forelock If I Want, one there was just heavy rumor, one was my friend P who was a nice sad closeted preppy boy I wouldn’t ever have clocked if I didn’t hang out with him and even so we never talked about it, not once. no girls at all, although looking back now I can’t believe I didn’t connect the dots wrt one
basically? nobody came out till they went away to college. that was just how that was. you wanted to get out of the immediate social and family crucible first. we didn’t have internet yet, the couple hundred people around you were the only world you had. at some point in my thirties I found out my old high school now had a gay/straight alliance and I think I literally cried
again: this was a small sheltered private school in a lefty hippie town in Massachusetts
Do any other 80s kids (or older, but I think kids got a lot of it) remember the basic health information type brochures on HIV/AIDS and how intensely heavily they blamed the epidemic on bisexual men?
Because I sure do remember feeling suspicious of bisexual men and wondering why they would be so terribly irresponsible and so hurtful to all the rest of us as to spread the plague in ways even gay men didn’t.
If anyone is wondering why I immediately shut down someone the other day for telling a bi man to shut up about homophobia because wlw have it worse?
That shit is why.
Do not try to tell me, someone born in 1979, that homophobia and biphobia against bi men wasn’t as bad as anything else because I will pee in your cereal bowl.
“bi men are responsible for spreading HIV” totally yes, but it was actually worse than that
it was “actually there’s no such thing as a bi man and anyone who says he is one is lying because he doesn’t want to admit to being gay, therefore he’s exactly the sort of terrible deceitful person who would selfishly spread HIV”
with a hefty side of “oh and bisexuality doesn’t exist period, it just extra specially doesn’t exist in men, in women it’s sort of a thing but only in a totally fake immature phase bullshit way”
and both of those messages were coming from the gay community just as much as or maybe even more than from the straight oppressors
tea.gif
Yep, that’s true.
Also there was a heaping spoonful of racism mixed in, at least from what I remember. People did a lot of sensationalist talking about black men “on the down low.”
Reblogging again to add that I also remember too well when bi women were supposedly bringing Filthy Diseases to unsuspecting Decent Lesbians. At least partly thanks to proximity to bi men, I can only assume, though I don’t recall hearing it outright. Any men were bad enough.
(That would of course be besides the health threat to straight men, because assumed promiscuity and lack of selectiveness. Plus likely the association with plague-carrying bi men, again.)
It was a total fucking mess well up into the ‘90s, that I saw directly.
there used to be fewer winning zip codes though; I grew up in an extremely liberal post-hippie town in a blue state and it was still pretty much like “if this then best move to SF or maybe NYC fucking asap, maybe up to and including running away from home as a minor” wrt being gay in the late 80s and I do feel like that’s changed quite a bit for sexual orientation stuff
gayness in the late 80s
there were 450 people at my grades 9 through 12 high school, and I can think of 4 that I was aware were gay at the time, and not because they were all proudly out of the closet
one was a super obvious, really sweet guy who cultivated a highly vocal crush on Madonna and we all liked him so we just let him do that because that’s what felt kind. one kid was What? I’m a Theater Kid, Theater, Also It’s The 80s I Can Have A Forelock If I Want, one there was just heavy rumor, one was my friend P who was a nice sad closeted preppy boy I wouldn’t ever have clocked if I didn’t hang out with him and even so we never talked about it, not once. no girls at all, although looking back now I can’t believe I didn’t connect the dots wrt one
basically? nobody came out till they went away to college. that was just how that was. you wanted to get out of the immediate social and family crucible first. we didn’t have internet yet, the couple hundred people around you were the only world you had. at some point in my thirties I found out my old high school now had a gay/straight alliance and I think I literally cried
again: this was a small sheltered private school in a lefty hippie town in Massachusetts
Do any other 80s kids (or older, but I think kids got a lot of it) remember the basic health information type brochures on HIV/AIDS and how intensely heavily they blamed the epidemic on bisexual men?
Because I sure do remember feeling suspicious of bisexual men and wondering why they would be so terribly irresponsible and so hurtful to all the rest of us as to spread the plague in ways even gay men didn’t.
If anyone is wondering why I immediately shut down someone the other day for telling a bi man to shut up about homophobia because wlw have it worse?
That shit is why.
Do not try to tell me, someone born in 1979, that homophobia and biphobia against bi men wasn’t as bad as anything else because I will pee in your cereal bowl.
“bi men are responsible for spreading HIV” totally yes, but it was actually worse than that
it was “actually there’s no such thing as a bi man and anyone who says he is one is lying because he doesn’t want to admit to being gay, therefore he’s exactly the sort of terrible deceitful person who would selfishly spread HIV”
with a hefty side of “oh and bisexuality doesn’t exist period, it just extra specially doesn’t exist in men, in women it’s sort of a thing but only in a totally fake immature phase bullshit way”
and both of those messages were coming from the gay community just as much as or maybe even more than from the straight oppressors
tea.gif
Yep, that’s true.
Also there was a heaping spoonful of racism mixed in, at least from what I remember. People did a lot of sensationalist talking about black men “on the down low.”
ok so like legit though, the whole shit i’m seeing about “perceived opposite gender partners” is all so fuckin biphobic n cisnormative!! wtf!!!! cissexism and erasure of ur orientation ain’t privileges!! why r we regressing now to being biphobic, n giving validity to cissexism and heteronormativity as good things!!! wtf!!! this is so fucking regressive yinz!!
“how do we revive radfem Socialised-As-Gender ideology but like, without anyone noticing that we did exactly that, and also while fucking over bi and nb ppl specifically”
Today I spoke with and comforted a friend who’s partner broke up with them because they found out she was bisexual.
“If you can’t even commit to one gender, how can you commit to one person?” Was the phrasing they were given.
What. The. Fuck.
I’m sorry, but if you share that opinion, then you can go ahead and un-follow me right now. Being bisexual doesn’t mean that you have a commitment problem. That’s like breaking up with someone who says they find both blondes and brunettes attractive.
“Well, since I’m a blonde and you like both blondes AND brunettes, I can’t be with you because you’re just going to cheat on me with a brunette”.
Yeah, see how ridiculous that sounds? Same concept. Hubs and I have been together over five years and I’ve never once said “Hmm, well, I’ve been with him the allotted amount, time to sleep with a woman again”.
Lets get something straight (haha): Bisexual people aren’t any more likely to cheat on you than anyone else. It’s insulting, offensive and downright hateful to suggest that someone is more or less likely to cheat because of their sexuality. Fuck off.
bisexual culture is being very specific with the men you’re interested in but having absolutely no type when it comes to girls because they’re all so beautiful
Consider this: you might be a lesbian dealing with compulsory heterosexuality and internalized lesbophobia
^^^^^ so important. That’s exactly how I was before I accepted I was a lesbian. I was very specific about the men I could date. So specific that no man could possibly tick all the boxes.
i’m not a fucking lesbian leave me alone
^^^— Bisexual problems. People insisting you must be a lesbian even though you just have specific tastes in dudes
^ so perfectly this.
and I mean, no wonder we’re specific about guys, have you seen them? most of them can barely dress like they give a shit or do basic skin cleansing so as to avoid pimples. and how hard is it to hide your burps in public? wtf. and I mean give me some fucking length of hair to touch or grab or whatever, wtf is this soldier haircut everywhere like nope.
but girls? girls,
god let bisexuals be bisexual in peace
I don’t understand why everyone got so pissy all of a sudden. The second and third reblogs in this thread were just trying to be helpful. Yes, you’re bisexual. These lovely blogs were just trying to offer some advice. No one was trying to attack your sexuality, honey. I’m sure that was not their intentions.
A lot of lesbians struggle with this inner turmoil, and these blogs were just trying to offer insight on something they’ve already gone through.
That’s what the text post button is for. No one got time for you to add onto a bisexuals party that they aren’t a bisexual like you know their shit. Fuck out.
I mean I can’t imagine why lesbians coming onto a bisexual’s post to say “Are you sure you’re not just a repressed idiot who is controlled by societal forces and just hasn’t yet recognized that actually you don’t like men at all” could possibly be construed as a negative thing. It’s not like gays and lesbians have been saying to bisexuals for fifty years that we don’t exist and we’re just confused and that if we weren’t dumbasses in the thrall of societal forces that they, personally, are enlightened enough to have overcome, we’d realize that actually we aren’t sexually attracted to the opposite-sex lovers we’ve had in our lives at all.
It’s definitely true that some gays and lesbians went through a period of thinking they were bi. It’s also true that literally every single person who explains anything with the term “compulsory heterosexuality” is basically saying “you are either too dumb, too repressed or too conformist to recognize your true desires.” If we had an acknowledgement that it might be a perfectly natural thing for one to understand our own desires better as one gets older and more mature, without the implication that a younger person who hasn’t yet recognized their own sexuality in full is “repressed” or somehow under the control of society in the way that more enlightened gays and lesbians are not, that would be okay, but there is at this point far too much societal baggage from gays and lesbians telling bisexuals shit that essentially postulates that we don’t exist.
Also, given that women perform beauty as a social requirement and men do not, how does any feminist not instantly recognize that almost anyone with any attraction to women at all is likely to perceive more women as beautiful than men?
Fun fact: “there are many more pretty women than men” is exactly what will happen if you just simply mix in equal amounts typical straight male sexuality:
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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