September

My coming out was a fairly non-event moment, after 20 years married to a man, who I met when I was 17, I came to the realisation that I was in fact bisexual, and the reason why this was a “non-event” was because I was still utterly in live with my husband, was still attracted to him, and had no urge to leave him to explore this part of myself. I did, however, feel like a jigsaw piece had been missing, I suddenly understood my obsession with Eliza Dushku in ‘Bring It On’, a film very popular when I was a teen. In reality the likeness of me finding out I was bisexual in my teens, was highly unlikely, I grew up in a very white, conservative part of England, with so much lack of diversity, there was zero representation in film and tv, at that point there was barely any gay or lesbian characters on the screens. In fact, I remember staying up late to watch ‘Queer as Folk’ by Russel T Davies on Channel 4 with a blanket over my head trying to muffle out the sound, so my parents wouldn’t hear and walk in. Apart from that my knowledge of the LGBTQIA+ community was virtually zero. How could I find myself when the society around me didn’t put these opportunities in front of me?

Bisexuality is still a mystery both to those inside and outside of the queer community, and yet the term bisexual to refer to human sexuality is almost as old as the term heterosexual. Jonathan Ned Katz, a gay history pioneer and activist, argues that “the idea of heterosexuality is a modern invention, dating back to the late 19^th century.” The first recorded use of the term was in a pamphlet in 1869, the author anonymous at the time, later found to be Karl-Maria Kertbeny. Kertbeny a journalist of sorts, wrote extensively about his view that sodomy laws violated human rights, thought to be a gay man himself, he found the need to label and define the sexual norm, so he could explain how same-sex desires and sexual behaviours contrasted with it. This is why he came up with the term’s ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’. A gay rights activist coined the word heterosexual as a by-product of creating the word homosexual.

Greek language plays a massive part in the term’s heterosexual and homosexual, hetero to mean ‘another’, whilst homo means ‘the same’, then melded with the Latin word ‘sexus’. Not long after, Bi or two was started to be used to refer to those people who had both ‘same’ and ‘another’ sexual desires. Researchers and society in general often interpret the bi, meaning two as attraction to men and women, when in fact the two are ‘same’ and ‘other’. Basically, bisexual is to find attraction, to those of the same and other genders, not to just men and women. The term bisexual was actually used to describe plants and creatures which are hermaphroditic, those with both male and female reproductive parts, before it was adopted to refer to human sexuality. Still today in the world of botany, entomology and zoology the term bisexual is often used this way, roses are example of a popular bisexual plant.

There has now been over 130 years of bisexual research, with scientists like Alfred Kinsey and Fritz Klein creating scales, in which you answer questions and are placed on a non-binary scale to measure your “level” of bisexuality/queerness. In fact when the Kinsey research was happening and these scales were used, people who thought they were ‘straight’, have fallen within the realm of bisexuality. This is due to the trained interviewers placing them on the scale based on what their answers mean and not what they say their actual label is, when in the context of others who sexually behave in the same way. This completely makes sense to me, I have friends who have had relationships with members of the same gender before, both romantic and sexual, and yet are someone of the opposite gender, and they do not see themselves as bisexual even though they are attracted to members of the same sex still. Whereas I have had not had a romantic or sexual relationship with someone of the same gender, yet I know I am attracted to women, as I am men so happily and proudly label myself as bisexual, but this is where bi-erasure, bi-visibility, and bi-phobia come in.

I remember heading to my first LGBTQIA+ social after coming out, I was anxious and on edge, I went along and said that I had a partner and children, but felt uneasy, worried and to be honest a little sacred to say that I was in fact married to a man. Bisexuality is still not always seen as a “legitimate” sexuality by some, we are often referred to as confused, greedy, cheaters, promiscuous, or told to just pick a side. If you are with someone of the same gender you must be gay and if you are with someone of the opposite gender you aren’t gay enough, and this is just not from people outside of the community. Yes, for those of us who end up being with someone of the opposite gender, some may say we have it easy, we can go on dates, get married, have children etc without the looks, stares and stupid questions. But no matter what who we end up with we are still here and queer, we are still coming out of the bi-closet all the time to live our authentic selves, and we want to celebrate our bisexuality, London now holds a Bi-Pride event to do just that.

There are any recognised sexualities that people use, bi, bisexual, biromantic, pan, pansexual, panromantic, poly, polysexual, polyromantic, queer, fluid, heteroflexible, homoflexible, all of these experience attraction beyond gender and surely that is something to be celebrated. The world in so many ways would be an easier place to navigate if everyone was considered under the bisexual umbrella until such a time where the attraction led them to the ‘same’, ‘other’, or to stay as ‘bi’.

So, if you ever take a sexuality quiz online you are most likely going to be using a digital version of the Kinsey Scale that was developed more than half a century ago.

We can only hope that at some point in time, queer history, which is a massive part of our modern and ancient world, is taught. So everyone can understand that we were always here, we have just been pushed into the shadows, and have had to fight our way out, and fight we shall continue to do. Until then we need to educate ourselves, I am currently reading BI by Julia Shaw, which really delves into Bi history and the science behind it.

And to the future, with the media now seeming to catch up a bit, with shows featuring bisexual characters, like Heartstopper and Young Royals on Netflix and Red, White and Royal Blue on Amazon Prime, and more public figures coming out as bisexual, let’s hope the future for Bi-people is a more accepting and understanding one. With representation being put out there in the mainstream, hopefully it means that more people can come out and be proud and remember there is no LGBT without the B!