Así describe Matt, un joven graduado que vive en Cambridge, Reino Unido, cómo es ser una persona bisexual en una cita amorosa. “Me asusta cómo reaccionará la gente”, cuenta a la BBC.
“Una chica con la que estaba saliendo me dijo que la sola idea de que yo estuviera con un hombre le daba vuelta el estómago. Luego me bloqueó en todo”, cuenta.
Por eso Matt dice sentirse forzado a mentir sobre su sexualidad para poder simplemente empezar una relación.
“Cuando salgo con gente y menciono que soy bisexual, la relación termina. Cuando miento y oculto mi sexualidad, dura. Todavía no sé si debería revelarlo desde el principio o esperar, porque cuanto más espero, más ansioso me pongo, pero no quiero que la relación termine”, explica.
“Siento que si termino en una relación heterosexual, parece que solo estuve experimentando todos estos años, pero si termino en una relación homosexual, la gente dirá que nunca fui bisexual. Y luego, si no tengo una relación monógama, la gente dirá que soy codicioso”.
Matt es una de las personas con las que habló Ben Hunte, periodista de la BBC especializado en temas LGBT, en el marco del Día Internacional de la Visibilidad Bisexual, que se celebra cada 23 de septiembre.
Y si bien cada vez a nivel general existe una mayor aceptación de la comunidad LGBTI, aún persisten muchos mitos sobre la “B”.
“En el acrónimo ‘LGBTI’, la 'B’ a menudo se eclipsa, lo que lleva a la invisibilidad de las personas bisexuales y a la negación de los detalles sobre su experiencia”, dice la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) de la ONU.
“Piensan que la bisexualidad es un fetiche”
Nichi Hodgson es una escritora que vive en Londres. Ella dice que salió “tarde” del armario, a los 26 años, y tuvo problemas para explorar quién era debido a las presiones de la sociedad para ser heterosexual u homosexual.
“Es un viaje loco debido a la cantidad de conceptos erróneos”, cuenta. “La gente todavía no logra entender la bisexualidad”.
Nichi también dice que ha tenido que ocultar su bisexualidad en los perfiles de citas online: “Tuve que tener uno heterosexual y uno gay, porque tener uno bisexual me generó serios problemas”.
“Algunas personas piensan que la bisexualidad es un fetiche y una forma codificada de decir sadomasoquismo. Es como que estás dispuesto a lo que sea. Hay un verdadero estigma”, opina.
Pero eso no es todo. Nichi dice haber escuchado decir “que las personas bisexuales no se casan, simplemente se 'enderezan’ y se casan. Hay una presión social real para ser heterosexual y no bisexual”.
“Mi exnovia solía bromear diciendo que tendría que desinfectarme antes de poder acostarse conmigo porque antes había estado con chicos”, cuenta. “Estaba realmente perturbada. Es muy doloroso”.
“Parece socialmente aceptable ser bifóbico”
Lewis Oakley es un activista y escritor bisexual que vive en Manchester y actualmente tiene una relación con una mujer.
Según Lewis, su novia es juzgada por estar con él y la gente hasta le advierte que él la engañará con un hombre.
“Parece que es socialmente aceptable que seas honesto sobre tu discriminación hacia los bisexuales. Nadie me ha dicho 'Eww, eres de raza mixta, no podría salir contigo’, pero constantemente se me dice que mi bisexualidad no se ajusta a las necesidades de las personas”, cuenta.
Lewis dice que cuando las personas se declaran bisexuales, inmediatamente quitan del abanico de opciones “tanto a los gays como a los heterosexuales, porque ambos los rechazan”.
“Es cierto que muchos hombres homosexuales se declararon bisexuales para cambiar su sexualidad”, explica. “Pero no se dan cuenta de que, aunque para algunas personas la bisexualidad es un trampolín, para otros es un destino”.
Una “epidemia oculta”
Lo que Matt, Nichi y Lewis cuentan no son casos aislados.
“La existencia de personas bisexuales es constantemente cuestionada y, a veces, incluso negada. A menudo, la bisexualidad es calificada de inválida, inmoral o irrelevante”, dice la CIDH.
“La bifobia, una de las causas principales de la violencia, discriminación, pobreza y peores niveles de salud mental y física experimentada por las personas bisexuales; se ve alimentada por la falta de visibilidad a menudo presente en comunidades de orientación sexual o identidad de género diversas”, agrega.
De acuerdo con la ONG Stonewall, de Reino Unido, 32% de los bisexuales no son abiertos sobre su orientación sexual con ningún miembro de su familia, comparado con 8% de las lesbianas y los gays.
Por otra parte, un informe de la Universidad Abierta de Inglaterra encontró que las tasas de depresión, ansiedad, autolesiones y suicidio eran más altas entre los bisexuales que en los grupos de heterosexuales y homosexuales.
En el ámbito laboral, una encuesta de la empresa TUC realizada a 1.151 personas LGBT en Reino Unido, 30% de las personas bisexuales dijeron que en el trabajo vivieron tocamientos no deseados en lugares como la rodilla o la parte baja de la espalda.
A su vez, 21% dijo haber experimentado tocamientos no deseados en los genitales, senos o trasero, y 11% haber sufrido violación o acoso sexual en el trabajo.
De acuerdo con la secretaria general de TUC, Frances O'Grady, los resultados revelan una “epidemia oculta”.
“Las personas bisexuales deberían sentirse seguras y apoyadas en el trabajo, pero en cambio están experimentando niveles impactantes de acoso sexual”, dice O'Grady.
“El acoso sexual no tiene lugar en un lugar de trabajo moderno ni en la sociedad en general”.
Given the great strides toward equality the LGBTQ+ community has made in recent years — including the legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide and increased representation of queer people in media — it would seem to hold that today’s queer youth have much better lives than their predecessors.
But beyond the most sweeping victories for LGBTQ+ rights, today’s queer youth still face massive challenges, which are compounded where they intersect with race. Feeling unsafe at school and feelings of worthlessness plague young queer people, as do startlingly high rates of depression and lack of sleep.
These revelations and more were exposed in the groundbreaking new “LGBTQ Youth Report,” conducted by the Human Rights Campaign in conjunction with researchers at the University of Connecticut. A survey of over 12,000 LGBTQ+ teenagers across the nation, it paints an intimate portrait of the obstacles queer youth face at home, in school, and in their communities — and found that supportive families and schools are key to their wellbeing,
An alarming 77 percent of LGBTQ+ teenagers, defined in the report as youth 13 to 17 years old, reported feeling depressed or down over the week preceding the survey, and 95 percent expressed having trouble sleeping at night. The report notes that these high rates could be explained by the variety of stressors young queer people face, including harassment, family and peer rejection, bullying from their peers, isolation and a lack of a sense of belonging.
Sixty-seven percent of respondents, for example, say they’ve heard family members make negative comments about LGBTQ+ people. “I overhear anti-LGBTQ slurs on the bus every single school day,” says one respondent. Overall, only 26 percent of LGBTQ+ youth report to feeling safe in their schools, and only 24 percent say they can “definitely” be themselves at home with their family.
The mental health crisis facing LGBTQ+ teens is compounded by lack of access to adequate and affirming counseling services. Only 41 percent of respondents say they have received psychological or emotional counseling to address their mental health issues within the past 12 months. And only 37 percent of respondents of color say they’ve received psychological or emotional counseling in the past 12 months. Youth who have received counseling, the report notes, reported better mental health outcomes.
“These harrowing statistics show the devastating toll rejection by family and peers, bullying and harassment, and apathy on the part of too many adults is having on America’s young people,” says HRC President Chad Griffin in a press release. “When this administration rescinds guidance protecting transgender students, or when lawmakers attempt to grant a license to discriminate to schools, colleges, and universities, it further erodes the fragile landscape for young people across the nation.”
Young LGBTQ+ respondents also say they hesitate to come out in healthcare environments, which can prevent their specific needs from being met. A majority of them, 67 percent, say they have not revealed their sexual orientation to their care provider, and 61 percent say they have not revealed their gender identity.
“I live in the Bible Belt,” one respondent says. “Also I’m afraid that any information or questions that I have aren’t confidential between me and my councilor. I’m afraid he’ll call my parents or try to convince me that my sexuality is wrong.”
But the report also shows signs of hope. 91 percent of youth report feeling pride in being an LGBTQ+ person, and 93 percent are proud to be a part of the community. Three out of five LGBTQ+ students, meanwhile, say they have access to an LGBTQ+ student club at their school, which has been shown to improve quality of life.
It’s incredible the strides we’ve made and how much the world has changed since the inception of Celebrate Bisexuality Day in 1999; 20 years on, we have national bisexual+ organizations and out bi and pan politicians; Kat Sandoval wearing butch bisexual suits on TV; Tessa Thompson and Janelle Monáe doing literally everything that they do; and a new generation of youth who are ready to save the world from climate change and have no interest in maintaining the status quo of the past around sexuality or gender. What kind of world are they ushering us into! We can’t wait to find out. Here’s some of your local bi+ Autostraddle writers and pals weighing in on what we hope to see in a bisexual future. Where do you see us headed? Let us know in the comments!
I would love bisexuality in the future to not be viewed as a behavior, but as an identity. So many of the dumb myths about bisexuality come with a hypersexual focus on sexual behavior, both assumptions of what kinds of behaviors bisexuals partake in and what bisexuals should or should not do in terms of sexual partners. I choose the identity of bisexual for a lot of reasons, both personal and political, but not really aligned at all with my sexual history (or future). What a concept!
I would want bisexuals in the future to have a sense of a bisexual past, bisexual history, bisexual culture, to feel a part of something just for them. I think about our history a lot, that fact that bi stigma has prevented us from reaching back and finding our own. Bisexual figures in history will get their place alongside gay and lesbian figures in the future. (FWIW, so will trans historical figures.) It’s exciting that there are so many out famous bisexuals now. There will be more to hold onto for future bisexuals than currently and, like others have said, that sense of representation means something tangible in terms of health outcomes and bisexual joy.
I just want more and more bisexual joy!
Natalie, Writer
So, I’ll start with the pop culture conversation…partly because it’s my beat here at Autostraddle but also because I truly believe in pop culture’s ability to initiate shifts in how we see each other and ourselves.
While we’ve seen an increase in the number of bisexual+ characters on television over the years, the numbers still fall short of being reflective of the our community. Studies estimate that bi+ people are about 50% of the LGBT community, on television we represent just 27% of LGBT characters. I’d love to see more representation of bisexual people across the board and shows like Grey’s Anatomy,Station 19andGood Trouble show that bi+ representation doesn’t have to come at the expense of gay or lesbian or trans representation. There can be and should be room for us all to see ourselves.
There’s a lot of attention paid to television shows that employ harmful tropes about bisexual people — and rightfully so — but one thing that’s becoming increasingly frustrating to me: characters who are, ostensibly, bisexual but who never actually say the word. For everything that was groundbreaking about Orange is the New Black, it took until its 89th episode for the show’s lead character, who had essentially been bisexual from the very first episode, to actually be called bisexual. Shows that do that are contributing to bi-erasure and biphobia and, of course, audiences are internalizing that message.
In the real world, that erasure has some consequences; it suggests that there’s something wrong with identifying as bisexual and contributes to a sense of alienation, especially among young queer people. We’re seeing that manifest in stark mental health disparities: according to an analysis from the Trevor Project, bisexual youth are more likely to feel sad or hopeless and consider suicide than their gay/lesbian and heterosexual peers…and, not surprisingly, those issues persist in adulthood. In the future, LGBT organizations have to do a better job at providing trans-inclusive programming targetted at bi+ communities that address mental health. On the political front, I think universal health care coverage, with mental health parity, is essential if we want to bisexual people to thrive.
I dream of a bisexual future where all people are safe to explore feelings of attraction, care, friendship, and love without fear of discrimination, violence, or stigma. I want a bisexual future that celebrates and uplifts trans people of all genders, as bisexual activists and community leaders have done for decades. I long for an inclusive bi+ future where everyone, no matter who they love or what label resonates most, feels welcome under our expansive umbrella. I need a bisexual future that honors our ancestors and demands better for those who follow us.
Sometimes I joke that I assume everyone is bisexual until proven otherwise. I don’t mean it in a reductive way, but rather as my small resistance to a cultural reality where heterosexuality is considered the default setting. I hope our bisexual future is one where we let people define themselves with joy and never fear.
The “x is bi culture” meme is increasingly common, and while it’s a joke format I really love seeing! I love that bi youth are growing up into a world where they’ll get to participate in and be part of defining a bi community and culture that’s all its own, something alive and changing and freestanding. As I was growing and developing as a bi person, everything I understood about bisexuality (and by extension, myself) was reactive, a point of comparison to gay or straight people. I learned that we were diet versions of gay people; more confusing, less trustworthy versions of straight people. I think that even in the 15 or so years since I was a youth, that’s already started to change; there are active conversations around specifically queer and bi identity and experience, and children who got to skip much of the confusing, self-loathing interim time of trying to figure out what they “really are.” Those kids will have a whole set of terminology and jokes and characters in media and celebrities and information about their own selves that I couldn’t have imagined, and I’m so elated about that. I’m excited for a future where bi people have a shared culture and conversation that goes beyond mythbusting or fighting stigma, and that stands on its own sense of self and history and resists comparisons to other groups, or an idea of being “in between,” and one that actively seeks out points of solidarity and overlap with trans communities and other marginalized people. We have such a rich history and strong present, and I’m excited for the broad-ranging, ever-shifting bi community to build its future.
I envision a future where the bisexual vs. pansexual debate is OVER! I want bisexuality to either include non-binary and otherwise trans people, or not. To be honest, I would be fine if there WAS a clear distinction – like, what it seems everyone on Reddit believes: “bisexuals are into cis men and cis women ONLY, pansexuals don’t discriminate by gender/genitalia,” or whatever. I don’t really care how it all shakes out, but it would be great to know off top who’s trans-exclusionary and who isn’t. Then I could know who to avoid if I ever date again!
In some ways I think the bisexual / pansexual / queer future I imagine when I think about this question is already happening for some youth and the world they’re living in. There are so many of them coming out so much earlier than I did, and embracing a wide variety of non-monosexual identities. It’s like they know that there is such a beautiful rainbow of options before them and they don’t have to squeeze themselves into a gay or lesbian identity if that’s not what fits best for them. It took me so long to figure that out! I hope in the future that every person coming out at any age feels free to adopt and try out whatever identity or label that fits best for them, and to change their mind if they want to. I want the freedom and queer belonging I’ve seen in some young bi+ people to be had by everyone.
Another thing that is great about today that feels like the future I would have wanted are the many amazing examples of bisexual representation in TV and books. I would have killed for this variety 15 or 20 years ago. I mean, I have over 400 books on my bisexual shelf on Goodreads! And we have real-life bi peope like Stephanie Beatrix playing bisexual characters on TV. What a blessing! For the future I would love to see bi+ media representation get more diverse and centre more people of color, people with diverse abilities, nonbinary people, trans people and — odd as it might seem to say — more men.
On a personal note, I am at the beginning of some big adulting type things like getting a mortgage and planning to have kids with my cis male partner. What I really want for my own future is to avoid disappearing into bisexual invisibility / supposed heterosexual normalcy. I think this means bisexual community. So stay tuned for the bisexual mom/parent group I may be starting in my small west coast city? In the meantime I have the amazing bi+ community at Autostraddle, which I am so, so grateful for.
First, and most importantly, I wish it could be universally agreed that bisexual does not imply a binary. It does not have to mean “both men and women” (others’ words, not mine); it can, and should, and in my opinion, does mean “both my gender, and other genders.” A binary interpretation can deter people from using it, and I actually struggled with it myself when I first came out. But it’s still the term I feel feels the best for me, someone attracted to both my gender and to other genders, be they transgender, cis, non-binary, any gender. “Pansexual” has never quite felt right for me, but of course, those who identify as such should use it. Bisexuality, as I envision it, should be seen as inclusive, and should absolutely not be transphobic.
I would also like to renew my call for boring bisexual characters in fiction! I want characters who post a lot of pictures of their cats and go to bed early when they have migraines. If we are going to be represented as “evil” or “confused,” there better at least be other characters on that show or in that book who are bisexual and good, or bisexual and boring. (Killing Eve does a good job with this, in my opinion.) We can of course, be evil bisexual (see: Gaby Dunn), or confused bisexual (see: ), but it’s not because we bisexual.
“Sexual-minority” youth are at higher risk of bullying than heterosexual peers, and may, as a result, score low on several key indicators of positive development, a new study finds.
“This research quantifies how bullying hinders sexual-minority youths’ access to the essential building blocks of health and well-being,” says lead author Robert W.S. Coulter, a doctoral student in the behavioral and community health sciences department at the University of Pittsburgh.
“Anti-bullying policies at schools are necessary but insufficient. Multifaceted interventions in all arenas, including schools, families, and communities, should focus on building more accepting and supportive environments for sexual-minority youth.”
For the study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers used data from a survey of 1,870 adolescents at US schools and after-school programs in 45 states that measured positive youth development using the “Five Cs” model, which assesses competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring/compassion.
Higher levels of the Five Cs are associated with positive contributions to society, and lower levels are linked to myriad risky behaviors, including cigarette smoking, alcohol use, and younger sexual initiation. The survey also asked participants whether they had been bullied several times in the past several months.
Of the participants, 127—or 6.8 percent—were identified as sexual-minority youth—those who report having both-gender attractions or same-gender attractions only. Nearly 24 percent of them reported being a victim of bullying, compared with 12 percent of the heterosexual youths.
The sexual-minority youths scored significantly lower than their heterosexual counterparts in three of the Five Cs: competence, defined as having a positive view of one’s actions in social, academic, cognitive and vocational arenas; confidence, defined as an internal sense of overall positive self-worth; and connection, defined as having supportive and positive bonds with peers, family, school, and community.
“However, when we adjusted our models to control for the effects of bullying victimization, the differences in scores between sexual-minority and heterosexual youths reduced,” Coulter says. “This suggests that bullying partly explains why sexual-minority youth had lower competence, confidence, and connection.”
But, bullying is not the only factor causing lower positive youth development scores for sexual-minority youths, Coulter says.
“Bullying is only one part of the story. It is one manifestation of more pervasive problems, such as stigma and discrimination. We need to take a holistic approach to positive youth development and create evidence-based programs that bring about a cultural change, allowing all youths, regardless of their sexual orientation, the same opportunity to thrive.”
The National 4-H Council and the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse supported the work.
