As promised last time, we've got a bi book on deck this week. But first we're going to start with a post over at Two Bossy Dames:
That post is a veritable matryoshka doll of nested posts with thoughts on queer identity, specifically related to author Margaret’s later-in-life realization of (and somewhat hesitant claim to) being “actionably bisexual.”
One of her points is that, for people who can generally pass as straight, it can feel like “stolen valor” to claim a queer identity. Isn't a bi woman who is dating a man just unnecessarily taking up space in the queer conversation? (Spoiler alert, no.)
I think some of that is because everyone is mildly to moderately anxious, but also because bi erasure is sooo common, there’s the lingering question of being Bi Enough. Despite September being Bi Visibility Month, I saw so much biphobia and bi erasure, including a review that described a bi character's relationships in a book as “sapphic” and “hetero”. Fun fact! A bisexual person can't be in a hetero relationship because they are not heterosexual.
This is one of the many tentacles of compulsory heterosexuality. If everyone is presumed straight until demonstrated otherwise, then an opposite-gender couple is automatically perceived as heterosexual, regardless of their sexual orientations (unless of course they perform their queerness to society's satisfaction). But this, essentially, is why one should claim their queer identity, whether or not they have an undercut or own a denim jacket or whatever. Because some people want to suspend your queer license depending on the gender of your partner, and that’s not how it works.
Which brings me to the book I wanted to talk about this week, Alexandria Bellefleur's Truly Madly Deeply, which is a male-female bi4bi pairing. Truly is a romance novelist, and meets Colin the divorce lawyer (“family law” he corrects) when they're both appearing on a podcast to talk about love. And then he gets on her nerves during the recording, but he is desperately into her. It's cute.
At one point, she's fretting from some imposter syndrome, because she's been invited to speak at her alma mater about bi erasure, and while she is bisexual, she's never dated a woman. There's a simile about how it's like just being in the airport, which is not the same as visiting a place. So then Colin, himself a longtime visitor in the airport before he went out to see the sights, calls her out on it:
"My point, before I got off on a personal tangent, was that there's no such thing as being queer enough. Action and attraction are two different things. You could go the rest of your life never dating a woman and it wouldn't change a thing. If anything, I think you're the perfect person to talk about bi-erasure in media because you spent the last six years in a straight-presenting relationship that was queer because you're queer. And the gender of your partner? Doesn't change that."
Truly realized she was bisexual while in a long-term relationship with a man, then after they broke up she ended up dating…another man. Who is (presumably; this is a romance novel) her happily ever after. So she’s probably never going to date a woman. But she’s still bi! How can you be bi if you're never with someone of the same gender? Literally by thinking or feeling or deciding you are! Nobody has to prove that they're straight; why should everyone else not get the same self-determination? (Also, generally speaking, someone who is straight does not spend a lot of time wondering if maybe they are not.)
National Coming Out Day is next week, fyi. I do feel like a lot of my acquaintances never really Came Out, so much as Post Stuff Online and we all just infer. And for as much as I talk about myself here, I'm not sure I ever actually say anything truly personal, given my absolute abhorrence of the mortifying ordeal of being known. Anyway, all of this to say, if you haven't already deduced (could I put a few more filler phrases in here?) I too, am bi. It's hard not to add qualifiers like “kind of” or “theoretically,” but as we literally just discussed, there is no threshold, so just gotta own it and be perceived, as it were.
It’s…pointless, in a way, to come out, given that I’m married to a man and likely to remain so for hopefully ever. But that’s actually the whole point, making yourself visible. Looping back to our original TBD post, as Margaret says:
Done properly, claiming this [queer] identity can be an act of solidarity— sacrificing some of the comfort and ease with which you pass through a hostile society in order to create safety for others who might not have it. But the onus is on you to show up for the fight, not just the parades. It means letting your queer identity radicalize you against oppression in all its forms, because none of us are safe until all of us are safe.
"some people want to suspend your queer license depending on the gender of your partner" is a brilliant sentence!