Today is “Celebrate Bisexuality Day” (or Bi Pride Day, or Bi Visibility Day, or any of a handful of other names for it). I’m celebrating with…a blog post. Not as exciting as anything someone with half an imagination and any exposure whatsoever to popular stereotypes might suggest, but hey. As exciting as my life is these days, it seems like a good way to celebrate, and it provides a nice excuse for me to get on my virtual soapbox, too.
So, what is it that everyone is supposed to be celebrating today? I could throw you a dictionary definition of “bisexuality” and start dissecting it, but honestly I think we’re all on the same page (or at least in the same book): when we talk about bisexuality, we’re referring to something that’s not hetero- or homosexuality, an attraction to more than just men or more than just women.
That definition was surprisingly difficult to keep vague enough to describe the many things people call bisexuality.
Some people who identify as bi say that they’re simply genderblind, “attracted to people, not parts;” for some, they’re into both men and women equally, but only the most masculine guys and femmiest of femmes, “the football players and the cheerleaders.” Others, contrary to a lot of popular belief, have nothing even approximating an equal attraction to men and women, and I’m not even going to get into the variations on genderqueer and its associated linguistic, political, and philosophical can of worms. Some bi folks say they fall in love with men but love to sleep with women (and vice versa); others have no experience with one sex or the other, or have no experience at all with either. And this is just a sampling, really, of the variations I’ve heard. Of course, this all has a flip-side, too; there are folks who don’t identify as bi who have been attracted to both men and women, along with folks who actively pursue one gender or the other (or both) while professing a seemingly incompatible sexual identity.
Obviously, this is kind of a mess. There are two main approaches to dealing with it (other than just using the term anyway) that I’ve run across.
