As a male bisexual I have dated very fluidly in my twenties, then was in a few long term opposite sex relationships. But then I chose to not date at all and sort out my codependency issues.

During the period of not dating, I got so much weird harassment from gays and lesbians that I am now committed to doing what I can do get bisexuals accepted.

In grad school a lesbian came into my place of employment and demanded I “come out as gay” and then for two years I heard say “which is it” repeatedly. A gay student did similar taunting; a gay teacher asking my orientation replied “Oh, you’re one of those.”

Another gay teacher wanted me to come out as gay. And the head of the department (a lesbian) responded to my bi identity by saying “we really don’t need labels”, but she has one, and the gay and straight students had one.

And then a year later a gay director told me it was impossible for me to be bisexual; in his words “I was straight and fucking around” or “gay and in the closet”. I can go on and on and on.

Since then my dating has been a bit weird too, as I realized via online dating that straight women won’t touch me, most gay men have hang ups, and that has left only a few dates (obviously Woody Allen was wrong).

I dated a Straight women for a year who was paranoid if I stood next to a man; we broke up – but she did make an effort to understand. Then a gay man, very sweet and supportive, but he also thought I had “heteroprivilege”. Yes, I do come across as very straight, so he is right, but the moment I say who I am that privileged disappears quickly (we are still friends).

Finally I dated and am still dating a woman who has been as fluid in her dating as I have been. Yeah!!! But what the hell is up? Why do I get worse treatment in the gay community than the straight community?

What’s up? And why do academic papers say male bisexuality is less fluid than female bisexuality? And why did I not exist up til a few days ago?

Matthew in Our BiNation (via bisexual-community)

Man. This is something that perplexes and infuriates me everyday as a bisexual woman. Just the other day I was talking to a co-worker and we were discussing how one of his friends recently lost his “bottom virginity,” as it were, and liked it; even though he had only had heterosexual relationships before that. My co-worker went on to say that this made his friend gay now. I said that you could still call him bisexual, but my co-worker insisted that since he “took it up the ass” that made him gay. 

I feel that male bisexuals have it harder than female bisexuals. Female bisexuality seems to be more accepted in the world now than male bisexuality. Even if we all still seem to be seen as sexually “greedy,” or as sluts. I was talking with a different acquaintance when one of them exclaimed, “Bisexuality isn’t even a thing!” to which I replied, “I’m bisexual.” Then she answered back, “Okay, women can be bisexual, but men can’t.” If I had known this acquaintance better, I might’ve gone off on a tirade, but as it was, I just bit my tongue. I’ve had a few male bisexual friends in my life, and they all seem as attracted to both genders as I am.

The notion of bisexuality not even being real haunted me as a teenager. When I started realizing that I was looking at girls the same way that I look at boys I originally thought, “Am I a lesbian? I must be if bisexuality isn’t a ‘true’ sexuality.” However, I couldn’t be a lesbian because I still found boys attractive. Then I started to look at all the guys I’d ever had a crush on and how all of them had something feminine about them (however slight) and continued to think, “Yes, I must be a lesbian.” Then, because I’m Catholic, I tried to stifle that side of me, and for a while I decided that I was straight but could appreciate the beauty of women—like most girls do, or so I thought. It wasn’t until college when one of my straight female friends revealed to me that she had never been attracted to another girl, had never even thought of kissing another girl, that I realized that my “appreciation” was attraction. At that point I once again thought I was a lesbian. It wasn’t till a year after that that I came to terms with my bisexuality. Having a roommate who accepted bisexuality as a true sexuality definitely helped. She was the first person that I came out to, partially accidentally, but she fully accepted me as bisexual right away. Even before I did. 

So if I ever have children of my own, I hope that they will grow up in a world that accepts bisexuality, and will be able to step into whatever identity they are born with minus all the confusion I had to suffer through.

(via jeffaplus)

Source: bisexual-community

Anna Paquin defends bisexual label despite being married, pregnant - NYPOST.com

heyidostuff:

derangedbutterfly:

“despite being married, pregnant.”

for this headline to make any sort of sense, we must assume the following:

1) bisexual people can’t or won’t commit to one person or one gender

2) people who choose to be in monogamous heterosexual relationships must be heterosexual

3) therefore, people in monogamous hetero relationships who claim to be bisexual have an obligation to defend their claims.

why is bisexuality such a difficult concept for people to grasp?

“Anna Paquin says she is still bisexual.”

Geez, Anna! You’re married to a man and famous now, you don’t need to double your chances/seek attention all the time with this fake bisexual phase.

Ugh…people are so dumb.

Source: derangedbutterfly

Fears of Coming Out

The magazine that I freelance for never ended up printing this article, so I shall let you guys read it here! It seems appropriate for Easter…

When I was young and going through puberty, one of my friends (mostly in jest) would tease me constantly, saying that I was a lesbian. She would put out her arm in a straight line and say “This is everybody,” then start to wave her arm, point to me, and say, “And this is her.” All the other girls would giggle at my expense as I vehemently denied her claims of my sexual orientation. At this point in my life I was only crushing on boys because that was the norm and what teenage girls were supposed to do, but my hormones hadn’t settled out yet. However, around age fourteen, I started to get the same funny feelings from cute girls that I did from cute boys. By that time I was no longer hanging out with a girl that would constantly tease me, but the pain from hearing her hurtful words stuck with me. I also had the added pressure of being raised Catholic with parents who, whenever they saw homosexuals on television, would either change the channel or comment on how unnatural “the gays” are. So, with the thoughts that those feelings for other girls were strange and wrong, I cast them away as my hormones being out of control. However, as I was reaching adulthood, those feelings for other girls continued to haunt me and make me feel like there was something wrong with me.

My senior year of high school came, and I was sure that I had surrounded myself with caring and loving friends. However, I was deeply involved with the theater department, and because of the lack of males in the department, I was cast in a male role. I was joking around with the girl who played my love interest and one of the few males in the department turned to look at the two of us and said, “I always knew you were a lesbian.” I was horrified. “No, I’m not! I would never!” The pain I had felt from my other friend who teased me came rushing back to me, and I was frozen. I never thought that I had shown any tendencies of being a lesbian. My hair was long, I wore makeup, and I never dressed butch. If anything I was a bit of a tomboy, but I was never overtly masculine. But the teasings continued, and I vowed to never acknowledge my feelings for girls.

It wasn’t until later that year, when I was at a conference for Catholic youths, that I finally started to accept myself. There was a speaker who was brought to talk about issues facing the youth, and how to deal with these issues as a Catholic. The subject of homosexuality came up, and the speaker told us, “It’s a disease, much like mental retardation.” My friend next to me was enraged, but didn’t make a scene. She simply turned to me and said, “No, it’s not. It’s love.” I took those words in. A fellow Catholic didn’t think that homosexuality was wrong? Her words circulated in my head as I saw plenty of the other attendees walking around in shirts reading, “God is Love.” If homosexuality is love and God is love, how could God possibly think that it’s wrong? I slowly started to believe that there was nothing wrong with me, but the feelings were so engrained in me by society and the way I was raised. It took me a few more years to accept the fact that I am bisexual and to start coming out to my friends and family, and I am lucky enough to have such a loving support group around me. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the increasing number of youths who continue to feel like taking their own lives is the only way to escape the feelings that their sexuality is wrong. Queer people have to go through so much hardship just to accept that their romantic desires are valid, that a depressing number of them give up. However, I believe that in our lifetime we will see a change in society where the queer community will no longer have to be ashamed of who they are during their youth, and won’t have to experience the pain that I did in order to accept themselves.

We aren’t sleeping together…jeeze.

So I have a complaint I need to address. Our male friends are always asking my roommate and I if we’re fooling around. The short and simple answer is NO. Just because we are two sexually active, not completely heterosexual women does not automatically make us secret lesbian lovers. What the fuck are your deals? Bisexual people don’t just go around fucking everyone they see. We have standards like the rest of society, we just happen to be attracted to both genders. I understand that we’re both attractive, and you probably like to fantasize about us sleeping together, but guys, it isn’t actually happening. Get over yourselves. Being bisexual doesn’t mean I constantly wanna have threeways, and definitely not with my roommate. Can you imagine how awkward it would be to be living with a fuck buddy? Yeah, not gonna happen.