Like many people, I’m very good at hiding my prejudices, even from myself. For the longest time, I did not even realize how unfair my beliefs about bisexual people were. This discrimination — like other forms of it — is not only harmful to its victims, but to its perpetrators, too. I did not realize what I was missing out on until I dated a bisexual woman.
For years, I believed that bisexual women were fundamentally heterosexual. Some were undoubtedly hypersexual, I acknowledged, and found it necessary to branch out from their preferred male partners to satisfy themselves. Others were simply experimenting, confused. They did not identify as Questioning, because they were trying to find entrance into a community to which they knew they did not belong. For these reasons, I simply did not believe that bisexuals truly existed.
It’s not difficult to see how prejudiced these beliefs of mine were, but they were never challenged, and so I held onto them. As someone who is comfortable with the label “lesbian,” I have privilege over those with sexual orientations that are not as readily recognized by those within the heterosexual and homosexual worlds. I exercised this privilege without a second thought.
Perhaps more than others, I should have known better. I had identified as bisexual all my life, until I was able to accept that, despite living in a heteronormative world, I had no interest in men. I thought I was exceptional: a bisexual who loved women. My experience of dating outside of the homosexual/heterosexual binary was nothing like the one I had ascribed to bisexual women, yet I maintained it — until I met Cali.
She shattered my concept of bisexual women, and made me a happy person.
I met Cali on OKCupid, which I was using because it took a lot of the usual guesswork out of dating; I know a person is queer, and therefore a potential partner, because their profile tells me so outright. Cali was listed as “bisexual” on OKCupid. Despite this, I thought she was intelligent, beautiful and funny. I do not think Cali was ever aware of my prejudice because I hid it from her.
I generally try to be as authentic with potential partners as possible. However, I thought she was out of my league, despite her sexual orientation. Telling her that I suspected she was promiscuous, confused, and disingenuous was not a good move under those circumstances. Predictably, she shattered my concept of bisexual women, and made me a very happy person in the process.
I have been forced to completely revise my general beliefs about bisexual people and I have benefited from the change. I repeatedly remind my heterosexual male roommate about Cali. While looking at profiles on OKCupid, I often hear him say things like, “She’s cute . . . oh, she’s bisexual,” while scrolling along to other profiles. I believe this prejudice is less obvious to him than it was to me, because he has never been discriminated against because of his sexual orientation.
It was not only unfair, but hypocritical, for me to think poorly of bisexuals. It’s also unfair for other members of the queer community to do so. Perhaps it’s more detrimental to us in comparison to heterosexuals, because we have fewer possible partners available to us to begin with.
Regardless of our own sexual orientations, we must work towards a uniform respect for all. In this instance, I did not extend my recognition of the prejudice I faced to people unlike me. The solution was to address my privilege over more marginalized orientations head-on. This approach is continual and difficult, but well worth it.
