An Ode to (Bi) Pride

Originally published July 6, 2018

Pride month has come and gone again. More often than not I find myself missing the key moments—the parades, the dance parties, etc. There’s a number of reasons for this: I’m busy, I don’t like crowds, parades, or talking to strangers, I don’t have a good queer crowd to go with. But I’ve got to admit that part of the reason I end up missing pride events is that some part of me feels that I don’t quite belong there. 

I am bisexual. I also think that queer or pansexual describe me well but I usually come back to bisexual because it’s classic, more complex than people realize, and often misunderstood. We’re everywhere, but because so many of us are “hiding” in “heterosexual” relationships, it can feel like we are slightly invisible. You probably know so many bi people, you don’t even know. 

I am also in a monogamous relationship with a man, so I often “pass for straight.” Usually this doesn’t bother me because not everyone I meet needs to know the complex workings of my soul and sexuality. But there are times when the invisibility gets to me. The other day I work I found myself leaping at the opportunity to out myself when a co-worker was talking about a bi friend of hers who was marrying a man. I wanted my coworkers to know me better, but the act of outing myself left me slightly shaky and blushing. At my last job where I worked for over two years with a tight-knit group of people, I never came out, not even to the other queer people there because I could never find a not-awkward way to bring it up. I talked about my partner—a man—and other things going on in my life, but I could never find a way to say, “by the way, I know I’ve talked about my boyfriend and I have long hair and present pretty femme, but I like women and have dated them and slept with them but it’s been a while and sometimes I feel more attracted to men and at other times to women and sometimes to people who don’t fit neatly into either category but right now I’m dating a man but I’m still bisexual.” It’s just a weird thing to say to people, even ones you like and want to connect with. 

When I was in my early twenties my two best friends from high school and I went to a bar in our hometown. I left our table to use the bathroom and when I got back they both looked at me very seriously and asked, “Are you going to marry a man or a woman?” I was amused but also a little thrown, because I thought that it was obvious what bisexual meant. “I don’t know,” I said, “it depends on who I fall in love with.” Much love to these two, who remain my two best friends, and who I believe were trying to know me better. It didn’t bother me, but has always tickled and puzzled me. Honestly, I wish more people would ask these questions, so that bi folks like me would have more opportunities to talk about their truth. 

Although it was often been delightfully called “Twenty-Gay-Teen”, 2018 has been a particularly good year for bi-visibility. Bisexual characters are all over television (see Brooklyn Nine Nine, Jane the Virgin, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and many others.) Rosa’s coming out as bi on Brooklyn Nine Nine was particularly thrilling because she named it—the character actually said the words “I am bisexual,” and they spent a lot of time exploring exactly what that meant for Rosa and what it meant for her to come out to her co-workers who had all assumed she was straight. Not only have we had more bisexual characters, but a wealth of artists have spoken openly about being bi and queer, like Stephanie Beatriz, the actress who plays Rosa, Janelle Monae, and Tessa Thompson. It’s really exciting to hear women speak about their own sexuality in a way that resonates with my own experience—to hear them speak about being attracted to women as well as men, about feeling as if you could fall in love with anyone regardless of gender, about the need to come out and own your truth even if you aren’t actively dating a woman. Of course there have been some clunkers: the Rita Ora song “Girls,” is the musical equivalent of a stale saltine, and it is also a male-gazey, watered-down portrayal of bisexuality. “Red wine and I want to kiss girls,” reduces female bisexuality to drunken whims—it doesn’t allow for either actual romantic relationships between women or even really sexual ones—what do the men who wrote that song think women do with each other? Kissing seems to be it, because if there’s not a penis involved, what else is there, right? 

I’ll end with some recommendations for some actually great bi music to enjoy this summer: the entire new Janelle Monae album Dirty Computer which features “Pynk”, a musical ode to vaginas and “Make Me Feel,” which, even if you don’t interpret as a bi anthem, is the best song to come out this year besides Cardi B’s “I like It.” And of course the classic “Getting Bi,” from one of the smartest shows on TV, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.