Celebrating 25th Bisexuality Day: Challenging Stereotypes and Raising Awareness

This week marks the 25th annual Bisexuality Day of Recognition, which was originally called "Celebrate Bisexuality Day". For over a quarter of a century, the day's purpose has been to "raise awareness and challenge the elimination of bisexuality". While one week may seem like an ample amount of time to raise awareness of an issue, a recent study showed that 37% people still view bisexuality as a choice, as opposed to homosexuality, a finding that underscores why we still need to work on raising awareness of bisexuality.

The survey, conducted by the dating app PURE, looked at the views of 2,000 Americans on bisexuality. The results show that many people still hold stereotypical views of bisexuality, with 20% believing that bisexuality is a "stepping stone" to homosexuality and 26% believing that people claim to be bisexual because of some "benefit" ("What benefit?!"). "What benefits?!" Every bisexual wants to ask). The survey also found that 31 TP3T of respondents don't even believe that bisexuality really exists.

Let's clear something up: bisexuality is real. In fact, the majority of the cool crowd is bisexual.The 2021 UK Census - the first census to include a gender question - found that 1.3% of the UK population identified themselves as bisexual.

For those who want to learn more about bisexuality, there are many books that can help. For example, Greed: Notes of a Bisexual Who Wanted Too Much is a book that explores the bisexual experience.

While some people may be openly bisexual first before they are openly gay, that doesn't mean that bisexuality is a stopover on the way to gay town. In a society that would rather you not be cool at all, figuring out your coolness can be challenging, and for many people, it can take a while for the many layers of internalized homophobia to dissipate. In addition, identities can change over time.

So why does the understanding of bisexuality lag behind other cool kid identities? Meg-John Barker, a theorist and author of several books on cool kids, suggests that it's because of our cultural obsession with duality. Bisexuality challenges two key dichotomies: "attracted to the opposite sex vs. attracted to the same sex" and "nature vs. choice".

In the dominant culture, things that are "natural" are often seen as more real and fixed than things that are "chosen". In reality, however, these things are not binary. Most aspects of being human, including sexual behavior, are biopsychosocial. This means that they are a complex combination of aspects of our innate orientation, aspects that we have developed over time - both in response to the choices we make, and as a result of the culture around us and the choices available to us.

The homosexual/heterosexual binary is forced upon all of us, and anything other than that is seen as a choice. This has become another way of refuting bisexuality. Because of this, people have been trying to prove that bisexuality isn't real for a long time, including a 2005 study that led the New York Times to claim that all men are either "gay, straight, or liars".

Bisexuals are perceived as untrustworthy, and this affects our entire identity; we don't tell enough about our own existence. Bisexual phobia stereotypes tell us that bisexuals are unreliable narrators of our own lives-because if you can't trust someone to know who they're really attracted to, you can't trust them to understand any of their sexual experiences-and that unisexual (attracted to one gender) people understand our sexuality better than we do.

These stereotypes continue to negatively impact bisexuals. Statistics and first-person accounts tell us that bisexuals are more likely to be in poorer physical and mental health, in part because bisexuality is eliminated from healthcare settings. London journalist Katie Boyden is one of the many bisexuals who lack understanding when trying to get support and healthcare. A previous therapist told her that her bisexuality was "[her] choice."

The "nature vs. choice" dichotomy has harmed the bisexual community in other ways as well. While Born this Way's narrative is a huge victory for LGBTQIA+ rights (and spawned an incredibly catchy song - thanks Gaga), it also subtly demonstrates that the cool community deserves rights and protections only because of the things that happen to us, and that we will choose those things if we can.

Bisexuality is not a choice. No one is going to sit down and make some list of pros and cons of the sexual orientation they want to be. Like gay, straight or asexual, bisexuality is a natural, beautiful, wonderful part of people's complex, multifaceted, fabulous selves, but it's not up to us. Through my own bisexuality, I have found a wonderful community, made lifelong friends, fallen in and out of love, and I have become an activist. If that 37% respondent is right, bisexuality is a choice I would make any day.