Erasure Looks Like This.

[cross-posted to Transcending Boundaries’ blog at http://www.transcendingboundaries.org/blog.html]

Bisexual. Pansexual. Fluid. Pan-romantic. These are just a few of the non-monosexual identities and expressions that exist in our fantastic queer world. All describe people who are attracted to more than one gender/sex. And all describe people who know what it’s like to be Erased. Misrepresented. Marginalized. Ridiculed. Not only by mainstream society, but by their queer allies in the gender and sexual minority communities. And lest anyone should think that’s a trivial matter, it’s not. It has some serious goddamn consequences.

I am bisexual. Or pansexual. Both labels suit me. If you stick ten people like me in a room, statistical odds are that four of us have seriously considered or attempted suicide. I am one of them. This suicidality rate is higher than for gays, lesbians or heterosexuals. (I’m not aware of any data on asexuals.) Similarly, the rates for poverty, intimate partner abuse, rape and sexual abuse, depression and other mood disorders, and poor overall health are also higher than for gays and lesbians. Bisexuals are paid less and less likely to be out to health providers. Or coworkers. Or family. Or anyone. And it’s hard to blame them, when coming out earns us monikers like traitor, indecisive, deluded, attention seeker, greedy, slut and fake.

With bisexuals et al. experiencing such adverse effects distinct from gays and lesbians, you’d think there must be some serious effort to root out and address the cause, right? Nope. Between 1970 and 2010, grants for the bisexual population totaled about $84,000. In comparison, grants for gay men and lesbian populations totaled about $64,000,000 and grants for transgender/gender nonconforming populations totaled about $16,000,000. And between 2008 and 2012, only $5,000 in grants was awarded to bisexual-specific projects or organizations. Additionally, no major national LGBT organization currently has a project geared toward the bisexual/non-monosexual population.

Not a one. $5,000. Is that really all we rate? I’m not ready to accept that the constant, daily erasure of our sexual orientations, and the isolation and the pain that this causes, is somehow reasonable. Four out of ten of us decide at some point our lives aren’t worth living. Is that not enough?

Of course, many of us in the Transcending Boundaries community wear other identities, like transgender and genderqueer and polyamorous and intersex, etc. I also identify as genderqueer, intersex and poly. How do these OTHER marginalized identities intersect with my bisexuality?

Well, some days it feels like I’m erased almost into oblivion. My sexuality is not real, because I am not gay or straight. My gender is not real, because I am not male or female. My physical sexual attributes are considered a deformity. For those of us who straddle these boundaries, who live in the in-between, we cannot just tackle one aspect of our being and ignore the others, or we will never be seen for the complex, beautiful beings that we are. And we deserve to be seen. Lately I have gratefully watched the trans*/GNC community blossom. But I have also watched the words “gay, lesbian and bisexual” turn into “gay, lesbian and transgender” in media stories and wondered…is it really that hard to include us all? Did I fight so hard for trans* inclusion only to watch bi inclusion pop out the other side? I can’t do that. I can’t choose between the two.

It is time for the bisexual/pansexual/non-monosexual community to become not only visible, but loud. It is time for the greater queer community to recognize that the struggles specific to biphobia and bisexual invisibility have very real, damaging consequences. We cannot afford to be an extraneous letter in the LGBT acronym or a polite afterthought. At least, four out of ten of us certainly can’t.*

[*If that ‘four out of ten’ reference reminds you of the 40% attempted suicide rate among trans*/GNC people – bingo. Neither the B nor the T can afford to be silenced, hence the alliances Transcending Boundaries works to build. But those are two subjects for other posts.]

Sources:
Bisexual Invisibility: Impacts and Recommendations (San Francisco Human Rights Commission)
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19907257/biinvisibility-FULLfinalforHRC.pdf
BiNet USA
http://binetusa.blogspot.com/2013/03/2013-bisexual-fact-sheet.html