Let’s go through a little hypothetical situation.
Let’s say, a lesbian and a bisexual woman meet at a bar.
They talk for a couple hours, and they both really like each other.
They both think the other one is really attractive, and nice, and funny, and smart, and they click
really well together.
But then, towards the end of the night, the bisexual woman mentions something about an
ex-boyfriend, and when the lesbian asks her about it, she says that she’s bi.
So the lesbian woman gets mad.
She thinks that’s gross and feels like she’s wasted her time, so she storms off without
saying a word.
This kind of situation is really common.
All the bisexual people I know have some kind of story about how lesbians or gay men have
suddenly become disinterested in them after finding out that they’re bi.
That’s textbook biphobia.
That’s discriminating against someone for no other reason than their sexual orientation.
And this kind of biphobia is rampant in the LGBT+ community.
Like, obviously this is a problem with straight people too, but I think we can all acknowledge
when straight people are being biphobic.
If a straight girl doesn’t want to date a guy because she thinks it’s gross that
he’s bisexual, that’s pretty obviously biphobic.
That guy’s bisexuality wouldn’t hurt her in anyway, but she still feels disgusted by it.
And vice versa, if a straight guy didn’t want to date a bisexual girl because he didn’t
like the idea that she’s had romantic feelings for girls, that’s obvious biphobia.
When it’s within the queer community, we seem to think this kind of behavior is okay
for some reason.
Tons of lesbians and gay men have no problem saying they would never date a bisexual person,
and that really just leads to the further exclusion and marginalization of bi people.
Even bisexual people can be biphobic.
Amber Rose said she would never date a bi man because it makes her uncomfortable.
Like, what?
How does that make any sense.
And just so you understand my perspective, I’m a lesbian.
I’m a woman who’s really only attracted to women.
Granted, I’m a trans woman, so my experience is different than that of cis women, but I
can’t imagine why someone wouldn’t want to date a bisexual woman.
So, I did some research and found a few reasons that lesbians and gay men cite for not wanting
to date bisexuals, and now we can talk about why they’re all bullshit.
1) “I’m worried that they’ll leave me for someone of a different gender”
The thing is, whether you get dumped for someone of the same gender
or a different gender doesn’t really matter.
If they break up with you, who they date afterwards is none of your business.
It doesn’t affect you.
And whether they’re gay or bi, they could break up with you for someone else, or they
could stay in a longterm relationship with you.
Bisexual people are just as diverse in their relationships as gay people.
Some bi people end up in happy longterm committed relationships, others don’t -- and the same
can be said for gay people.
And I’ve heard people say that like bisexual people have twice the chance of leaving you
because they have twice as many options, but that doesn’t make any sense.
Like, first of all, if your relationship is just you being constantly paranoid that your
partner is going to leave you, it’s probably not a very healthy relationship in the first place.
But also, by that logic, just being around more people would make your partner more likely
to leave you for someone else.
Like, being with a gay person in a densely-populated largely-gay area like West Hollywood would
make them more likely to leave you than if you were with a bisexual person in a smaller city.
Like, if your plan to keep your partner involves limiting the number of people they come into
contact with -- not a great relationship.
Whether your partner is gay or bi, you should be able to trust them around other people.
Just because someone is bi doesn’t mean they’re going to leave you for the next
person they see.
2) “They’re not 100% gay and that makes me uncomfortable”
A really common misconception about bisexual people is that they only feel 50% attraction
towards one gender and 50% attraction towards other genders.
In reality, they feel 100% attraction to all of those genders.
Just because someone likes boys and girls, doesn’t mean that they like boys less than
someone who exclusively likes boys.
And if the fact that someone can feel attraction to multiple genders makes you uncomfortable,
that’s just your own internal prejudice.
That’s just like the “discomfort” that straight people when they see two men kiss
or two women kiss.
Just because your knee-jerk reaction to something is to feel uncomfortable, that doesn’t mean
it’s wrong or bad.
It might just mean you need to think about why it makes you uncomfortable and try to
work through your own ingrained biphobia.
We’re all raised in a heteronormative society, so it’s not unusual to have that initial reaction.
But it’s important to question it and to try and change it.
3) “I’m afraid they’ll cheat on me with someone of another gender”
Cheating sucks, there’s no way around that, but bisexual people aren’t more likely to
cheat than gay people.
It comes back to what we talked about in the first question, do you think that your partner
having more potential options around makes them more likely to cheat?
Then you probably just don’t trust them and don’t have a very healthy relationship.
I’ve seen a lot of people say that they were cheated on once by a bisexual, so they’ll
never date a bisexual again.
But that’s the exact kind of stereotyping that cishet people do to queer people.
They see one gay person do something and assume all gay people do the same thing.
Yeah, some bisexual cheat, but a lot of them don’t.
Some gay people cheat too!
Cheating isn’t exclusive to any sexual orientation.
And if you’re insecure because you think someone of a different gender could offer
your partner something that you can’t, then you really just need to work on your own insecurity.
Every person, regardless of their gender, offers something different in a relationship.
If a bisexual person has chosen to be in a relationship with you, it’s because they
love being in a relationship with you.
It’s not like they’re constantly being tempted by other possible relationships any
more than a gay person would be.
Again, not all bi people stay in longterm relationships, but many of them do -- and
it’s an insult to those people to say that bisexual people are always cheating with someone
of a different gender.
This is a case where you need to work on your own insecurities rather than blaming bisexual people.
4) “I think it’s gross that the person has had sex with or kissed someone of a different gender”
This one is really harsh because it kind of assumes that once you’ve kissed someone
or had sex with someone, you’re “contaminated” for the rest of your life.
Like the idea that you once did something weeks or months or years ago somehow makes
you unattractive in the present?
That makes no sense.
If you date a gay person, you don’t have to be attracted to all of their exes, and
the same goes for bi people.
What they did before doesn’t affect you, and yes that attraction to other genders will
always be there, but it doesn’t hurt you in anyway.
It’s just a part of who they are.
And this one doesn’t even only affect bisexual people.
Plenty of lesbians date men before they come out, and the same goes for gay men dating
women before they come out.
There are lesbians who have had sex with men.
There are gay men who’ve had sex with women.
That doesn’t “contaminate” them, and it doesn’t make them any less gay.
Saying that someone’s only desirable if they haven’t been with someone of another
gender before is harmful to so many people who had trouble figuring out their sexuality
or who needed to be in the closet for their safety.
5) “I don’t like greedy people, and bisexuals are greedy because they want both a man and
a woman.”
I don’t even know how to make an argument for this one; it’s just not true.
Bisexual people aren’t greedy; it’s just their sexual orientation.
This is a really common stereotype that’s basically saying that sexual orientation is
a choice, that bisexual people choose to be attracted to multiple genders because they’re greedy.
But obviously that’s bullshit.
Sexual orientation isn’t a choice.
Being gay or being bi isn’t a choice.
Bisexual people aren’t greedy for just being honest about who they can be attracted to.
6) “I don’t waste my time with confused bicurious people who call themselves bisexual.”
I’ve seen a lot of folks get hurt by someone and then generalize that to all bisexuals.
Like, some people do experiment with their sexuality, and some people have a more fluid sexuality.
Some folks use ‘bisexual’ as a label for some period of time, and then later switch
to a different label that feels better.
These kinds of folks are often labelled as confused and then generalized to all bisexuals.
But so many bisexuals are very confident in their sexual orientation.
Being bisexual doesn’t automatically mean being confused.
Sure, there are people who are confused and who identify as bisexual for a certain amount
of time, but for one, that’s understandable because sexuality is confusing and finding
out who you are can be hard.
But also, those people don’t represent all bisexuals.
If a bisexual person tells you that they’re confident that they like multiple genders,
and they’re not confused or experimenting, you should believe them.
7) “I only want to date other gay/lesbian people because gay/lesbian culture is important to me.”
The problem with this argument is that lots of gay people don’t want to be a part of
gay or lesbian culture, and lots of bisexual would love to be a part of that culture.
If you’re gay, I’m sure you’ve met the kind of gay person who doesn’t want to be
associated with the gay community, and who doesn’t ever want to talk about being gay,
and who doesn’t want to go to Pride, and who openly dislikes the hypervisibility of
the gay community.
These people exist; I’ve met plenty of them.
Whether gay culture and visibility is a good or a bad thing is an argument for another
video, but I think it’s safe to say that not all gay people like to consider themselves
a part of gay culture.
Meanwhile, there are a lot of bisexual people who love being a part of the queer community,
but feel excluded in spaces that are specifically for gay men or lesbians.
If lesbian spaces were more welcoming to all queer women, and gay men’s spaces were more
welcoming to all queer men, then this wouldn’t be an issue.
Just like gay people, some bisexual people would distance themselves from the community,
and others would love to be a part of it.
So the exclusion becomes kind of a Catch-22.
Bisexuals aren’t a part of the community because they don’t feel welcome, but nobody
is willing to make the community more welcoming to bisexual people.
Now, I think labels are important.
I’m not one of those people who thinks that labels divide us.
I think labels are important for finding community and ways of describing ourselves.
But in this case, using the labels “gay and lesbian” to exclude other queer people,
feels like an unnecessary division.
We’re all different, and we have different labels and experiences, and that’s okay
-- but we’re all queer, we all fall under the LGBT+ umbrella.
And I think it’s necessary that we all stick together.
When cis lesbians and cis gay men start to turn their backs on the rest of us, I feel
like it really harms our community as a whole.
We should be sticking up for and including all kinds of queer people, not just cis gay
men and cis lesbians.
So it’s okay if gay or lesbian culture is important to you -- I think that’s great
-- but I don’t think it’s a reason not to like bisexual people.
They’re queer too, and they’re a part of queer culture.
If you don’t think they’re a part of gay or lesbian culture, do everything you can
to make that culture more welcoming for them -- and don’t make it even more exclusive
by saying you’d never date them.
8) “Following the logic of this argument, lesbians have to date men, and gay men have
to date women, otherwise they’re prejudiced.
You’re basically advocating conversion therapy lite.”
This is the most ridiculous argument.
Sexual orientation and dating preferences are not the same thing.
This is a slippery slope argument.
Like, it’s saying that if dating preferences can be changed, then sexual orientation can
be changed in the same way.
But that’s not what I’m arguing at all.
And this slippery slope kind of argument is the same flawed logic that homophobes use
to discriminate against gay people.
They say, “Well, if men can have sex with men, that means that men can have sex with animals.”
But there’s just no connection between gay sex and beastality.
And likewise, there’s no connection between changing certain dating preferences and changing
sexual orientation.
Dating preferences are, to some degree innate, and to some degree shaped by the world around us.
They’re both nature and nurture.
And it’s hard to tease out which of those is in play at any given time.
Like, if you’re mostly attracted to tall men, it’s hard to know if that’s just
an innate preference you have, or if you’ve been socialized by a lot of our media telling
you that tall men are attractive and short men are not.
But it’s *possible* that you could change that preference by having bad experiences
with tall men and having good experiences with short men.
Eventually you might come to find short men more attractive.
Or, if you grew up in a culture that depicts short men as attractive, you’d probably
find short men more attractive than if you grew up in a culture that depicts tall men
as attractive.
In these ways, dating preferences can often change quite a lot and depend on the culture
and the media that you grow up with.
On the other hand, trying to change someone’s sexual orientation is proven to not work,
and it can be extremely harmful to the person.
In 2008, all of these organizations endorsed a report that said, “The nation’s leading
professional medical, health, and mental health organizations do not support efforts to change
young people’s sexual orientation through therapy and have raised serious concerns about
the potential harm from such efforts.”
Plus, there are gay people all over the world in every culture, so the argument can’t
be made that culture or media changes someone’s sexual orientation.
Some people who grow up in extremely heteronormative societies end up identifying as gay.
Sexual orientation is much much more innate than dating preferences, and claiming that
the two are the same is drawing a false equivalence between them.
Not to mention that when it comes to bisexual people, they’re physically not any different
from gay people or straight people.
You can’t look at someone and know that they’re bi.
So your attraction to them, on a physical level, doesn’t have anything to do with
their sexual orientation.
The only thing you have to judge them on is the stereotypes about bisexual people that
you have in your head when they tell you they’re bisexual.
And there’s no question that people hold implicit biases and stereotypes.
We all do.
But changing them is hard and we still haven’t identified the best ways to do that yet.
This is supported by a meta-analysis of 494 studies that in total looked at over 80,000
participants, and the researchers found that implicit bias can be changed, but haven’t
identified reliable longterm solutions for changing them.
So further research in that field is needed.
At the moment, it seems one of the best solutions is to simply be around people of different
groups, and to be around people who defy your stereotypes.
So just being friends with or acquaintances with more bisexual people is likely to change
your perception of bisexual people, especially if they aren’t what you typically imagine
a bisexual person to be.
A meta-analysis of 515 studies found that contact between two different groups reduced
prejudice between those two groups.
So, given that research shows that sexual orientation cannot be changed, while implicit
biases and stereotypes can be changed, I think it’s pretty obvious that they are not equivalent.
And, because I know how people are gonna twist my words and misconstrue my argument, let
me address some things right now: I am not saying that you have to date bisexual people
or you’re a bigot.
I’m saying that if the only reason you won’t date someone who you otherwise really like
is that they’re bisexual, that reasoning is harmful, and prejudiced, and biphobic.
I am not saying that *you* are biphobic.
I mean, you might be, but I think a lot of this stuff is just biases that we’ve all
internalized thanks to growing up in a heteronormative society.
And maybe you’ve never heard of this or even thought about this before; I’m not
saying that makes you a bad person.
I’m just saying that you really need to think about why you don’t like bisexual
people and figure out if that stems from biphobic stereotypes that simply aren’t true.
Also, the title of this video is only “not dating bisexual people is biphobic” because
“not dating bisexual people solely because they're bi is biphobic” is too long of a title.
I think there are plenty of situations where someone would never date a bisexual person.
But rejecting a bisexual person who you would otherwise like *just* because they’re bisexual?
That’s what’s biphobic.
So, that’s everything I had for today.
If you’re interested, I’ve linked to some articles in the description for further reading
about all of this.
And, in the comments, if you’re bisexual, tell me about your dating experiences with
lesbians and gay men.
And yeah, thanks so much for watching!
I’ll see you next time.