September 23rd is Bisexual Awareness Day.
Why have a special day for Bisexuals? Because we get hit with fear and distrust from both the gay and straight communities. Lots of people assume that if you are bi, then you have twice the dating options. The reality is, so many people have screwed up ideas about bisexuality that we have a much smaller dating pool than even lesbians!
I came out as Bi when I was 14 (for reference, that was 1988). Realistically, I am more pansexual than bisexual, but that identity was not available 20+ years ago. For me, gender of my partner is irrelevant and I date beyond the binary. I still tell most people I am bi- because pan- is not easily understood.
Basic Facts
Bisexuals are not necessarily sluts. We can be as monogamous as anyone else.
Bisexuals are not going to leave you because you are only single-gendered.
Bisexuals are not confused. I am not gay. I am not straight. Never have been. Never will be.
Its not a phase. If it is, this is the longest phase of my life (going on 30 years).
So, about a year ago, I did a poem about bi-phobia based on the funeral oration from Julius Caesar by Shakespear. If you have forgotten it from your sophomore year of high school, here is the original.
Am I Not Honorable
Dykes, faggots and heteros, lend me your ears;
I have come to bury bi- phobia.
Gender is too often exalted
and oft felt in your bones.
So let it be with you. I will tell you
gender is irrelevant to me.
As you fail to sort your lovers
on religious denomination or height
believing those to be meaningless in love,
for me gender does not factor in passion and desire.
I am an honorable woman.
I come not to your bed with the desire
to seek other lovers believing you to be inadequate.
Just as you have fought to be defined
by more than who you sleep with so do I.
I have brought men and women and trans folks
to my bed. I have done this
with full disclosure of who I am and what I desire.
My sexuality does not shift with the gender
of the lover on my arm. I remain strong and queer
regardless of my partner’s genitalia.
Thrice I have taken lovers and thrice my sexual orientation
has changed in the eyes of the world.
When a beautiful woman adorned my arm I was a lesbian to you.
When a man kindly kissed me I became a hetero to you.
When a transgirl escorted me in, I was queer.
Was that my fickle sexuality or your perception and belief?
Yes, your gender is important to you
and as a gendered lover you stand strong.
I ask you, can I not disregard gender and still be an honorable woman?
I am here to speak to you of what I know.
I love with intention and passion
and my lover’s gender remains irrelevant to me.
I recognize you seek to embrace your identity
and be fully who you are. That is honorable.
I seek to live, acknowledging my path that is genderless.
Yes, I am seen as a cis-gendered woman in this world.
By my love remains unbound by the confines
of our misconception of duality.
Oh judgement! You all are brutish beasts
and have lost your reason.
My heart will confirm
my lover does not define me.
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