I went as “Bi-Centennial” and I was received pretty well, much to my surprise. Billing myself as America’s most flamboyant bisexual superhero -- there were a lot of feathers -- I had “The Power of Woman, the Soul of a Man, The Reproductive Organs of Us All.”
I was a hit. Seriously, there must be more than a hundred pictures out there of a crazy guy in red, white and blue feathers, spandex and heels. It was the first time after I’d come out that I truly felt like I fit in somewhere. I laughed a lot.
The funniest thing, however, was as my friends and I were navigating our way out of the city, the driver had no idea where we were. As I watched her desperately trying to find the right street I boldly told her to turn left, to which she replied, “You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” I said. “That’s my superpower! I know all the streets that go both ways!”
Pretty original, I thought. (And it didn’t hurt that turning left was indeed the correct way out of the slums.)
Nearly a year later I still think that’s a pretty funny story and ComicCon still holds a warm place in my heart. What I don’t think, however, is that my superpower was an original one -- or that bisexuals are warmly welcomed everywhere.
For one thing, the idea of bisexuals going both ways in popular culture goes back a long ways, certainly longer than ComicCon. Apparently as early as 1959 people have been using AC/DC -- literally alternating current -- to indicate people going both ways.(1)
Indeed, more than any other LGBT term I’ve researched, “bisexual” has more different slang and synonyms associated with it than any other.
Also appearing in the 1950s to indicate a bisexual person? “Switch.” Ick. (Which is still better than what they came up with in 1924: “Ambisexual.”(1) You can bet they’d never come up with Ambien if that word had stuck.
One term that did stick, naturally, is “bi,” making its appearance about the same time, in 1959. (“Bi” being the Latin for “two,” as in bicycle, meaning two wheels; bifocal meaning two lenses, and "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo,” meaning one of two songs from a Disney movie no one can spell.(2))
Not as clear cut, however, is the term “bisexual” itself, which appeared first in 1824, meaning "having both sexes in one being, hermaphroditic."(1)(3) It wasn’t until the late 19-teens, early 1920’s that it came to mean "attracted to both sexes," the meaning as we understand it today. Which then brings us back to the 1950’s, when “bisexual” finally entered general use. “Bisexual,” “AC/DC,” “bi,” “switch:” Like tailfins and skirts with poodles on them, it seems when it came to talking about bisexuals, too much was never enough.
Unfortunately, for some people just the term bisexual is too much -- and that’s in the LGBT community itself. There are literally hundreds of media articles and studies that document this.
Search for “bisexual discrimination” within the gay community and a dozen different unique links come up before you get to a link that’s actually about something else.(4)
“Bisexuals must frequently contend with discrimination from gays, lesbians, and straight society around the word bisexual and bisexual identity itself says wikipedia.(5)
The “straight society” part makes sense in a homophobic, horrible sort of way. If people are going to hate gays and lesbians, why wouldn’t they hate bisexuals, too? Might as well be consistently idiotic.
What’s more surprising, however, is that within the LGBT community it’s not so much people don’t like us to exist, there are a number that don’t even believe we do.
This isn’t just ignorance. Some scientific studies seem to show that it is extremely rare for people to be equally aroused by both men and women. Of course, that presumes that the definition of bisexuality has nothing to do with sexual identity -- which is a whole other column. Trust me, I wrote it last week.(6)
Sadly, this appears to be one of those things that’s not improving rapidly in the LGBT world. According to a 2011 report by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, “Bisexuals experience high rates of being ignored, discriminated against, demonized, or rendered invisible by both the heterosexual world and the lesbian and gay communities. Often, the entire sexual orientation is branded as invalid, immoral, or irrelevant.”(7)
All of this isn’t news to me. of course. The minute I figured out I was bisexual, I immediately went and researched it. I was stunned how how singularly divisive a term meaning two could be. Maybe that’s why I was so nervous before I went to ComicCon. It’s bad enough knowing some of the majority dislikes you, it’s a whole other worrying that your own minority does.
No wonder I had more fun with superpowers.
References:
1) Online etymology dictionary: bisexual
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=bisexual
2) “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” is the other
3) Dictionary.com: Hermaphrodite
“Her·maph·ro·dite, noun...an individual in which reproductive organs of both sexes are present.” This is definitely NOT most bisexuals.
4) Compare this to searching for, say, information about tigers. The first thing that comes up is the baseball team. That’s helpful in 7th grade biology.
5) Wikipedia: Bisexual
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisexuality
6) When it comes to gender, a different identity doesn’t mean a mistaken one
http://rainabowe.weebly.com/2/post/2014/01/january-12th-2014.html
7) LGBTQ Nation: New report highlights discrimination against bisexuals by both gays and straights
http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2011/03/new-report-highlights-discrimination-against-bisexuals-by-both-gays-and-straights/