A group I’m involved with is in search of a new leader. It is a long, slow process — as all well-considered leadership searches should be — and there are many chances (commonly referred to as “listening sessions”) for various members of the community to weigh in and express their opinions and desires about who the next leader should be.
Because this group is very social justice oriented, and because it is very focused on uplifting marginalized members of the community, there have been several listening sessions particularly tailored to various subgroups: listening sessions for BIPOC members, listening sessions for LGBTQ members, listening sessions for trans and non-binary members specifically. And so on and so forth.
What there is not — what I would not ask for — is a listening session specifically for bisexuals. And I am trying to think through why that is.
I have a lot of baggage around the idea of a “bisexual space.” Even now, as a Professional Bisexual™️ who writes a sporadic newsletter about bi issues, I still have to fight off a full body cringe when I simply think about what it would be like to ask this organization for a dedicated listening session for bisexual community members.
Even just the thought triggers an immediate flood of negativity: Why do bisexuals need their own spaces? Do they think they’re better than other LGBTQ people? Everyone knows bisexuals are more privileged than other queers, why would they need a dedicated space?
And then, of course, some joke about sex parties.
It’s funny — not funny haha, but funny weird and sad — to witness these thoughts in myself, knowing as I do that we are weeks away from Pride, which means we are weeks away from inevitable jokes about how bisexuals (who, of course, are often reduced to “bisexual women with straight boyfriends”) are a bummer who ruin the vibe of queer celebration.
I know all the reasons why an LGBTQ+ space does not necessarily serve me, a bisexual. I know all the reasons why I feel silenced and sidelined in these groups. And yet. I still feel like it is somehow wrong and inappropriate for me to ask for a space of my own; as though it is not me seeking a safe space, but me flagging some sort of belief in my own supremacy.
It doesn’t help that even among queers, the idea that bisexuals are marginalized — and marginalized along a bisexual axis, and not merely a queer one — is still a bit fringe. It does not help that most of the people who can understand why specialized groups are even needed still cannot fathom why bisexuals, specifically, might need groups of their own.
I’ve said before that bisexual erasure is, more than the erasure of an individual’s bisexuality, the broad invisibility of the experience of biphobia — the lack of awareness that even bisexuals ourselves have of how we are ground down by living in a society that is built for monosexuals.
I don’t think I want or need a bisexual listening group for this particular leadership search, not least because I don’t even know if I’m going to have time to attend one of these listening groups and it would be very awkward to request a bi one and then not show up. But I am, nevertheless, trying to go into Pride month with the energy of someone who believes that she has a right to have a space that is just for bisexuals. I am trying to go into Pride month not just intellectually knowing all of the stats about the impacts of biphobia, but actively feeling and understanding the reality of what it means to live in a world that refuses to accommodate bisexuals.
I am trying to believe that a bisexual only space is not some frivolous ask, or a sign that I’m some kind of queer elitist or desperate for a threesome. I am trying to believe that a bisexual space is no different from any other space reserved for marginalized people. I am trying to believe that it is something that I deserve.
I hope you can find a way to believe that you deserve it too.
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