It is a general rule that when people talk about “biphobia,” the first things that come to mind are often the kinds of things that used to be called “microaggressions.” You know what I’m talking about: complaints about stereotypes, complaints about gays and lesbians being mean to us, complaints about erasure — which is of course always defined as an individual bisexual not being seen as bi rather than the more structural oppression of systemic bisexual erasure.
But while I dislike biphobia in all its forms, the bi oppression that truly keeps me up at night is not the fact that someone doesn’t want to date me or that I’m not welcome at this or that party. What bothers me is the way those microaggressions embed more deeply into society and become, if you will, macroaggressions: things like, say, facing the threat of deportation to a country where your life is at risk because the Canadian government doesn’t think you’re really bi, as happened recently to Charles Mwangi.
Asylum requests have long been a fraught topic for bisexuals. In many cases, bisexuality is not considered a valid reason to seek asylum in the first place: sure, a country might be violently homophobic, but can’t bisexuals find safety there just by pretending to be straight? But the threat that faced Mwangi was, in some ways, even more sinister. It wasn’t that the Canadian government didn’t recognize the threats that bisexuals face in Kenya, Mwangi’s home country. It wasn’t that they didn’t know that deporting a bisexual to Kenya could put them at grave risk.
It was simply that they decided Mwangi wasn’t actually bi.
Despite his sworn testimony.
Despite the sworn testimony of his boyfriend.
Despite the fact that he was an active member of the Toronto LGBTQ+ activist community.
Apparently, it was deemed more “credible” that a straight Kenyan man would flee to Canada, apply for asylum, find a fake boyfriend, do a bunch of pro-queer activism, and get covered by the international press in such a way that would ensure that if he did return to Kenya, his life would be at risk because he’d been publicly branded a bisexual in the media. Yes, that’s a much more plausible scenario than simply “this dude is bi.”
Thankfully, Mwangi’s deportation was cancelled at the last minute, and he’s been granted a one-year temporary resident permit (though this time next year, he could wind up facing deportation again). But the fact that Mwangi’s safety and ability to stay in Canada was ever in question speaks deep volumes about the reality of what it means to face biphobia, the reality of the insistence that bisexuality “isn’t real,” that self-identified bisexuals are just “doing it for attention,” can have deadly impacts on actual bisexual lives.
I don’t really know what the solution to this problem is. But I know we can’t solve it unless we talk about it. And I hope that stories like Mwangi’s help people begin to understand that bisexual oppression isn’t just a personal discomfort. That bisexual oppression puts lives at risk.
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