‘bi people can pass as straight!’
anyone can pass as straight, if they silence themselves enough.
SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!
“Silence themselves” implies people hide it. How about they just don’t feel the need to advertise their sexuality? At the end of the day, no ones sexuality ought to be their defining feature (unless they want it to be), and if people aren’t like “oh hey, nice to meet you I’m [insert LGBTQ+ identity]” that doesn’t mean they are silencing themselves.
Every person I meet, I have to assess. Is it safe to out myself? Will they get judgey? Will they get violent? Should I lie?
Do I really want to come out to my Uber driver?
If mention my fiancee, in casual conversation, what pronouns do I use? Most cishets won’t read “they” as queer, and she doesn’t mind me using it to keep myself safe. She has a gender neutral name. I’m lucky she has a gender neutral name. Cishets hear her name and think I’m engaged to a Christopher.
(I’m safer if they think my wife is to be my husband. I wish that I could give her the same gift, the same cloak of plausible deniability, and I hate myself for it. We are both bisexual; we would both be “gold star lesbians” if not for that inconvenient fact.)
My grandmother, who had for 22 years called me her soul-sister, proclaimed us kindred spirits, disowned me for not being straight enough. My father has not spoken me since he found out I’m marrying a woman.
I live in Chicago. I live in a queer neighborhood and work in a queer industry and visit a queer practice for my medical needs. I can clock other queers like a goddamn rainbow swatch. I eat breakfast at a queer cafe and I feel absolutely aglow when I see a cis-looking beardy dude wearing a he/him/his pin so the man I’d misread as a woman can wear that same pin himself and feel normal doing it.
When I was younger, I made a big deal about how my sexuality didn’t DEFINE me. (Because I’ll find a nice man and settle down and be safe and no one will know. Then it might go away.)
But as I’ve grown older I’ve come to understand that who we love and how we love are fucking important.
It’s not a privilege to be read as straight, it’s an insult.
This isn’t passing. It’s hiding.
And I desperately long for the day I don’t have to do it anymore.
“It’s not a privilege to be read as straight, it’s an insult.”
