Eponymous Fliponymous

Angry Bisexual With A Keyboard

[dysperdis]

I am bi and over 25

The “Bi people will eventually grow up and pick a side” claim is an old lie, but a tenacious one.

If you’re bi and in your mid 20s or older, it’d be cool if you could reblog this and give your younger bi followers a counter-example to help remind them that their bi identities are valid.

[harriefarrow]

I’m bisexual and am 55. I’ve ID as bisexual since I was 14. Check out StillBisexual.com for lots of great videos about bisexuals over the age of 25. 

[fliponymous]

47.  Been bi as long as I’ve been aware I had a sexuality.

[bugchat-blog]

the word ‘bisexuality’ is a taboo

it isn’t said on tv. orange is the new black, for example, features a bisexual protagonist who points out the biphobia at one point in assuming she can’t be attracted to multiple genders, but no one Ever says the word and she is ignored and referred to as a straight girl or a lesbian depending on the situation

other bisexual characters later turn out to have been Really Monosexual All Along. or are attractive, promiscuous women with commitment issues

this isn’t a coincidence.

people who are attracted to multiple genders, when asked about it, often describe themselves as “Fluid”. “I’d rather not label it.” “I don’t need to define it.” “It’s just whatever.” as if people are afraid of even implying the b word

this isn’t a coincidence.

the word ‘bisexual’ gets you different reactions in different places. straight people think you’re either faking for attention or a deviant. straight men are afraid of bi men and think bi women are just particularly promiscuous straight girls who want to have threesomes with them

gay men accuse bi men of being in the closet. lesbians accuse bi women of being straight girls going through a phase. and the ones who don’t do either of these things still often assume bisexuals are promiscuous, indecisive, and can’t settle down.

the theme throughout is that bisexually is illegitimate, deceptive, and always a front for something else.

this isn’t a coincidence

people are constantly encouraged to ‘settle down’, to ‘just pick one’, to ‘not be greedy’. abandon bisexuality. you’re really gay. you’re really straight. you’re too young. how can you know you’re bisexual at 16? 18? 20? 25?

this isn’t a coincidence

the word ‘bisexuality’ is constantly, persistently manipulated, by people who aren’t bisexual at all. the meaning twisted on shallow rationale. accused of being transphobic, or of being exclusionary. this has been happening for over 20 years now despite the existence of outspoken trans and/or non-binary bisexuals. whatever they can do to make you not say the word. pick a different one.

this isn’t a coincidence

bisexual people - whether implied or literally, deliberately saying they are bisexual using the word - are constantly rewritten as gay or as straight. gay icon. he was never interested in men. bi actor comes out? headlines say ‘came out as gay’, or articles outright ignore it

it’s never, ever a coincidence. bi erasure is a constant, ongoing thing.

[melinda-t-charville]

God yes. Characters doing the ‘no labels’ thing really annoys me. Some people don’t like labels, that’s cool. But it’s always the bi/pan/omni characters and it’s all of them.

It starts to feel a little ridiculous - especially when combined with RL media erasure - like there’s a sense we’re not quite bright enough to understand anything beyond gay or straight.

[fliponymous]

It is always and ONLY the nonmonosexual identities that get this treatment.  It’s like homosexuality a hundred years ago.

Bisexuality is the new Love That Dare Not Speaketh Its Name.

[fliponymous]

Dan Savage tells me that I’m straight because I’m a cismale in a long term monogamous relationship with a ciswoman. It doesn’t matter to him that we met because we were interested in the same man, ...

[fliponymous]

Gay, Lesbian, ________ and Transgender

This will be brief. People need to belong. Abraham Maslow’s heirarchy of needs describes how people are able to get their needs met. First is survival. If you don’t have food and water, or other th...

“This is one of the many reasons bisexual erasure is a problem. It prevents people from recognizing themselves in others, because it prevents people from seeing others like themselves. A community of invisible people is not a community that can empower its members – a community of invisible people is not a community at all, but a Cantor dust of scattered atoms, occasionally randomly connected, with only the power that each individual is able to bring to bear.If we cannot find each other, then, we cannot satisfy our need to belong, which means that on some level we are unable to build self-esteem, and without that ability, self-actualization is forever out of reach.”

[fliponymous]

Profiled in Bi Magazine: “ From passionate treatises on bisexual identity development to evocative arguments on labels and Venn diagrams explaining sexual orientation, this blog is where one gets to geek out on all things bisexual. Who is the man behind this blog?”

[bialogue-group]

Basically, no one has to identify as anything, but labels exist to highlight the suffering and oppression shared by a common group of people that other people are not even talking about or paying attention to. The object is always to make the world a better place so that future generations do not have to reinvent the wheel when in comes to facing discrimination and suffering. “Whatever” is a throwaway term. But bisexuals have been thrown away for so long, that attention to our specific needs and problems is really necessary right now.

Paige Listerud a Chicago Bi Activist commenting on the June 2015 article “Maria Bello Is Not Gay or Bi, She’s ‘Whatever’”  in The Advocate

(via binetusa)

[bifacts]

Life tip: Tired of being constantly purposefully mislabeled as gay or straight? Sneak into the pantry of your unsuspecting biphobic nuisance, and switch their salt and sugar. See a bottle of water? Switch it out with vinegar, and vice versa. Don’t forget to switch the ground coffee out with a jar of dirt. They’ll soon thank you for enlightening them on the importance of correct labels

[rantsandwitchcraft-deactivated2]

I get so sick of being told what my sexual preferences are by people who aren’t me. So I’ve made this to demonstrate it why being bi doesn’t make me only interested in only two genders. This is in no way meant to offend anyone, I just feel it’s important to share.

[jenniferrpovey]

I had a thought today about bisexual representation. We know it’s a problem (asexuals have it worse).

Representation means the character has to be explicitly bisexual.

Here’s the problem.

Young writers are taught that a cardinal rule is “show not tell.” We’re told we as the writer should not say “this character is bisexual.” We’re even told it’s ‘bad’ to have the character say “I’m bisexual.”

The problem then, especially for monosexual writers, comes in how to show the character is bisexual.

There’s the easy route of having them date both sexes over the course of the show or book. In Gotham, Barbara’s bisexuality is revealed when we find out Renee Montoya is her ex. That’s one way to do it. Unfortunately, when a lot of writers do it this way, they drift towards the bislutty stereotype. And that’s reasonable for some characters (Jack Harkness comes to mind - he’s a very cool character who is as bislutty as they come). It doesn’t lend itself to representing the entire spectrum of bisexual characters.

If you’re writing in first person, it’s easier. The MC of Making Fate, Jane, is bisexual, but the word has yet to be used in the series. Instead, she narrates about her attraction to both sexes, her rejection because of it by the asshole chairman of the gay and lesbian club (He insists she has to pick a side), her difficulties coming to terms with it. But those kinds of inner narratives only work if the bisexual character is the protagonist and you are writing prose in first person or close third. It doesn’t help scriptwriters, it doesn’t help for more distant points of view. It doesn’t help if the bisexual character is not the main character.

Of course, there are other ways to do it. Have a guy casually mention having slept with a character who’s currently dating a girl. Show a character’s hesitation about dating a bisexual person (a lot of people get nervous about the extra competition). Have somebody wear a piece of clothing with the bisexual flag, a T-shirt with a suitable slogan - if it’s something that char would do.

But I think as writers we need to be a little bit less afraid of actually using the word. I count myself in this.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with telling something if it needs to be told. And there is nothing wrong with having your bisexual character be out and proud…if they would be. It does depend on the character.

But if we’re going to have more explicit bisexual representation, we need to be less afraid to tell it. By being less afraid to tell it, we don’t drift into problematic ways of showing it such as pulling out the bislutty stereotype (unless it fits! People like that do exist, after all), or thinking we’re showing it clearly when our readers are actually glossing right over it.

So, tell your reader your bisexual characters are bi. AND show it. Show the confusion many of us experienced as teenagers. Show your bisexual characters appreciating eye candy. Write bisexual characters who are so out they’ll walk down the street with a T-shirt declaring their “status” and ones so in the closet they hope everyone thinks they’re straight (or even gay). But, above all, don’t let the “rules” of writing get between you and explicit representation.

[fliponymous]

Whenever I hear the “Women are paid $.78 for the man’s $1” I flip it around. Men make $1.22 for every woman’s $1. It interests me that even the most common simple measure of gender inequality is firmly based on male-as-normative …

bisexual activist and queer theory blogger Patrick RichardsFink 

this is an interesting point, although mathematically inaccurate: assuming the women:men, 0.78:1 ratio is correct, men make $1.28 for every woman’s $1

A white man makes $1.34 for every dollar that a black man makes

A white man makes $1.52 for every dollar that a latino man makes

A white man makes $1.24 for every dollar that a white woman makes

A white man makes $1.44 for every dollar that a black woman makes

A white man makes $1.67 for every dollar that a latina woman makes

That’s some bullshit right there.

Let’s take it a step further. For every hour a white man works, a black woman has to work 86 minutes to earn as much money. 57.6 hours a week compared to the white man’s 40.

Take it another step further. Assuming a Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 job, from Thursday 12:45pm through Friday end of business, a white man gets paid for his work, a black woman is, by comparison, working for free.

(via quentintortellini)

THE LAST LINE

(via covenesque)

This. I am tired of seing this numbers without thinking about woc. (via arobynsong)

THIS.

[artsyartichoke]

No one defines you but you.  

By Artsy Artichoke

[dovsherman]

[desroix]

Mmm, that sweet, sweet accuracy

[terminal-bisexuality-blog]

When people assume stereotypes are reality

"Why would you want to call yourself bisexual? That word has such negative connotations."

Yes, of course it does. Those are called stereotypes. That’s what stereotypes do.

[fliponymous]

Coming Out Day

Today is National Coming Out Day. Hi! I'm 100% certain that anyone reading this already knows I am bisexual, the B in LGBTQ+.

But here's the thing. Coming out isn't a 1-time event. It's a process that continues, and while that is true for all of us standing under the rainbow umbrella, it's especially true for the bi community.

Community is incredibly important, and the bi community struggles to be seen and understood by the straight world and the queer world. That's simply a fact of existence when you break down the binaries that people construct to make sense of the world.

I'm bisexual, and I wouldn't ever want to be anything else. Labels matter.

[fliponymous]

Gut Feeling

Today I was working at an event to benefit the local transgender community – a community that intersects with all the other letters of the awkward initialism by which we identify ourselves.  We had received a substantial in-kind donation from a person whose transgender child had passed on.

When I heard the news, I felt it in my gut.  The person who told me this saw my face, and clarified that it was natural causes.

“Wow,” I responded.  “That’s unusual.”  And then it struck me.  It is unusual, in our communities, for natural causes to be the stated reason for our deaths.  This is not the case in the cisgender heterosexual mainstream world.

So I told another person, also Queer, about the donation and the circumstances.  They got That Look, you know the one.  So I gave them the rest of the story, and they said. “Huh.”

Huh.  Wow.  That’s different.

This cannot be allowed to continue.  It can not be acceptable for any part of our community – a part that intersects all other parts so intimately – to have natural causes of death not even be on the radar as a first or second possibility.

People ask what it is we want.  What’s the point of Pride, or of being out of the closet, they ask.  And there are a million answers to those kinds of questions.

But the right to have the ends of our lives be easily and naturally assumed to be something other than a word ending in –cide, it seems to me, is a pretty basic and important right.

[fliponymous]

On Spectrums of Gender and Sexual Orientation

To use language that I find to be a better description, it's like an electron cloud. Gender, like sexual orientation, comes in nearly infinite variations with some larger (and some smaller) metastable areas where in a random crown you're more likely to find the majority. A lot of people who are pretty happy with these metastable areas treat them like the old fixed orbits that we used to imaging electrons were in, but that's Bohring and not really how it works, just how it looks from one PoV.

[fliponymous]

Why Biphobia Shall Not Be Tolerated

Yo. Gay people. You may be wondering why bisexual activists frequently point out biphobia in the gay community. You may ask, "Why aren't they focusing on the Overculture that's beating on us all?"

The answer is in Silence of the Lambs.

There's a scene in there, where Clarice calls Crawford aside, after he's said something that puts women down.

"Sir," she says, "those men in there? They take their cues from you."

As long as biphobia is tolerated in the gay and lesbian community, then the well-meaning straight people who want to help will think it's OK to be crappy to bisexual people. And the not-so-well meaning straight people? Does ANYONE think that they are treating bisexual people any better than gay people?

And don't EVEN start with the whole "accessing straight privilege" thing, because *even if that argument were true* (which is isn't) if you follow that logic then no one, gay or bi, would ever be out of the closet. Come on, people, you share the closet experience, it may be the only near-universal queer experience. Are you gonna stand there and tell me that it's OK to put down bisexuals because the closet is a magical place filled with friendship and magic and pudding pops? Didn't think so.

A gay blogger dropped trou and unloaded a steaming log of biphobia in the punchbowl today. Is now complaining about the mean bisexuals who misunderstood him. We didn't misunderstand, Jack, we need you to not "educate straight people" if what you are teaching them is that bisexuals are horrible people.

I will not calm down. I will not tolerate Callous Disregard. I will not allow biphobia from straight or gay people to stand unchallenged. Gay and Lesbian brothers and sisters and siblings, stand with me. That's all I ask. Stand with me *the way we have stood with you from the beginning*.