I’m not on here much, but I have something to say about a recent encounter with bi erasure.
I’m currently enrolled in a fiction writing class, and as I do with most of my writing, I wrote a story that is very close to home. Perhaps too close for a critique setting, but writing helps me sort through things and looking at yourself is hard sometimes.
So my short story is about a bi girl who comes out to her dad. She also happens to be dating a boy, and here is where most of the issues people have with my story arises.
In the piece, the main character, Addy, has a conversation with her boyfriend abou why she has yet to come out. She ends up saying, “well, I’m dating you, so why does it matter?”
In my experience as a bi woman with a boyfriend, this is a question I ask myself all the time. While it’s valid, it’s also something I recognizeas problematic in the way I’ve internalized bi erasure.
So my story revolves around breaking that concept down. She comes out to her dad as a matter of being true to herself and those she loves, with the added pressure of the impending passing of one of her family memebers. One of the critiques on my first draft was that there needed to be a reason she came out to her father now, and not earlier. I thought I had fixed that in the second draft, but apparently not.
It turns out that people didn’t feel like she needed to come out because they didn’t really believe she was “bi-enough.”
So que 20 minutes of having my sexuality minimized and essentially invalidated in front of a classroom of 22 students on a very liberal, accepting college campus. Fun times.
In order to fix the issue of Addy not being “bi-enough”, there were a variety of suggestions given. These included changing the sex of her significant other to a girl so she had to come out (because you can only do that if you’re dating someone of the same sex). Alternatively, there could be a flashback to prior experience with girls (because that’s a prerequisite). Oh, and maybe I should highlight all the things she couldn’t get from her male partner to allude to the fact she might just date a girl in the future because you can’t have a fulfilling relationship if you’re bi. Common knowledge.
But the synopsis of the critique was this:
If those pressures weren’t present, then there was no point in my haracter coming out.
I’d like to say that the only reason you need to come out is because you want to be out. This doesn’t require any significant pressure, but it often does because it’s scary as shit. Even in the context of a loving family and supportive friends, that shit is not fun. Sometimes the greatest motivation is just getting to a point of being fed up with feeling suffocated. The story is meant to be about truth.
If my story was about a gay or lesbian person, there would be no question or explaination needed as to why they needed to come out, and rightfully so. My question is why a bi character seems to have the option to shut up and remain in the closet without a traumatic trigger to make them come out?
After all, that’s easy and unharmful, right?
I understand this is for a fiction writing class, and that certain elements have to be in place to create tension. I just don’t believe that I have to play into every stereotype and bi erasure method to achieve that. So thank you for your critique, it has shown me what my story is meant to do. I suppose it’s meant to show you that you’re wrong 🤷♀️
Here’s to further editing in the pursuit of authenticy.
dededos
prguitarman
kianamaiart
izzy806
tangentwithtanner
