The whole “bisexuals can’t reclaim the f/d-slur” discourse (I have a whole other post about the d-slur discourse, click that before going bonkers) is so disconnected from reality. It just does not make any sense unless you’re on the internet where people’s orientations are explicitly stated.
For same-gender couples and single non-heterosexuals, here’s no way for real-life strangers to distinguish between “gay” and “bisexual” unless we explicitly come out. Even then, bigots don’t care about who we’re not attracted to—any same-gender attraction bisexuals express renders us “gay” in other people’s eyes. It’s really funny how gay people insist that biphobia is just homophobia and yet we can’t… reclaim homophobic slurs that target and traumatize us.
Nobody looks at a single butch woman and goes, “just so you know, if I saw you with your girlfriend but I thought you were also into men, I would totally not call you the d-slur.” No homophobe sees two men holding hands or a man being flamboyant and thinks to themselves, “I’m going to call them f-slurs because I think they’re not attracted to women.”
Homophobic violence doesn’t occur solely on the basis of ~lacking attraction to the opposite gender~. It’s because we have attraction towards the same gender (and our society assumes that if you like the same gender then you don’t like any other gender; thanks bi erasure!). If this weren’t the case, bisexuals could escape homophobia by coming out, which is ridiculous. I wish we could do that.
Homophobic violence also has plenty to do with gender-nonconformity, which is to be expected when it’s such a staple of gay/bi culture and non-heterosexuality is a marker of “failing” to adhere to gender roles. As Laverne Cox puts it:
When kids are bullied and called anti-gay slurs… [i]t’s because the child did not conform to gender expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth. The bullies might yell ‘gay,’ but it’s about gender expression.
I know bisexuals who’ve been called these slurs while single or in different-gender relationships. I know people who’ve been called the d- or f-slur in response to coming out as bisexual. And did we all just collectively forget the whole “love the sinner hate the sin,” “it’s fine if you’re gay as long as you don’t ‘act on it’” crap?
I hear the “counterargument” that “bisexuals can tell homophobes they’re attracted to the opposite gender while gay people can’t,” but:
They can. That’s what being in the closet is. Gay and bi people can and do lie about their sexualities to avoid violence all the time.
Our different-gender attraction doesn’t eliminate the “problem” of our same gender attraction.
Again, do you really believe that if someone calls me the f-slur, I could just go, “I’m bisexual, actually,” and they’d apologize?
Y’all make far too many assumptions about how bisexuals live their lives when our experiences can be almost identical to yours. We’ve always shared spaces with you, fought with and for you. Unless you somehow believe that we aren’t oppressed for our same-gender attraction, there’s no legitimate reason to “guard” these words from us. They’ve been ours. We aren’t “stealing” anything.
