Bi vs Lesbian discourse but I looked at it through a mathematical angle and now I canât unsee itâŚ.
( this is so terminally online. But I think this could apply to multiple situations. It has certainly helped ME see the "why")
Probably gonna call me tinfoil hat- predictable- idgaf.
Where was I? Oh RIGHT! (So this is my "theory" btw for context-but originally I wrote a coming out post/ breaking ambiguity to get more personal.
I did not think about my label too much after I came out again lol. Until I did. I discovered a year and a half or so later after coming - then going online- all about about âcomphetâ âgold starâ âfebfemâ âradfemâ âpolitical lesbianâ all that stuff. I remember seeing that comphet masterdoc and thinking it was so silly. I had never seen it before. I used to think âwhy blame comphet instead of taking accountability?â But I didnât NOT believe in it at the same time when I learned the concept and that created a lot of tension for me as I began to look deeper. ďżź
I had ITCHY cognitive dissonance. I did not even realize how itchy it was. Because âwhy blame comphet instead of taking accountability?â I said that, sure, but I did not want to say I was technically bi. Because everything I had seen online about bi people was negative AND to the antithesis of what I was (male centered, gonna leave for a man, etc) I did not relate.
It is as if I had an error- bi: women is a phase, really wants men and then will leave women for men someday. I was like âdoes not computeâ. I kept on trying to think of another way that ânon gold starsâ COULD be lesbians. Some genuinely believe it and I used to too. Until I kept pondering about it. I really wanted it to be true. I did not want the baggage of the âbiâ label as it is (what I am about to elaborate on) high entropy and raises more questions. And then men think they have a real chance with you. And you get equated with people who aren't really like you.Â
But eventually, after accepting ambiguity (hence why I have remained ambiguous about it except privately or anonymous publicly), it felt better. I stopped being scared. It is just a thing that is. It did not change anything about me or the truth. Â
And so I am here telling you now. But why? What the hell does this have to do with anything?
But now that the question "AM I REALLY X" doesn't sit in my mind everyday, I feel an evolution of thought.
â---The why questionâ------------
I present no solutionâŚ. just a why.
WHY does this pattern keep happening? (Not just me but others because well why is there a whole discourse on the subject) Why do so many women who are clearly not 0% into men still reach for the âlesbianâ label? Why does the bi label create instant uncertainty and follow-up questions while âlesbianâ doesnât? Whatâs actually going on under the surface with how humans process these signals?? If it keeps happening, clearly there is a reason.
I've answered in the implication of why ( I personally- but I am thinking about other people too because of the pattern) did not want to come out with this label despite fighting cognitive dissonance. Because of the stereotypes, the lack of community within all bisexuals (of all types) due to variation-I like to think of it like everyone speaking a language that is deriving from the romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian) but just because they are all romantic does not mean they can all understand each other. And the loneliness of being a kinsey 4-5 range person, you get the point.Â
But WHY other than this is it so difficult for most people AND THE PUBLIC (myself included to really âcome outâ as âbiâ.) People wonder why people avoid it(if you are not 50/50) Because I know I am not alone in this. Being a febfem is literally just explaining to people what it is over and over (because it is a tumblr term that sounds like a tampon, no offense). And like I said, we see over and over again, âfakebiansâ. Women who are technically bi but say they are lesbians anyways. Online, we just get mad and yell âFAKEBIAN! COCKSUCKER! ERASURE!â And the cycle repeats. Nothing changes. No thinking beyond just the surface. We audit other people and people audit themselves (whether they admit or NOT, a pattern exists). If it is so easy to just say bi why donât people just say itâŚimmediately-even if they donât feel any caution per say(because some do not). I am talking mostly about the pattern we see of women who we find out are bi later online and then we get mad when they say stuff like âI AM A LESBIAN WITH AN EXCEPTIONâ (I agree it sounds silly do not worry lol). But there has to be a deeper reason to why this is happening besides just âlesbian erasureâ âbi erasureâ.
â----Information theoryâ----------------
In 1948, mathematician Claude Shannon introduced information theory. I started researching this way before I wrote this but then one day, I made the connection. It was at a grocery store as I was thinking about what I learned about it days prior(it applies to radios as Im also obsessed with radios at the moment too) and I was like AHA this could connect you know??? This could connect to language.
In a nutshell: Information is the resolution of uncertainty. Not just facts and knowledge like we use it in layman's terms. It is the mathematical study of how we communicate data. Itâs the foundation of every text message, radio, video stream, and hard drive you use today. It is so fascinating and honestly I am just in awe with the concept of entropy (represented as H). Entropy(H) measures how much uncertainty or âsurpriseâ is in a message.Â
 You can apply this concept to real life HYPOTHETICALLY even tho it is technically for computers and radios and such. Humans are like radio receivers only biased and emotional a lot. But the concept could still apply.
High entropy: A message that is unpredictable or vague. It requires more "bits" (each piece of information is counted as âa bitâ)of data to explain. Example- I am a christian. Ok but what kind of christian? Catholic? Orthodox? Protestant?Â
Low entropy: This type of message would carry little information. It would carry EXPECTED information. For example, If a fundamentalist christian says "I believe the Bible is literal and there really was a great flood on earth!" that is a low-entropy message. It carries almost zero new info because we already expected it.Â
And then comes VARIABLES, which I WILL tie to my point . Redundancy is the extra data added to a message to ensure that if some "bits" are lost or corrupted by noise, the receiver can still figure out the original meaning.
Messages have a variable count. Example: I have a coin. It could be heads or tails. That is a 1Â variable outcome. Because it can ONLY BE heads OR tails. Not at the same time. A single coin has two possibilities, yes, but it only represents one variable because once you know it's "Heads," you automatically know it is not "Tails."Mutual exclusivity.
Now tying it into the online discourseâŚâŚâŚ
Lesbian-1 Variable. You will only be with the ladies lol. Low entropy. Very expected outcome. You are either with a woman(land on heads) or you are single(land on tails)-if you were to apply coin logic.
Straight- 1 variable. You get the picture. Â
Bisexual-2 variables. Man and woman. But unlike a coin, it is not mutually exclusive. You are left wondering when someone says vaguely âI am biâ- questions like âmen or women more?â âwho are you gonna date?â âwill you change someday?â âpreference?â â50/50?â âbiâŚ.curious?â ((You see how with a bisexual how the coin analogy breaks down lol. Because with the coin analogy, you could just say youâre either with one particular gender or youâre single but with bisexuality thereâs so many fucking possibilities because that label is shared by so many.)
And then you try to solve it by being more specific. Febfem OR âBisexual with a strong female preferenceâ. That is a lot more specific, but it still does not reach the same level of certainty as the 1-variable label. There is still a possibility. If a system has a variable, it has Potential. Even if you say the probability of you dating a man (ever or again) is P=0.000001, as long as you use the "Bisexual" label(which the Value of that variable is NOT absolute zero) it represents the possibility of it still being there.
A better way to imagine: imagine you have a jar of marbles. Blue marbles- dating a man. Pink marbles-dating a woman white-perpetually single
The lesbian has ONLY pink marbles (bc sheâs only into women and no men in anyway) and white marbles (for when the possibility of being single)
The bisexual has blue AND pink (and white) even if not, every jar has the same amount, the presence of all of them is still in the jar. Even if she tries to âremoveâ them, the fact that you still are attracted to them no matter what keeps the even if it is only 3 blue marbles in the jar.
Now you see the lesbian label communicates a closed system:
⢠no possibility of men (no blue marbles)
A bisexual label communicates an open system:
⢠even if extremely unlikely, the possibility still exists (at least one blue marble).
And SO it creates more ânoiseâ. A non-zero probability, no matter how small, represents Potential Information. People are still gonna know. They hear: "There is a 0.000001% chance (or 5% or wtv percent if you count fleeting attraction that doesnât mean you necessarily want to do it but maybe a what if itâs hard to tell tho if you have OCD. But it doesnât matter you get the point.) You are stuck adding more redundancy(more words) to get the message across that getting with a man for you is practically not feasible. Now you are stuck wondering if that passing thought means you truly wanna just up and go and leave a woman you love for a man?
They act like: "So you're saying there's a chance!" âSo thereâs a chance that you are going to leave me for a man?â âSo thereâs a chance youâre gonna cheat on me with a man?â âYou are gonna bi cycle and leave me yea?â "Are you trying to just be in lesbian spaces and invade?" And like I said, previously, people still see if you identify with that label, âthe blue marblesâ even if the pink marbles are the most populous ones and the blue marbles in the grand scheme are the minority.
And then the discourse comes back to the other variable. Even if lesbians say they are lesbians, there is gross men out there and honestly gross people that treat them like they are bisexual(âwill you change your mind?â) regardless(so wrong!!!) having a word that only represents one outcome entirely can feel like a weapon and for very good reason. And because people try to corrupt that signal anyways, having one grounding factor must feel good emotionally. However, itâs also a word that gets thrown around in casual conversations a lot when describing things like attracted women especially in the way that I mentioned.
And now, you see where I am going with this? And so bi people (like bi with a female preference) feel excluded because everyone "sees" this. And then there is the stigma. And then the push pull back and forth blah blah blah we have seen this discourse for years.
â----------------------------------------------WHAT I AM NOT SAYINGâ----------Iâm not claiming itâs morally ok to lie to a partner about being bisexual. Honesty in relationships matters. If you love someone, they deserve to know the actual nature of your attractions.Iâm also not saying a bisexual woman is a lesbian just because she casually calls herself one. That DOES NOT erase the truth. What I am saying is that we rarely pause to look at how we process information and signals. âLesbianâ is a clean, low-entropy label. âBi with strong female preferenceâ isnât. That difference creates noise, uncertainty, and a lot of questions even when no one is being malicious.As an autistic person, thinking about social stuff through this kind of systemic lens feels genuinely liberating. It turns endless emotional yelling into something more mechanical and understandable. Instead of âpeople are just lazy/evil/gatekeeping/they hate our groupâ I get to ask âwhy is it even happening?âIâm not offering this as an excuse or a solution. Just as one âwhyâ that helped quiet my own brain. And now I keep wondering: how often does this same type of thing play out in other areas of life? Probably a lot.
If you made it this far, thank you. So sorry that this is such a long essay. I really hope that nobody misinterprets me because Iâve made a lot of people mad in the past. But I donât really think I give a fuck anymore to be honest. And Iâm very proud of who I am and Iâm very proud of my growth and I donât wanna hide it. I donât care how information dense I am- I am proud.