defining bisexuality
Hi! It’s Lily here!
I decided to write this blog post in response to some of the comments we have been getting on our latest video - explaining “other” sexualities (click for link). In this video, Saskia and I attempted to explain all of the sexualities we were aware of in the lgbtqia+ community in a simple and concise manner. The aim of the video was to help people who may be less aware of the names and definitions of less “common” sexualities, as we know there are people who watch our videos who are not part of the lgbt+ community, or may only know about the lgbt part of it!
Because of this, we decided to use the “official” definitions when explaining the sexualities. When explaining bisexuality, we said, “bisexual people are attracted to either a person of the opposite sex or a person of the same sex. You can be attracted to males or females, that’s it.” Obviously this is a very loose explanation of bisexual attraction, as we were mainly going off the google definition: “Sexually attracted to both men and women.” An additional note is that when we said “attraction to males and females” we were not being exclusive to cisgender males and females - we were of course including trans men and women in this definition, but in hindsight, we should have made that clearer.
After hearing some bisexual people’s explanations of bisexuality, I would probably change our earlier definition to, “being sexually attracted to TWO genders.” This of course means that you could (for example) be attracted to female and non-binary people or male and non-binary people.
A recent comment we received stated, “bisexual can mean just attraction to more than one gender(could be several), and it doesn't have to be in the gender binary.” As somebody who identifies as panromantic, I found myself feeling a little confused as this is how I would describe somebody who is pansexual - in our video we described pansexuality as “attraction to everyone, whether they inside or outside the gender binary.” Basically I think it’s fair to say that everyone defines sexualities differently and there are no real black and white answers. If anyone wants to make a video explaining their own definition of bisexuality, we would be happy to link it in the description.
Saying this, it is not our place to tell you how or why you define your own sexuality. We are both strong believers that sexuality is very fluid, and if you identify as bisexual and are attracted to more than two genders, that is your own prerogative. It was not our intention to box any sexualities into definitive categories - we were simply trying to explain it in a simple manner, making it more easily accessible and understood by a wider audience.
We apologise if anyone was offended by our definition of bisexuality - it was, in its simplest form, how we understood the term, and we will continue to stick by it.
Hope you’re all having a nice day!
Lily (and Saskia) xxx
