I hate to see this from fellow queers in the global south. I get it, your “born this way” and “I can’t control that I’m not attracted to the opposite gender at all” narrative helps you gain some sort of conditional acceptance based on pity from a materially dangerous society. Rather than thinking of you as a deviant pervert, they can view you as helplessly sexually disabled instead. Or maybe it helps them accept queerness as something natural—which is what we want and is great for all of us without being dehumanising or infantilising, right?
The thing is, queerness may be perfectly natural however there is no evidence saying it’s bioessential. This palatable “born this way” narrative being pushed by the media has been what led to hijra communities (roughly, a culturally significant transfem umbrella) in South Asia being temporarily fairly accepted as a “third gender”, only to receive a recent wave of phobia towards “self-realised trans people” when the general public realised not all hijra-identified people are born intersex as previously believed by deliberately ignorant and bigoted idiots.
Socially, we know for a fact that gender is a human construct and as a result sexuality is a fluid concept. (Yes, this applies to everybody, even monosexuals that are settled in their identities for their entire lives, even if that makes you uncomfortable.) Relying on the censorship of the scientific facts only leads to conditional, limited and highly precarious acceptance for the LGBTQ+ community from larger society as well as divisive intracommunity conflicts and respectability politics that fracture the movement. [Exhibit A where the existence of bisexuals who identify as gay/lesbian (a historically consistent but stigmatised intersectional occurrence deliberately erased by the media) is suddenly the “reason” that homophobia exists; Exhibit B where the existence of trans endosex hijras (a historically consistent but stigmatised intersectional occurrence deliberately erased by the media) is the “reason” that intersexism towards hijras exists—Oh no! The straights realised we were sociopolitically double-crossing them to placate them and now they’ve gone back to mistrusting all of us!]
You might think contemporary label purity and the idea of “l’m only engaging in queer relations because I didn’t have a choice” serves you, a cis lesbian or gay man in the global south. But what about bisexuals that did still have an “option” to suppress their queerness and assimilate with straight society … but chose to follow their hearts and engage in queer relationships anyway? What about the bisexuals that are literally committed in visibly queer relationships alongside you? How is your agenda helping the bisexuals who can’t help that they’re queer, too? Or did you think “bisexual” is a synonym for “basically straight person that makes the rest of us look that way too when they associate with our gay/lesbian communities”? Are only monosexual lesbians and gay men deserving of their agency and freedom to love who they want in the global south?
You say in our part of the world “the distinction between lesbian and bisexual has real, material consequences”. Well, in my native language nobody even knows the word for “bisexual”, though anybody and even their grandmother in the village would recognise the universally prominent English terms “gay” and “lesbian”. In fact, the same conversion abuse is levied at any queer person; if anything, my long-term girlfriend and I coming out as bi (and painstakingly explaining what the hell “bi” even means) would probably put us in more danger of being sabotaged because our families will believe “there is still hope for us”—Is that the so-called “distinction” that is supposedly protecting queers in the global south? If I ever come out, I don’t care to reveal I’m bi and would rather say I’m a lesbian. I don’t particularly care if self-important netizens think bisexuals are somehow putting “the reals queers” in danger by “appropriating” (rather than literally embodying) globally significant queer identities—that have historically also belonged to bisexuals—whenever we’re literally trying to survive. And I’ve seen with my own eyes the kind of abuse bisexuals in our country face from their monosexual partners who falsely accuse them of cheating or threaten them to “pick a side”, but I guess “abuse and murder” are only wrong when you didn’t consciously “choose” queerness? The statistics of bisexuals being at comparitively higher life-threatening risk of intimate partner violence, poor health, substance use and poverty compared to monosexual peers don’t lie.
Biphobes are so incoherent. You say bisexuals have a choice (unlike the “real queers”, who don’t) and it’s some sort of privilege that bisexuals abuse by always choosing heteronormativity, but then bisexuals trying to engage in gayness/lesbianism (as they have always done) is obviously counterfeit for clout, some sort of new western invention, so these bisexuals should “use a different label”. (Which in itself sounds eerily familiar to how local phobes in my country talk about queerness itself—a figment of “western invention poisoning society”—but I rest my case.) However, judging from your own fears of being associated with “choice” narratives often applied to bisexuality (that you yourself are eagerly affirming), you reveal that even you are fully aware how dangerously those viewed as functionally bisexual are treated in the global south. Bisexuals are the ones who “think of queerness as a fun exclusive club rather than a real identity” and “are desperate to appear actually oppressed” so “they make up words like monosexism”, but there is an obvious inherent societal safety in claiming monosexual identity that lesbians and gay men are fighting tooth and nail to not share with bisexuals, deliberately blocking bisexuals from accessing this privilege. Queerphobes (hey! that includes you now!) claim sexuality is a choice because they want to punish people that, in their eyes, chose wrong. And instead of advocating for every person’s right to choose their own lifestyle, you’re saying “No! I’m one of the good ones! I swear!” If the “distinction” or separatism between bisexual and gay/lesbian (that is a fairly new, western phenomenon, actually) has indeed ever played a role in keeping a monosexual gay man/lesbian safe in my experience of the global south, it’s been at the selfish expense of further marginalising bisexuals.
