Note: vent under the cut. I didn't how to approach this, so I think I'll just let it out.
It's heartbreaking and bleak how perfectly okay with misogyny towards bi women everyone is. Even in feminist/social justice spaces. We are not viewed as fellow women, and they are perfectly okay with us being harmed at the hands of men because we're viewed as tainted and deserving of harm.
Straight women and lesbians get to be viewed as pure in their respective communities, and deserving of protection, whereas bi women are not. We are sullied because of our dual attraction and because of this we deserve abuse/harm/dehumanization, according to people. Our womanhood is stripped out of us. We are deemed of incapable of truly loving anyone, and only full of lust. We are demonized for things that are perfectly fine for other women to do (like venting about men for example, there's seldom any pushback towards straight women doing this, even if they have male partners). People viewed bi women as irrevocably tied to men no matter what we do. Our place in this so-called LGBTQ "community" is constantly debated, even if bi women were there fighting alongside other LGBTQ people for decades.
In a way, it reminds me of how black women (which I am one) are treated. We are also stripped of our womanhood and often times compared to men, and deemed as undesirable in comparison to other races of women. People use this as a justification for harm/humiliation towards us. We are also deemed as lustful people incapable of actually loving anyone (Jezebel stereotype). We are demonized for things that are perfectly okay for other women to do (and even get praised for doing). Feminists of the past were also racist towards black women, which lead us to receiving voting rights later than white women, for example. We're the incorrect women to be, no matter what we do.
Maybe I'm not the only black bi woman that sees the parallels between black women and bisexual women.
All this discourse surrounding bi women made me not like men or women to be honest. I want to be content in the fact that I'm attracted to both sexes (regardless of their gender identity), but I have no interest in placing men OR women upon any pedestal whatsoever. They both have misogynistic attitudes toward bisexual and black women respectively.
My love will be for the men and women who deserve it.
