I need us to have an honest conversation about how awfully bisexuals are treated when we first come out as butchfemme, bc looking back on it now, the way that i experienced the first steps of educating myself on butchfemme culture and stepping into the label, was full of some of the most disgusting biphobia that i’ve experienced in my life.
I spent hours and hours and hours scouring articles, books, online content, magazines, reddit communities, podcasts, youtube videos and more only to be met from the very beginning of my search with things like ‘bisexuals are disgusting sluts that poison sapphic communities, they do nothing but bend over for men and harm lesbians and take labels that aren’t theirs and they have no claim to lesbian history whatsoever.’ i was met with death threats towards bisexuals, rape threats, hateful and bigoted rhetoric from every fucking source i turned to and it genuinely fucked with my mental state so hard that i could not bring myself to call myself a butch for months.
I remember speaking to an elder lesbian butch online, a woman who is very popular amongst butchfemme communities, and being so excited to finally share myself with someone like me. I sent her an ask on this very website asking about bisexual butches, asking if she knew any, if she had any resources for me, if she could give me any encouraging words or advice, and she returned with a scathing reply telling me how the bisexual women that she stays in community with know their place as being privileged and allies to the lesbian community, how bisexuals should never conflate themselves with lesbians and how she would never support a bisexual butch bc we are tainted by men and will always return to men.
it crushed me.
I look back on baby butch bi me and i feel such inconsolable sadness and rage for him. I feel so much pain for the way that he was treated when all he wanted was to find a place he belonged. I feel so much pain for the bisexual community. i feel so erased and barred from what is rightfully mine.
This is something that i feel is a uniquely bisexual experience. The very nature of exclusion from our own history and culture and communities is a deep deep blight upon the queer community as a whole. It harms bisexuals in severe direct ways, hurts us in very vulnerable places and it keeps us hidden and shut away where we are no longer deemed problems for the rest of the community. This erasure kills, maims, and destroys my community.
I know that my experience is not unique. I have heard the same from nearly every bisexual i’ve come across and from nearly every bisexual that i am in close community with. that in of itself is a heavy heavy weight on my soul.
