Hi there! I'm writing a story with a bisexual main character. I myself am bisexual, and the story itself has romance and two love interests. I'm worried that, should the character end up with one love interest, she will simply be written off as straight or gay, depending on the way i go with it. Is there any way I can avoid this? (I've thought of explicitly stating her sexuality but as I've seen first hand, that doesnt always work)
As terrible as it is, there are some things we as writers can’t avoid, because they aren’t problems with our writing but rather problems with our society.
Readers who are already accepting of bisexual characters will pick up on the fact that the main character is bi simply by seeing them have sexual attraction for more then one gender, while biphobic readers will continue to paint characters as either straight or gay. This isn’t your fault, and it’s also not your responsibility to fix the bigotry of pathetic idiots.
You’re writing a story with good, honest representation, and that’s the most important thing you can offer readers, and the most anyone could ever ask of you.
If you have a strong desire to go beyond this and dive into the discourse of sexuality within your novel then there are a couple things you can include:
Explicitly state your main character’s sexuality. This isn’t particularly discourse-y, but just throwing around the term bisexual helps bring it to the front of reader’s minds.
Have your main character describe what their sexuality means to them. By having your character flat out explain what it means to be bisexual, readers gain more knowledge about what bisexuality is and how it works for this particular character.
Have you main character deal with biphobia. Portraying the same types of trials you’re experiencing as a bisexual writer trying to write bi characters brings it very clearly to the reader’s attention that it’s important for them not to erase your main character’s sexuality.
As you’ve seen, none of these things will actually stop certain readers from erasing your main character’s sexuality, but it does poke at them with a giant finger which says: “Hey you! What your doing to this character is wrong! It’s not canon and it hurts bisexual people in real life!”
Keep in mind, the more you include in depth discussions related to sexuality (or gender or race for that matter), the more you will have readers who complain that you’re bringing in “too much social justice stuff,” and no matter how seamless and natural your conversations are, someone will say you’re forcing the topic. Don’t ever let that deter you from writing what you want to write, but it’s good to know what you’ll face before it arrives.
And if for any reason you decide not to go down that route, and to focus on simply writing an awesome romance about a character who happens to be attracted to more then one gender, then that’s totally within your rights.
You can’t change people’s bigotry.
What you can do, is give the readers desperately looking for representation something wonderful to enjoy.
