Coming Out As Bisexual

The rhetoric around “coming out” has everyone thinking it’s a one-time thing. That’s not exactly true for anyone on the TBLG spectrum, but doubly so for the B. It’s one of the only things I hate about being bisexual. I have to come out all the time to almost everyone, including some of the same people.

Not only do I have to “come out” to straight people, I have to do it for everybody else too. The LG bit of the TBLG+ section of people can be straight up, for lack of a better word, assholes.

“Why don’t you pick a side?”

“But you’re dating/married to a guy so you’re straight.”

“It’s ok, you can really come out to me.”

“I don’t date bi girls because they cheat.”

“I thought that was just a phase.”

“So you’re gay now?”

“So you’re straight now?”

Sometimes I wanna wear a shirt that says “Yes I fuck guys, yes I fuck girls, no I’m not picking a side”.

While that’s bad, it’s not even the worst of it. The absolute worst has to be the people who “forget” that you’re bi and you have to “come out” again and they’re surprised again.

“So I have a date with this cute girl — “

“I thought you were straight.”

“No, I’m bi.”

“WHAT?!”

“I told you this before.”

“Oh. I forgot.”

The second worst are the people who think that unless you’ve had sex with one of every gender, you can’t be bi or pansexual.

“So you’ve never had sex with a girl before?”

“No.”

“So how do you know you’re really bi then? You just want attention!”

“Ugh…”

By that jacked up logic, virgins don’t know their sexuality because they haven’t had sex with anyone. Third worst goes to the assholes who think you’re automatically down for a threesome because you’re bi.

“Oh, so you’re bi?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool! Me and my girl been looking for someone to — ”

“NO.”

That’s just a snippet of what I go through when coming out as a bisexual woman. Bisexual men? That’s a horse of a different color. Bisexual women are hypersexualized and/or are “really just straight” and bisexual men just don’t exist because they’re “really gay” and “halfway in the closet.” For some reason (hmmm… wonder what that could be), it always comes back to wanting men.

In the end, our sexuality is invalidated by others because of the attraction to men. The result of this is us having to come out to people time and time again only to be dismissed time and time again. It’s either deal with that or go back into a closet.

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Originally published at theangryfangirl.com.