Bisexuality is not a stepping stone between "straight" and "gay."

Content advisory: use of the word "queer" throughout, in a neutral context.

Were The World Mine is one of my favorite movies.

Firstly, it's a musical. Secondly, it's about one of my favorite plays (retroactively - this movie is what got me into Shakespeare in the first place). Thirdly, it's about an out queerbro who suffers frustrations but finds happiness in the end. I am an out queerbro who suffers frustrations, so it's good for me.

There's just one line that bugs me.

"Firstly, Shakespeare has never been proven to be a homosexual. Bisexual, perhaps."

The context of this quote is as follows: For some reason, all of the students participating in a school performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream have started falling in love with each other. In an all-boys' school. Parents are freaked out about all the homosex and are claiming that the play is somehow responsible because Shakespeare was - to quote the dialogue - queer. The above line is the play director's rebuttal.

Which is not a rebuttal at all.

Bisexual (and pansexual) people are queer, too. We're defined in part by our being attracted to members of the same sex. Just because we also like people of the opposite sex does not mean we somehow lose our queer status. Or our magical queer powers of turning others to our orientation.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Bisexual people in media are often shown encouraging formerly straight characters to explore their queer side.

Without that component to the argument, her "rebuttal" comes across as extremely weak, essentially no more than a matter of semantics, or some nerd's personal pride at making sure that dead, tertiary character's sexual orientations are properly understood. Pointless.

Here's another one:

Earlier today, I read an article listing a few individuals throughout history (all white, natch) who were also gay. One of the names mentioned was Hans Christian Anderson, who while not definitely gay, demonstrated some interest in men based on his correspondences with various men that he new. The article explains this by saying that he was probably "at least bisexual."

In other words, if he wasn't a whole queer, he was at least half queer.

The general theme I'm getting from both of these works is that many people see bi/pansexuality as some sort of "middle ground" between being gay and being straight. Which is not remotely true.

Someone is not "at least" bisexual, because bisexuality is not lesser than homosexuality. Bisexuality, to repeat myself, is a fully fledged sexual orientation in its own right. My own attraction to men and my attraction to women (as well as my attraction to individuals of nonbinary genders) are tied in with each other in such a way as to be inseparable. For example, I have to reconcile my choice of pursuing a woman with my desire to be with a man. My love of men and masculine things causes me to be very attracted to masculine and crossdressing women (without disregarding their womanhood), while my attraction to feminine things is often strongest when attached to a competent, interesting, and strong individual of any sex.

I doubt that this can accurately describe how most bisexual or pansexual people's orientations work, but the point I hope to make is that my sexual orientation is its own beast, different from either gay or straight people. I may be differently queer, but I am not less queer.

We are not "just" bisexual. We are not "at least" bisexual. We are simply bi/pan. Do not talk about us as if we're some kind of transitional form between straight and gay.

Bisexual Erasure: Buffy Edition

Okay, guys, I know how great it is to have a good gay character in the media who doesn't die, doesn't lose xir true love, and isn't all about the gayness, but a quick heads up:

Willow is bisexual.

She never stated that she wasn't attracted to Oz - in fact, for some time she was torn between him and Tara (and it's not like you can pretend that lingering attraction/affection for her old boyfriend wasn't there, folks). She did what so many of us monogamists do, which is to choose one, but that doesn't make her 100% lesbian. Please make an effort to get your head around the fact that we CAN be into both sexes, yet only end up with one, who might even be the same sex as us. It happens.

I Am Invisible

I am invisible.

I usually don't realize that because I spend a lot of time hanging around transgender-safe message boards, but the fact is: I am invisible. When people talk about atheists, even though they don't specify, they are thinking of cisgendered atheists. When people talk about gays and lesbians, even though they don't specify, they are thinking of cisgendered atheists. Men means cisgendered men. LGBT means L, G, sometimes B, and those other weirdoes we heard were out there. Transgendered people are invisible.

Obviously there are some people out there who know we exist - shows such as Family Guy, The L Word, Coronation Street, and Degrassi have had transgendered characters. The film The World According To Garp has an excellent portrayal of a trans woman, and there are other movies that are just about us. But to the majority of people, we do not exist - or exist only in a theory so abstract that we may not exist at all.

I know. I used to be one of those people.

For the first eighteen years of life, I either didn't know about transgendered/transsexual people, or what I knew was very abstract: sometimes there were boys that felt like they should be girls, and underwent treatments to become girls, and often their parents kicked them out of their homes and they ended up homeless and/or addicted to drugs but sometimes they turned out okay. I'd heard somewhere about FTM's (courtesy of my mum, actually) but it never sunk in for me. Why? Because I didn't know anyone who is transgendered. I didn't know anyone who knew anyone who was transgendered. I'd never bumped into a transgendered person on the Internet, and when I did, I didn't spend a lot of time with him. My mother was on the site, watching my every move, and she didn't approve of his "lesbianism." Plus I think I was afraid that if I told the forumites that I felt similarly I'd be laughed at. You can't be a "gay man in a woman's body," after all. You can only be a straight woman. But I digress. Naturally, I never thought to include trans people in any of my writing or correspondence or anything.

This is the mindset that prevents trans people from getting their rights. Someone introduces a piece of legislation that covers trans people (or gays, or POC, or atheists, or whatever), and you think that since you don't know (or like) anyone who will be affected, it isn't important. So you let it slide.

People can't live like this. You can't go on holding in your minds that transsexual people don't exist, or there are too few of us to count. There are never too few of us to count. This is something that I didn't truly understand until I became a member of two of the least regarded minorities in the United States of America, and looking back I am ashamed to think that I once thought differently. Here is what I didn't realize: The majority, or the average if you will, does not equal the default. There is no default for the human condition. I am not a cisgendered white male unless I specify otherwise. It's not easy to remember this, with our parents, teachers, peers, and the media convincing us that diversity equals deviance. Society is not a dichotomy between white males and everyone else. It is a complex mosaic of people. Some of them are descended from Europeans, some from Africans, some from Asians, some from Eurasians, some from Americans, some from European-Asians, some from African-Caribbeans, some from people of many different continents. Some of us are Christian, some are Hindu, some are Jewish, some are Muslim, some are Jedi. Some used to be religious but aren't anymore. Some were never religious at all. Some are close to six feet tall and others are closer to three. Some are HIV-positive, some have cancer, some have diabetes or syphilis or angina or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or missing organs and some have no outstanding health problems at all. Some are organ donors; some aren't. Some are female, some are male, some are intersexed. Some are cis, some are trans, some are genderqueer. Some are bisexual, some are straight, some are gay, some are pansexual, and some are one or the other but willing to experiment. Some of us have very little money, some of us have a lot; some of us just have what we need to get by comfortably. Some of us live in the cities. Many of us live outside of them. Some of us love only one person at the same time, but some love more. Some of us masturbate. Some of us don't. Some of us do and lie about it. Some of us promise our parents that we'll never have sexual intercourse until we find the one we'll be with for the rest of our lives. Some of us wouldn't have found the one we'll be with for the rest of our lives unless we had sexual intercourse first. Some of us love feet. Some of us hate feet. Some of us couldn't care less about feet. Everything about you is part of your identity, and it is no less diverse, beautiful, and strange than that of someone whose traits are less common than yours. And here's the thing: every trait about that person, to the extent that it does not harm another person, deserves to exist and be respected and protected by human law. If your identities are protected, and you can't find the time to make sure others have the same courtesy, then you don't deserve the protection you have.