This week is one of my favorite weeks of the year: it's bisexual awareness week, or, biweek. In the bisexual community, this week is all about celebrating bisexuality. From invisibility and erasure to not feeling welcome all the time in LGBTQ+ spaces, we need a holiday of our own. Hence biweek. The culminating day is September 23, Bi Visibility Day. September 23, in the bi community, is our big and special day. It is our day to say, "Hey we are here we are queer and we belong here."
In celebration of this frabjous festivity, I figured I may as well put something out there. A little, increasing awareness, as it were.
So, according to a study by The Williams Institute of Law at UCLA, 3.5% of US adults identify as LGB (0.3% ID as trans*). Of that 3.5% of LGB adults, 1.8% identify as bisexual, and the rest ID as gay or lesbian. This number may be even higher in young people. In other words, despite the issue of bi invisibility, bisexual people are the majority of the LGB population. And in my experience of the LGBT+ community, this data has held up. Most of the LGBT people I know identify as bisexual or queer or pansexual, as in, not exclusively gay or lesbian.
Our majority status does not exclude us from discrimination. Just last month, Danielle Smith and her mother Terri Jackson were murdered in their home in Missouri. Why? Because their neighbor found Smith's bisexuality as something warranting harassment and death. As a bisexual person, stories like this scare me. I once went to a public forum on enacting anti-discrimination policies for LGBTQ people in my town. After speaking about my experience as a bisexual woman, I was stared at and followed out of the building by a man I did not know. I went to this event alone, and had I not found my old high school teacher and the group he was talking to, I do not know what would have happened to me.
For us bi folk, violence is a reality. We fight, we are loud, because we have to be. So many of us can't be. There is still this prevalent idea that bisexuality doesn't exist.
(Spoiler alert: it does!)
There is this frustrating feeling when you're bi where you don't feel like you belong in LGBTQ+ spaces, especially when you're dating someone of the "opposite" gender as you. When I am dating a man, I often feel like I am not "gay" enough. But when I am dating a woman, I fear being able to hold her hand in public, or speak openly about her and my relationship with her, because someone dangerous might overhear. That is not fun.
But hey. We are the majority. And we've got each other. What we've got to realize is that last bit: we've got each other. There are so many voices in this community. We've got some great role models (Alexander Hamilton, Alice Walker, Julius Caesar (maybe not the best one on the list), Oscar Wilde, Frida Kahlo-- just to name a few) behind us.
We, as a community, have the power to do so much good for this world when we stand together. The violence we face for existing has never needed to be a constant. It is on us to make this world a safer place for us.
I'm bisexual. I'm a lot of other things as a person, but in this moment, that part of me is what is shining brightest. My goal is to one day no longer be needed, that I will not have to say, "Yo, I'm here, and I'm queer, and very bi, please don't hurt me or threaten me because my sexual orientation doesn't click with you." Bi week is amazing, and Bi Visibility Day is the shining moment of it all. This Friday, I will be visible. I will be proud of who I am. Threaten me if you want. But I am part of something bigger than myself. Something I cannot control. Something I cannot and will not change.
Let the #biweek festivities begin.
