I’ve been publicly out as bi for nearly 5 years now, and I’m fiercely proud of who I am in all my complexity.
It took me until my mid- to late-twenties to emerge from the proverbial closet, largely because coming out as bi requires overcoming a shit-ton of internalized biphobia. While I always knew there was something “different” about the way I related to romance and attraction, growing up in the 90’s and early aughts (and even into the early ‘10s) left an indelible mark on my sense of sexual identity.
During this era, the prevalent attitude towards bi people was simple: They didn’t exist. Oh wait, maybe they did, as long as “they” were conventionally hot women who made out for men’s enjoyment. Bi women, as the adage went, were really straight women going through a phase, and bi men were gay1. Naturally under these conditions, my desire to pursue people other than men was pushed to the back of the closet.
I remember the first time I overcame a huge internal hurdle and came out to a boyfriend, only to have him declare my identity “sexy,” initiating a months-long production of persistent, pouty bids for a threesome. I wish I could pretend this only happened with one past partner.
To this day, I remain enigmatic to many a people who just cannot fathom a femme being with anyone other than a man. My fiancee and I have been miscategorized as friends (just gals being pals, sharing a one-bedroom), sisters (I’m white, she’s not), even a mother and son (what the literal fuck). This is now a running joke for us, two bi women who view these moments of bi erasure as an opportunity to present the eye-opening lesson that – gasp! – “man + woman” isn’t the only option for dyadic pairings.
In spite of the rollercoaster of experience that is being bi, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Let’s bask in some queer joy together as I regale you with the varying manners in which I personally find meaning in my beautiful bi existence .
#6: There’s a simple bliss to stumbling upon a “Miss Honey moment” of childhood obsession, where I realize just how enduring my love for women has always been
I think I’m speaking for many queer people raised in the 90s when I relay my infatuation with Matilda’s Miss Honey and her cottagecore dream home. Sure, at the time my young mind categorized this as something other than romantic interest, but the yearning for connection was definitely present.
I see this sapphic longing in so many different memories:
- Sitting mere inches from the TV as Christina Augilera’s Dirrty music video played (I swear, I was only watching for the choreo!)
- My fierce loyalty to She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s Hermione (what an absolute role model for young, bossy intellects)
- How enraptured I was with Disney’s Mulan (Mulan and Shang could both get it)
There’s something so quintessentially queer about rehashing these memories and realizing that, hey, actually other straight girls didn’t fantasize about kissing Kim Possible – that’s decidedly you.
#5: I accept my behavioural eccentricities as a valid part of my identity
I’ve always been that girl who talks too much, intonates with a series of very-poorly-approximated British accents, and generally has an excessive amount of energy for her body. In my younger years, I was very self-conscious about these things, painfully aware of how they “othered” me. When you’re a kid who’s already hiding a big secret about themselves, masking these other bits to make yourself more palatable for others doesn’t seem like a choice.
As I’ve grown and evolved, I’ve realized that I don’t have room in my life for anything less than being authentically me. Life sucks when you’re pretending to be something you’re not, so eradicating the vestiges of my concealment has become something of a game for me. Accepting my sexual identity has made room for me to accept my other “queer” traits, creating a world where, instead of shying away from my weirdness, I get to revel in it. This makes things just a bit more vibrant and exciting.
#4: I get to explore how I like to show up in the world
As a teen with disordered eating tendencies who was raised around the turn of the millennium, I grew up equating a little bitty waist and a round thing in your face with being feminine, which equaled being desirable to men, which equaled being accepted.
Lucky for me, I was “blessed”2 with a tall, thin frame and a fast metabolism. Combined with a high femme aesthetic – perfectly coiffed hair, flawless makeup, rocking the skintight dresses and highest of high heels – I was celebrated as a hot girl and ogled at by men. Within the constraints of the heteronormative sexist ideal, this was (unfortunately) a very reinforcing experience.
When I first started peeling back the layers of this reinforcement, I began to notice a deep, invisible connection between that sense of objectification and my compulsive need to appear perfectly “ladylike” all the time. Once I realized this, I began to make way for exploring more androgynous and traditionally masculine styles – and oh my god, is it awesome.
Some days I wake up and want to pull a full Miss Frizzle wild-science-teacher-who-probably-smokes-good-weed campy dress look, others I feel more at home in a baggy sweatsuit, short hair tucked underneath a beanie. On occasion, I go the Italian runway model route complete with the slickback and the too-deep-V button-down. It’s all left up to how I feel in the moment I’m choosing the look, not predetermined by some arbitrary marker of gender.
This serves as yet another lesson that binaries in life do us no favours – how much more fun is it to colour outside of the lines of social conditioning? Who the fuck needs lines, anyways?
#3: I’ve embraced the life-changing magic of clapping back at homophobes
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Homophobia is a very real hazard for queer people. Yes, even in 2022, and even in Canada3. LGBTQ+ folks (especially racialized and transgender individuals) face barriers in all areas of life, impacting our mental and physical health in profound and life-altering ways.
So sure, #3 is definitely me making a silver lining of a shitty unsafe situation, but I’ll take it where I can get it. Little is more satisfying to me than having a man approach me and tell me “Being a lesbian is wrong,” thinking that I will quietly take it – only to have the exact opposite happen as I transform into the loudest, most barking-est version of myself. Or the kid who thought saying “You two should kiss” to me and my then-girlfriend would be a cute add-on – hard nope, bud. Prepare to receive a verbal redressing in front of your slack-faced friends. Not today, homophobic Satan.
The fact that I’m emboldened enough to get in someone’s face when they encroach on my ability to live my life is a huge sign of growth for me, a recovering people-pleaser who used to do anything to keep others happy. Protecting my space, and the space and agency of other queer folks, is a phenomenally fierce experience.
#2: Kissing women is everything I dreamed it would be
This probably goes without saying, but as a woman who loves women, I had always dreamed of what it would be like to kiss a girl – really and truly kiss her, not as a drunken dare at a frat party, but date-and-be-romantically-involved kiss a girl. I remember being 15 at a sleepover and kissing my friend, both of us insisting it was practice for our boyfriends. Or being 17 and “connecting hard” with (read: having a gay ol’ crush on) this girl I met in a therapy support group, imagining what it would be like to tuck her hair behind her ear, her blushing in response. You know, just normal straight shit.
But being able to kiss women as a woman often requires overcoming the pernicious obstacle of this internalized “pursuing women is predatory” logic. When you are a girl who likes girls, you learn very early on that that type of love just isn’t okay. Maybe your parents caught you kissing a girl and actively chastised you, maybe you grew up with a religion that told you being gay was a sin, maybe you’ve read between the lines in the heaps of casually homophobic movies and shows that were super-popular when you were growing up. Regardless of the origin story, this seed is planted deep in your mind. If you’re unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of unwanted sexual advances from a man (an infuriatingly all-too-common experience4), that predatory-paranoia roots even deeper.
So when I first started openly dating women and got to experience that kiss and realize that it wasn’t predatory but mutually agreed upon and desired by both parties, I felt like a glow stick that had been snapped and shaken up. I felt luminescent, this dream that I’d relegated to the archives of “never gonna happen” was happening! To me! Repeatedly!
I’m not exaggerating when I say that being able to openly kiss my fiancee is one of the purest joys, evidence that I’m living life on my own terms in pursuit of my true self.
#1: I am crystal-clear on what matters to me
You may have sensed a running theme through the last five points: Being queer is kind of a lot of mental effort. To set the record straight (heh), a queer existence itself is not tiresome – it’s the constant ways in which we’re required to prove ourselves, in big and small ways, that gets exhausting. Being regularly interrogated with questions like “how did you know you’re bi?” really makes you sit with your thoughts.
Think about it – are straight people ever asked how they know they’re straight? No, they just know. That’s the “hetero” in “heteronormativity”: Straight is the default identity, so you don’t need to justify who you are But queer people are expected to know, and to clearly, concisely, and politely as possible articulate their argument for how they can turn down the obvious allure of HetLife™.
Being required to defend my identity caused me to develop a keen ability to express my opinions, which first required getting clear on what exactly those were. When you’re conditioned to question the very fabric of your being, as deeply harmful as it is, it gives you a framework upon which to question other things in life. No longer is the visible norm the only option – there are so many other possibilities. All it takes is the bravery to ignore what other people are telling you to do and you explore life on your own terms.
Over the past half-decade, my life has become this journey of self-discovery, unravelling my past hurts and old conditioning to reveal more of who I am – and I can’t get enough of it. I’m happier, more self-assured, and stand stronger in my values now more than I ever have before, and I attribute so much of that to the transformational power of being out.
Footnotes
1 Isn’t it riveting how the common root of both of these things is a desire for men?
2 I have extreme privilege due to being tall, thin, white, able-bodied, and cisgender. Given the system that prizes these things is absolutely fucked, this is less of a “blessing” and more of a “system in need of abolishment”.
3 A 2021 Stats Canada profile noted a 41% increase in police-reported hate crimes targeting LGBTQ people between 2018-2019, with over half of those being violent crimes.
4 A commonly-cited CDC report states that 61% of bisexual women have experienced sexual or physical assault, compared to 35% of straight women.