fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2527 ]

[ SECRET POST #2527 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2527 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
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Does "society" really think that? Maybe it's a local/regional thing, but from what I've heard in real life conversations, people think "bi" means "gay" no matter what gender you are. I hear things like:

"Alice and her boyfriend..."

"Boyfriend? But I thought she was a lesbian. Didn't she have a girlfriend before? She totally did!"

"I don't know, but she has a boyfriend now."

"But why? She's gay!"

... Either way it's frustrating, but I don't know. Has anyone else noticed a pattern in what the people you know think about it?

Gay guys are the worst for this.

Yep. One of my female friends who is bi happens to be married to a man. I have had to tell other friends that doesn't mean she isn't bi and they really don't get it. I also have a male bi friend whose gay boyfriend recently broke up with him when he found out my friend isn't 100% gay :/

It's sad, Anon, but "bisexual erasure" is totally a thing that exists :( Both in fandom and IRL, at least where I live. And there's always someone talking shit such as "bisexuals just should decide and pick one!", or the ever popular "I can understand liking one gender or another, but wanting both? That's just depraved".

And I'm not even bi! But I feel sad for my friends who are.

I've definitely come across both attitudes. My girlfriend and I are both bisexual and have had to remind some friends of that in the past, but I've seen the other assumption that bisexual women are really straight and just looking for attention too.

There's a lot of that floating around the last few days now that Tom Daley and Maria Bello came out as currently in same-sex relationships but not exclusively gay.

Speaking of bisexuality, I have a question. One of my friends was trying to wrap their head around being attracted to both men and women and couldn't understand it. It always seemed obvious to me so I was like "Well, you like brunettes and you like redheads..." Then I wondered if that was a good analogy for it. Am I way off?

Yeah, I think that's a good comparison, but maybe be a bit more broad. Like, I mean most people like more than one person in their life, so maybe point that out to them.

Works for me.

Personally I can't imagine only being attracted to one sex, so on some level I can understand where those "I don't get bisexuality" people are coming from. As long as they don't say it doesn't exist I don't really care if they understand it or not.

This reminds me of the logical inconsistency of "gay men are gay because they were sexually abused by a man as a child," and "gay women are gay because they were sexually abused by a man as a child."

Everything gets traced back to the magic peen. *eyeroll*

For real. I have had people tell me with a serious face that homosexuality is (well they said it could be, hemming and hawing, etc.) the result of some kind of wrong thing in their life - abuse, lack of a proper mother/father/other relationship, etc. I'm like no, that is not how it works

but yeah magic peen. and reminds me how everyone goes up in arms when a kid doesn't have a father, but doesn't make as big a deal about lacking a mother (especially boys needing fathers, but girls not specifically needing mothers). Everyone needs a Strong Masculine Role Model amirite?

I think it depends on how "society" knows said person is bi. If people know they were dating someone of the same sex in the past, yes, the assumption is "but, wait, gay?" But if sexual/relationship history is unknown, and a guy says "I'm bi", they do seem to be classified as gay, whereas a woman going "I'm bi" gets classified as straight, with optional "too chicken to come out all the way"/"doing it for the attention" vibes.

As a bi woman dating a bi man, this comes up on occasion, although our friends are all cool people, so it's not too common.

(We're also gender nonconforming in a lot of ways, which lead to the question "Wait, why is the gay dude making out with the lesbian?")

Luckily I've only come across a couple people that I know personally (rather than just hearing about it secondhand) that feel this way, or at least that will admit to feeling this way--my (straight) brother and a (lesbian) family friend.

With my brother, it's weird because he claims to understand/believe in pansexuality, but somehow bisexuality escapes him. Like, he gets not caring about the gender of the people you're interested in, but he doesn't understand specifically being attracted to masculinity and femininity (which is how he defines bisexuality) which is a strange distinction to make and almost seems like a semantic argument to me. And when I tried to use the blonde and brunette analogy he thought I was going in a different direction than I actually was and wouldn't let me finish. But this is also the same guy who once said that ALL women are bisexual if they get drunk enough and that that somehow proves that bisexuality doesn't actually exist (yeah, no one at the table with him when he said it understood, either) so who the fuck knows.

With the family friend, all she'll say about it is "you're either one or the other, there's no in between". She's a really devout Christian while also being a lesbian, though, despite the fact that her church clearly hates her (she's always talking about how they discriminate against her and her girlfriend and treat them horribly) yet it never occurs to her to leave the fucking church, so logic isn't exactly her strong suit.

ngl your brother sounds kind of obnoxious

and the family friend is kinda ???? to me

That's a huge understatement lol. He's becoming more and more conservative the older he gets and there are so many things he just does not get (or refuses to even try to understand).

Yeah...she's nice and I generally like her but the way she thinks it's impossible for anyone to be anything other than gay or straight is definitely frustrating.

Yuck! Wow. I have extended family members like that, but I can't imagine if it were my brother. (My brother as it is is obnoxious and we don't get along well much of the time, and he can be carelessly sexist in really annoying ways, but he's politically pretty similar to me - socially pretty progressive)

I'm gonna sound like I'm looking for asspats here, which is not my intention, but I have never understood this or really even seen much of it before having an online presence. In high school, when I first learned about these different options (I was kind of sheltered and I'd heard of gay but not bi or ace, and hardly ever thought of it, before that time) I thought it was very obvious, logical, and straightforward. Straight meant opposite gender. Gay meant same. Bi meant both. Ace meant neither. It's like a square grid with options - "Are you into women" on one side and "are you into men" on the other, with four intersecting squares, and also I've always liked word roots, and...yeah. When I found out that people couldn't wrap their mind around bisexuality apparently I'm like "but one plus one equals two...? are you just dumb?"

I don't know anyone personally who has this problem, though I know a lot of conservative people I haven't really talked to about it. Apparently it's not limited to conservatives though. hmm

Yeah, the bi guy = gay and bi girl = straight is what I hear most often, though I do hear the bi girl = gay and confused/afraid to come out on occasion. But thinking about it, I hear the last one more often when the girl has traits that people identify with being gay.

And then there's the "current partner defining sexuality" and the "does that mean they need to date both a man and a woman at the same time?" My mom saying the last one was one of the lowest points of my coming out to her.

"does that mean they need to date both a man and a woman at the same time?"

This one has always killed me. Like, how does 'you don't need to fuck everyone you're attracted to' become so hard to grasp just because 'everyone you're attracted to' happens to include people of multiple genders?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2527 ]

"Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"

Re: "Bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really straight"