‘I often feel like I'm somehow living the wrong life by being in a mixed-gender relationship’
Pronouns: she / her
Content warning: swearing
Names have been redacted to protect anonymity
Tell us about your sexuality, and any terms you align with
I always feel a bit unsure of what to use, honestly. I have gone by bisexual, plurisexual, gender-blind for a while but that doesn't feel accurate, queer. I mostly use bisexual as people understand it but probably prefer queer for the ambiguity. I'm more attracted to women and female identified people than anyone else and I'd say I'm demiromantic.
Has coming out been part of your experience? If so, what did coming out mean to you?
I kept my attraction to women secret for a long time despite having a girlfriend, and I dated men at the same time, in part because it threw people off the scent. I grew up under section 28 and so I was very frightened of people finding out when I was at school and I didn't really understand what was going on with me because I'd never even heard the term bisexual. I came out officially when I was 18 and started working as a pole dancer at a strip club. So many of the women there were bi and had a name for it, and it was such a powerful revelation to me. Finally I felt like I'd found somewhere I belonged! After that I was a lot more open about my sexuality in general, sex work will do wonders for you in that regard!
Have you had any memorable responses from other people about your sexuality?
For the most part my experiences have been on the positive side of neutral. No one ever seemed particularly surprised and even my Irish Catholic father seemed to take it in [his] stride, although I do wonder if this is because I'm now married to a man and so he doesn't take it seriously. There have been some negative responses though, the one I remember most strongly was a gay male colleague of mine point blank telling me that bisexuals don't exist after I told him I was going to be studying bisexual+ identities and monogamy for my PhD and that I was bisexual myself. He said all bi men are really gay and all bi women are just doing it for male attention, right to my face. I have also been told by lesbians in the past that they won't date me because I've been with men. Most of the discrimination I've personally encountered directed toward myself has actually come from lesbian and gay people.
Do you think your gender (if any) affects how people react to your sexuality?
Definitely. I've definitely had men in the past get excited when I tell them I'm bi because automatically they think of threesomes. I'm actually not opposed to threesomes but there's something about a particular way of responding to it that seems very fetishized, and if I get that kind of reaction I'm no longer interested in that person. As I mentioned, I've also had people say that because I'm a woman who's bi that I must be doing it for attention.
Do you think the gender of your romantic or sexual partner has affected people's perceptions of your sexuality?
Absolutely. I have a cishet male partner and people assume I'm straight, that I'm no longer bi, that I don't belong in the queer community or in queer spaces. I don't attend Pride events or try to really engage with the community outside of my research for this reason, I find the rejection very difficult and it often has me questioning my relationship. It's made harder because I often feel like if I hadn't grown up under section 28 I may have been braver about having a queer marriage rather than a mixed-gender, mixed-orientation one. I met my partner when I was still quite young, I was 20, and I feel that over time my sexuality has changed, but that's hard when I'm already with a partner and I do love him and don't want to hurt him. Even though I sometimes wonder if I'd be better off in a different kind of relationship. Though how much of this is caused by internalised bi-negativity as a knock-on effect from experiencing rejection from the queer community because of my relationship with a man, I can't really say! It's something for me to work through. I'm in a funny, painfully self-reflective place at the moment as a result of studying my own sexual identity I think.
Are there any words / phrases that you've encountered as being associated with your sexuality?
Greedy, slutty, poser, 'contaminated by dick', fake queer. Though on the more positive side is open minded and adventurous I suppose, despite the last one being a little bit loaded with stereotypical expectations perhaps re: kinks. They're not wrong though...!
Do you feel that you see enough representation of your sexuality in culture / media / beyond?
Haha, no. There has been more in recent years, but more representation would still be good. It would be nice to get to a point where we can have lots of different kinds of bi+ rep, so happy monogamous bi+ people in mixed-gender marriages, and same-gender marriages, polyam relationships, relationship anarchy. Problematic or complex relationships too, strong successful bi characters and messy, clueless ones. Just all the kinds of honest representation you get of cishet people really!! It's great to see really positive representations of bi+ people (still very rare), but I don't want to see it reduced down to just one type of bi+ person in one type of relationship when it's such a diverse category. Stories besides coming out stories that are fraught with rejection too, although those kinds of stories are also important. Basically just variety, like in real life. Though it's still at a point where seeing bi+ people represented at all is exciting. Schitt's Creek was pretty great for this reason.
What challenges do you face as a person who is attracted to more than one gender?
Being accepted by the queer community is the big one. Maybe I shouldn't need acceptance from other queers to feel good about myself, but I do, and there's lots of academic research to suggest why it's important to have that in-group connection and how it relates to wellbeing. I feel like for a lot of bi+ people, that's a very complicated issue. There's also my own internalised bi-negativity or whatever you'd want to call it, where I often feel like I'm somehow living the wrong life by being in a mixed-gender relationship and I can't tell whether that's a me issue or an issue created by my environment. I don't really feel like I fit in anywhere and it's a strange, lonely place to be. The only time I really felt a strong sense of belonging was when I was working as a stripper and engaging in relationship anarchy if I'm entirely honest. But these are things I'm going to need to work through when my PhD is over, I think. I want to find a therapist who is preferably bi+ themselves and has experience working with bi+ people, as all my previous attempts at therapy have been with therapists who have just encouraged me to come out as a lesbian and leave my partner, and I don't think it's as straight forward as that.
Where do you feel most confident expressing your sexuality? Are there and spaces or communities that make you feel especially welcome?
Most of my friends are other bi+ people and I feel good and as though I can unproblematically be myself around them. I feel fairly accepted and seen in queer academic spaces too, although this is complicated sometimes. I don't really feel accepted in a lot of more generally queer spaces unless I don't reveal the gender of my partner or my married relationship status. This is kind of a complicated one as outside of my academic work, I tend to keep away from specifically queer spaces. On the whole though, people I know personally are accepting of my bi+ identity, at least theoretically. They all know, and I talk about my bi+ research to friends and family. I guess that feels like acceptance, and in my own home when it's just me and my partner I feel accepted. He's always known that I'm bi+ and has never been weird about it, he's never fetishized it or made me feel I should identify a different way. And as I've mentioned, the most accepting and welcoming space I've ever been in is strip clubs! Particularly the first one I ever worked at which felt like a big group of mostly queer friends. I've never quite found a space that felt so much like home as that one.