The bi backlash will not be legislated

For a while now, I have been obsessed with the question of what, exactly, a bi backlash might entail.

After all, a backlash seems inevitable in the wake of increased visibility: after gays and lesbians fought stigma in the 1970s and 1980s, we wound up with the Defense of Marriage Act — a preemptive strike against marriage equality signed into law before a single state had even legalized same gender marriage*. And after the “trans tipping point” of the mid 2010s, we found ourselves, well, where we are now: in a hellscape of laws criminalizing essential medical care and trying to prevent kids from playing sports.

And so it only makes sense that in a moment when we’re hearing that a fifth of young women are bisexual, when Gen Z is queerer — and specifically more bisexual-identified — than any older generation, that we’re going to get a bi backlash.

But the framework outlined for the gays and lesbians and trans community above — social visibility followed by legal crackdowns — has never quite made sense when it comes to bisexuals. It is difficult — perhaps even impossible — to pass laws against bisexuality without also criminalizing something else. How are you going to ban, say, someone marrying a man and then later marrying a woman while maintaining marriage equality? We do have bans on group marriage, but those are not quite bi specific (and not every bi person wants multiple partners, as many Bisexual Myth Busters™️ will have you know).

And while one could conceivably see bisexual specific discrimination in the workplace or in housing or other spheres, we are thankfully seeing laws anti-discrimination laws that explicitly name bisexuality alongside homosexuality and heterosexuality as an identity worthy of protection (asexuality is only beginning to gain ground there, though there are some state laws that mention it).

But here’s the thing: I don’t believe that a backlash to increased bi visibility has to come in the form of bi-specific punitive legislation. If the goal of a backlash is to shame bisexuals back into the closet, you don’t need laws to do that. Indeed, why go to all the trouble of making anti-bi laws when social shaming works so incredibly well?

To wit: the backlash to the news that young American women are increasingly likely to identify as bisexual is still going on, and not just in the more conservative corners of the media. Air Mail — a newsletter published by none other than Graydon Carter — just ran its own warmed over take on the matter this weekend, and it’s… a self-identified cis straight woman insisting that all these young bisexual women aren’t “bisexual” so much as “trying to be cool.” Bisexuality, the essay insists, is just about “vibes,” it’s about proving your social cred. It’s about insisting that you’re not some boring old cishet.

The essay’s author attempts to position this idea of bisexual as cool cred as something new and different than the “they’re lying and indecisive” messaging that permeated my youth, explaining that:

For those of us who went through puberty in the pre-Internet age, sexual orientation is inextricable from the embodied act of sex. But many Gen Z–ers reject this notion, which makes a certain sense when you consider that they are not only the least sexually active generation in modern history; they are also the first for whom social and sexual awakening was experienced primarily online.

As someone who had her first period in 1993 — a year when the internet existed but was niche enough that I think we can say I went through puberty in the pre-Internet age — I find this framing ludicrous. Straight people have never been expected to have sex in order to know that they are straight. And it’s hard for me to imagine this woman telling a gay or lesbian virgin that they can’t really know that they’re queer unless they have had sex.

And quite frankly, I knew I was bisexual before I had had sex with anyone. If I — as a fourteen-year-old girl with no sexual experience beyond crushes — could know that I was attracted to both men and women, then why should a young woman who has dated only men be any less capable of doing the exact same thing? Why is bisexuality the orientation, the attraction, that has to be proven and cannot simply be known?

I find this line of thinking — this constant insistence, even from liberal quarters, that the uptick in young bi women is merely social contagion, girls trying to be trendy — deeply upsetting because I know exactly what it did to me. I know how the common wisdom that my sexuality wasn’t “real” unless I constantly having multigender threeways all the time made me doubt my fundamental sense of self and become incredibly self loathing.

I remember all the times that a lackluster sexual encounter with a woman left me convinced that I must not really be attracted to women, even as I’d had numerous equally lackluster encounters with men that didn’t shake my belief in my attraction to them (hilarious given that, on the balance, I’m more attracted to women than men). I know how all the doubt and anxiety kept me isolated and unhappy and unable to pursue a relationship that would actually feel fulfilling.

Which is all to say: every time I read one of these essays dismissing increasing bi visibility, increasing bi identification, as a fad, a trend, as anything but a recognition of the broad swath of people for whom sexuality is more complicated than a binary choice, I think of all the years I wasted hating myself — and I know that it was messaging like this that fueled that self hatred.

The bi backlash will not be legislated. It does not have to be. It is easy enough to make us hate ourselves, to shame us into the closet, to make us question our self worth and sense of self without drawing up a single piece of legislation.

The bi backlash has already arrived. The question now is, how are we going to fight it?

* Yes, we also got Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, but that was progress. I know it is hard for people to remember this, but pre-DADT the military was even worse for queer people, because the “ask” part of “don’t ask” is actually banning the military actively investigating whether gays were amidst their ranks. DADT sucked but it’s hard for me to call it backlash.