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I’m not weird, you’re weird.
I did not expect a chance sighting of the word “throuple” to unlock a whole revelation about my very motivation for starting this bisexual writing project, but the world works in mysterious ways. But. To begin with: I do not like the portmanteau throuple. I would even go so far as to say that I…
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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…
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Self classification
There is an Instagram meme of sorts going around my friends’ stories. I’ve seen it several times now (and in a few iterations); perhaps you have also seen it yourself. The gist is basically this: you’re presented with a series of lines, each offering a spectrum of various sex and gender identities, and invited to…
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You can’t understand yourself through a straight/gay binary
The Journal of Bisexuality has just published a very interesting paper by Rosie Nelson that deconstructs the notion of “straight-passing privilege” using very academic language and heady theory. You can read it yourself — it goes over a number of concepts I’ve thought about in my essays for this project — but the reason I…
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Specificity lost
Loyola Marymount University’s LGBTQ+ Victory Institute has just released a report on the experiences of LGBTQ+ women in politics and it is… predictably grim. Queer women are more likely to be discouraged from running or worried about harassment than their queer male peers (with trans women in particular experiencing this); while on the campaign trail,…
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I’m not sick, but I’m not well
Little by little, it feels like some of the mysteries of the bisexual experience are starting to be unwound. It’s been — well, not common knowledge, but well-documented with research for several years now that bisexuals are, uh, not doing so hot. Compared to monosexuals, we tend to be sicker, both physically and mentally, and…