Give It to Me Bi: Am I Still Queer If My Libido Ghosts Me?

At this point, we're professional bisexuals. Give It To Me Bi is a bi-weekly advice column in your favorite Bisexual Killjoys answer all your questions about being bi+.

Q.

Dear Bailey & Jace,

In the last few years, perimenopause has sent my hormones into chaos, and it’s affecting my attraction in ways I didn’t expect. As a bi+ woman, my fluid sexuality was always a steady part of who I am—something I leaned on whenever bi-erasure crept in—but now the sexual and romantic parts of me feel muted for long stretches, and I don’t feel like myself. With my attraction fluctuating, old doubts have resurfaced, and I find myself questioning whether my queerness is still real or relevant. How do I stay grounded in being bi+ when hormones can reshape my attraction so much? And does my bi+ card get revoked if I’m not interested in dating anyone at all? Any wisdom on aging while bi would mean a lot.

Love your podcast,
Feeling Faded

A.

Dear Feeling Faded,

Let me start with this: your bi+ card has no expiration date, no attendance requirement, and absolutely no “minimum attraction hours” to log each month. The only person who decides whether you’re bi+ is you. That’s it. Not your hormones, not your libido, not society, not your doctor, and certainly not whatever puritanical ghost keeps haunting our cultural understanding of desire.

Now that we’ve cleared security at Identity TSA, let’s talk about what’s actually happening.

You’re navigating perimenopause, and I’m not…yet. But here’s something I can offer from my own life: my libido fluctuates wildly, too. And I’m in a loving, steady relationship with someone I adore and am deeply attracted to. I don’t question any of that. Sometimes life squashes desire. Sometimes desire is active and bright. Sometimes my busy brain hops between these states so quickly that it’s easier to take a nap.

That ebb and flow doesn’t make me less bisexual. It doesn’t erase my queerness. It doesn’t make my identity any less real or grounded or lived. And it certainly doesn’t mean I suddenly become straight or un-queer or identity-less the moment my libido decides to take the nap.

Your queerness is not measured by the volume of your desire. If it were, the entire community would be collectively screwed (ha).

Here’s the thing no one tells you: desire changes. Over a lifespan, over a year, over a week, over a single menstrual cycle, and yes, during perimenopause. Attraction can shift, quiet, flare, hide, transform, and re-emerge. That isn’t failure. It’s biology, it’s age, it’s hormones, it’s stress, it’s sleep, it’s life (have you looked outside lately? That shit is bleak). What matters is not how loud your attraction is at any given moment, but how deeply it’s woven into how you know yourself.

And from your letter, that knowing is still very much there. You’re bi+ because that’s who you are, not because your libido sends out regular performance reviews confirming it.

So how do you accept yourself as still bi+ while your hormones force your relationship with your body to change?

Tips for Moving Through This Life Shift

1. Treat your orientation and your libido as separate things.

Your sexuality is an identity; your desire is a sensation. One can fluctuate while the other stays solid (unless you want it to change!).

2. Create new markers of bi+ identity that aren’t tied to attraction.

Reading bi+ books, engaging with community, wearing your colors, having queer friendships. These are all ways to affirm yourself without relying on libido to do the work.

3. Grieve what’s changing without assuming it’s a loss.

You’re allowed to miss the way your desire used to feel. But also stay open to the possibility that this quieter version of your desire might hold its own beauty.

4. Talk openly with partners or close friends.

You don’t owe anyone performance, but connection helps. Naming what you’re experiencing can relieve pressure and bring comfort.

5. Track your patterns, not to “fix” them, but to understand them.

Noticing when your body feels muted versus when it sparks can help you feel less at the mercy of the fluctuations.

6. Rediscover non-sexual intimacy.

Touch, closeness, ritual, shared routines can feed the parts of you that feel muted without requiring sexual energy you don’t currently have.

7. Give yourself permission to be different now.

Bodies shift. Hormones shift. Identities grow around those shifts, not in spite of them.

Your bi+ identity isn’t something your hormones can revoke. It’s something you claim because it describes who you are. You get to stay bi+ simply because you are bi+, and because this is a part of you that doesn’t disappear just because desire gets quiet for a while.

With love, solidarity, and a libido that does whatever it wants,
Bailey

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