Give It To Me Bi: How Did Bisexuality Save Your Life?

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+

When we were in Albany last month, we had the opportunity to answer so many good questions about bisexuality (and remember, we use that as an umbrella term). A lot of our answers were sassy because, well, that seems to be our default setting. But one question caused pause.

How did bisexuality save your life?

JACE.

It’s not uncommon for people to ask me a different version of this question: Why Bisexuality? While they seem different on the surface, the truth is that my answer always seems to come around to how bisexuality did, in fact, save my life.

I’ve shared elsewhere about the influence bisexuality has had in my life, including how it has framed my worldview. I've made bisexuality my whole career. But most of all, bisexuality saved me from hating myself.

I don't know how common this story is, but I did have a moment there in high school after I came out to my family as bi, where I thought, “Shit, maybe I'm just a homophobic lesbian.” I didn't have a word for it at the time, but now I can say that every time I experienced attraction towards men, I felt guilty. My inner monologuing would go around saying that I was a liar, I didn't actually like guys because if I did, I wouldn't like women at the same time. I was worried I was just doing what my family and friends expected of me instead of what I actually wanted (also known as compulsory heterosexuality).

I lived with that self-hating “you're a homophobic lesbian” monologue for a really long time until I got involved in a cult.

The cult is a story for another time, but basically, I was surrounded by all these people who were (mostly) supportive of me and my life when I confessed these feelings I was having. I knew I wasn't homophobic, I actively did work in LGBTQ+ spaces for LGBTQ+ folks - but why did I still like men? One of my group leaders said, “Maybe you're just capable of more than you think you are.” And honestly? That’s when it clicked.

I never did the whole “coming out as a lesbian and then back to bisexual” thing. But arguably, this was a lot more impactful than that. Perhaps, this was when I started developing that famous “Bi+ worldview”. Being bisexual didn't mean I was forcing myself to fit the mold—I was actively breaking all the rules that said I had to pick one. I was capable of more. 

In a lot of ways, most of which are kind of obvious, it shaped a lot more of my life than just putting a stop to the self-hatred. But this is probably the clearest way in which bisexuality saved my life.

It was after that whole revelation that I changed majors from mechanical engineering to sociology. I transferred campuses, took sociology of gender and sexuality classes, got involved in even more LGBTQ+ activism, and did research on bisexuality purely out of spite. In a lot of ways, I was determined no other bi+ woman would feel the same self-loathing I felt for being bi. We deserved better.

Now, that passion has transitioned into making sure bi+ folks feel seen, represented, and recognized in LGBTQ+ scholarship. I will cause eye-rolls and sighs in class, especially if there are other bisexuals in the room (statistically likely). I will critique the “LGBTQ+ scholarship” that's really LG. I will pose a problem for anyone and everyone who endorses bi-oppression. Because we deserve better.

And in a lot of ways, this Bisexual Killjoy project is one of the most life-affirming things I've ever done. Bisexuality saved my life because it gave me reasons to keep going. It sparked my curiosity to do things beyond commonsense expectations. And made it very clear that I wasn't the problem, monosexism is.

So, you know, cheers to spite being the fuel that keeps these bisexuals going.

BAILEY.

No one had ever asked me about how bisexuality influences my life before last month. Honestly, no one ever challenges my sexual orientation identity at all, though it’s hard to say if that’s because people have assumed I’ve been in love with my best friend since we were 8 (not wrong) and am now married to a cisgender man or if they automatically erase my identity because we live in under monosexual oppression. The latter seems more likely, but my delusional ass refuses to believe it. 

But just because people don’t ask doesn’t mean that my sexuality doesn’t influence me. At this point in my life, it is a cornerstone of my personality. I am very publicly out on purpose. Before that, though, “bisexual” was never a word or identity that I claimed.

I grew up in the Bible Belt and, like many queer folks, had a difficult relationship with the church. Though, to be honest, the “homosexuals” were never mentioned in our sanctuary, perhaps too far from God’s grace to warrant acknowledgment. My first awareness of gay men started when I was about fourteen or fifteen, during Memorial Day weekend when I started my job as a hostess. There had been an influx of men, to the point that I commented on it to a veteran co-worker. She looked at me, laughed, and said, “Sugar, everybody knows all the f*gs come to town for Memorial Day weekend and fuck on the beach.”

When I tell you my jaw dropped so hard and fast that it could have shotgunned straight into the earth’s core, I’m not sure how far that’s from hyperbole. If men could be together, what else didn’t I know?

This isn’t the part of the story where I tell you that I realized that I was bisexual and lived happily ever after. 

For a long time, I didn’t know bisexual was an option. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you with any real certainty when I learned the word. All I know is that at some point in my sophomore year of college, while exclusively dating a cisgender man, I called myself bisexual and have never questioned it since. 

Of course, being in that exclusive relationship, I never had a chance to explore my sexuality. To be honest, I’ve never felt the need to prove my sexuality to myself in that way. For over a decade, I’ve felt comfortable identifying as bisexual. But how did that self-identification save my life? Maybe here I’ll drop a pithy “to thine own self be true” so you know I’ve at least pretended to read Shakespeare or at least salivated over the 1990 adaptation of Hamlet with Mel Gibson and Helena Bonham Carter.

I think calling myself bisexual, even without announcing it to the world, and knowing that it was true was perhaps my first real step toward self-actualization. Up until that point, I’d spent my life erasing myself, hiding myself, doing anything I could do to minimize myself for the benefit of my family. “Don’t be a problem, Bailey! Do good, Bailey! Be good, Bailey!” But there I was, picking up a label and knowing that it was right and it was mine. 

Now, here Jace and I are, over a decade later, working on a project by bisexuals for all the bi+ people of the world because there aren’t enough of our voices out there in the world. The older I get, the more established and safe I feel in who I am, the more prepared I am to go toe-to-toe with bigots and biphobes because they don’t get to tell me what my identity means. 

In this hindsight moment, I realize that my complete acceptance of being bisexual not only saved my life because it affirmed my life but that my identity has the chance to help others get to that point, too. 

And that? That dares my jaw to drop so far and so fast that it shotguns into the earth’s core.

YOU.

Though we really liked this question because it is beautiful, it was still a hard question. We got so swept up in the moment that neither of us could remember what we said. But now that we’ve had time to think about it and offer our stories, we turn the question to you if you’re willing to answer: How did bisexuality/pansexuality/plurisexuality save your life?

Your Favorite Bisexual Killjoys,
Jace & Bailey

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