How much does social acceptance or rejection define our sexual identity and orientation? It’s curious to see that Generation Z is the one with most LGBTQIA+ members, and, going back, there’s less and less in each generation. What’s the correlation between the two factors? 

Social acceptance has a big impact on how open people feel able to be about their sexual attractions and how free they feel to act upon them. It’s likely that shifting proportions of LGBTQIA+ people across the generations reflects how socially acceptable diverse sexualities and genders are in wider culture, as well as how possible it has been to act upon them without stigma, discrimination, or restriction. Another factor is how important it has been seen over the years to identify your sexuality and gender.

It’s also important to remember that the proportion of people who identify with a particular sexuality is the tip of the iceberg. For example, with bisexuality, far more people will have sexual experiences with more than one gender than identify as bisexual, and even more will experience attraction to more than one gender which they don’t act upon.

Are sexual orientation and identity biological or a social construct?  

Both! Our sexuality is biopsychosocial, which means that – like most aspects of human experience – it comes down to a mixture of the social context we grow up in, the experiences that we have through our lives, and the ways in which our body and brain function. All of these things interact with each other in complex ways that we could never really tease apart. For example, the ways in which our body and brain function impact how we’re treated by others in our particular culture, and also the wider culture shapes the experiences that we’re able to have, which – in turn – shapes our bodies and brains.

You might think about the ways in which certain body shapes and sizes, and mental abilities, are deemed ‘sexually attractive’ in our culture, leading those who have them to have radically different experiences of sex and relationships. Or you might think about the ways in which culture enables and restricts certain forms of sexual expression, meaning that we’re more or less likely to have access to those experiences, which will impact how our bodies and brains will respond to those possibilities (e.g. with pleasure, joy, fear, shame, etc.).

What impact does fear of child sexuality have on how we develop our sexual identity and preference? 

Fear of childhood sexuality has a massive impact at the moment. Few children receive anything like a good education around sex and relationships because there is so much anxiety about talking with kids about sex. Tragically this actually results in more young people have abusive, unwanted, and risky sexual experiences, not less, because they are so ill-equipped to talk about sex or to navigate sex consensually. Certainly most sex education and advice assumes that people will be heterosexual, or only includes LGB sexualities very briefly. This restricts how able young people are to explore the full range of possible sexual and asexual identites and experiences.

It is often said that everyone is bisexual or that no one is, which are biphobic expressions. Why does society have trouble accepting bisexuality specifically. Could it be a human need to categorize everything in extremes? (black and white/ good and bad)

This is an idea that my co-author Alex Iantaffi and I explore at length in our book Life Isn’t Binary. It certainly seems that humans – particularly in western cultures – are drawn to these kinds of binary polarisations when, of course, so much about human life is diverse rather than binary. It wouldn’t make sense to divide people into short and tall – clearly height is a spectrum. A similar thing could be said about various mental capacities, we can’t divide people into a binary of unintilligent or intelligent, rather we can locate people in different places on a number of spectrums of various abilities (mathematical, linguistic, spatial, etc.). So why, when it comes to sexuality and gender, do we assume a binary?

You’re right that, many times over the years, people have tried to argue that either nobody is ‘really’ bisexual, or that everybody is bisexual. Both of those extremes risk erasing actual bisexual experience, as well as limiting human sexuality to one dimension (the gender of the people we’re attracted to), when really there is a lot more to it than that.

It is often said that putting labels on ourselves or others can be damaging, but by not calling something by a name, you can deny its existence. Do we really need labels to identify ourselves and what we’re attracted to? Why?  

This is another non-binary! There are many arguments for and against people labelling their sexuality. I find it more helpful to ask what labels open up, and close down, for people, assuming that they probably do both. For people whose sexual attractions – or absence of attractions – are marginalised, labels can be important in claiming their experience, communicating it to others, and finding supportive community within a world that harms them. At the same time, labels can come with a set of expectations which can be limiting and rigid, and it can be difficult to let go of labels – and all that they bring – if things change for you.

Culturally we’re in a place where the only accepted way to fight for equal human rights is generally on the basis of identity labels. It’s very hard to fight for the rights of a group to be treated in just ways unless that group identifies under a label and can prove, through research, the negative impact that marginalisation has upon them. This has been a key tension in discussions of the labels around attraction to multiple genders. Some argue for the dropping of labels entirely, or embracing multiple labels like pansexual, queer, omnisexual, plurisexual, and so on. However, most governments and organisations only recognise the ‘B’ for bisexual, so there are strategic reasons for people to use that term, even when it may not feel the best fit for them.

At least in the United States, bisexuals comprise more than half the LGBTQIA+ collective, but that’s not what it looks like. It seems that they’re actually a minority. Why could that be?   

There’s a long history of bisexual people being treated with suspicion in the wider LGB movement and community. This dates back to the fact that ‘gay rights’ were often fought for on the basis of the idea that sexuality was binary (straight or gay) and that gay people were a minority group who were marginalised and oppressed within that binary. Anybody whose sexuality didn’t fit that binary model were seen as ‘muddying the water’ and potentially jeopardising the fight for gay rights. 

Many theorists and scientists now recognise that human sexuality is actually diverse and fluid across many dimensions, and that the proportion of people attracted to the same gender or more than one gender is probably at least equal to the number of people who are attracted to the ‘opposite’ gender only. However it is taking a long time for this way of seeing things to find its way into mainstream culture and governmental policies.

Have the different definitions of bisexuality through history influenced biphobia and formed misconceptions on what bisexuality is?  

Yes certainly they have. The most widely accepted definition of bisexuality within the bi+ community today is ‘attraction to more than one gender’, with some also using ‘attraction regardless of gender’. However, early definitions of bisexuality mixed gender and sexuality and saw bisexual people as people who had more than one gender. Later definitions assumed that bisexual people were attracted exactly equally to men and women. We see the legacy of these kinds of definitions in the assumptions that bisexual people will also be androgynous, and in the equation of bisexual with attraction to only two genders. As The Bisexual Index points out, if people are concerned about the ‘bi’ in bisexual meaning ‘two’, they can understand it as ‘attraction to both people of the same gender as themselves, and to people of different genders to themselves’.

It’s not common to hear about bisexual characters on the history of LGBTQIA+ rights although they’re there. Why are they not that visible?  

This is particularly striking when you think that one of the most famous sexologists of all time (Alfred Kinsey) and the woman who co-ordinated the first Pride march in 1970 (Brenda Howard) were both bi! However people who identified as bi or had attractions to more than one gender are often erased from LGBTQIA+ history. I suspect this is for the same reason that I mentioned above: that a lot of gay rights has been fought for on the basis of a straight (majority) / gay (minority) binary, and the existence and prevalence of bisexuality seems like a threat to this.

What is the reason that bisexual women are the ones to experience the most sexual violence? 

Bi women seem to experience higher levels of both sexual and relationship abuse than straight or lesbian women. One reason for this is the stereotype of bi women as hypersexual and sexually available, which means they experience higher levels of sexual harassment of all kinds. Another reason is that so many people find the idea of bisexuality threatening, and sexual violence can be used as a way of policing and punishing that. In relationships, the stereotype of bi people as promiscuous, suspicious, and lying means that bi people are often wrongly assumed to be more likely to leave – or cheat on – a partner. This can lead to biphobia in relationships where bi people are encouraged to hide their sexuality, and may be treated in controlling – even violent – ways by partners who are insecure about their bi-ness.

How do we work towards ending biphobia? 

I’d like to see far better awareness and education in wider culture, and for young people, about the diversity of sexuality, moving away from binary models which see it as being all about the gender of the people we’re attracted to. In my book Sexuality: A Graphic Guide I draw together lots of theories and research which suggests that there are many dimensions to sexuality, including the amount of sexual attraction that we experience, the kinds of erotic desires we have, the other features of a person that we find attractive beyond gender, and much more. We need to get to a point where we see all forms of erotic experience as equally legitimate and beautiful, so long as they are acted upon consensually.

The post Bisexuality and biphobia appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

In this post I want to share some thoughts about the learnings that I believe are important, in both directions, between mental health activism and sexuality/gender activism. I also want to explore the separation that we make between these two areas and whether that might be part of the problem.

Separating out mental health and gender/sexuality

The first thing we were asked to do on the panel was to introduce ourselves, including our own gender and sexuality – given the focus of the panel – and our lived experience of mental health struggles.

The answer I would usually give to this question nowadays – for example in the interview that I did for mental health podcast So Many Wings – would be something like this: 

‘My gender is trans, my sexuality is queer, and my mental health situation is that I’m a survivor of developmental and relational trauma who experiences themselves as plural.’

So I could be diagnosed with post traumatic stress and dissociative identity disorders if using those psychiatric categories. If you wanted to add a question in there about my spiritual/therapeutic stance then something like somatic- and social justice-informed Buddhist mindfulness might get close to that.

As I considered this answer though, I realised that a deeper truth is that it really doesn’t make much sense to me, any more, to distinguish my gender, my sexuality, my mental health status, and my spirituality in this way. The answer to all of these questions – gender, sexuality, mental health, and spirituality – could be trans, they could all be queer, they could all be plural, traumatised, and mindful. They are all of them.

So the main point I want to make in this piece is that I think we should question the very separation between mental health activism and LGBTQIA+ activism. The reasons for this is not just because – as Black feminists have rightly pointed out – we have to fight all forms of injustice – whether or not they impact us directly – in order to be truly free. It’s also not just because so many queers are also survivors due to the traumatising nature of marginalisation and stigmatisation. It’s because the very separation of these aspects of our experience may well be part of the problem which leads to both the oppression of queer people and to the distress of survivors. 

I’ll return to this theme in more depth shortly. First, let’s consider what each form of activism might learn from the other, if we did regard them as separable. For each I’ll make a couple of key suggestions although there are many more we could consider.

What can mental health activism learn from LGBTQIA+ activism?

My answers to this question are both things which more radical mental health activism has already learnt from queer activism, but which could definitely do with filtering through more fully to mainstream mental health activism.

First, LGBTQIA+ activism – whether the more mainstream or radical version – has generally located the problem of queer experience out there in the heteronormative, homophobic, biphobic, transphobic, acephobic, etc. culture, rather than in queer people themselves. This is a shift that began a long time ago, in the moves towards decriminalisation and depathologisation of homosexuality. It has continued as each new addition to the LGBTQIA+ acronym has eventually argued that their experience should not be understood as a problem within the individual, but an issue with wider normative society. 

Within more mainstream mental health activism there is still often a sense of mental health struggles as something which are located within the individual, which require fixing, rather than as signs of a toxic culture, unjust social structures, or systemic problems within a family or workplace, for example. 

Some mental health struggles simply wouldn’t be struggles within a culture which accepted diverse experience rather than insisting that people follow certain rigid norms of behaviour and experience, and pathologised and stigmatised those who don’t. Many other struggles are the result of forms of traumatic experiences such as marginalisation and non-consensual treatment, which are individualised in the person who is struggling, rather than recognised as being structural and systemic problems. 

Survivor-led and mad pride movements have moved towards a more similar understanding to queer activism: that the problem is out there rather than in here, and that one important form of resistance is that of visibly taking pride in our difference, rather than accepting the shame and stigma of the wider world. For example we might question those who can can manage to fit into the category of ‘sane’ in such an ‘insane’ world. We might celebrate the ‘creatively maladjusted misfits and changemakers’ that we are, as So Many Wings does.

What can LGBTQIA+ activism learn from mental health activism?

My answers to this question are about what LGBTQIA+ activism could learn from the more radical and critical versions of mental health activism. I wrote more about this in this paper on why bi communities, in particular, could do with a more critical understanding of mental health.

One thing that’s always surprised me in queer communities is the way people who are very critical about normative ways of understanding gender and sexuality, often seem to accept mainstream medical models of mental health. Folks who think carefully and queerly about the labels and categories that are imposed on our genders and sexualities, where those come from and who benefits from them, often seem comfortable labelling their mental health struggles with psychiatric categories, and accepting that those make them a certain kind of – disordered – person. 

Also, many in the queer world challenge the binaries and hierarchies that are imposed on gender and sexuality, without applying this to mental health. So the main thing I’d like to see from a dialogue between queer and mental health activism, would be a more critical perspective on mental health among queers which questions binary divisions between normal and abnormal, mad and sane, functional and dysfunctional, healthy and unhealthy, rational and emotional, and so on. Just as with the binaries of man/woman, gay/straight, cis/trans, etc. we can ask who is served by such divisions, and whether they stand up to scrutiny. Alex Iantaffi and I explore these questions more in our book Life Isn’t Binary.

Secondly, mental health activism is – it seems to me – increasingly informed by somatic understandings of trauma and the way it operates in the body. Queer activism could certainly do with learning from such trauma-informed perspectives. My experience of LGBTQIA+ and sex positive spaces is that they are often unaware of this. For example, there’s often little awareness in party and con spaces of the potential triggers of trauma, how these show up in the body, how to know that you – or somebody else – is in a trauma response, and the implications of this in for our sexual practices and relationships. 

In more conscious sexuality and kink spaces, there can often be a sense that people should be pushed to their edges, or confronted with challenging activities as a form of catharsis, without an awareness of the potentially retraumatising impact of putting somebody through a similar situation to one which was traumatising in early life. Online call-out and cancel culture, which is prevalent in some queer communities, similarly lacks an awarenes of the potentially retraumatising impact of public shaming, and the traumatised places in ourselves that such impulses can come from.

Mental health activism is LGBTQIA+ activism and vice versa

When I worked as a therapist, one thing that struck me was that gender and sexuality were almost always deeply relevant to clients’ mental health struggles. This was true whether they were somebody whose gender and/or sexuality was marginalised, or somebody who was more normative in their presentation of their gender and/or sexuality. 

LGBTQIA+ people’s mental health struggles are clearly related to their experiences of marginalisation, stigma, invisibility, discrimination, bullying, and so on. For more normative folks, it is often the attempt to adhere to rigid ideals of masculinity, femininity, and heteronormativity that is the problem. 

For example, in relation to gender, we know that high rates of suicide and addiction in men is highly linked to toxic masculinity and rules against expressing vulnerability or emotion, and seeking help or support from others. We also know that high rates of depression, anxiety, and body shame in women is highly linked to the way femininity is defined in relation to others, and women’s worth is wrapped up in their relationships and desirability. 

In relation to sexuality, many people experience distress because the very limited ideas about the kind of sex that they should have, and the relationship contexts they should be having it in, bear little relation to their internal erotic landscapes. This mismatch plays out regularly in a vulnerable and embodied way during sex, which takes a great toll on mental health. It could be seen as a form of everyday non-consent enacted against the bodies of ourselves and/or of others.

So, whether we are marginalised in relation to our gender and sexuality or not, normative understandings of gender and sexuality traumatise us. For this reason, our mental health struggles, genders, and sexualities cannot easily be disentangled, in fact should be explored together.

Bringing mental health and gender/sexuality back together

It strikes me that many cultures around the world do not separate out gender, sexuality, spirituality, and mental health at all. In many places the most spiritual people have also been those who were gender creative and erotically expansive. Language has developed in such contexts which captures that whole state rather than separating out gender, sexuality, and spirituality. In many faiths and communities, experiences which we might label mental health struggles are seen as sacred experiences, or paths to enlightenment, and people going through them are honoured and supported.

The separation of gender, sexuality, mental health, and spirituality could be seen as a toxic aspect of racial capitalism, required to ensure docile subjects who are too busy policing themselves, and each other, around their ‘normality’ or otherwise to critically consider what is being done to them, or its impact. 

Certainly we can see the roots of the current form of the binary gender model and heteronormativity in forms of capitalism which required women to work unpaid in the home supporting and reproducing the workforce. In many ways this has ramped up under neoliberal capitalism with its pressure to present a successful, productive singular self who is performing gender, sex, and mental well-being perfectly, while paying little attention to spirituality beyond the individualised kind of care required to keep them functional and productive.

Perhaps one of the reasons we see such high rates of distress in neoliberal capitalist cultures is this very severing of gender, sexuality, mental health, and spirituality, within such an unjust race and class system. This could, itself, be seen as a form of historical and intergenerational trauma, as authors such as Alex Iantaffi have suggested. 

The work of Audre Lorde – and many Black feminists who’ve followed her – calls into question such separation. They suggest instead that we could understand ‘the erotic’ as a powerful resource relating to how we feel when we’re most alive and mentally well which incorporates and transcends the sexual and the spiritual. If liberated such a resource would reveal and challenge all of the destructive forces we’re operating under, and require something very different.

My trans, queer, plural, traumatised, mindful self

You might find it useful – like me – to play with whether the labels you use to describe one aspect of your experience or identity are actually helpful to apply to other aspects. Perhaps this can be helpful in breaking down the divisions between gender, sexuality, mental health status, and spirituality.

I find trans a useful word to apply to all of these areas because my experience of all of them is different to what they were assumed to be when I was born, not just my gender. Also we can understand trans as signalling transition, or change over time, and I consider all these aspects of me as in a state of becoming, rather than being fixed.

The word queer can signal being outside of normativity of all kinds, and that certainly applies to gender, sexuality, mental health, and spirituality for me. Queer also involves questioning binaries, and the power structures they serve, which is something I’m keen to do, whether those binaries be man/woman or cis/trans, gay/straight or sexual/non-sexual, mad/sane or normal/abnormal, spiritual/non-spiritual or Buddhist/secular.

In addition to transition, plurality is a word which captures my experience of selfhood better than most. Again this applies across all these aspects of being. My plural parts have different genders, they have different sexualities and erotic desires, they express trauma in different ways and fall into different survival strategies, and they certainly come down in different places on a spectrum from secular to spiritual, or ‘rational’ to ‘woo’.

Finally trauma and mindful are both words which are useful across all aspects of myself. I have certainly been traumatised by normative understandings of gender, sexuality, mental health, and spirituality which have been passed down through the generations to me. These are also all sites of trauma for me as I’ve experienced gender-related bullying and discrimination; sexual assault and harrassment; gaslighting and stigma around my mental health struggles; and traumatic experiences in spiritual and conscious sexuality communities – both personally and in relation to the wider #MeToo moments that such communities have gone through.

Somatic and social justice forms of Buddhist mindfulness have been important for me, in addressing all these forms of trauma, and in coming to understand my self (or selves, or no self) better in relation to gender, sexuality, mental health, spirituality, and the ways these are all woven together.

Further resources

• You can read a dialogue between me and Helen Spandler on what queer studies and mad studies can learn from each other here.
• This resource that I wrote for the BACP explains in more detail why gender and sexuality are themes that need to be explored with all clients in relation to their mental health struggles, along with race, class, disability and other key intersections.
• This article I wrote about mental health as depression and oppression in relation to bi communities also deals with these themes.

• You can find more of my resources about trauma on my trauma work page.
• Patreon link: If you found this useful, please feel free to support my Patreon.

The post Queer Activism and Mental Health Activism: The Need For Dialogue appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

First I’ll be on this panel tonight talking about bi visibility and mental health. ELOP LGBT centre are organising this, who offer great support to LGBT folks in North and East London.

Second, thanks to Paisley Gilmour for including me in her great piece for Cosmo on ‘how straight people can be better to their bisexual friends‘. You can read the full interview I did with Paisley below…

How does coming out as bi, or being bi, affect friendships with cishet people?

Obviously it depends a lot on the cishet people concerned, but in a situation where most of your friends are cishet identified it can be hard indeed to be the one person who is bi, pan, or queer identified. It is often the case that people are ‘recloseted’ by their friends even after coming out to them as bi. If they’re not actively in a queer romantic/sexual relationship they’re assumed to be ‘really’ straight.

This relates to the common popular stereotypes of bi/pan sexuality being ‘just a phase’, ‘not real’, etc. And that relates to the cultural assumption that sexuality is binary: you’re either straight or you’re gay. Interestingly this is also very patriarchal: bi women tend to be assumed to be ‘really’ straight, and bi man as ‘really’ gay, as if everyone would default to being with a man given the chance! It also links to slut-shaming for women, as bi women are often assumed to be promiscuous.

It is stressful indeed to have to come out repeatedly to friends, to have to keep reminding them of your bi-ness, and to have it continually erased in this way. This might take the form, for example, of them assuming you are cishet even after being told otherwise, or of only expressing interest and enthusiasm about your dates who are the ‘opposite gender’.

This is all really important because we know that bi erasure, biphobia, and lack of support, takes a toll on bi people’s mental health, which tends to be worse than that of either straight or gay people. Also the rates of abusive relationships are higher for bi people because some partners will use their bi-ness against them, or act in controlling ways because they are threatened by it in a world which equates being bi with being untrustworthy betrayers.

Why are friendships so important for bi folks?

Given cultural biphobia and bi erasure, people may well have problems in their families and/or workplaces when they come out as bi. They may even not be able to be out in those contexts. This can be particularly the case where bi-ness intersects with other aspects of oppression. For example, it may feel unsafe for a bi person to come out to biphobic/homophobic parents, particularly if that might risk them losing their home, their community, and/or a carer if they are also disabled. Black women who are already highly sexualised in the workplace may fear the extra harassment they would receive if they were out there as bi.

For these reasons friendships can be vital. They should be one place where your bi-ness can be seen and mirrored by your close people, and a place where you can feel supported and like people are there for you. It can therefore be particularly painful if the people you have chosen to be close to – rather than being forced to be close to by birth or career – are unsupportive, ignorant, attacking, or bi-erasing.

Why can navigating friendships with cishet people as a bisexual/queer person be so hard?

It’s worth thinking a bit about what may be behind some cishet people struggling with bi/pan/queer friends.

First of all, remember that the majority of people experience some attraction to the ‘opposite gender’. According to a recent YouGov survey, the majority of young people are something other than ‘exclusively heterosexual’.

So it is probably the case that the person coming out as bi or queer in an otherwise cishet group prompts some degree of envy or discomfort in at least some of the others in the group. Some may be consciously hiding queerness from their friends, others may feel edgy or uncomfortable because it prompts them to question themselves in ways they haven’t done before. They may not want to look at what it brings up for them.

Some cishet friends – responding to stereotypes of bi-ness and promiscuity – will assume that somebody being bi means they will be attracted to them. There is often discomfort and distancing in friendships where there is the possibility of sexual attraction, compared to those where there is not, which is a real shame. And obviously being bi does not mean being attracted to everyone any more than being straight means being attracted to everyone of the ‘opposite gender’.

Finally, bi folks often find themselves questioning other norms around sex, gender and relationships, and more. This is partly because questioning one set of norms often leads to further questioning, and partly because of overlaps between bi community and trans, kink, polyamorous, and other communities. Again, friends may feel a sense of envy seeing these things opened up in a way that doesn’t feel possible for them. It may feel threatening to them, or it may create distance in a friendship where people are now on quite different life trajectories (e.g. towards marriage and nuclear family vs. towards an extended polycule of queers).

Bi, pan and queer folks can end up more educated around social justice issues more widely, due to common conversations in their communities, and this can also cause rifts with friends who are less keen to know about social injustice or examine their privileges.

How can we know when to educate, when to shrug off their comments, and even when to end a friendship?

Perhaps this is a broader question to ask of all the relationships in our lives, in an ongoing way. One of the problems with normative models of friendships – and partner and family relationships – is that there isn’t often a sense that consent should be at the heart of it. In fact there’s often quite a strong sense of duty and obligation: that you should be in this relationship because you were in the past, and that it should remain the same over time.

Consent means checking in, in an ongoing way, about whether a relationship is nourishing everybody in it, and – if not – what it would take to be more nourishing, whether the relationship container may need to change, or even whether people might need to go their separate ways.

A definition of consent would be that everyone involved feels free-enough and safe-enough to express themselves, their feelings, their needs, and their boundaries, knowing that these will be respected.

In the case of coming out as bi – as with any new thing – it’s fine for friends to need a little adjustment time. But if you are still not feeling free-enough and safe-enough to express your bi-ness, and confident of having it respected, after a while, then there is an issue!

It also should not be on any marginalised person to educate those around them. It’s okay to provide a couple of links of good information and expect people to educate themselves a bit. Again those who refuse to do this are giving you some important information right there!

Of course it can be really hard to have conversations about this with your friends if there is a genuine fear that you may lose them. I would suggest slowly, when it feels okay to do so, asking friends one-to-one if they’d be up for a conversation about what the friendship needs to do in order to be free enough and safe enough for both of you to bring yourselves fully. If people aren’t up for that, or if those conversations go badly, then focusing time and energy on cultivating friendships where you feel more seen and secure, is a good idea. It’s fine for this process to take a while though, and to get some therapeutic support if you find that kind of communication and boundary-setting hard, as many of us do.

Are friendships with other queer people easier? Should we be gravitating towards them?

One tough thing for bi people – certainly in the past – has been the fact that many have had these experiences with straight friends and have then turned to the gay community for friendship and support. Sadly many lesbians and gay men have struggled just as much – if not more so – with bi folks as cishet people have. This is called double discrimination and can be really devestating for people who then feel they don’t belong anywhere.

The same kinds of issue around recloseting, casual biphobia, mental health struggles, and relationship abuse, have played out for bi people in gay communities as much as they have in straight ones. Still many older bi folks in relationships with gay or lesbian identified people do not feel able to be out as bi.

There’s a history in gay communities of bi people being seen as ‘muddying the water’ in the campaign for gay rights, or of having privileges that lesbian and gay people don’t have, or of being untrustworthy and likely to return to the straight community at some stage.

For these reasons, bi communities have been extremely important to many bi people, and it can still be great to tap into bi-specific events and spaces on or off-line. Check out Bi Pride, The Bisexual Index, Bi Community News, Bis of colour, BiCon, Biscuit, and more in the UK.

However, in younger gay and queer communities there is often far more openness to bi and pan folks than there has been in the past, so it may well be that – if you are younger – the turn towards queer community is a much more positive one, and that you will find many other people there who identify in similar ways to you.

It’s certainly very helpful indeed to have friendships with people who mirror your sexuality back to you accurately, who celebrate all your relationships, and who offer you support. However, it’s worth being aware that no community is perfect, and most have some implicit norms about how people are expected to be and behave.

You are ‘bi/pan/queer enough’ whether or not you fit the ways of being bi, pan or queer that you see around you in your community. You may well find it’s useful to join some groups – or find some friends – specific to your intersections, if you don’t feel well reflected in the wider bi/pan/queer community. For example there are great QTIPOC groups, events, and helplines in many places.

The points made earlier about consensual relating are important for everyone to take seriously, and not something you can just assume to be the case in communities where people seem to be more like you. It can be the case that people surprise you, and those who are most supportive and celebratory are not always those in your specific community. For example, people who have experienced other forms of difference and oppression in their lives can sometimes be great friends or allies, and those committed to consensual relating without sharing an identity with you, can be a better bet than those who are more similar, but are not aware around consent.

The post Bi visibility: how to be a good friend appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Is it common for people to question their sexuality?

It’s actually really common. Although many people assume that we’re born with a fixed sexual orientation, actually recent research has found that most people’s sexuality is fluid, meaning that it changes over the course of their lives. For example, we might have been attracted to one gender for our whole lives but experience an attraction to somebody of another gender. This might start us questioning how we identify our sexuality going forward.

It’s also important to remember that sexuality isn’t just about what gender or genders we’re attracted to. It’s also about the amount of sexual attraction we experience (from none to high), the kinds of sex we enjoy, the types of people we find attractive, the roles we like to take sexually (more active or passive, submissive or dominant), and many other things. All of these aspects of our sexuality can change over time meaning that we might start to question what our sexuality is, or how we identify it.

Can this happen at any time in your life?

Absolutely. Most people experience some changes in their sexuality over the course of their lives, for example in the age of the people they’re attracted to, the amount of sex they want to have, or the types of things that turn them on. Our sexuality can be impacted by our physical and mental health, the amount of energy we have, the people we hang out with, who we’re in relationships with, and the messages about sex that are around us in our communities and cultures. All of those things change over time as well.

Why might someone question their sexuality?

Some common reasons for questioning our sexuality include:

• Finding that we’re attracted to someone who is quite different to our usual attractions (e.g. a different gender, physical appearance, or background)
• A friend, colleague or family member coming out as a different sexuality which can make us realise that it might apply to us too
• Learning about a sexuality we were previously unfamiliar with in the media or from a friend. This can give us a sudden sense of realisation: ‘oh maybe I could be that,’ ‘that label might apply to me.’
• Watching porn, reading erotica, or having a fantasy and realising we’re turned on by something that we didn’t used to be turned on by, or which we just hadn’t thought about before.

What should you do if you think you might be gay, bisexual, pansexual, queer etc?

First of all it’s really important to remember that whatever your sexuality is – and however you decide to label it – is absolutely fine. Sadly we live in a culture which gives us the idea that it’s more ‘normal’ or ‘better’ to be straight than it is to be gay, bisexual, pansexual, queer, etc. Actually, recent research suggests that at least as many young people are on the spectrum from ‘exclusively heterosexual’ to ‘exclusively homosexual’ than are at the ‘exclusive heterosexual’ end of that spectrum. Also more people have some kind of kinky sexual desires than don’t. And many people are on the asexual spectrum. Even if your sexuality is very rare or unusual, it’s still completely legitimate, so long as you only act on it consensually (that’s also true for common sexualities too of course!)

If you think you might be a different sexuality than the one you thought you were then it’s a great idea to do some self-exploration. Give yourself time to reflect on your sexuality and how you might like to label it, if at all. Journalling, engaging with ethical porn (and paying for it!), reading erotica, and fantasising are all great ways to do self-exploration.

It can also be really helpful to get support from other people who are in these sexual communities. There are online groups, meet-up groups, and community resources for all of these sexualities, as well as books and videos online. Check this stuff out but do remember that nobody should be pressurising you to label yourself in any way, or to come out unless that feels good to you. Go gently and take your time.

Is there a way to know?

Sexuality is a complex, constantly changing and evolving, thing so there’s no way to be sure whether you are ‘really’ straight, gay, bi, pansexual, asexual, demisexual, submissive, etc. It’s much more about whether those words – or others – feel like a good fit for you. It’s fine to just call yourself ‘questioning’ for as long as that feels right, or simply not to label yourself. It’s also fine to use one label for a while, and then change it if it stops feeling like such a good fit.

The main thing to remember is that it is perfectly legitimate to have whatever attractions and desires you have sexually, so long as you only act upon them consensually. If that feels like a struggle for you – or if these questions are causing you distress – then it’s worth getting some professional help from a therapist or counsellor. The Pink Therapy list in the UK is a good one for therapists who specialise in this area. The Kink Aware Professionals and Poly Friendly Professionals lists online are also useful international resources.

What would you recommend for people who think they might be but aren’t sure – any resources, books, practical tips?

I’m writing a book called How To Understand Your Sexuality next year which will hopefully be helpful! Meanwhile BishUK and Scarleteen are excellent resources for younger people questioning their sexuality, and contain useful material for people of all ages too. 

You might also find these zines helpful to work through:

Mapping Your Sexuality

Make Your Own Sex Manual

Justin Hancock and I talk about these themes often on our podcast at megjohnandjustin.com.

The post Figuring out your sexuality appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

You can read the article here, and my full interview below.

Why are people calling this gay instead of sexually fluid or bisexual?

This story is being treated in a very similar way to ‘Brokeback Mountain’, which was almost unanimously hailed as a ‘gay cowboy story’ although it could more accurately be described as a ‘bisexual shepherd story’, given that both male characters had female partners and there was certainly some depiction of romantic and erotic attraction within those relationships too.

The reason for this is certainly that we’re culturally mired in the gay/straight binary. We see a similar thing when celebrities mention attraction to more than one gender, often mainstream media announces that they are ‘gay now’. Unfortunately the interconnected binary understanding of gender and sexuality is strongly embedded in Western culture. Until recently even the science of sexology insisted that humans could only be men or women, and could only be attracted to the ‘same’ or ‘opposite’ sex. 

Thankfully the work of sex historians, queer theorists, bisexuality researchers, and scientists have challenged this view, pointing out that this is a relatively recent way of understanding human experience, which is a poor fit for many people, and which isn’t supported by either biological or psychological research. Not only is sexual attraction not a same/opposite binary, but sexuality is fluid (our attractions, desires, and identities can change over time), and multidimensional (not just about gender of attraction). 

Is bisexuality still being erased or considered non-existent? Do we need more fiction like this that envisions desire as unmoored from gender and sexual identities?

Sadly bisexuality is still erased. Until recently most mainstream depictions of characters with attraction to more than one gender were almost always depicted as going from straight to gay or gay to straight. If they were depicted, bisexual characters were confused, going through a phase, or otherwise suspicious. Still bisexual characters are often represented as evil, greedy, or manipulative, think of Frank Underwood in House of Cards, for example (check out the media section of The Bisexuality Report for more examples).

It would be great to see more fiction that unmoors desire from gender and sexual identities. We know that around 40% of young people experience their attraction as somewhere between ‘exclusively heterosexual’ and ‘exclusively homosexual’. Many identify as bisexual (attracted to more than one gender), pansexual (gender not being the key feature of their sexual attraction), or queer (challenging the whole gay/straight binary). 

Going back to multiple dimensions of sexuality, many find that their extent of sexual attraction is equally – or more – important than gender of attraction (people on the asexual spectrum). Many define themselves more in terms of the kind of people they’re into (e.g. sapiosexual), the kind of desires they have (e.g. people in the kink or BDSM community), the positions they take (e.g. top, bottom, switch), or the kind of relationships they form (e.g. solo-poly, monogamish). People can be in different places in relation to their erotic attractions and their nurturing attractions (the people they want to form more romantic or close bonds with), and in relation to what they enjoy in solo sex or fantasy, and in sex with other people. Sari van Anders is one key researcher who is teasing apart these dimensions in scientific research (basic overview here).

Is there something political or profound about imagining non-normative desire/ love that is unhindered by the usual obstacles, and not sensationalized or othered?

In a world which is still mired in an outdated understanding of sexuality as fixed, defined by gender of attraction, and only acceptable within a monogamous context, I would say that this kind of fiction is indeed political. It’s worth remembering that the dominant cultural understanding of sexuality – where heterosexuality is normal, homosexuality is less than normal (still requiring of explanations and people ‘coming out’) and anything else is invisible – is grounded in a historical approach to science and psychiatry which saw its purpose as delineating ‘normal’ from ‘abnormal’ behaviour. This, itself, was related to the early 20th century scientific projects of delineating different races as inferior/superior (in order to justify colonialism), and the eugenics movement (trying to prevent supposedly inferior classes and races, as well as disabled people, from reproducing). 

Producing depictions of non-normative desire are a step in the direction of challenging all sense that there is a normative (white, middle class, male, heterosexual) way of being that everyone should be judged against, and questioning the related view that some bodies and lives are inherently more valuable than others. Follow this thread and it leads to some far more obviously political questions about the way we relate to other humans, other species, and the planet. 

Are portrayals of desire as sexually fluid/ bisexual becoming more common? Are there any examples in contemporary culture that you feel are getting it right?

The majority of depictions do still fit the monogamous gay/straight binary model sadly. However, we do now have some excellent stereotype-busting bi characters now in the form of Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn 99 and Callie Torres in Grey’s Anatomy. Bisexuality is also well represented in Issa Rae’s TV show Insecure, and will be centred in her follow-up Him or Her. Relatedly, we’ve seen some good depictions of non-binary gender in shows like Billions and Grey’s Anatomy.

Very few mainstream depictions ever truly acknowledge that a person can be attracted to – or love – more than one person without that being a problem. So much drama revolves around the love triangle.

Sense8 is an example of a nice recent exception. The movies Shortbus and Kinsey from a while back, and more recently Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, are pretty positive. The TV shows You, Me, Her and She’s Gotta Have It deal with this topic, but fall into some more stereotypical and problematic portrayals of open non-monogamy. Queer fans enjoy the depictions of gender, sexuality, and relationships in the cartoon series Steven Universe for being far less normative, and sci-fi and fantasy in general can be better places to turn for non-normative depictions. 

What are the possible benefits of seeing examples of openly non-monogamous desire in fiction and film?

The benefits are potentially huge. Monogamous relationships are currently under huge pressure to meet all of a person’s needs, with partners expected to provide sexual passion, best-friendship, caring support, co-habiting, co-parenting, and more, for life. Therapists like Esther Perel point out that it’s incredibly hard to get both ‘warm love’ and ‘hot love‘ within the same relationship, and this may explain why over fifty percent of people see themselves as having one or more sexual dysfunctions, and rates of infidelity are similarly high.

The pressure on monogamy keeps many people in unhappy and damaging relationships, while others go from break-up to break-up because nobody can match up to these high ideals, collecting more emotional bruises along the way.

We need depictions of people doing relationships in all kinds of other ways in order to know that these are available and to have some model for how to navigate them. Open non-monogamy is just one example. It would be great to also see positive depictions of soloness and singledom, people who prioritise friendship over love when it comes to close relationships or cohabiting, aromantic people, relationship anarchists, people whose relationship style is based around friends-with-benefits, fuckbuddy, or hook-up arrangements. People are living their lives in these ways but struggling to see themselves represented.

The post Sexual fluidity and ‘Call Me By Your Name’ appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

My main reason for not writing it sooner was that I knew there were knowledges, practices, and themes that a book like this would need to cover which I didn’t have enough understanding or experience of myself. Fortunately I now have my awesome co-author Alex, and we were looking for a follow-up to How to Understand Your Gender. Alex and I have pretty similar views, but we come from different backgrounds in all kinds of ways. We bring together different spiritual traditions (e.g. Pagan and Buddhist), different activisms (e.g. intersectional feminist, queer, disability, sex critical), different academic backgrounds (e.g. psychology, sociology, philosophy, literature, health), and different therapeutic approaches (e.g. existential, mindfulness, systemic, and somatic).

Most of these areas have something useful to contribute to the idea of thinking, relating, and living non-binary. We’re aware – of course – that there are many other schools of thought and traditions that would also be valuable but which we don’t know about personally. We hope that people with those understandings (from other faiths, philosophies, cultural contexts, etc.) will be able to bring them into dialogue with the materials in the book.

The book starts by taking you through why a non-binary approach is a useful way of understanding sexuality and gender. Alex and I have a background in bi politics, and we both identify as non-binary/genderqueer these days, so we talk about our own experiences as well as expanding out beyond the gay/straight and male/female binaries. Then we explore how the non-binary approach might also be helpful in thinking about how we do our relationships, how we think to our bodies and identities, how we relate with our emotions, and how we think about life, the universe, and everything.

You can listen to Alex and me talking more about Life Isn’t Binary here.

If you want a taster of the book, here are a few of my blog posts which cover non-binary sexualities, genders, relationships, feelings, and thinking:

• Bisexuality, pansexuality, and queer
• Non-binary gender
• Relationships
• Feelings
• Non-binary thinking about porn and trigger warnings

If it sounds up your street please do grab a copy of Life Isn’t Binary today.

The post New Book – Life Isn’t Binary – Out Today! appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

In the run up to publication Alex and I made this podcast about the book and why non-binary thinking is such an important theme for us.

We discussed the trans umbrella, colonial thinking, bi-gender people and plural selves, sexualities, queerphobia, Disney Pixar’s ‘Inside Out,’ binary governing of our bodies and emotions, labels, intersectional identities, hierarchies, marginalisation, policing identity boundaries, prioritisation of different relationships, growing up in Italy, Capitalism, the importance of reflection, and being kind to yourself.

Check out the podcast here.

If you like this you can also follow Alex’s awesome podcast, Gender Stories and my regular podcast on sex, and relationships with my other amazing co-creator Justin Hancock – Meg-John & Justin.

And, of course, you can pre-order the book here.

The post Podcast: Life isn’t binary! How non-binary thinking can help us to understand ourselves appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

1. How would you respond to common accusations of “snowflakery” within the LGBTQ+ community?

The snowflake insult tends to conflate a few different things. If you look into the meaning it includes the idea that ‘snowflakes’ believe they are particularly unique and special (like every snowflake is different), as well as the idea of being particularly fragile – and therefore in need of protections like safer spaces.

Teasing these things apart I wouldn’t say that LGBTQ+ people are especially unique, but I do think the snowflake metaphor is useful for thinking about gender and sexual diversity. When we consider intersectionality, and how every person is positioned in relation to multiple intersecting aspects including gender, sexuality, race, class, disability, age, generation, nationality, etc. then snowflake is about right. There won’t be any two people where this constellation of aspects is identical. That helpfully draws our attention to the ways in which all of us are privileged in some ways, marginalised in others, and how we need to hold our similarities and our differences simultaneously. Snowflakes all look similar, but in fact they are unique.

Are LGBTQ+ people particularly fragile? Again it’s more complex than that. We live in a culture which is rooted in hierarchies whereby some people, bodies, and lives are regarded as – explicitly or implicitly – more normal, healthy, or highly valuable than others. All of the groups on the more marginalised end of those hierarchies have less power and privilege and face more discrimination and hatred on a daily basis. This takes a toll as we can see when looking at statistics on mental and physical health. LGBTQ+ people – like women and BAME people – have higher rates of mental health problems than average because they’re disadvantaged – and often traumatised – in a society that sees heterosexuality and cisgender as the normal, superior, way of being. This can make us more fragile. It can also make us more resilient. George Takei’s comment about snowflakes being powerful when they take the form of an avalanche captures that duality.

2. How would you respond to those who accuse, for instance, trans people requiring safe access to spaces appropriate for their gender of being “snowflakes”?

To my mind this is not about trans people saying we are particularly unique, or particularly fragile. It is more about recognising the unequal power dynamics in wider culture and trying to even the balance. If we can agree that no people, bodies, or lives are inherently more valuable or ‘normal’ than others, then everyone should have equal access – for example to bathrooms where they can pee in safety, to media which represents people like them in positive ways, and to daily interactions with others where their identity isn’t constantly called into question or they have to answer intrusive questions about their genitals or medical history. If there’s no media debate on whether cisgender people’s genders are real or whether they might be misguided in believing they are the gender that they say they are, then there shouldn’t be a media debate on that in relation to trans people. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all be having interesting conversations about how gender works and the impact it has, but don’t focus that on trans people.

3. Even some members of the LGBTQ+ community say that many of these accusations are valid, and that sometimes we try to move too fast and harm our movement in the process, for example by quickly attempting to introduce non-binary genders into common parlance. How would you respond to this?

I feel like we’re starting from the wrong place if we take for granted that there is some kind of a normal group in society that we’re gradually working to add all the marginalised or minority people into. That’s the model here. It’s like the norm could just about cope with adding in lesbian and gay people twenty years ago, but bisexual people were told they had to wait their turn because they were confusing and they muddied the water. Now there’s a sense that maybe we can begin to open to trans people, but perhaps only trans men and women because non-binary people will be too complicated for ‘normal folks’ to get their head around.

Instead we need to question this whole model of normal versus abnormal that we’ve been fed. It’s not that LGBTQ+ people – or trans and non-binary people – are snowflakes. The point is that we are all snowflakes. Everyone is diverse in terms of their gender and sexuality. There is no norm. For example, over forty percent of young people are somewhere on a spectrum between heterosexual and homosexual. Over a third of people feel that they are to some extent ‘the other gender, neither gender, or both genders’. Well over two thirds of people have some form of kinky fantasies, and a similar number are non-monogamous at some point in their life. Add all this together and the number of people who are some kind of pure heterosexual, cisgender, only into penis-in-vagina sex with a monogamous partner is actually pretty low.

So I don’t think it’s about gradually adding new identity categories to the group of people who is seen as normal or valid, with each new group having to somehow wait their turn for grudging acceptance. Rather it should be about shifting the whole understanding of gender and sexuality to one of diversity – or snowflakes – rather than a normal/abnormal binary.

4. How would you respond to the idea that those who object to things such as two men holding hands in an advert are in fact guilty of being “snowflakes” themselves?

I think it’s clever how people have turned the snowflake accusation around on the accusers. If people become so upset and offended about LGBTQ+ rights then aren’t they being just as ‘fragile’ as the people they are accusing of being too-easily upset and offended? Again though I would question an ‘us and them’ approach as any kind of long term solution to this. As long as we remain in separate camps accusing each other we won’t get very far, and a lot of people will be hurt in the process. What’s needed is an end to the attempt to categorise people into more or less normal, or more or less snowflakey, and a recognition that we’re all diverse across multiple spectrums of gender, sexuality, and much else. Then we can work to redress the balance whereby some of been valued less than others on the basis of such spurious distinctions.

Find out more

Check out my books Queer: A Graphic History, How to Understand Your Gender, The Psychology of Sex and – coming soon – Life Isn’t Binary.

The post The snowflake generation appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

There’s also a podcast and blog post all about bi visibility over on megjohnandjustin.com.

Gay Invisibility

Imagine a world where bi people were treated like gay & lesbian people, and vice versa…

You wake up in the morning and smile, remembering it’s Pride day. You’re going to get to march with all your lesbian and gay mates. Then your heart sinks a little remembering previous Prides. You’ll probably be relegated to the back of the march again after all the hundreds of bi charities and groups and organisations. Sure some of them have finally added LG to their names these days, but BTLG is mostly about the B and everyone knows it. It’s crazy-making when we know that LG people make up around half of all LGB people. Where are they all?

You know you’ll also be lucky this afternoon if there’s even one gay or lesbian identified person up on the stage at the end of Pride. Last year one gay activist got about a minute up there before the next bi band came on. It’s like the Purple List of influential BTLG people: Published in a major national newspaper every year and almost everyone on it is bi. A small gay magazine published a ‘rainbow list’, to make the point that there are lots of influential LG people too, but people didn’t pay much attention to that. It’s so frustrating because you know for a fact that many of the famous bi actors, sportspeople, and pop stars only ever have same-sex relationships, but they still call themselves ‘bi’ because being gay is so stigmatised. When that swimmer came out a couple of years back the bi press immediately called him bi even though he deliberately only said that he was attracted to people of the same-sex. There’s so few gay role-models or gay storylines on TV programmes. It only makes lesbian and gay people more invisible.

You sigh. It’s hard being gay in a world where everyone’s divided into heterosexual or bisexual. They’ve even done research now to try to prove that same-sex-only attraction doesn’t exist: that you’re either ‘straight, bi, or lying’. People can wrap their head around attraction to the opposite gender, or to people of any gender, but not to only being attracted to the same gender only. When you try to point out that Kinsey found that sexuality was a spectrum: there were people at the far end who were just attracted to the same gender, they just dismiss you saying that research is outdated.

Over breakfast you flick through the latest report from a major BTLG mental health charity. It’s great work they’re doing and you try to support them, but the gay invisibility really gets on your nerves. Several places in the document talk about ‘biphobia and transphobia’ and don’t mention homophobia at all. You’ve brought that up with them in the past and they just claim that homophobia is a subset of biphobia. It’s the same kind of argument as people who use ‘bi’ as an umbrella term for everyone with same-sex attraction whether they’re also attracted to the opposite sex or not. You’ve tried to point out that the word ‘bisexual’ doesn’t accurately capture your sexual orientation but they just look at you like you’re making a big deal over nothing. It’s all ‘bi people’, ‘bi relationships’, ‘bi parents’, ‘the bi community’ etc. etc. etc.

The report talks about the fact that BLG people have worse mental health than straight people, but it just lumps all BLG people together. You find that annoying because you know that it’s the lesbian and gay people who actually have the highest rates of depression, self-harm and suicide. Research like this means that the money and resources go to BLG people as a whole rather than to LG people in particular. And that mostly means the big commercial ‘bi scene’ which very few LG people actually access. So the help isn’t going to the people who need it most, and the bis are the ones who get all the funding.

Again you’ve tried to point this out, but the bi activists you’ve spoken to argue that it’s important to get everyone accepting bisexuality fully as the first step to BTLG rights. Once that’s happened they can work on the more ‘complicated’ identities like gay and lesbian. That’s why so many people’s energy went into the multiple marriage campaign. Now polyamorous bisexual and straight people can marry more than one partner, or one opposite-sex partner. But there’s still no allowance for gay people – and monogamous bisexuals – who want to marry one same-sex partner only. Even during the campaign loads of people were saying that there was a danger that multiple marriage would open the floodgates to same-sex-only marriage, comparing it to incest and bestiality. They call multiple marriage ‘equal marriage’ now, but it’s not truly equal. When you point that out people just accuse you of sour grapes.

Last BTLG history month you tried to get your organisation’s BTLG group to do an exhibition of famous LG people through history, but the other people on the committee (all bi of course) said that most of the people you suggested were ‘probably bi really’. And they’re always going on about Stonewall as this big event in BT history, dismissing all the gay people who were also involved at the forefront of what happened back then. The committee ended up putting a bunch of the Stonewall posters up round the organisation: ‘Some people are bi, get over it’ and ‘One is bi. If that bothers people, our work continues.’ You pointed out that there were actually ‘gay’ posters available as well but they just gave you a look and said ‘the campaign’s about eradicating biphobia in the workplace, alright.’ You hear that Stonewall have consulted with lesbian and gay people to try to improve inclusion, but you feel so jaded after all this time that you’ll believe that when you see it.

You check your phone. Looks like a bunch of your mates are going out to a bi bar after the Pride event. You’re not tempted. Last time you did that everyone assumed you’d be attracted to multiple genders and it was really uncomfortable when you came out as gay. Like at work and with your family they also kept forgetting and assuming you were bi, so you had to come out again and again. And you’re so sick of the stereotypes. Some bi people won’t date you for fear that you’ll leave them for another gay person. Others treat you with suspicion: ‘are you sure you’re really gay?’

The double discrimination is probably the worst thing. You kind of expect homophobia from the straight world, but getting it from bi people as well is really hard. Like when you finally left the football team you were on because of the homophobic discrimination there, and joined a BTLG football team only to find that they called you ‘gold star’ like it was a big joke, and kept going on about your sexuality and how you must be ‘picky’ or ‘confused’.

You remember back to last year’s Pride. Double discrimination there too. Your group marching past a bunch of bi people and they all started singing some old Eurovision song ‘loosen you mind up’ which you know was a homophobic joke. Mostly though the crowd just went quiet when your group walked past and then started cheering for the next bi group.

When you told your bi friends about it in the pub afterwards they said you were probably just exaggerating or being over-sensitive. They think you’re crazy to be so bothered by it, but you think the world is crazy for not being able to see gay invisibility when it’s right in their face.

Maybe you’ll just stay at home.

This story is based on all based on research on bisexuality reviewed in The Bisexuality Report (with the sexualities reversed of course!)
With many thanks to Catherine Butler and colleagues for their inspiration with the Homoworld story and short film, as well as this US version.

The post Bi visibility day: Gay invisibility appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

It’s a great interview because it covers a lot of the key ideas in that book pretty simply. There’s also a nice long section about the complexities around bisexuality in relation to queer, which is something that a lot of people have been asking about.

Late last year Icon Books released Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele which looks at queer theory and the ideas and people that shaped this way of examining and thinking about society and individuals. Barker is a therapist, activist, writer and a senior lecturer at the Open University in the UK. They were kind enough to chat about the book and try to lay out some of the core concepts behind queer theory, which Barker admits are complicated.

Alex Dueben: Where did the idea for this book come from? What made you interested in making a graphic novel?

Meg-John Barker: Icon books have this whole series of books called ‘Introducing…’ where they try to make complex academic or political ideas accessible and engaging to everybody using the comic format. When they asked me if I’d be interested in writing one of these books about queer I was so excited. My love of comics goes back to childhood and I’ve been heavily into graphic novels all of my adult life. I also found the Introducing books super helpful myself when I was a student and trying to wrap my head around existentialism, Freud, or Foucault, for example.

At the same time as having a passion for comics, I’ve always been convinced that queer theory and queer activism has a lot to offer everyone, not just academics, activists, or people who identify as queer. So this was my opportunity to get that across.

Dueben: What was the process like? What did you give Julia and how were you initially envisioning the book? Read more…

The post Queer and bisexuality made simple appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.