Bisexual People Have Always Existed

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What does queer mean?

Hello and welcome to episode 5 of Queer Enough Club.

I'm Gretta, or G, and I'm the creator and host.

This is a fun follow-up to my coming out episode

as I identify as bisexual much of the time.

My sexuality is not fluid, but I've just never felt like the word bisexual was exactly right.

Learning more about the history of the word and its space in the queer community

actually brought me a lot more pride, but also presented me with a different option,

which I'm really excited to keep learning them out.

But first, I did flip to a hilariously ironic definition,

so let's do our queer definition before we dive in.

Definitions are randomly pulled from the Queen's English,

the LGBTQIA+ dictionary of lingo and colloquial phrases by Chloe O. Davis.

The word today is "rak."

Now, a pair of breasts.

See also boobs, jugs, titties.

You see, sis, your rack looks sick in that bikini.

You have to get it.

Want more info?

Think.

A nice set of titties.

I'd like to start with this quote from the Trevor Project about labels.

Labels can be a huge source of self-understanding for us,

um, LGBTQ+ people.

Because we live in a society where everyone is assumed and expected to be straight and cisgender,

finding the words to define yourself can be an act of liberation.

Labels can help connect people to one another, allowing them to feel less alone,

and to create community together.

Labels also allow researchers to study marginalized groups,

giving us important information to better understand and support these groups.

Bisexuality is a sexual orientation describing people who have the capacity for

emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attraction to more than one gender.

The term bisexual, often abbreviated to "buy,"

is also used to refer to those who engage in romantic or sexual relationships

with more than one sex or gender.

Bisexual and bi-plus are considered umbrella terms to honor that potential attraction

beyond a single gender.

Although bisexual people have always existed in practice,

the term bisexual was first used to describe attraction to multiple genders

in: 1882

Before that, bisexual was used in biology to refer to inner sex traits and plants.

In: 1927

helping to bring the concept into the field of sexology.

While his work included flawed stereotypes, such as the notion of a generalized bisexual temperament,

Ellis also noted positive traits, including high intelligence.

Later, Alfred C. Kinsey furthered the study of bisexuality with the creation of the Kinsey scale

in: 1948

Despite its presence in academic circles, the term bisexual wasn't widely adopted

n queer communities until the: 1960

Activists like Brenda Howard, a key figure in the early queer liberation movement,

were instrumental in pushing for bisexual visibility and inclusion.

Howard, often called the "mother of pride,"

helped organize the first pride event following Stonewall.

Many bisexual adults have embraced the definition proposed by long-time bisexual leader,

national speaker, and award-winning activist Robin Oakes.

I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted,

romantically and/or sexually, to people of more than one sex or gender,

not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way,

and not necessarily to the same degree.

Although bisexual and pansexual are the most common terms for those attracted to more than one gender,

people might use words like "multisexual, omnisexual, polysexual, heterophlexible"

or "queer" to describe their identity.

Some argue that bisexuality reinforces the gender binary because the prefix "by" in bisexual

comes from the Greek prefix for "to."

Many words that describe sexuality were originally rooted in the gender binary

due to limited understanding of gender at the time by larger society.

Whether for this reason or not, people may also or instead use the word "pansexual"

to describe their attraction to more than one gender.

Pansexuality is defined as an attraction to people of any gender

or to people regardless of their gender, with the prefix "pan" coming from the Greek prefix for "all."

Some people may use the words "by sexual and pansexual interchangeably"

and others use only one word exclusively to describe themselves.

For the purposes of this episode, I'll still be using bisexual.

According to the Williams Institute and HRC Foundation research,

studies suggest that about 50% of people who identify as either gay, lesbian,

or bisexual identify as bisexual.

This makes the bisexual population the single largest group within the LGBTQ+ community.

Despite growing visibility, bisexual people continue to face significant challenges related to acceptance,

representation, and well-being both within broader society and within LGBTQIA+ spaces.

Bisexual erasure and exclusion remain persistent issues,

leading to serious mental health disparities and feelings of isolation.

While all LGBTQ+ youth are at elevated risk for mental health challenges

compared to their heterosexual peers, bisexual youth face even higher rates of distress

than their lesbian or gay counterparts.

The following are "pulled from the Trevor Project."

Nearly 50% of bisexual youth seriously considered suicide in the past year.

66% of bisexual youth reported feeling sad or hopeless for two or more consecutive weeks

compared to 49% of gay and lesbian youth and 27% of heterosexual youth.

More than 1 in 3 bisexual youth reported being bullied at school.

1 in 5 bisexual youth reported being forced to have sexual intercourse,

highlighting alarmingly high rates of sexual assault and rape among bisexual people.

Research confirms that bisexual individuals across age groups experience worse mental health outcomes

than heterosexual, lesbian, and gay individuals.

These include higher rates of depression, anxiety, and mood disorders,

more frequent reports of self-harm, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts,

lower levels of social support, greater discomfort with their sexual identity and being out,

higher rates of substance abuse including smoking and having drinking.

What we're discussing really falls into the bucket of bifobia,

or bi- and antagonism as some groups are starting to call it.

These are harmful stereotypes and attitudes from both heterosexual and LGBTQIA+ communities.

These harmful beliefs include bisexuals are sexually greedy, promiscuous, or carriers of STIs,

bisexuals are untrustworthy or traitors because they can pass as straight,

bisexuals are incapable of monogamy because they're attracted to more than one gender,

bisexual women only seek attention from men, bisexual men are just gay and afraid to come out.

Bi- and antagonism not only isolates bisexual individuals from others,

but it also makes it harder for them to feel positive, safe, or open about their identities.

Then we have bisexual erasure, also called bi- invisibility,

which is the denial, minimization, or distortion of bisexuality as a legitimate sexual orientation.

It occurs when bisexual identity is ignored, misrepresented, or replaced by other labels.

Common examples include claiming bisexuality is just a phase or a step toward identifying as gay, lesbian, or straight,

assuming a person's orientation based on their current partner's gender,

mislabeling openly bisexual individuals as gay, lesbian, or straight.

Organizations claiming LGBTQIA+ inclusivity but failing to provide bi-specific resources or programming.

As I mentioned, bisexual people make up a significant portion of the LGBTQIA+ community.

According to a: 2016

By comparison, 1.3% of women and 1.9% of men identified as gay or lesbian.

Bisexuality, like all sexual orientations, is multi-dimensional.

It manifests in various aspects of a person's life that are not necessarily linked to their relation status or behavior.

Even in a monogamous marriage, a bisexual person's underlying attractions, fantasies, or self-identification remain valid and intact.

When we look at the tools to help understand sexuality, it seems that Kinsey scale is one of the most well-known.

Alfred Kinsey and his research team conducted thousands of interviews with people across the United States to gather data about sexual practices, desires, and identities.

This was all around the: 1930

These studies have challenged the moral and cultural norms of the time by showing that sexual behavior and orientation were far more varied and widespread than previously acknowledged.

As part of his research, Kinsey developed a tool to help describe a person's sexual orientation along a spectrum,

rather than viewing it as a strict binary of heterosexual and homosexual.

This tool is known as the Kinsey scale.

I'm not going to read every number, but essentially the scale ranges from 0 to 6 with an optional x category for no-sociosexual contacts or reactions.

We might consider this asexual today.

Now, the Kinsey scale was revolutionary because it recognized that many people do not fit neatly into categories like straight or gay,

and instead experience attraction along a fluid spectrum that may shift over time.

A few decades later, expanding on the complexity of sexuality, the client's sexual orientation grid, or the client grid, offers a more nuanced approach than the traditional Kinsey scale.

veloped by Dr. Fritz Klein in: 1978

Sexual attraction, sexual behavior, sexual fantasies, emotional preference, social preference, lifestyle preference, and self-identification.

Each of these aspects is measured over three time frames, past, present, and ideal, giving a dynamic, evolving picture of a person's sexuality.

For example, someone in a monogamous relationship may limit their current behavior, but their attractions, fantasies, emotional, and social preferences, and self-identification often remain consistent.

Now, a seemingly lesser-used model for understanding sexual behavior is the A-I-B model, which stands for attraction, identity, and behavior.

Attraction refers to a person's romantic or sexual feeling towards others.

Identity is how someone understands themselves and chooses to label their sexuality.

It includes how they think about their orientation internally and how they wish to be perceived by others.

For example, if I was bisexual but wanted people to perceive me as straight, that's a part of my identity, just as much as my closet itself.

And then we have behavior, which refers to the romantic or sexual actions a person takes.

Behavior may not always align with a person's identity or attraction, particularly for those in the closet or in a monogamous relationship that limits outward expression.

This model helps explain why someone's sexual orientation is valid, even if their behavior doesn't reflect their attraction or identity.

For example, a bisexual person in a heterosexual relationship is still bisexual.

Unfortunately, when I started looking further into the A-I-B model, the Klein Grid, and the American Institute of Bisexuality, all which stemmed from Dr. Klein's work, I discovered the run a blog called Queer Majority, which is a conservative blog that features several anti-trans authors.

I then discovered that the American Institute of Bisexuality also runs by.org.

While I did use by.org for some basic research, I did not pull any information that I wouldn't consider general knowledge.

Once I discovered these underlying conditions, I closed all the tabs and decided to go do my deeper dive elsewhere.

A quick search on both Duck Duck Go and Google did not bring up anything for, was Dr. Fritz Klein anti-trans, so I have a bit more digging to do there.

t the plot since he passed in: 2006

If you're looking for resources on bisexuality, the Human Rights Campaign, HRC, lists the following as national organizations that advocate specifically for bisexual people.

Bisexual Resource Center, the Bisexual Organizing Project, and still bisexual.

Okay, now we've talked a lot about what bisexuality is and why it's valid.

So let's end with a few myths I want to debunk about bisexuality.

Myth. Bisexuals all experience a 50/50 split attraction between men and women.

No, as we discussed earlier, bisexuality doesn't necessarily refer to only two genders, but is all inclusive to any and all genders.

Each person who identifies as a bisexual decides what their spectrum looks like.

I personally have always felt a 50/50 split, though again, this is a reason I'm really loving the word "pansexual"

I do feel like for me it's not "I'm attracted to all genders" but rather "I'm attracted to any, regardless of gender."

Myth. That I took from by.org, before I knew, and who hasn't heard this one, do all bisexuals like three sums.

Because bisexual people have the ability to enjoy sex with both men and women, the general public sometimes get carried away with fantasies about our sex lives.

The reality is a bit more mundane. Some buy people like three sums, some buy people don't, just like everybody else.

A myth from the bisexual resource center, and I really loved this analogy.

If you're in a monogamous relationship with someone of the same or different gender, does that make you gay or straight?

Consider the werewolf. Whether they are currently in human or will form, they haven't stopped being a werewolf.

Similarly, in the same way that straight people are still straight when they're single, buy plus people are still buy plus when they're dating someone.

One last myth that I remember actually struggling with thinking about when I started to first expand my queer knowledge is that trans people can't be bisexual.

Trans people are sometimes told that they shouldn't choose the label bisexual because the buy and bisexual may refer to an exclusive attraction to the binary genders of men and women.

I think as my understanding of the trans experience grew, my understanding that, of course, this was a myth.

I struggled quite a bit with the concept of gender for a really long time.

I didn't dispel that multiple genders existed, but I couldn't wrap my head around it or understand it.

And I'm actually going to be dedicating a couple of the next episodes to gender because I think that it's really important for us to have a better understanding of how gender works as we talk about more and more sexual identities.

Last call today is for all the queers living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Recently, I became aware of a local group in Minneapolis named Queer Community.

At first glance, it appeared to be a working space, which was neat, but I'm not currently in the market for a working space.

However, after looking to it a little further, I discovered there is a cafe that's open to the public.

So I immediately texted my friend and was like, hey, we gotta go.

So I was imagining like a small area, maybe five or six tables, you know, and if you want to go inside, you have to pay more.

Holy crap, not the case. This cafe area was huge, inclusive, and had the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever had in my life.

So I'm going to read a couple of excerpts from their website because I think it just does justice to explain this venue, how it came to be and what it's for.

It says, a new kind of venue. Queer Community is a vibrant event venue, gathering space and cafe in Minneapolis dedicated to offering high quality experiences.

For LGBTQ plus and BIPOC communities and their allies.

We work with and for the people we serve to build a regenerative economy, maintaining a truly affordable space to gather, celebrate, work and create while supporting local farmers, artists, makers and small businesses.

A regenerative economy is about creating systems that restore, renew, and strengthen the communities around us.

A queer community, this means we actively and reinvest in local talent, organizations and resources, amplifying what's already working and building partnerships that foster growth, innovation and lasting connections.

Our approach focuses on supporting what's here today, so we can live to see something better tomorrow.

Queer Community is open to the public daily from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and general entry is free. Our space thrives thanks to cafe patronage, space rentals, ticketed events and memberships.

A portion of these sales is reinvested into queer affirming resources and free community offerings like GAAA, book clubs, resume support, discussion groups and arts and cultural programming.

If you're based in the Twin Cities or ever find yourself visiting, you simply must stop in and get a cookie.

All right, our source is for today around bisexuality. We've got the Trevor Project, apa.org, bisexuality.org, bi.org, bi.org, bi.resource.org, hrc.org, transgendermap.com, and them.us, and under queermunity, we've got queermunity.m.n.com.

To learn more about myself or the project, head to the website, queerunufclub.com.

QEC is on Instagram, TikTok, Napsoon and Blue Sky at QueerNufClub, and you can email me directly at hello@queerunufclub.com.

Lastly, if you like what you heard, please leave a review. And you know, welcome to the club.

[Music]

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