So, I am an openly bisexual woman. I’ve identified as bisexual since I was about 16 years old and my relationship with my sexuality has developed and changed over time. I experience what might be known as “compulsory heterosexuality” – it is much easier for me to identify with my heterosexual feelings than my homosexual ones because straight relationships are easier to get into.
What I mean by that is the fact that people kinda expect you to be straight until you make them think otherwise. Straightness is treated as the “default” state. That means that people are more open about their heterosexual attraction and I find that straight people are much more likely to get offended when you show same-sex attraction to them than gat people do when you should opposite-sex attraction to them. It means that I, as a bisexual woman, tend to just stick to dating men because it’s what’s expected of me and makes my dating life much easier.
And with all of that in mind, there’s something I really want to speak about: bi erasure. Just because I mainly date men (out of ease), it doesn’t make me straight. It just means I’m a bi woman who mainly dates men. But there’s so much to bi erasure that makes me openly uncomfortable in writing and the media in general.
Bi Erasure
So what exactly is bi erasure? Well, I’m going to write a blog post all about it eventually, but here’s a basic definition:
Bi erasure, a short form of bisexual erasure, is the act of ignoring, explaining away, or otherwise dismissing bisexuality in culture, media, or history. – Dictionary.com
And that happens in many, many different ways. I can give you a few examples from my own life.
- Someone telling you to “just pick sides” because there’s “no such thing as bisexuality”.
- People assuming your bisexuality was “just a phase” as soon as you’re in a proper relationship.
- People saying you’re “gay now” or “straight now” as soon as you settle down in a committed relationship.
In the media, one of the biggest issues that bi erasure causes is previously straight characters being “retconned” as gay to give them a same-sex partner, instead of just saying it how it is: they’re bi. They showed sexual and romantic interests in both men and women at some point in their lives.
Bi Erasure in Buffy
I’ve been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer recently. I absolutely love the show! And most of the jokes have aged surprisingly well! In fact, many of them are downright relevant even 20 years later. And Willow’s relationship with Tara is one of my favourite relationships in the whole show! However, there’s one thing that makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable whenever it’s brought up.
That’s the fact that the writers made Willow choose to identify as “gay” or “lesbian” as soon as she’s in a committed relationship with a woman. Now that’s, of course, Willow’s choice to identify in whatever way she wants to. My only problem with that is the fact that she was clearly romantically and physically attracted to Oz before she found Tara. And she was definitely physically attracted to Xander before Oz (and during her relationship with Oz)!
So why is it that she’s suddenly straight-up gay as soon as she’s attracted to women? Of course, back then we saw sexuality in a very different light. It’s fair enough for her to come to that kind of self-identification. But now? 20 years later? People are still calling Willow straight-up gay and that makes me annoyed. I certainly hope they correct that in the revamp that I don’t even think needs to happen.
But I still love Buffy and I reccomend it to anyone! It’s much more annoying that people still talk about Willow’s explicit lesbianism now than the fact that she identified as lesbian in the late 90s and early 00s.
Bi Erasure on Episode
Episode has its own issues with bi erasure that really annoy me – and many of its issues come from the community itself! One of the big ones is the whole “choose your love interest” aspect of some stories. For me, that’s a giant leap forward. The main character finds herself attracted to two people and they’re of two different sexes. Been there! But then the reaction to this by readers and other writers (especially around the time that the LGBTQ shelves come out) really worries me.
They say “love interest choice isn’t real LGBTQ representation”.
What?! How?! Why would you even think that? Why would anyone think that the portrayal of a bisexual experience like that isn’t LGBTQ representation?! What exactly do you think the B in LGBTQ stands for?
Sure, some writers handle LI choices terribly. They make it seem like the same-sex choice is just randomly attracted to the MC when the MC shows no interest in them whatsoever. Or they just tack it onto the end. I’m thinking of two Episode Featured stories in particular when I say this: Emerald and that one where you fake-date a gang member actor dude to help him with his acting career and the undercover police officer is randomly attracted to the MC at the end – when the MC shows very little attraction until a few chapters before the end.
That makes it seem like LGBTQ characters are always badly written – or that a bi character’s love interest choices are just there to appease gay people. If you’re going to have romance LGBTQ options, you have a few options. Give people the choice to show no attraction to same-sex characters if you want them to be gay. Make it clear from the start that the character is bisexual. Do a mixture of the two.
However, that doesn’t mean that all romance choices are inherently poor representation. If we’re willing to accept love triangles in our stories, why is it such a leap that someone who has a love triangle with a man and a woman is bisexual? Why are we forgetting that bi people exist in the first place? I have the same discussion with people whenever an LGBTQ shelf comes out and it’s getting really tiring.
What This Does to Bi Representation
What this means for us – this bi erasure – is that the only characters that are specifically referred to as “bi” are the promiscuous or extremely sexually open characters. Since as soon as they settle down, their sexuality is assumed by the gender of their partner – and if they end up in a committed relationship with someone new, they just change from straight to gay or vice versa.
That then gives off this impression that all of us bi people out here are promiscuous. That our bisexuality disappears as soon as we get with someone. That anyone who says they’re bi is either in a polyamorous relationship or they just sleep around with everyone they meet. That’s not a good image for us and it really does affect the way people treat us.
Help me raise awareness of bi erasure. LGBTQ option? Why not try making the MC explicitly bi for a change? Why don’t we change the way we talk about LGBTQ people a little?
I can’t force you to do anything, but it would really help people like me massively.
If you read all of this, thank you so much!
