Happy Pride Month! During Pride month, you might hear lots of terms. Some you might know, others you might not. Others you might have heard but are not entirely sure what they mean. Sometimes, parsing through all the information might make things even more confusing. In this blog, I’m going to clear things up about Bi erasure.
Bi or Pan?
A quick note about terms: bisexuality and pansexuality are the same thing, though sometimes you might hear people try to argue there is a difference (like the myth pansexuals will date trans people, but bisexuals won’t, for instance). Bisexuality as a term was popularized in the 1970s. Pansexuality came into the lexicon in the 1990s, generally believed to be more encompassing of transgendered peoples than the term bisexuality. Today, most use the term they feel best identifies them, but often someone decides based on which term they heard first. Though I’ll be using the term "bi erasure," you should understand that it includes pan erasure as well.
What is it?
Bi erasure is sometimes known as bi invisibility. It’s the denial or rejection of bisexuality as part of the sexuality spectrum. This manifests in various ways, from the belief that bisexuality is only a stepping stone until someone "picks a side," meaning they come out as gay or lesbian completely. and in the fact that if schools teach about sexuality at all, they teach about heterosexuality and homosexuality, but not necessarily the myriads of ways someone might identify.
Bi erasure also shows up in portrayals of bisexual characters, diminishing them down to their sexual identities being used only as ploys for power, like Frank Card in House of Cards or that they are bisexual merely because they are promiscuous, like Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones. Therefore, the full scope of what it means to be bisexual is erased and reduced to the arguably villainous behavior of the aforementioned characters, or worse, a punchline.
Biphobia
In a lot of ways, outside of academic teachings and media, bi erasure shows up more prevalently as biphobia. Biphobia is still quite common, with gay, lesbian, and heterosexual people being uninterested in dating those who identify as bisexual for various reasons, such as the belief that bisexual men are dirty, or that bisexual women are more likely to cheat than a woman who has a more binary sexuality.
Bisexual people can feel that they are “too gay” for straight communities and “not gay enough” for LGBTQ communities. Due to this, bisexual people may experience isolation and depression from not feeling welcome and being stereotyped as bad partners thanks to notions about infidelity and hypersexual characters portrayed in popular culture.
How to combat Bi Erasure
Use inclusive language! Often times “gay” is used as a catchall for the LGBT community, and that not only erases the bi community but also removes other communities, too, who may not fall under that umbrella, like asexual and transgendered people.
Increasing visibility and lifting the voices of bisexual people goes a long way, too. You can do this by reading a book about or authored by bisexual people, or re-sharing and engaging with bisexual and pansexual creators and organizations.
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