Most people have heard of homophobia in this day and age, but what exactly is biphobia? Well, first let’s define the term it refers to: bisexual. It can be easy to think of bisexuality as just “attraction to men and women” but that’s limiting.
It’s more accurate to call it the ability to be attracted to more than one gender and even that might be an oversimplification. Attraction is complex and it’s ultimately up to an individual to define something as personal as sexuality.
Returning to the topic of biphobia, it refers to unfair prejudice against or outright hatred directed towards people who identify as bisexual.
From the outside looking in, it can be easy to assume that the LGBTQ+ community is tightly banded together with everyone under the rainbow having each other’s backs, but this isn’t the case. Bisexuals often face the most unfair judgement from other LGBT people.
It’s common for bisexuality to be thought of as a waypoint between hetero and homo that gay people need to cross over to fully accept themselves. Either that, or a front for straight people to invade a community space that isn’t theirs.
Bisexuals are called selfish. Some think of them as cheaters who are incapable of commitment. More believe they’re inherently promiscuous. Others are upset that they can “pass” as straight to avoid homophobia.
On top of that, there’s also the issue of bisexual erasure.
Bisexual erasure is what happens when we embrace a purely binary view of sexual orientation. If people are really only ever either gay or straight, the problems of anyone outside that bubble just don’t exist. This outright ignores the struggles bisexuals face and therefore makes them seem irrelevant whenever they’re brought up.
From my perspective, bisexuals are so demonized because their very existence calls the complexity of attraction into question. It makes straight and gay people have to consider whether they could see themselves liking anything about genders they previously deemed unappealing to them.
That said, I understand why the notion of sexuality outside the binary is so scary, at least for gay people. Our community has been fighting for equal rights for so long that suddenly saying there aren’t actually any divisors between straight and gay might feel like a slap in the face.
I myself hadn’t stopped to consider problems faced by bi people until videos covering the subject just so happened to get recommended to me. I’m going to link those videos below and encourage anyone curious to research the topic themselves instead of just taking my or anyone else’s word for it.
Hi Emmanuela!
I never considered the different views regarding biphobia, or that it was such a big problem. I like how you point out that you think that bi people are demonized because their existence calls into question the very idea of attraction, as the very idea of attraction is something that has been part of humanity since the very beginning. This was an enlightening post!