It’s Not Just a Phase
Bisexual Awareness Week Series: Day 5 – Previous Posts: Introduction to Bisexual Awareness Week Series – Bisexuality in YA – On Failing to Recognize Ourselves in Mirrors – The “B” Word – There Once Was a Girl
by Justina Ireland
When I was in high school I used to argue a lot about politics. I was the girl in class who would raise her hand and correct the teacher when they’d say something wrong or just plan biased. This usually exasperated the rest of my classmates. Sometimes I cared. Mostly I didn’t. I thought it was better to be right, to correct what was usually a pretty ignorant worldview, than to be popular. And at the end of these heated discussions, as the bell rang and everybody else gratefully escaped, more often than not my teacher would say something along the lines of “You won’t always see things this way,” or “it’s only because you’re still young that you think this way,” excusing my opinions and points of argument with a modification of the “it’s just a phase, you’ll understand when you get older” lecture.
By the time I graduated the phrase was enough for me to plug my ears and sing “LALALALALALALALA.” But at the same time, when I messed around with girls “it’s just a phase” was a protection against thinking that maybe I wasn’t just heteroflexible, that I was a lesbian or maybe truly did like boys and girls. Because if I could be so fickle to find both attractive, what did that say about me, about the way I was made?
“It’s just a phase” has long been the rallying cry of the closeted bisexual. Once we settle down, grow up, we’ll pick a side. It gives us an out from thinking about our sexuality. We have time to decide! To pick a side: gay or straight, forever more. Even the comic book character Iceman got a variation on this speech when he came out recently.
“It’s just a phase…” is the erasure of every bisexual person out there.
Your sexuality is real. You can be equally attracted, romantically, sexually, to both men and women. Even marriage or a long term relationship won’t change that. I’ve been married a very long time. And if tomorrow I ended up divorced I wouldn’t just date men, my dance card would be open to both men and women, still. Because bisexuals are real, they exist.
And it isn’t just a phase.
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Justina Ireland enjoys dark chocolate and dark humor, and is not too proud to admit that she’s still afraid of the dark. She lives with her husband, kid, and dog in Pennsylvania. She is the author of Vengeance Bound and Promise of Shadows, both currently available from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Her essay “Me, Some Random Guy, and the Army of Darkness” is forthcoming in The V-Word, an anthology of personal essays by women about having sex for the first time, published by Beyond Words (Simon & Schuster). You can find Justina on Twitter as @tehawesomersace or visit her website.
There Once Was a Girl
Bisexual Awareness Week Series: Day 4 – Previous Posts: Introduction to Bisexual Awareness Week Series – Bisexuality in YA – On Failing to Recognize Ourselves in Mirrors – The “B” Word
by Tristina Wright
Once upon a time, there was a college girl very confused about her sexuality, and her best friend was a lesbian. They were the closest of friends and helped each other through the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. They were never more than friends, nor did they ever want to be. They were friends and that was special in itself.
There’s this pervading stereotype of bisexuals that we’re incapable of holding down friendships because of our propensity to flirt with anything with a pulse. We’re portrayed as easy and promiscuous, yet confused and teasing. Bisexuality is a “phase” or a “stepping stone” to the more acceptable sexualities of straight or gay. If we do settle down, we’re then labeled based on the gender of our partner so we fit into a more socially palatable box. We’re only allowed to take on the label bisexual if we’re single and, even then, we’re questioned and erased and deal with assumptions of fidelity and promiscuity, even from within the queer community itself.
Watch out for those bisexuals, they’re tricky folks. Don’t look them in the eye.
It’s incredibly important that, in addition to portraying bisexuality respectfully in literature through their romantic relationship(s), there are strong platonic relationships as well. Bisexuality can be confusing enough and wrought with microaggressions from seemingly well-meaning folks who simply don’t think or believe they’re joking.
Ha ha ha threesomes, amirite?
But to navigate that, and life in general, without friends by your side is not only unrealistic prose, but a missed opportunity. Some of my most cherished memories involve friends, not lovers. My bisexuality and the sexual/romantic orientation of my friends has no bearing on our friendships beyond the occasional shared conversation of “Listen to this
Platonic relationships are just as important as romantic ones, especially for queer sexualities because of the myth that we want to hit on everyone regardless of gender or orientation. That line of thinking is incredibly disrespectful to us, and also paints us as disrespectful to everyone else as well.
However, it has to go beyond the Token Gay Friend in a group of straight characters. The vast majority of my close friends are queer in some fashion. We connect along those lines, and our friendships build off that and branch into shared interests such as writing or music or favorite video games and movies. But that support system exists for moments when someone pokes at one of us, or an ill-informed article appears on the internet. I have a network of people who understand on a personal level and can support each other that way. We flock together like penguins huddling in the cold.
When you’re writing a bisexual character, it’s just as important to give them well-rounded friendships as it is to get their sexuality right. It’s important to show strong friendships with various genders because those portrayals, while seemingly innocuous in themselves, add up to help combat the myth that we’re incapable of stable friendships.
Friends are one of life’s greatest treasures. Your sexuality doesn’t preclude you from having some of the best friendships of your life. And if someone doesn’t want to be friends with you because of your sexuality, run far away in the opposite direction.
Once upon a time, there was a woman confident in her bisexuality, and her best friend was bisexual. Her other best friend was straight. She surrounded herself with friends who existed all over the queer spectrum. They helped each other through the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. They were never more than friends, nor did they ever want to be. They were friends and that was special in itself.
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Tristina Wright is a blue-haired bisexual with anxiety and opinions. She’s also possibly a mermaid but no one can get confirmation. She writes epic queer YA SFF, and one day her books will be on shelves for you to read. Until then, you can find her on Tumblr, her website, and Twitter.
The “B” Word
Bisexual Awareness Week Series: Day 3 – Previous Posts: Introduction to Bisexual Awareness Week Series – Bisexuality in YA – On Failing to Recognize Ourselves in Mirrors
by Camryn Garrett
Reading a book is like being sucked into someone else’s world. I’ve learned about other worlds, but also my own through reading. Not only have I discovered that I was struggling with mental illness, but I’ve learned more about other cultures, other thoughts, other places, all in between two covers.
But on the other hand, I’m often learning about a specific group of people. It changed between the mode of media (films, books, TV shows), but there’s usually a specific race, gender, and sexuality portrayed.
I’m a sucker for romance stories in YA, but it’s like almost all of the couples are straight and white. Even now, while things are changing all over the place, there are still specific types of sexuality showcased.
There were gay dads in Fans of The Impossible Life and gay kids discovering themselves on The Fosters and shows like Orange is the New Black on Netflix. There seems to be lots of representation for lesbians and gays (it can still be argued, however, whether or not more is still needed.)
One of the things people still seem to avoid is the b word. And I guess it doesn’t seem like a problem, from the outside. Gays have the right to marry, right? We shouldn’t complain! Everything is absolutely awesome and great.
But the fact that people are just beginning to talk about bisexuality is an issue. A large one. When you are treated like you don’t exist, you start to feel invisible. It’s not just other people who doubt your existence – you doubt your own.
Like, let’s talk about the fact that I still sometimes wonder if I’ve made up my sexuality. I don’t know many people who are bisexual in real life, but they’re all over the Internet. There are groups and meetings and readings. It should feel real.
The thing is, it doesn’t always. Sometimes I wonder if this is just a phase. I remind myself that bisexuality is actually a thing, and wonder why I even doubt myself. It’s not like there are people constantly telling me that bisexuality is bad.
Actually, bisexuality is mocked all of the time – subtly, without anyone uttering the name. Lots of characters, so many that I can’t even count, have a “curious period.” Usually girls. I refer to this as the “sexy phase,” which I got from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
Scenario: young lady goes to college. She meets another girl. They date. Have sex. Kiss. Whatever. After college, the relationship is over. They get married to an all-American guy, and don’t ever mention it again, except as a joke.
One of my favorite movies, Scott Pilgrim, has a scene between the love interest, Ramona, and her ex-girlfriend. She says all sorts of things that make me grind my teeth every time I rewatch. Including, but not limited to:
-“It was just a phase.”
-“It meant nothing. I didn’t think it would count.”
-“I was just a little bi-curious.”
So whatever. Sexuality is fluid, and lots of people explore, right? But that was the first time I’d ever even heard the word, and even then, the entire concept was being mocked. Bisexuality was ridiculous, and if you took it seriously, it was your own fault.
Even when there are characters who actually seem to be bisexual, bisexuality is never explicitly stated. I guess we can say that labels don’t matter, but they sure do seem to matter to other queer characters.
Off the top of my head, I can think of Connor and Jude from The Fosters, Cosima from Orphan Black, Sense8’s Lito, Mitchell and Cam from Modern Family, and, like, half of the cast of Glee, all announcing that they were queer.
There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s totally cool. But why can’t bisexual people have the same?
If you’ve seen me on Twitter, you know that I’m constantly talking about my bisexuality. That’s because it’s something that I feel safe saying, but I’m trying to remind myself that it can actually be a real thing. Being bisexual is weird, because I’m invisible. I don’t belong in the “straight club” or the “queer club.”
I don’t feel comfortable talking to the gay kids at school about sexuality, because I know there are people who think that bisexuality isn’t real, so much so that they get insulted at the sound of the word. It’s odd, knowing that a group of people who were once outcasts themselves are still turning people away.
Someone once told me that I have to disclose to lesbians that I’m bisexual before getting into a relationship with them, because there are so many lesbians who are biphobic. Apparently, there are women who might physically hurt me because I’m not just attracted to girls.
I’ve seen people get angry at bisexual girls who bring their boyfriends to Pride. Bisexual kids mocked for identifying as queer, because “they aren’t really.”
I’ve talked to adults about my sexuality and been told that bisexuality is a phase. My mother used to think that bisexuality means that I must be in a polygamous relationship. Even now, she is hesitant to let me hang out with both girl and guy friends. Because, apparently, being bisexual means that I’m attracted to every single person I see.
This scares me so much so, that I haven’t been to Pride, anywhere. I don’t know what it’s like. I worry that they’ll kick me out because I’m not queer enough.
There are so many bisexual stereotypes. I’m not saying that there aren’t other stereotypes for lesbian/gay people, but it seems to be that they’re slowly being overturned. There are lots lesbian/gay people on TV and in movies, and the amount is slowly increasing.
There are so many famous people coming out as gay. There’s Neil Patrick Harris and Jodie Foster and Ellen Page and Matt Bomer, and what feels like a thousand other people.
When famous people like Angelina Jolie or Freddie Mercury are bisexual, it’s glazed over. People decide to make their own definitions, and just decide that Angelina went through a “wild phase.” Evan Rachel Wood is the one famous person I know of who is openly bisexual, and even then, people give her a hard time about it.
It’s even more condensed in books. Even if books don’t have gay/lesbian characters as leads, there is usually someone sprinkled in the background.
I, like many other people, read to learn about new things. Even when people aren’t exactly reading to learn, they do it without meaning to. Many teens have learned about their gay/lesbian peers through reading books about them, like Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda or the Miseducation of Cameron Post.
There’s one book I’ve read with an explicitly bisexual main character: Not Otherwise Specified by Hannah Moskowitz. It’s the only book that actually shows the struggle it is to be a bisexual teenager. Friends who have read it can understand what I’m going through, what I mean, without me having to explain feelings I’m still discovering by myself.
Some people say that the things we read about in books or see in TV shows and movies aren’t important. But they are extremely important for people who aren’t seen in real life. A light is shed on you when you’re accurately portrayed in a story.
So many teens learn about the world and themselves through the media they consume. I learn from the books I read and the shows I watch and the movies I go to see. When groups of people are omitted, we are taught that these people don’t exist. They aren’t as important as those displayed.
Stories don’t fix everything, but they can most definitely bring awareness. Let’s use them to change the world – or, at first, society’s view of bisexuality.
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Camryn Garrett is a teenager who thinks that she’s too awkward to function. She blogs at the Huffington Post when she isn’t ranting about racism or sexism, and has a laptop named Walden. When she grows up, she wants to be “better than Lena Dunham.” Reach her at @dancingofpens on Twitter.
On Failing to Recognize Ourselves in Mirrors
Bisexual Awareness Week Series: Day 1 – Previous Posts: Introduction to Bisexual Awareness Week Series – Bisexuality in YA
by Claire Spaulding
When I first started brainstorming for this post, I came up with a list of what I want to see in bisexual YA: more badass bisexual ladies going on adventures! Swoon-worthy romance with happy endings! Bisexual pirates! Seriously, guys, where are my bisexual YA pirate novels?!
But then I moved beyond what I want in bisexual YA right now, and I started thinking about what I wanted in bisexual YA back when I really, deeply needed good bisexual YA. Which was when I was questioning.
And I realized that, at the bottom of a long wish list that includes pirates and adventures and happily-ever-afters, I’m actually still searching for what I needed back then: more nuance and diversity in the way that bisexual stories get told. Books that explore an array of complicated, subtle experiences of bisexuality that don’t fit into the conventional bisexual narrative. Bisexual books that welcome, include, and validate.
Diverse representation in literature provides mirrors for people who don’t see themselves reflected in mainstream culture, but when we look into those mirrors, we can’t always recognize ourselves. Sometimes, we don’t want to recognize ourselves. Sometimes, we’ve just been taught to look away. Don’t make eye contact. Pretend we never looked in the first place.
For the questioning teen, especially the questioning teen who might end up identifying as bi or pan or polysexual, the overrepresentation of clearly-defined gay and lesbian characters in queer YA literature can provide plenty of excuses to look away. “Oh, that character isn’t attracted to people of a different gender–I’m not like them.” “Oh, that character has always known that they’re gay–I’m definitely not like them.”
Queer YA tends to validate gay and lesbian identities with a force and clarity it doesn’t grant to bisexuality. And when queer YA does validate bisexuality, it only tends to do so in two very specific and limiting ways: either the bisexual character has had relationships with at least one boy and one girl in the past, or the bisexual character is currently in a love triangle with exactly one boy and one girl (I say boy and girl because queer YA suffers from a truly appalling dearth of nonbinary characters).
Made out with a girl? Check. Made out with a boy? Check. Congrats, you’re a genuine bisexual! Please proceed to the Bisexual Registration Office to submit your paperwork and confirm your status. No, you haven’t checked those boxes? Sorry, but why exactly do you think you belong here?
This trope spreads the insidious idea that, while straight kids and gay kids can know their identity instinctively, bisexual kids “can’t know for sure until it happens,” i.e. until they’ve had positive sexual or romantic experiences with people of multiple genders. While gay and lesbian kids also hear that message from the straight world, I think it’s something bisexual kids are more likely to internalize. After all, most of us are attracted to people of the “opposite” gender. So when we start to explore queer spaces, we get imposter syndrome. That nagging feeling that we need to do more to prove to others, and ourselves, that we belong. I’ve experienced that, and I’ve heard it from nearly all of my questioning friends at one point or another.
And that’s so harmful. It’s not as though we’re all asleep in a glass coffin of heteronormativity and being kissed by someone of the same gender is the only way to wake up. There are tons of valid ways to figure out one’s identity, and sexual experimentation is only one of them.
Which is another reason why the checklist approach to bisexual representation is harmful: the trope reinforces the stereotype that bisexual people are inherently more promiscuous than people of other orientations, which spreads a negative image of bisexuality and alienates the many bisexual teens who aren’t sexually active and don’t necessarily want to be.
Robyn Ochs’ inclusive definition of bisexuality reads as follows: “The potential to be attracted—romantically and/or sexually—to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.”
Where is the space in bisexual YA for questioning teens? For teens with no sexual or romantic experience? For teens who experience attraction in complicated and messy ways, teens who haven’t always known, teens who have only ever been in serious relationships with people of one gender?
Where, in other words, is the space in queer YA for bisexual teens whose identities can’t be summed up in a series of checkboxes?
We need to use bisexual YA to welcome teens who find it difficult to access the majority of queer YA. We need complexity, nuance, inclusivity and positivity.
We need to create gentler mirrors. Mirrors that don’t make it so easy for questioning teens to look away.
At the end of the day, here’s the core of my wishlist for bisexual YA:
- Characters who self-identify as bisexual, pansexual, and polysexual. For contemporary fiction, at least one of those specific words needs to be used. In other genres, characters must still define their own identities clearly in contextually appropriate language.
- Books with multiple bisexual characters who experience bisexuality differently.
- Characters who start off questioning, end up questioning, and reject other characters’ attempts to label them as gay or straight along the way.
- Bisexual characters who have not been in relationships with people of multiple genders.
- Bisexual characters who do not end up having relationships or sexual experiences with people of multiple genders.
- Aro/ace-spectrum bisexual/biromantic characters.
- Bisexual and questioning characters with friends, both queer and straight, who affirm their identities and accept them as valid members of the queer community.
- Bisexual characters supporting other bisexual characters.
And, of course, pirates.
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Claire Spaulding is a writer and college student. While she procrastinates on her latest novel, she can usually be found playing piano, drinking tea, crying over musical theatre, and reading as much diverse fantasy and science fiction as she can find. Her short story “Chocolate Chip Cookies for the Apocalypse” was published in Daily Science Fiction in February 2015.
Bisexuality in YA
Bisexual Awareness Week Series: Day 1 – Previous Posts: Introduction to Bisexual Awareness Week Series
by Shira Glassman
Climbing the Date Palm by Shira Glassman (Prizm Books, 2014)
When I was a little girl, it took me until I was fourteen to realize that the way I liked girls counted as that way. Looking back, it was pretty obvious; I was obsessed with the cute blonde detective on Mathnet at age six and the Egyptian princess in The Ten Commandments at seven; at nine I talked about boobs an awful lot (my name for them, at the time, was “blossoms.”)
But I had no idea that counted as anything – because of a highly attractive male opera singer I’d also noticed as a youngster. You see, I hadn’t been introduced to the concept of bisexuality at all. Somehow in a lack of bi visibility it literally never occurred to me that you could like more than one gender at once.
The reason this is bad for bi kids is that we grow up in an environment that teaches that as long as you like the “appropriate” gender, your other attractions don’t matter and shouldn’t be acknowledged, explored, celebrated, or inform your choice of eventual serious long-term partner or spouse.
CAN I GET A NO, PLEASE.
YA literature can play its own part in establishing–or refuting–the idea that clear evidence of a boy liking a girl or a girl liking a boy is inherent proof of straightness. If a bi kid is reading a book and the book acts like bisexuality doesn’t exist, it reinforces that lack of awareness. “Maybe,” says the kid while turning the pages, “what I feel doesn’t matter, and I’m straight.”
An otherwise excellent book throws out a line implying that a boy flirting with another boy automatically means he won’t be interested in women ever… and a bi kid absorbs that. (And so do the straight and gay readers!)
I love how the bi girl Brianna in Dahlia Adler’s recent summer release Under the Lights knows exactly what she is — she’s bi, and she’s in a relationship with a girl. This provides modeling for scared bi kids that they, too, can be confident that their other-gender attractions don’t negate, invalidate, or sully their same-gender ones. This also provides a much-needed reminder that bi girls can and DO choose girls.
That’s the same kind of reassurance I’m going for by frequently writing bisexual characters in same-sex relationships. If someone picks up Climbing the Date Palm, they’ll see in Aviva a reminder that bi ladies can choose ladies and that some women in f/f relationships are bi, and they’ll see in Prince Kaveh a reminder that a man’s past girlfriend doesn’t rule out the chance that he might be interested in a boyfriend in the future. I hope Yael, the bi trans woman in my upcoming The Olive Conspiracy (2016, Prizm Books), will give readers the hint that trans people, like cis people, come in all orientations.
There also needs to be representation in YA for other bisexual experiences – bi girls who have boyfriends, bi teens who have a boyfriend and a girlfriend at the same time. I’m sure these books are out there but I haven’t read every book yet; bisexual-books on Tumblr can hopefully help you out if that’s what you’re looking for. Naturally, of course, we need more of them, and beyond that – and in the meantime – we need our “girls who love girls” and “boys who love boys” books to try if possible to stay away from bisexual erasure or narratives where attraction to more than one gender ONLY appear in connection with flaky, untrustworthy, backstabbing characters.
This is a modern-day AU version of some of the characters; the bi ones, Aviva and Kaveh, are on the outside, and the ones in the middle are gay. They are ALL parents of the baby in the pic, who was conceived via magically-assisted artificial insemination, and the pic was drawn by Becca Schauer.
(Disclaimer that I’m definitely not asking for every same-gender-attracted character to be bisexual. That would make me really uncomfortable and be its own type of erasure.)
My goal would be a world where people who experience other-gender attraction feel just as justified pursuing their same-gender attractions (romantic, sexual, or both) as people who only experience same-gender attraction. And of course, people who only experience same-gender attraction should feel completely justified. After all, the straight world is largely telling BOTH groups to shut the hell up and be straight. I feel that healthy representation in YA literature is one of the ways we can create that world, where a girl will see it modeled for her by fictional girls just like her that her all-consuming crush on a male TV star doesn’t mean she shouldn’t ask out Sarah from biology; where a boy won’t assume his crush on the same celebrity is just “something that happens to all boys” and should be ignored, because a bi boy in a book he read liked more than one gender.
Have you read a book that unexpectedly reassured you that yes, there was someone else out there like you, that your feelings were real, that you were telling the truth about yourself after all? I’d love to hear about it. Whether it’s lesbianism, bisexuality, transness, nonbinary identity, an intersection between gender/sexuality and your ethnicity, ethnoreligious group, or disability, or another issue of marginalization, please comment and tell us!
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Shira Glassman is a bisexual violinist living in North Florida with her agender same-sex spouse and the worst-behaved but prettiest cat in the world. (Seriously, stop eating cardboard boxes!) She draws on her Jewish heritage, her childhood in South Florida, and the German and French operas she adores for writing inspiration. Shira’s Climbing the Date Palm was a double finalist in the 2015 Bisexual Book Awards. Her next offering is a short f/f paranormal story, “Wet Nails”, in which a bi lady of today hooks up with the ghost of a bi lady of the past, contrasting the different ways the times they live in has affected their ability to express their love for women. “Wet Nails” appears in Torquere’s Haunted Hotties Anthology Vol. 1 on October 14, and will also be available as a separate eBook download.