We independently assess all our recommendations. Purchases through our links may earn us a commission.
In this article:
- Bi erasure is a cornerstone of biphobia, the hatred and/or aversion towards bisexual people.
- It’s a surprisingly common sentiment in the LGBTQ+ community with biphobia towards bisexual women being frequent in the radical feminist and political lesbian spaces.
- Biphobic rhetoric assumes that bisexual people aren’t affected by homophobia, are less entitled to inclusion in the queer community, and that bisexuals are secretly straight.
- This biphobia, which stretches back to the days of second wave feminism, shares roots with transphobia and TERF ideology.
- Recently, TERF and political lesbian radfems have been using aro ace exclusionary rhetoric to slowly radicalize people against the LGBT+ community.
Are you bisexual or is it just the compulsory heterosexuality talking? But, conversely, are you really straight or lesbian/gay, or have you been made to feel like you have to “pick a side”?
Bisexual people are often the target of exclusion in the LGBT+ community and are accused of not having queer-related struggles, of being “experimenters” or “secret straights,” and, when it comes to bi women, of only being attracted to men because of internalized misogyny.
The point is that bisexuals are never queer enough or straight enough for either side of the fence, and part of why that rhetoric exists is radical feminist ideology. Or to be more specific, political lesbian ideology, a sister to trans-exclusionary radical feminism.
What Are Bi Erasure and Biphobia? A 101 on Hatred From Both Sides of the Fence
All of those words probably made your head hurt and because the Discourse™ can get confusing, let’s step back a bit to first identify what biphobia and bi-erasure are.
Bisexual erasure is dismissiveness towards bisexuality. It can be a tendency to ignore bisexuality and the existence of bisexual people and/or the conscious act of doing so.
Both biphobic groups see bisexuals as being “confused” or “going through a phase” and that once they’re over it, they’ll decide whether they’re actually straight or gay/lesbian.
This can take the form of insisting that bisexuals are either straight or homosexual which, weirdly enough, comes from both sides of the fence.
This is because some members of the LGBTQ+ community and some straight people both deny bisexuality as a valid sexual orientation. Both biphobic groups see bisexuals as being “confused” or “going through a phase” and that once they’re over it, they’ll decide whether they’re actually straight or gay/lesbian.
The prevalence of bisexual erasure has made it the central issue in the bisexual community. Biphobia, the aversion to and/or hatred of bisexual people, often takes the form of bi erasure.
Or, as some bisexuals on the internet cleverly call it, Schrodinger’s bisexual.
The informal theory of Schrodinger’s bisexual is that a bisexual is only bisexual when they’re dating someone of the opposite sex. Hence, they’re perceived as being truly bisexual though at risk of being written off as “finally gay/lesbian.”
The frustrating part about bisexual erasure and biphobia for many bisexuals is how much of it comes from inside the house, so to speak.
To be clear, this isn’t to say that heterosexuals, in general, are more accepting of bisexual folk because as far as many homophobic heterosexuals are concerned, bisexuals are just as much a “sexual deviant” as the other letters.
But it doesn’t mean it’s all rainbows and butterflies inside the LGBTQ+ community either.
Many lesbian women outright reject bisexual women as romantic partners because of their “double nature,” fearing that they’ll eventually leave them for men (regardless of the risk of being left existing whether the other partner is bisexual or not).
Bi erasure can also take the form of denying bisexual experiences, including when it’s coming from people who posit themselves as having more “queer cred” than bisexuals.
A study published in Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity posits that this is because monosexuals, people attracted to only one gender or sex, assume that bisexuals are more attracted to men.
That’s how you get bisexual men as “gay men in denial” and bisexual women as “heterosexual experimenters” a.k.a “spicy straights who need attention.”
Bi erasure can also take the form of denying bisexual experiences, including when it’s coming from people who posit themselves as having more “queer cred” than bisexuals.
Some biphobes will go as far as to deny that biphobia exists within the queer community because bisexuals have the “privilege” of straight passing — another of the many myths about bisexuality.
The Myth of Bisexual Depravity, the Bisexual Phase, and “Straight Passing”
As one Pride Month Tweet puts it, “Straight passing privilege” for bi people is what other queer and trans people call being in the closet. Of course, there are certain advantages to being in a heterosexual relationship like not being harassed on the street, to name a few.
To assume that bisexuals have straight passing privilege is to say that bisexuality is nothing more than being half-gay/lesbian and half-straight and that bisexuals get to switch between either as needed.
But again, this is also what fuels the inherent bi erasure of biphobia: To assume that bisexuals have straight passing privilege is to say that bisexuality is nothing more than being half-gay/lesbian and half-straight and that bisexuals get to switch between either as needed.
It is to say that there is no struggle in being bisexual despite research showing that bisexuals are at higher risk of depression, are more likely to self-harm, and are likelier to attempt suicide.
And because this comes hand in hand with the “straight passing” rhetoric, that bisexual people somehow “owe” it to the rest of the queer community to advocate for the rest of them simply because they aren’t “queer enough” to be completely excluded by heteronormative society.
Lady Gaga, though often hailed as an icon for the queer community, has been written off as just another “ally” despite her openly admitting multiple times that she “likes girls sometimes.”
In her speech at Stonewall during 2019’s Pride Month, Gaga said: “I may not, to some people, be considered a part of this community, even though I like girls sometimes. I would never degrade the fight you have endured.”
This statement highlights the phenomenon of how bisexuals make up the majority of queer people but are less likely to be out compared to gays and lesbians.
The myth of the bisexual phase assumes that bisexual people don’t exist.
Aside from accusations of not being queer enough, and so, being “straight passing,” stigma towards bisexuals make it harder for them to date within the community because biphobic queer people assume that bisexuality is “just a phase” which is pretty ironic when you think about it.
The myth of the bisexual phase assumes that bisexual people don’t exist and are just gay or lesbian people in the making. More insidiously, it implies that bisexual and bicurious people aren’t sincerely identifying as queer or opening up to their identity, that they are somehow out to “hurt” proper queer people.
Because of this, over 80% of bisexuals end up in seemingly straight relationships. That’s seemingly, because again, a person’s bisexuality does not disappear by virtue of not being directly observable based on who they’re dating.
This is due to a number of factors. Naturally, there are more cis and straight people to go around than lesbians and gay people for bisexuals to date. Gallup’s 2021 survey revealed that only 5.6% of adults in the U.S. identify as queer, leaving the bisexual dating pool dominated by straight, cisgender people.
And then, there’s the fear of community rejection, both from straight and queer folk, that keeps bisexuals from coming out and/or actually exploring non-heteronormative relationships.
Another myth about bi people is bisexual depravity or bisexual promiscuity. People who hold this view believe bisexuals are greedy, overly lustful, and disease-ridden because they supposedly want to sleep with everyone.
Kind of like how gay people are accused of being sexual deviants. And if you’ve noticed, yes, there are similarities to how bisexual people, particularly bisexual women, are talked about in “progressive” leftist spaces and the way TERFs talk about trans people.
Political Lesbianism Denigrates Bisexual People as Traitors to Feminism
Let’s start with the great grandmommy of them all: political lesbianism. Political lesbianism and political lesbians insist that lesbianism is a conscious choice to refrain from sexual contact with men which for many allies and queer people sounds a little…off to say the least.
It’s common for homophobic, transphobic, biphobic, and pretty much every-phobic person to say that other people’s identities are a choice and so, they should choose to be moral (read: straight and cisgender) upstanding citizens.
The similarity isn’t a coincidence. Both hinge on controlling people’s sexuality as a means of upholding an ideology, it’s just that in this case, it’s about upholding radical feminism instead of traditional conservative values.
This form of bi erasure asks bisexual women to bi erase themselves if they want to be counted as “true feminists.”
That said, it would be remiss to insist that political lesbianism is solely about oppressing bisexual women. Rather, political lesbianism is entirely of its time. It is one of the many ideological daughters of second-wave radical feminism which was making waves in the ’60s and ’70s.
One of the main concerns of the time was figuring out what women actually are when you take away the expectations of a patriarchal society and compulsory heterosexuality.
This came in the form of fighting against pornography, which was seen as the exploitation of women by male power, and, to an unfortunate extent, the exclusion of bisexual women.
Second-wave political lesbians saw bisexual women as a group whose existence undermined the work against compulsory heterosexuality. Did they have a point? Aside from biphobia, yes.
But the problem with second-wave radical feminism is that its biphobic daughters are still around and this time, they’re insisting that it’s transgender women who are harming womankind.
The BTA+: Why Radical Feminism’s Hatred of Bisexuals, Transgenders, and Aro Aces Is the Same Thing With a Different Name
In 2020, a series of proposed changes to the U.K.’s Gender Recognition Act that would make it easier for trans people to be legally recognized was criticized by trans-exclusionary radical feminists or TERFs for posing a danger to women’s rights and spaces.
The argument is that transwomen are not “woman enough” to belong in women’s spaces and that their rights are not women’s rights.
Kind of like how bisexual women are accused of perpetuating compulsory heterosexuality and, thus, are not “feminist enough.” In this case, the argument is that transwomen are not “woman enough” to belong in women’s spaces and that their rights are not women’s rights.
Lois Shearing explains that bisexual women are a threat to TERF politics because their existence:
- Undermines the importance of gender differences.
- Undermines the idea that any woman would choose a man-free life if she could.
- Makes it harder to construct a desexualized universalized “essence of womanhood.”
And if there’s no “essence of womanhood” how will TERFs exclude transwomen from feminism now? Transmen pose a similar threat because if gender differences aren’t important then how can they portray transmen as self-hating women.
“Some people think we reject our femininity and that it’s a betrayal or something.” Felix, a 26-year-old transman who inspired this deep dive, told me as we bounced ideas regarding this topic, “They think that if we ‘reject’ it, it’s a waste when it’s not the only way to be a woman.”
But there’s another community that doesn’t get mentioned as much, mostly because it’s smaller.
Just like how radical feminists have trouble reconciling feminism and womanhood with transgender identification and bisexual attraction, aromantic and asexual people threaten to destabilize the radfem conception of internalized misogyny and compulsory heterosexuality.
Straight and asexual transwomen are accused of internalized misogyny or of simply being “dysphoric” if their attraction to men (or lack of attraction to anyone, period) doesn’t fit the radfem idea of womanhood.
While that seems odd — because wasn’t it the point to not have women be attracted to men? — asexuality and aromanticism also mean not being attracted to women in ways acceptable to radfems.
A number of aromantics and sexuals have noticed how radfems have helped perpetuate divisive rhetoric within the LGBTQ+ community by targeting trans, bi, and aroace folk.
Laura Buttrick, a game design student from the U.K. whose partner identifies as asexual, wrote in The F Word about how certain segments of feminism saw her partner not as a real asexual, but as a woman struggling with finding “sexual liberation” outside of attraction to men, which undermined her own understanding of her sexuality.
Kind of like how straight and asexual transwomen are accused of internalized misogyny or of simply being “dysphoric” if their attraction to men (or lack of attraction to anyone, period) doesn’t fit the radfem idea of womanhood.
Talk about shared experiences.
