When bisexuality gets explained away

Some gay and lesbian people will tell you that bisexuality is a stage on the way to coming out fully. You may have heard it from a friend, a date, or someone at a bar who said it lightly and meant it.

For some people, it was true. They used the word bisexual first because it was the word they could say. Later, they found another word that fit better. That is one path.

The mistake is turning one person’s path into a map for someone else.

Other people are bisexual at twenty and bisexual at fifty. They are attracted to more than one gender, and they know that about themselves. Their relationships may change. The gender of their partners may change. None of that makes their sexuality temporary.

A bisexual person in a different-gender relationship can be assumed to be straight. The same person in a same-gender relationship can be assumed to be gay or lesbian. Their sexuality did not change because their relationship changed. What changed was the person standing beside them.

A relationship can tell you who someone is with. It cannot tell you the limits of who they are attracted to.

This is bisexual erasure.

Erasure does not always look like someone saying bisexuality does not exist. It can be treating someone’s current relationship as the answer. Assuming they will eventually choose. Hearing “I am bisexual” and translating it into “I have not worked it out yet.”

Deciding again and again whether to correct an assumption can become its own kind of work. Sometimes you explain. Sometimes you let it go.

None of those decisions changes what you know about yourself.

Identity can move. Some people who describe themselves as bisexual now will use the same word for the rest of their lives. Others may understand themselves differently later.

Changing the language you use for yourself does not prove that you were wrong before. The possibility that you may use another word one day is not a reason for someone else to disregard the word you are using now.

There is no length of time an identity has to last before it deserves to be taken seriously.

If bisexual is the word that fits, if you are still working out what does, or if you are tired of other people deciding what your sexuality means for you, you do not need a final answer to start counselling.

You do not have to make your identity easier for someone else to understand.