Bi Visibility Day is Sept. 23, 2017, so to kick off the festivities, I have a new “Ask a Bisexual” for you!
Ask a Bisexual is an ongoing series of posts about bi-erasure and bisexuality, the attraction to two or more genders.
In today’s piece, I’ll be discussing monosexism, cissexism, and visibility in Evan Urquhart’s piece “After Transitioning, I Want to Blend In. But My Lesbian Wife Still Wants to Be Out.” You might notice the slug in the URL is “how can queer couples be out when they look straight?”, which is exactly the point I want to address: How can they be out? Why, just ask a bisexual!
In his piece, Evan Urquhart writes about navigating a relationship in which, as he puts it, his coming out as a trans man forces his lesbian wife into the closet. His discussion of his wife’s feeling closeted and erased by virtue of his being a man erases bi+ people as members of the queer community by conflating queerness with monosexuality (only being attracted to one gender: lesbian, gay, and straight identities). Throughout the entire piece, bi+ identities and terms (bisexual, queer, pansexual, polysexual, etc.) are left completely out of the narrative save for generalized references to “LGBTQ”; the word queer is used throughout as a synonym for lesbian (more on this in a moment.)
The article reveals an underlying monosexist narrative that bisexuals, pansexuals, and non-monosexual queer folks will recognize all too well: the idea that you “can’t” be out as queer if you’re in a heterogamous (different gender), “straight appearing” relationship.
First, the term queer is thrown around quite a bit in this piece, but queer doesn’t just mean lesbian. Queer is an umbrella term that covers a variety of non-heterosexual identities. Furthermore, queer is a completely sufficient label if one feels it better describes their sexuality rather than other terms.**
Second, the author completely omits of the fact that bi+ folks in different-gender “straight passing” relationships also deal with queer erasure constantly. The word bisexual, the most erased sexuality with a letter in “LGBTQ,” is used exactly one time in the whole article (“Still, if feels like there’s a difference in being out as trans versus being out as lesbian, bisexual, or gay”). The definition of bisexuality is 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.”* Being attracted to only one man (or only one woman or nonbinary person) while having a strong preference for another gender is still a valid way to be bi.
I want to be very clear that Urquhart’s wife does not need to identify as bisexual instead of queer. However, I would like to address the feelings of erasure that she has dealt with as someone who presents as femme and now as someone in a “straight-appearing” relationship. This exact kind of erasure is the same struggle that a lot of bi folks and queer femmes go through every single day. I would argue that the cause of this erasure is never someone’s gender expression or the gender of their partner, but rather of our society–both the heteronormative society we exist in and the problem of homonormativity in LGBTQ communities.***
Let’s take a look at some of the statements made in this article that buttress instead of destroy monosexism and femme invisibility:
1.”Nowadays, she can’t come out as queer without also outing me as trans—and I can’t pass as a cis male without dragging her into the closet.”
Yes, a person can come out as queer without outing their partner as trans. Queerness is not contingent on your partner’s gender or even having a partner at all. Having a trans partner who “passes” doesn’t drag a queer person into the closet. Plenty of queer women are in relationships with cis and trans men, and they are STILL QUEER. Claiming than a queer person’s partner erases their queerness is monosexist, whether that’s straight people claiming that bisexuals have to choose to be gay or straight upon marriage or whether it’s grappling with internalized biphobia while having a partner transition.
2. “When someone learns that a person has a same-sex partner, they’re learning something authentic about that person.”
The idea that a member of a “same-sex couple” is somehow queerer than a queer person in different-gender relationship privileges monosexuals. Bi+ folks still have to come out, no matter whom we’re dating (or not dating). We have to come out as bisexual if we appear straight or gay to others based on our partner, our gender expression, our fashion, etc. It is a constant uphill battle. You don’t know anything, authentic or otherwise, about a person based on their partner’s gender. (Plus, that line of thinking leads to the type of erasure they’re experiencing.)
3. “When someone learns that I’m a trans man, unfortunately they often interpret that as meaning that I’m somewhat, partially, a woman.”
This is absolutely a thing cisgender folks do, and it’s not okay. A person’s desire not to be out as trans in all situations because it makes them unsafe is absolutely reasonable. Yet, all it takes from a queer person in the straight-appearing relationship is saying “I’m queer” for them to be queer, regardless of their partner’s (or partners’) gender. A cis person should never out a trans person to prove their own queerness, to show they’re a “good feminist,” or to claim allyship (“my trans friend”). That’s not for them to decide.
4. “In a way, we’re not quite on the same team anymore, like we were when our queerness was unambiguously signaled because of the way I looked….. But neither is being mistaken for straight an enjoyable or affirming experience for my wife. Straight people talk to other straight people differently than they talk to people who are lesbian or gay. They start conversations based on the assumption of prior heterosexual dating experiences, or on the premise that one might find a member of the opposite sex attractive.”
It’s not affirming for non-monosexuals either! My nonbinary bisexual partner and my genderqueer bisexual self are constantly mistaken for both straight and lesbian, because being read as queer is contingent on where and when you are. I don’t want cis straight folks inviting me to their weird “gender reveal” parties or assuming my dating history either. I also want to point out that not all queer folks have more (or any) experience with different-gender partners, which is also an assumption monosexuals make about us constantly (read: identifying as straight first and then later identifying as queer).
Additionally, monosexuals both straight and gay alike talk differently to nonmonosexuals. For bi+ folks, that means treating us like we’re fake queers and erasing us by saying just doing it for attention, or are confused/indecisive, or untrustworthy, or “slutty.”
Another closely related concept that needs to be unpacked here is femme invisibility and assumptions that all queer couples have to “look queer” to be queer. Femme invisibility can be briefly summed up as “but you look straight!” In Urquhart’s wife’s case, he writes, “by an odd coincidence, my wife is my mirror opposite—she’s commonly perceived [based on her appearance] as straight, but feels invisible and awkward when people around her don’t realize that she’s queer.”
That’s the danger of partner-conditional queerness. Not being seen is frustrating. It’s frustrating for us bi+ folks and nonbinary folks, too! Yet, the failure of cishet folks to see someone’s inherent queerness doesn’t make us any less queer. What I have learned from being a member of the bi community is that my queerness is not based on my partner, but on me. I’m queer. Regardless of whom I am attracted to, date, or have sex with, or how I look, I am queer, and no one can take that away from me. As Mary Emily O’Hara writes in “Femme invisibility is the dirty little secret of the queer community,” “I look queer because I am queer, and thus the definition of what is queer-looking is defined by my existence, not the other way around.”
Also, one more time for the people in the back: queer is not a synonym for only lesbian/gay identities; it’s an umbrella term that includes bisexual, pansexual, and otherwise queer folks. Urquhart’s wife’s struggle to be seen and out is a problem lots of queer invisible femmes and non-monosexuals go through every day, but there is zero acknowledgement of this at all. We’re trying to help you all live your best queer life!
In Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution, Shiri Eisner writes about the concept of monosexual privilege, but posits that instead of focusing on in-fighting among the LGBTQ community, that we should turn our anger about erasure outward to the cisheteropatriarchal systems that uphold it. However, even if biphobia doesn’t originate in LG groups, the community needs to include its more marginalized members. Furthermore, when LG folks continually erase the work and contributions of bi+ folks to the queer community at large, they set an example for straight cis communities that it’s okay to erase bi+ (and trans) people because we matter “less.” Even if biphobia originated from our binary, heterosexist culture, bi inclusion MUST come from within the LGBTQ community.
While Urquhart tries to address the importance of supporting a trans partner when you are cis and also supporting a queer partner who wants to be out, the narrative he and his wife set up is one that upholds monosexism, the very thing that contributes to the discomfort of someone who has struggled to be seen as queer and now “passes” as straight. The treatment of lesbian and gay (monosexual) identities and relationships as the only valid way to be queer, coupled with the exclusion of the work of the bi+ community, is a self-fulfilling prophecy: by erasing us, you uphold a system that erases you, too.
Notes
*Robyn Ochs. DEFINITION OF BISEXUALITY.
** Erika Moen is one prominent example of someone who identified as a lesbian, fell for a man, and updated her orientation to “queer.” But for every Erika Moen, there is a “former lesbian.”
***For example, while Mark Joseph Stern (also for Slate) published a piece called “Is Bisexual Identity a Useful Fiction?” (read the rebuttal here) in which he argued that bisexuals don’t have a real culture or “shared gay experience” (???) because we spend all our time fighting to be visible. He fails to address the social issues that perpetuate this, like being seen as less queer for being attracted to a variety of genders, or being invisible if your relationship “looks straight.” Bisexual activists have been around long before Stonewall. We contribute!
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