May 08 2008
Bisexuality: What’s in a label
There’s a risk that as soon as you adopt of label such as ‘bisexual’, others peg you with a stereotype, often that stereotype is unflattering, ill-informed or even prejudiced. Who wants to be judged by a label? Does owning an Adidas tracksuit make you a Chav? Does being a Scouser make you a car thief? Does being bisexual make you a deplorable fence-sitter?
No wonder that many people choose not to come out. The word just carries too much baggage.
So why do I choose to label myself as bisexual, why not one of the wonderfully inventive euphemisms which also really mean “bisexual”? Why not: pansexual, trisexual, hetero-flexible or this seasons fashionable word ‘fluid’?
Well for a start “fluid” makes me sound like an amoeba, “hetero-flexible” conjures up images of a contortionist and “pansexual” sounds like a word Ford Prefect might use to describe a cocktail in The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
That said, the most compelling reason not to beat around the bush is search engine visibility. There are far more searches for “bisexual” than “hetero-flexible”, so if I want my blog to be read I need to use words which people are likely to search for on Google. And finally, these other euphemisms are just that, euphemisms. They might not carry the baggage of the bisexual label, but that’s because they are not mainstream words and I refuse to hide my sexuality and other people’s reactions to it, by using language which is ambiguous or otherwise obfuscates the issue.
It always makes me laugh when people say “I prefer not to label my sexuality”. Honestly Mr [no-label] who are you kidding? We all know you mean you are bisexual, you’re just shying away from the word because either a) you want to sound trendy, which is pretty lame, or b) you’re too timid to challenge other people’s misconceptions about bisexuality.
And lets face it bisexuality is a broad church, it spans everyone from Kinsey 0.00001 to 5.99999. The Kinsey definition leaves a lot of room for anyone to carve out their own identity within it. As I see it, bisexuality is just a convenient catch-all term for anyone who has a sexual interest in men and in women. These interest does not have to be evenly split or even acted upon with equal vigour. The term exists, or should exist, purely to differentiate us from monosexuals (people who are only attracted to one gender).
Definition:
Bisexual (noun) - Someone who is not monosexual.
Labels can be a problem, they pigeon-hole us, but only if you let them. Taking time to explain to others what bisexuality means to you is the only way to challenge people’s preconceptions. It helps educate the world around us. Until we reclaim the bisexual label and start defining it for ourselves, then others will continue to define it for us and chances are we won’t identify with their definition.
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I don’t like being labeled as:……. well the fact is I’m not really gay, I do love a midnight ride with a pretty girl. But, I’m by no means ’straight’, an hour or two with a really horny guy is a pleasurable sexual experience. What other term fit’s but bisexual?
i hear your activism and I like it. In my experience, the need to move away from a label is that it constrains my identity. You mentioned several reasons to identify with the label bisexual, but one that I consider important is time. Our society pushes to believe that identity is a static thing that never changes and therefore is solid, permanent, and may I say, credible. Anything that changes lacks credibility. Well, in my experience, I’ve been through periods that I’m mostly attracted to men, and periods when I’m mostly attracted to women. That doesn’t make my identity a “confused” one, but that makes me see myself as a person whose experience changes with time. As you said, my sexuality is not the cornerstone of my identity. One of the cornerstones of my identity is that I change, that I evolve and that I try to adapt to my environment using my values and my convictions to do that. I’m not the same shy student I was in high school, and I’m not the confused teenager either. I evolved. And my need for labels to explain my own behavior to the rest of the world has evolved as well.
I’m kinda with sal on this one. I don’t reject the bisexual label, but I don’t wholeheartedly embrace it, either. I’ve gone through long periods of time of being almost exclusively attracted to one or the other sex. Enough so that I would consider myself closer to gay or straight for those periods of time. I don’t shy away from the bisexual label out of fear or confusion at those times–I do so because it feels inaccurate.
I’ve also had periods of time where I’ve been attracted to both sexes, though these are rare. At these times, I’m more comfortable with the bisexual label. I don’t see myself ever being totally comfortable embracing any pre-packaged sexual identity, though. The notion that sexuality is as permanent and easily defined as eye color is what needs to be challenged.