biphobia is real and harmful: a thread bc i'm tired

lets define biphobia, wikipedia states "Biphobia is aversion toward bisexuality and toward bisexual people as a social group or as individuals. It can take the form of denial that bisexuality is a genuine sexual orientation, or of negative stereotypes towards bisexual people."

ps i use wikipedia because apparently biphobia isn't a word in the webster dictionary? WTF? anyways....

let's address the first part of the definition that bisexuality aka that it's not a legitimate sexual orientation

bisexual erasure is not a foreign concept to most bisexual individuals the most common form of this is being called straight or gay depending on your partners gender and/or being told to "chose a side"

personally bisexual erasure effected me growing up by not knowing bisexuality was a thing. from a young age i knew i liked both boys and girls but because i liked boys i assumed my "like" for girls was how everyone felt.

because of biphobia and bi erasure bisexual women are thought to be attention seeking straight women and bisexual men are thought to be gay men too afraid to be fully out of the closet

speaking of the closet did you know a study from 2013 found that bisexual individuals are less likely to be out to their love ones compared to lesbians and gay men

another study found that bisexuals are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety compared to the rest of LGT you can read about it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2017.1387755

(TW: violence and abuse) bisexual women also suffer from higher rates of intimate partner violence compared to lesbians and straight women but lack the resources to cope with this trauma

the bisexual manifesto published in 1990 in "Anything that Moves" a magazine that reclaims a bi stereotype as its title was made to bring awareness to biphobia and bi erasure

it asserts that bisexuals are tired of being defined by others and/or being made to feel invisible by others

it also touches on the fact bisexuality is not just the attraction to two genders (plus that there are NOT just two genders) and that bisexuality is not inherently promiscuous and/or unsafe both very prelate stereotypes at the time and unfortunately still today

i'll probably add to this later but this thread was mostly for myself as i spent last night wide awake thinking i was being over dramatic about bi erasure and my insecurities in my sexuality and rereading the bisexual manifesto makes me feel validated that I'm not alone in that!

also if you want the sources i used i have them bookmarked :)