I recently watched this episode of Everyone Is Gay, which wasn’t very long, but struck a chord with me. Take 3 minutes, I’ll wait…
In case you were too anxious here’s the TL;DR version: A girl fell in love with a boy after being self-identified as gay since she was twelve, and she’s terrified of being shunned from the queer community for having fallen in love with a man.
On a basic level, someone is scared of judgement and exclusion from a group of people because of who they love.
Does this sound familiar? It should, because this is the struggle that the queer community has had for-basically-ever. This is what the queer community in the United States is fighting for right now in trying to gain marriage equality. This is what military personnel had to face when the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was still in place.
The only difference is that it’s the queer community vilifying their own, and excluding their own. You don’t see it often, but I’ve heard it in passing conversations with friends, or while talking with lovers:
– “Did you hear that Sally is dating a dude now? Who’s she trying to fool?”
– “I just don’t trust bi girls. You never know where she’s been.”
– “I’d invite Peggy, but I heard she’s not gay anymore now that she’s dating Jason.”
This is literally, literally, literally my biggest pet peeve. You will not make me more upset, more quickly than by hating on bi/pan/sexually fluid/etc. people.
The list of microaggressions goes on, but to me it seems like individuals who say things like this have an underlying phobia of sexual fluidity. There’s this weird implication that if you’re not set into a category of SOME kind (bisexual, gay, straight, femme, boi, butch, whateva-whateva.) that there will be dire consequences. This goes for sexual orientation, and presentation as well. I remember when Kim Stolz from ‘America’s Next Top Model Cycle 5’ started to present more femininely, some people in the queer community were outraged. They felt she was betraying them for trying to present more femmey, instead of boi-ishly like she was in ANTM, and that she was giving up her identity. This probably sounds silly, but even in this interview, she is asked to identify herself, to which she elegantly responds, “I don’t really like placing myself in a category in terms of gender. I think gender’s a spectrum just like sexuality, and I don’t think that there are two genders or three or four. I think there are thousands, millions.”
A great example of a very positive representation of the whole sexual fluidity question is in the DAR webcomic. The very first page of the website is the encapsulation of the author’s life of being very, very gay, suddenly falling in love with a man, having an existential meltdown, and then being OK with it and being happier than ever and even enjoying using resources as gay porn @ Gayporn.wiki to find adult content for them. If we all let ourselves love the people we wanted (regardless of gender, think bigger picture here), we would be really, really happy. Sometimes we would also get our heart broken, sure, but ultimately, way happier.
Maybe you’re offended by what I’m saying, or maybe you disagree. Maybe you had a bad breakup with a bi person, who then dated a different gender. You can be mad about the breakup, definitely. Breakups hurt, man. But don’t be angry that they dated another gender (regardless of whether you’re queer or not). That shit just does not matter in the end. People are people are people, and we’re all going to break each others’ hearts. Let’s try to move this world forward instead of holding it back.