being bi

Our Town

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Let me give you some context.

Back in March, our town’s high school hosted a conference that they’ve hosted for the last seven years. The conference focuses on diversity and inclusion, on acceptance and anti-bullying measures. Students in our predominantly white, upper middle class town get to hear different perspectives from all sorts of different communities, and there are multiple workshops throughout the day that students can participate in. This is all enumerated on the conference’s website, and students cannot attend without parental permission. In other words: your kid can only be at this conference if you give the okay.

Lots of speakers lead workshops at this conference and do so for free. It’s volunteer work, and presenters are chosen from responses to RFPs sent out several months in advance. Workshop leaders talk about topics like racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and other difficult things students might encounter in their schools and out in the real world. These workshops aim to give students ways to respond to those sorts of instances, to prevent them from happening in the first place, and to not be discouraged if they’re the target of that sort of nastiness. 

One of the presenters this year was the Pride chapter from our nearest city. Their presentation began with a performance by a drag queen, a two-to-three minute dance as Karen Smith from Mean Girls, as the movie musical had just been released (and, let’s be real, Mean Girls is absurdly gay). Once the performance ended, the drag queen stepped back to let the other presenter lead the workshop about the history and culture of drag. Students by and large came away from the workshop feeling better about themselves, one student even talking about how it filled them with actual joy to be there.

Except.

Someone took sneaky pictures of the workshop like a peeping Tom. Those pictures got around and eventually, someone brought it up to the school committee (who had nothing to do with the conference, no say in any performances whatsoever, and really seemed more interested in making sure that the budget was balanced than anything else). As our school committee meetings are always recorded, a snippet of the complaint somehow made its way to the Lib of TikTok Twitter–sorry, X, didn’t mean to deadname it–account, and our town has not known a moment of peace since.

(Libs of TikTok, for those not in the know, is an account owned by a woman in California named Chaya Raichik. It’s a hotbed of stochastic terrorism, where followers are given misleading information and outright disinformation in the interest of riling them up and inspiring them to do harm. Libs of TikTok has been linked to an absurd number of bomb and death threats, and in one instance, was a deciding factor in a mass shooting. Of course, Chaya never outright tells her followers to go do crime, but that’s the thing about stochastic terrorism: if you tell the right people that a group is evil, they’ll do unspeakable things)

We’ve had so many Facebook debates about this. We’ve had so many meetings about this. People have said the most vile things, downright evil things about the LGBTQIA+ community, specifically trans people (which is kind of hilarious because the drag queen in question? Gayer than a maypole in a sunshower but definitely not trans). People have been yelling SO LOUD, and it’s been SO MUCH, and even though the people yelling are just a small percentage of the town’s population, their screams just ring in everybody’s ears and do the work of making queer people feel unsafe here. 

We’ve also attracted a LOT of out of town attention, including what seems to be a local church and this group that seems to travel from controversy to controversy, demanding that parents homeschool their kids because, apparently, public schools are brainwashing kids to be soldiers for Satan? (speaking as someone who has taught at many levels, trust me, if teachers could brainwash kids, everyone would do their homework all the time, nobody would call their teacher “bruh,” and nobody would run in the hallway ever again) 

(also one of the people who went on the brainwashing for Satan tangent bragged about getting arrested at the department of elementary and secondary education’s headquarters for “just asking questions,” which is a euphemism, I’ve learned, for “property damage”)

Last night was the long-awaited school committee meeting, and it was just a disaster. Four hours of incoherent screaming and tangents and absolute nonsense that was entirely unrelated to anything (like people were talking about test scores as if this conference has anything to do with that?). Four hours of some of the worst vitriol I’ve ever heard in person. I was sitting with the members of the team who put the conference together, many of whom were queer, and everyone looked so miserable–angry, sad, uncomfortable, afraid. It was awful. And in absolute fairness, some people tried to express their weirdness civilly… but even then, when you hear someone civilly say “acknowledging that someone is transgender is like kidnapping them from the inside,” that doesn’t make it better.

BUT ANYWAY. I spoke, too. Because like… have you ever had an experience where you know that you must do something? You feel sick to your stomach about doing it, but you know that if you don’t do it, things will be so much worse. And that’s how I felt about speaking. 

I wrote a speech. It was seven minutes long to start (and that’s what I’ve copied below), and then I had to trim it down to three minutes, and THEN, when I actually spoke, I got nervous and lost my place and couldn’t finish it. I wanted a lot to wish the school committee and principals and superintendents a good summer, but I didn’t have time. What I said was enough, but I do wish I’d been able to say more and say it in a gentler, calmer way instead of panicking about the clock. 

But anyway. Here is what I wanted to say. It’s a lot. I edited it a lot. 

(also I talk about some negative aspects of my upbringing here, which isn’t me trying to crap on my parents at all; it’s more me saying, they were doing the best they could with what they knew and what they believed were best for me, but those actions did not accomplish the goals that they–and a lot of the people so furiously against this conference–wanted to see)

Good evening. My name is Abby, and I will have been a resident of [my town] for ten years come December. I have three children in the school system, and since my youngest are just finishing up kindergarten, I’ll be around here for quite a while. 

I wanted to talk a little bit tonight about the impact of sheltering your kids from things like what we saw at the conference versus allowing them access to those things. I don’t expect to change anybody’s mind tonight, because the human mind is primed to defend itself against opposing points of view, but I do want this information on record, first to be considered by the school committee, principal, and superintendent going forward; and second, so that anyone who identifies as LGBTQIA+ (which I will be shortening to “queer” from this point on) in our town knows that they are not alone.

My parents are both ordained ministers through a relatively conservative Christian denomination, and they did their best to raise me with the values passed down to them by that denomination. In many cases, this meant shielding me from things they deemed inappropriate or sinful. We didn’t celebrate Halloween when I was growing up. Certain Disney movies were completely off limits, and others came with a sort of Christian commentary reminding me that Ursula was not the ruler of all the ocean, that Allah didn’t exist no matter what the sultan said, and that magic wasn’t real. We turned off the TV the second anyone appeared in their underwear or a bikini, and the wine bottles my aunts and uncles brought over for holidays were kept well out of sight and whisked away as soon as the parties ended.

But most notably, my parents shielded me from information about sex and sexuality. I learned the vaguest of basics from a Focus on the Family book, one that only mentioned homosexuality enough to say that it was wrong, a perversion. When the topic of further sex ed arose at school, my parents screened every course and liberally removed me from classes they deemed inappropriate. Once, when I was in seventh grade, a sex ed class slipped through the cracks–leading to several meetings like this one–and that, along with my struggles with algebra, pushed my parents to pull my siblings and me out of school altogether to be homeschooled for a year. When I returned for my freshman year of high school in the town just next door, the proud tradition of pulling me out of sex ed classes continued, and so while my classmates learned about their bodies, protection, STDs, and the like, I learned about nutrition in the library.

By the time I reached tenth grade, I’d had no positive exposure to gay people or transgender people. I believed what I’d been taught–by my parents, by youth pastors, by Focus on the Family, by Christian books and other media–that being gay was a choice, and it was a choice that people only made if they were deeply unwell, oversexualized and in a dark place far from God. And I desperately feared disappointing God and falling away from grace. My parents and I did everything in our power to keep me from being anything but a straight, God-fearing woman, to the point where that was my sole defining characteristic to a lot of people in my high school.

If sheltering your child could prevent your child from identifying as queer, I would be a living testament to that–but the truth is that I’m bisexual. I realized this in tenth grade, and the knowledge that I was attracted to people of my gender and people of other genders made me sick to my stomach for so long. It calcified into this tumor of shame and self-hatred that I kept secret and tried my hardest to pray away, crying as I lay awake all night begging God to make me straight. It hurt so much that I found myself wishing that I’d get hit by a truck or fall horribly ill so that something could hurt my body as much as my soul hurt.

I’m not alone in that feeling. We have countless studies on suicidality and self-harm among queer youth. According to a 2017 study, around 70% of queer people experience major depressive disorder at one point in their lives. Another study in 2019 showed that 71% of queer teen girls and 57% of queer boys had seriously considered suicide. Unwelcoming communities are a huge contributing factor in these statistics: a 2010 study in the Chronicle of HIgher Education reported that about a quarter of queer university students had been harassed because of their orientation, and a 2009 survey found that among participants, queer students were three times as likely to say they felt unsafe at school compared to cishet students.

But. There is good news. Acceptance and support are the biggest preventers of suicidality in queer youth. A 2022 study found that transgender youths who had the support of their families were less than half as likely to commit suicide than those who did not have the support of their families. And, more relevant, gay-straight alliances in schools demonstrably reduce suicidality among queer youths, cutting that number in half. To put it plainly: programs like the conference literally save lives.

I’m very lucky. My story didn’t end in high school. I grew up, I’m healing, and beautifully, when I came out to my parents two years ago, they each held me tightly and told me that they loved and supported me no matter what. 

I worry, though, about kids who don’t have this level of support at home, who feel the way I did in high school with no positive examples. Are we to let them drown in depression and lose them to suicide because “school should just teach academic subjects” or something along those lines? Or can we put aside our own discomfort and save some kids’ lives? Because if all it takes for a kid to reconsider suicide is a drag queen giving a workshop on loving yourself as you are, I think we have a responsibility to invite that drag queen back every year. 

We know for a fact that the biggest shield against the messed up twists and turns of the world is community. For many of us here tonight, it’s the queer community. For many of us, it’s this town. For me–and many of us here tonight–it’s both. Our wonderful little town–with its shimmering ponds, its incredible views of the surrounding region, its quaint town common (despite the construction), and its wonderful people–has a chance once again to stand up for those who might not have the ability to do so themselves. The conference team has done an amazing job at this for the past seven years; let’s not allow external provocateurs prevent them from continuing their good work. 

And to the school committee, principal, and superintendent, I hope you all get really great vacations this summer, because you all deserve it so much. Thank you.

Bi Bi Bi

/ lovescienceandnat20s / 1 Comment

I’ve wanted to write this for a really long time. Most of my life, actually, now that I think about it. I’ve wanted to be upfront and honest and open about who I am for so long that it’s hard to remember a time when it wasn’t something I wanted, but life has this funny way of preventing this level of honesty. You worry about what people will think, you worry how your truth will affect other people, you question yourself on every level.

But ultimately, here I am. Being honest and open, and I hope that after you, dear reader, finish with this post, you’ll still stick around and love me (if you do love me; if you didn’t to begin with, it’s all good) as much as you did before. If you don’t, if you’ve changed your mind on me, I’ve reached a point where I’m okay with that, okay with people who can’t accept me for who I am seeing their way out of my life, because at the end of the day, I’d rather be authentically myself than keep up an act. 

In that vein, rather than just beating around the bush and leaving you to read the whole post and be like “BUT WHAT ARE YOU??” like this is some vague Facebook status where I say that I’m HARD TO GET ALONG WITH and I’ll ALWAYS FIGHT FOR MY FRIENDS because I’m a SCORPIO WHO LIKES ELEPHANTS or something like that, I’ll get the big revelation out of the way first, as a sort of thesis statement. That way, if you don’t like it, you can stop reading now, unfollow me, walk away, and not worry about the rest. 

But I hope you’ll stay. And I hope that you’ll read past this point, where I tell you that I am bisexual, I always have been, and I always will be. 

But how do you know??

Do you remember the first time you saw someone who took your breath away and reset your brain to factory settings? And all you could do when it happened was just stand there and blink and wonder what had happened and when you were going to get back to normal?

I remember. I was fourteen years old, and I was in typing class. There was a girl in my class, whose name I absolutely forget, and one day, even though I’d seen her hundreds of times before, she left me dumbstruck. I was the teacher’s pet in typing class (thanks to Mavis Beacon and having a college boyfriend with whom I chatted on AIM all the time), but I don’t remember doing very well that day, because it was all I could do to kick my brain back into gear and stare at the passage we were supposed to be typing instead of that girl. 

Now, I grew up in a pretty conservative Christian household, and as I’d neared puberty, the main thing I’d learned about sex was that doing it outside of marriage was Bad and Wrong and would probably result in me getting pregnant with AIDS. To my parents’ credit, this wasn’t their messaging, by and large. They put their collective foot down when it came to my love life overall (still let me date a guy five years my senior, mind, but their rules about physicality were strict enough that they got me grounded at least twice over kissing), but the hellfire and brimstone didn’t come from them so much as from the culture of conservative Christianity at the time. 

My awakening, as it were, happened right as purity culture was finding its footing. For the uninitiated, purity culture was (maybe is, I don’t know what churches similar to the one I grew up in do with their adolescents now) this obsession with not only not having sex until you were married but not getting into emotional entanglements either. It often involved things like purity rings and girls getting compared to things like chewed up gum, tape that’s lost its stickiness, shattered glasses, etc., if we were “loose.” Nobody much talked about sex itself… it was more the idea that having sex outside of what the Bible condoned (i.e., one man and one woman in marriage, however the current culture defined it) would absolutely ruin you. You’d turn into a sex addict, you’d get pregnant with AIDS, you’d be worthless, your future spouse (assuming we’d all have future spouses) would be the Bigger Person for accepting you in your gross, already-did-the-nasty-ness.

And anything outside of heterosexuality? Don’t even think about it. Being gay was a sin, being attracted to anyone outside of a cisgender “opposite” sex spouse was a sin, and a bad one. Almost as bad as abortion. 

So I had this moment of “KAPOW, beautiful girl!” but I had no idea what to do with that feeling because bisexuality just wasn’t on my radar in the slightest. Sure, we had internet, but it was the baby internet, a wild west without real search engines, and anyway, even if Google had been available, the idea of my parents finding out about me researching this perversion terrified me. I had no label for myself, and all I could think, when I was trying to sleep and fantasies about that beautiful girl and other beautiful girls danced through my mind, was that I must be addicted to sex. 

(mind, I’d gone no farther than kissing my boyfriend at that age, I only just barely knew what sex entailed, but there I was, fourteen years old and an obvious sex addict)

This was, in retrospect, the wrong conclusion, but I had no way of knowing that. Shame over my apparent sex addiction consumed me, and some nights, I’d lie awake all night, begging God to help me not give into the temptation of wanting to have sex with a girl (the temptation of wanting to have sex with a guy, mind, was perfectly fine–after all, being a good Christian girl, I’d definitely be doing that eventually) and to forgive me for letting things get this bad. I was particularly terrified after one sermon brought up that Jeffrey Dahmer had Jeffrey Dahmered because he saw porn and, therefore, sex outside of acceptable parameters could naturally lead all the way to being a serial murderer and cannibal. I wasn’t there yet, but that sort of thing gets into your head when you’re autistic, and I was convinced that unless I repented for being attracted to other girls, I’d be there soon enough. 

This particular theme played itself out many times over the years. I’d have these bursts of being okay with myself, somewhat, followed shortly thereafter by all night repentance fests, right on through college. 

Some things did change. When I was sixteen, I found out that bisexuality existed, thanks to religion message boards and an improving internet. Further searching led me to the term “bi-curious,” which I adopted for myself–I wouldn’t ever actually have sex with a girl or date a girl or fall in love with a girl, I told myself, but I was awfully curious about it. 

Warring with yourself that long, however, is exhausting. All those sleepless nights took their toll. Acceptance finally started to come to me when I spent a semester abroad, studying theology and Christian history at Oxford University (which makes me sound super smart, but y’all, I barely passed). I was there a hundred days, living with people who seemed really comfortable with who they were, more than almost anyone I’d ever met. And living with them, I had to be mask-off with my autism because it was exhausting not to be. 

Not only that, but being in Oxford introduced me to more liberal forms of Christianity than I’d known my entire life, different interpretations of the Bible that looked at words in Greek and Hebrew and said, “but is that what it meant historically?” and “can we apply this literally to our lives today or do we need to sincerely consider the historical and cultural context in which it was written?” I studied Plato and Aristotle and fell absolutely in love with Plato’s Symposium and the idea of Forms. And all of that combined so that by the time I was on the plane home in April, I knew that even if it was a sin to be so, I was bisexual. It was my cross to bear, and I’d have to bear it. 

And I felt guilt over it still, so much guilt, but the sleepless nights grew less and less. And then one day, when I was a few years out of college, I connected with this amazing guy from Texas, and while I still wasn’t wholly guilt-free about it, I told him early on: “I’m bisexual.”

And he said, “oh.” And loved me just as I was and just as I am, and the guilt started to go away. Eventually, after we left the church altogether (that’s another story for another time), the guilt was gone, as if a huge weight had been around my neck, and I could finally live knowing who I was–who I am–and not hating myself for it. 

It did take me longer to be open about my orientation with others in my life, mostly because I didn’t know how they would react, but as I’ve been inching out of the closet, everyone has been so loving and accepting, and it’s such a good feeling. 

So to answer the question: I know that I’m bisexual because I’ve tried to fight it for so long, because I spent the better part of nearly twenty years at war with who I was, and in the end, I decided to let myself win. If I weren’t bisexual, some of that warring, that repenting, that begging would’ve worked. But none of it did. And I’m so glad.

But what does it mean??

A fun thing in the LGBTQIA community is dissecting labels. 

I realized, after watching the Blue’s Clues Pride parade with my kids (hurrah, hurrah, oh you want to hear it again, Isaac? 42 times in a row wasn’t enough? Alright) that nearly every sexual orientation and level of attraction has its own label. It’s very convenient on some level, but if you’re not super immersed in the community, it can also get pretty confusing. 

(in the writing of this blog entry, for example, I had to look up “aegoromantic,” “maverique,”and “coeosexual,” among others)

Bisexuality is something that’s become particularly contentious to define lately, with a subset of the community saying that it’s exclusionist towards nonbinary people or trans people. This is, of course, bullshit–bisexuality has always included nonbinary and trans people, and it always will. Still, those who aren’t comfortable with the “bi” part of “bisexuality” have tended in recent years to identify more as “pansexual” or “polysexual,” rather than bisexual. 

I use my own definition of bisexuality, thanks to some message boards I’ve poked around and articles I’ve read. And this might be its own microidentity, but listen, I read the word “bisexual” first in 1999. It entered my identity almost 30 years ago. I’m not giving it up, thank you. 

So anyway. For me, bisexuality means that I’m attracted to and can fall in love with people of my gender and not of my gender but that gender identity does play a role in how that attraction manifests. For example, when I’m attracted to another woman, I cannot talk, I become an absolute idiot, and flirting is 100% out of the question. Good-bye, Abby’s brain, I hardly knew ye. When I’m attracted to a man, however, I’m able to turn on the charm, flirt like crazy, make wonderful jokes, and just be naturally fun. 

(in theory, at least; it’s been a loooooong time since I’ve been in a position to really flirt with anyone except Kyle, and our flirting mostly consists of teasing each other through the house while trying to be a functional pair of adults, key word: trying)

I find different things attractive in men than in women, different things attractive in enbies than in trans people, and so on. Gender absolutely plays a role in my attraction to people, not in the sense that I’m not attracted to certain genders at all ever but in the sense that how I’m attracted to someone will change depending on their gender.

It’s hella confusing, of course, but that’s the bisexual life for ya.

But wouldn’t this mean you’re just a slutty mcslutface??

Which brings me to the other part of my identity: demisexual.

I fought this one for a while, too. Basically, being demisexual means that you’ve got no interest or sexual attraction towards a person until you’ve developed a deep bond with them. For me, it mostly translates to me being perfectly content to flirt with people (when the opportunity arises or arose), but having an actual intimate relationship with a person requires at least a 5th level friendship and constant reassurance that yes, we’re on the same page. 

I had my slutty mcslutface days in college and right afterwards, but nowadays, eh. Kyle and I have a good relationship, and I’m honestly too tired to throw myself at anyone else, even if I did have the inclination. 

But you married a man, so doesn’t that mean you’re just straight??

No more than getting married means that you never look at your celebrity of choice and think, “daaaaaaaamn.” 

Look, I’m married, not dead. I’m not exactly running around and dropping trou for every warm body I come across, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t fanning myself through the entirety of Thor: Ragnarok (Cate Blanchett, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Tessa Thompson, Mark Ruffalo, Karl Urban, AND Jeff Goldblum? Um, yes please?).

I get gobsmacked by people who hit my every type, male or female or neither or both or somewhere in between. I’m not swiping around on Tinder (even if I were single, just… no.), but I didn’t stop being attracted to people just because I got married. 

Bisexuality is weird in that I constantly feel random pressure to prove that hey, yeah, I’m still attracted to women and enbies and trans people, even though yes, I’m married to a man and, from the outside, you’d probably think we’re just your friendly neighborhood heterosexual married couple. But while my marriage, being absolutely wonderful, changed a LOT of things about me, it did not change my sexual orientation in the slightest. 

IN CONCLUSION

I feel like I could probably write a TON more on the subject, going into years of that warring with myself all the way up to getting my first Pride flag this year (because it was free! which is my favorite price for things). And I probably will write a TON more about this eventually.

But for now, I really just have one real conclusion, that being the wish that I hadn’t warred with myself for so long and that I’d come out sooner. I know and I love who I am, a bisexual woman, and I hope that you do, too.