The girl you fucked in the dyke bar bathroom might very well be a goldstar bisexual

The elephant in the bisexual room is polyamory

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One of the most common narratives about bisexuality is the narrative of “invisibility” which is connected to the narrative of “validity.” It goes something like this: Bisexuals are invisible because their sexual orientation is interpreted through their current partner. If they are currently in a gay relationship, they are read as gay. If they are currently in a straight relationship, they are read as straight. Therefore, bisexuals are not seen and are not understood as bisexual. The “validity” narrative that flows from this states that bisexuals are still “valid” in our bisexual identity and in our belonging to queer community, even when we are in a straight relationship. There is a lot of discourse about how, even if you stay in a straight relationship forever, your bisexuality is still valid.

Notice that both of these narratives are based on an unspoken assumption of monogamy. The assumption is that bisexual people will have one sexual/romantic partner at a time (and maybe that time will last many years or our whole lives) and that we will be culturally understood as either straight or gay based on the gender of our current partner.

I find it bizarre that this narrative is the most common and popular narrative associated with bisexuality. It makes it seem that our biggest issue is being “validated” in our queerness even when we are in monogamous straight partnerships for a very long time. And look — I’m sure this is a very real issue and struggle for some bisexuals and I’m not discounting its importance as a bisexual narrative that needs to be heard. But it is not THE bisexual narrative. It is not my experience or the experience of any of the bisexuals in my life.

The elephant in the bisexual room is polyamory. Because so much biphobia is animated by representations of bisexuals as endlessly thirsty, indecisive sluts, there is a counter insistence that bisexuals absolutely can be monogamous. And yes, we can be. But the truth is, a lot of us don’t want to be. I don’t know if there’s ever been research done on how common nonmonogamy is for bisexuals compared to other sexual orientations, but I know from living my life that a lot of bisexuals are nonmonogamous. A lot of bisexuals are, in fact, endlessly thirsty, indecisive sluts. We like sex, we like dating, we like gender. Mmmm gender.

I do not experience my bisexuality as invisible. I think I am extremely clockable. Part of this is because, in my ever changing constellation of partners and lovers, I am usually dating both women and men. In fact, I am hilariously usually dating at least one woman, one man, and one nonbinary person (lmao). Not on purpose or anything, just because I’m an insatiable, thirsty, bisexual slut and, you know — gender is delicious. But I actually think my bisexuality is highly clockable even when I’m not with a partner because I talk about my partners, I flirt with people of different genders, and my gender presentation is a perfect combo of dyke meets straight girl. If I do say so myself.

Gatekeepers who get extremely mad about me stating the fact that bisexual women are co-creators of lesbian culture and always have been, tell me to go create my own bisexual culture. The crazy thing about bisexuals is that we are shapeshifters who move through and between different sexual cultures. I spend a great deal of time inside queer, lesbian, and straight contexts, and I have more contact with queer men than your average straight girl or lesbian, because I love that bi4bi lifestyle and bisexual men can get it. Bisexual culture is this shapeshifting. Bisexual culture is moving between and co-creating sexual cultures that we are only in part time.

I think the most distinctly bisexual thing I can name is our desire for a variety of sexual and romantic experiences with a variety of partners of a variety of (delicious) genders. Biphobia includes homophobia, and it includes the gatekeeping of cultures we co-create, but one of the most common and intense expressions of biphobia is not our supposed invisibility, but an attack on our expansive sexualities. Bisexuals are seen as freaky, slutty, easy, down. This, like everything relating to bisexuality, plays out differently for bisexual men and women, but the idea that bisexuals are freaks is a major one. We respond to this by insisting “bisexuals can be monogamous!” But the truth is, many of us are freaks. Resisting biphobia means insisting there is a diversity of bisexual experience. It also means celebrating and re-valuing aspects of bisexual experience that are stigmatized and shamed.

Yes, we like threesomes. Yes, we like getting off on watching our two lovers of different genders make out with each other. Yes, we have multiple partners. How many? Well, that depends. Yes, we can be freaky. Since we already experience so much bullshit for claiming our sexuality, we might as well claim the whole thing. Yes, we can be easy. Sex is fun, gender is delicious, and we are in charge of our own sexual decisions. Yes, we can be thirsty. We can be slutty. We’ve probably had sexual connection with multiple genders this week. Yes, we have metamours, and polyamory scheduling struggles. Yes, we have more exes than the average person would believe.

This isn’t every bisexual’s experience and I acknowledge that. But I don’t see much acknowledgement of the polyamorous bisexual experience at all in our public discourse on bisexuality. The primacy of the “invisibility” and “validity” narratives of bisexuality bothers me because these narratives do not represent me, or my bisexual lovers, partners, and friends. I am not invisible as a bisexual in the majority of social contexts I find myself in. I will never experience long stretches of time only dating one person and therefore one gender. I have no concerns or worries about the “validity” of my queerness.

I think a lot of the bafflement lesbian gatekeepers express when I say bisexuals co-create lesbian community, comes from the fact that these lesbians are picturing a monogamous bisexual woman with a male partner who is not actively part of lesbian community saying that. She’s not imagining the girl she fucked in the bathroom at the bar the other night as the bisexual co-creating lesbian community that I’m talking about. But yeah, the girl you fucked in the dyke bar bathroom might very well be a goldstar bisexual.

While I have compassion and sympathy for bisexuals struggling in the “invisibility” and “validity” narratives, I am going to need these narratives to stop being the primary way we think about bisexual experience. Polyamorous bisexuals are out here. We are not invisible. Our validity is the least of our problems. Our experience is complex. For polyamorous bisexual women some common experiences include — moving through multiple sexual cultures, multiple sexual and romantic partners, group sex, complex webs of relationships, metamours of all genders and sexual orientations, dealing with straight men’s violence, being a satellite to the men who have sex with men community (and all the risks and pleasures that entails but without being able to access any of the resources for that community), HIV and other STI risk, unwanted pregnancy risk, increased risk of domestic violence, homophobic street harassment, compulsory heteronormativity being shoved down our throats, queers gatekeeping our own communities from us, inadequate research into the STI transmission risk in lesbian sex, lack of representation, bisexuality always presented as an afterthought, weird accusations of transphobia for using the word “bi,” very few resources specifically for us, no one being able to imagine that the MFF threesome is actually for us, etc. etc. etc., I could go on. (I could make a different but similar list for polyamorous bisexual men too.)

Bisexuality by its very nature breaks down the rigid structures of community based on identity. Bisexuals are too fluid to be held in any rigid container. We constantly leak out and make everything more complicated. This messiness, this failure at containment, is, for me, the most fundamental bisexual experience. Our desire is undomesticated and won’t be controlled. Our choice to claim our whole rich varied sexualities in the face of so much stigma, hostility, and denial is beautiful. Many of us could never be monogamous if we tried. This complexity deserves and needs to be recognized in our cultural understandings of bisexuality.

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Announcements

I am doing a mini European tour! Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin. All the events are free. If you’re in any of these cities come out!

New episode of Fucking Cancelled, Tech Won’t Liberate Us with Paris Marx. As the tech oligarchs dream of subjecting us all to their sick fantasies and their pet governments pave the road to hell with bad intentions, the sycophantic press breathlessly praises each new ‘advancement’ in dystopian tech — and each new phony scam as well. In Episode 83 we’re joined by Paris Marx, technology critic, author and host of Tech Won’t Save Us, one of the most important podcasts of the Canadian Left. We discuss technopessimism, fully-automated luxury space communism, whether sentient AIs will ever be a thing, and what, behind all the smoke and mirrors, the evil techlords are actually trying to accomplish.

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I am a writer, zinester, and literary punk based in Montreal, Canada. I have been making zines since the year 2000 and have probably made more than 100,000 hand stapled zines over the course of my career. My best selling zine, Love Without Emergency, has sold more than 11,000 copies, and I have many other zines besides that. I write essays, literary nonfiction, and philosophy, and am known for my unflinching approach to deep and difficult topics, as well as my accessible, down to earth use of language. I am known for my work on many topics including surviving incest and other forms of trauma, trauma informed polyamory, bisexual women’s sexuality, opposing cancel culture on the left, and finding compassionate, non-punitive approaches to ending the cycle of violence. I have a podcast with my partner Jay Lesoleil called Fucking Cancelled where we develop our thinking on how to build a robust, effective left that doesn’t eat itself alive, and where we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing many important thinkers and writers. I have published six books over the course of my career, Rupture, The Size of a Bird, You Can’t Own the Fucking Stars, Trauma Magic, Fucking Magic, and Sexting. I sometimes teach workshops on various topics. This substack is a huge archive of my writing, a place where I am regularly and consistently producing new writing, and one of the main ways I support myself as an independent, underground writer. Thank you for being here. As well as the archive, make sure you explore my bibliography, my body of work, and the list of interviews I’ve done. Thank you for your support of my work.

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