Like a lot of bi people in relationships, I’m in a relationship with someone of a different gender to my own.
Why are a lot of bi people in mixed-gender relationships? This can make the whole bi activist thing seem a bit silly: if we’re so indistinguishable from straight people, why don’t we just shut up, right?
Because the relationships we’re in don’t dictate our identity — just as, for example, a gay person is still gay when they are single. (Bisexuals in any kind of long-term relationships face a lot of this “you’re gay really”/”you’re straight really” nonsense, which I have never understood.)
Let’s say that 15% of the population are attracted to people of similar genders. 95% of the population are attracted to people of different genders. (Yes this already adds up to more than 100% because some people are in both categories; otherwise there’d be no reason for this blog to exist! And it isn’t counting the proportion of people who are attracted to no one, and so on, who are not mentioned here because my list is not exhaustive as I am only using it to make a point to which gender and attraction are relevant.)
That means that even if I am the “50/50″ bisexual that some people think you have to be in order to label yourself with the B-word, even if I’m equally attracted to men and women, I (a woman) live in a world where a lot more men than women are likely to consider themselves capable of attraction to my gender. Add to that the heteronormative societal pressures that benefit mixed-gender romance and sex (from marriage law to the ubiquity of cultural signals telling us how romance is supposed to work to having one less thing to get bullied about in school) and the fact that some bi people are just low Kinsey numbers anyway, and you’ve got a lot of bis in mixed-gender relationships.
And while some of the people we’re in those relationships with will also be attracted to more than one gender — whether they call themselves bi or pansexual or omnisexual or sapiosexual or heteroflexible or homoflexible or queer or “I can’t stand labeling myself at all” or whatever — a lot won’t be. The majority of people who are attracted to genders different from theirs are only attracted to genders different from theirs (or as they might be more likely to put it, “the opposite sex”). They’re straight. A lot of them have never thought about there being more than two, or about the difference between sex and gender.
I didn’t know or think much about sexual or gender minorities for a long time, because I thought I was straight, and I am cis (not trans, i.e. experiencing no distress based on the gender I’ve been presumed to have since birth), and those things mean you don’t have to think about this stuff because you’re the default; you’re what’s considered “normal,” you’re what you see in ads and TV shows and anniversary cards in the Hallmark store and everything, you’re probably not going to get awkward questions or weird looks based on your sexual or gender identity.
But it’s an odd thing. If you’re gay or lesbian or straight, you’re probably used to having romantic/sexual partners who are that too. Makes sense, right? But if you’re bi, you can have partners who are any of those things…as well as bi of course. And thus of course not every lesbian, straight or gay person will have a partner who is what they are, but I think it’s assumed that they would, to the extent that in many contexts people remark on a non-bi person who they learn is dating/married to/etc a bi person. Especially if the non-bi person’s straight; in my experience, lesbian and gay people are much more likely than straight people to have developed strong opinions about bisexuals and bisexuality. Even though we’ve already demonstrated that a bi person is more likely (all else being equal; of course they may particularly seek out people of similar genders for whatever reason) to end up with a straight person.
And this is what I have done. And because he’s a straight cis person, he feels that he doesn’t have anything personally to do with “LGBT” stuff. He’s extremely aware of the issues and supportive of his friends who are members of sexual or gender minorities…but I think it’s partly for this reason that he is wary of joining in. “I don’t want to encroach on your spaces with my straight maleness” is something we both know he says tongue-in-cheek, meaning “I don’t fancy going to the pub with you for a bi social” or “I can’t be bothered to march in the Pride parade where you’re marching with the political party we’re both members of.” Bi-friendly partners, friends and allies are explicitly welcome at all the bi events I ask him go along to, and having straight cis people politically supporting the rights of sexual and gender minorities sends a great message — but also I totally respect his right not to be around crowds, which he finds stressful, or just to make his own choices about what he wants to do. He has his own activism and leads a busy life as it is.
While he’s supportive, respectful and kind towards people regardless of whether they share his straight or cis status, he doesn’t feel like my bi stuff and LGBT stuff is about him. And that’s fair enough, certainly understandable, but it is a little weird for me. I share so much with him. And while he certainly listens sympathetically to my woes (annoying e-mails regarding LGBT political activism or the paper cut I suffered while helping get an issue of Bi Community News into envelopes and off to a postbox; it’s a glamorous life, activism), there’s always a sense that it’s separate.
It’s nothing personal, this isn’t about a flaw in me or my partner; indeed I’m sure this is how it is for a multitude of relationships that comprise one person who only fancies one gender and another who fancies more than one. But it’s not something I remember ever reading about, so I thought I might write about it.
