Every so often we get this query into the group, or it comes up in a talky space discussion. Should we use a different word instead of “bi” because some people imagine it’s an offensive term? Specifically because they’ve been told that “bi” means two, and that means bisexual means only attracted to two genders – cis men and cis women – and so it’s a trans excluding, transphobic word.
Nope.
There are of course some bis who are transphobic or are only attracted to cis people (it’s a pretty good rule of thumb that these are people who think they are only attracted to cis people and are mistaken). There are also bis who won’t date anyone taller than them, or with ginger hair, or has a tattoo, or believes in the ‘wrong’ god, or any of the other arbitrary ideas people get in their heads about who is an acceptable partner.
The clue to the biphobia in the claim is that it’s only bisexuals who are asked to change their labels to indicate whether their orientation is trans inclusive or exclusive.
There’s nothing along the lines of “if you’re a non-trans-attracted lesbian you must call yourself an xyz instead.”
These days we do have a rich vocabulary to express the nuances of bi attraction. So you might prefer a term like pan, omni or polysexual to indicate what kind of a bi you are: how you experience attractions and whether it is to many or all genders.
You know, no-one accused of bigamy in court gets off the charge by proving they married three people not two. “Bi” might have a Latin root where it meant “two”, but English is not Latin, and Latin has been dead for over a millennium. English does not follow the same tight prescriptive rules, it messes about with words to what suits people over time. A century ago a “mouse” went squeak and if you had a “keyboard” in your house it was most likely something on a piano.
If – for the purpose of considering the idea being put forward by the “bi is binary and transphobic” notion – we divide humanity into four messy gender groupings: cis men, cis women, trans men, trans women, and then we pretend that the “bi” in bisexual means two… then assuming the two genders bis would fancy would be the cis ones is a great big dollop of transphobia itself.
Far moreso than the spelling of a word.
Or to be less wordy about it: no, bi isn’t binary, just as we don’t expect gays to be relentlessly happy or lesbians to have been born on an island in the Aegean. The English language doesn’t work like that.
