This one is a serious one, so hold onto your boots, guys.
Since the age of twelve, I’ve been denying the term bisexual. For a brief period of time, and by this I mean approximately three hours, I had come out to my close friend group as bisexual in my third year of high school until they all decided it would be funny to bully me for it. Before I knew it, the entire school year knew. It was traumatic, I was cornered in the locker rooms by big groups of girls who ‘didn’t want me to hit on them’ and equally cornered by big groups of guys who ‘wanted to see me kiss a girl’. For this reason, after those horrid three hours, I made a point of telling EVERYONE that it was a joke and I wasn’t really bisexual. This was only the beginning of my journey with internalized bi-phobia.
What I didn’t understand was what made me so different. A couple of girls in my year had come out as a lesbian, and they didn’t get anywhere near as much hate as I did. They got hate, sure, but it wasn’t I’ll fuck you up in the corridors at lunchtime levels of hate. I’d never been more terrified than the day I came out for the first time. It took me a good few years to realise what made me so different. People thought I was greedy, faking it, doing it for attention, cheating on everyone, sleeping with everyone, crushing on everyone etc. When I was in high school, bisexuality was ONLY JUST starting to be talked about as a validated sexuality. As mentioned in a previous post, video games only started to include confirmed bisexual characters after 2010, which saw the first few years of my high school experience through. It certainly wasn’t accepted, yet, to come out as bisexual in school and expect to be treated with respect.
I had a few boyfriends in high school. I was happy with a few of them, some of them I regret being with for so long. I was too young to know what I really felt, I was being walked around by my hormones to be honest. I didn’t experience love for the first time until I met my current partner, I was 20. They really changed everything about my life, and I don’t mean that lightly. I experienced sexual trauma with my ex when I tried to explain to him my feelings for women. I went off to University at 20 and met Taylor, realising I had more than friendly feelings for them.
(For context, my partner is a non-binary lesbian. I will be using gender neutral pronouns when referring to them throughout.)
I tried to explain to my boyfriend at the time that I needed space to explore my sexuality. I wasn’t sure if I was a lesbian, or if I just needed time to be single and understand what it was I actually wanted. All I knew was that I wasn’t happy in my current relationship, and I hadn’t had chance to explore my sexuality really ever. So, I broke up with him. That’s when he raped me.
It’s been over 3 years since this happened. I still think about why he did what he fucking did. Maybe trying to re-claim me? Force me to like him? After this long, I’ve given up trying to find answers. There are no answers for sexual abuse. There’s never an excuse and I won’t be the person to waste my life trying to find one.
After this, I posed as a lesbian for a while. I didn’t tell anyone I was raped for 6 months after, and when I finally told people it became somewhat clear to me that I needed the support. I had my sexuality abused in the worst way possible, which I realise later down the line that this had only helped my internalised bi-phobia to grow. After sexual abuse, I suffered sexual trauma for a long period of time, and I still do. Due to this, it took me a little over a year to officially come out as bisexual again. But this time, it didn’t feel right.
I had a lot of trouble imagining myself ever sleeping with a man again. There were days when I didn’t want to leave the house in case he came looking for me. I was truly fucked up by what had happened, as anyone would have been. So, coming out as bisexual just didn’t feel right when I had this aversion to masculine attraction. This is when I thought I was pansexual.
As I’ve mentioned in my post about bisexuality and pansexuality, there definitely is a difference between the two. However, it’s really about what identity feels right for you. I truly believe that because of the traumatic associations I experienced with the label ‘bisexual’ and the sexual trauma I experienced when I was honest with my ex-boyfriend about my need to be single and experiment, my internalised bi-phobia was worse than ever. For me, though, this transcended into bisexuality isn’t right for me which of course I realise now is the furthest thing from the truth.
If any of this rings true to some people reading this, please know that this feeling of aversion doesn’t last forever. I’ve been with Taylor for 3 and ½ years now, but I’ve only been properly out as bisexual for a little over two months. It’s taken me that long to separate the traumatic incidents in my life from the identity label I feel comfortable with, so now those memories are just baggage I’m dealing with elsewhere. It’s so incredibly important to remember that your experiences do build you, but in a good way; they help you to realise what is crucial to your survival. I’ve jumped back and forth between identity labels so much that people don’t even ask anymore. It’s been a long journey but also one that has made me realise how REAL internalised bi-phobia is to me and many other people. It doesn’t just exist in others; it exists in you too.
Kel
-the voice of (bi)five
(bi)five 