Pride Parade on Aisle 3

Or why bisexual people are not allies

by Amy Pearl

Picture an ordinary bisexual woman of color, a middle-aged mom minding her own business at the supermarket while shopping with her tween son. He heads off to look for something he wants to get, and she pushes her cart in a different direction. Suddenly, her gay-dar goes off, as she spots a thirty-something white gay man ahead of her, near a register. It’s June, so she says:

“Do you celebrate Pride? Happy Pride!”

He looks surprised. Maybe even confused for a second. After a pause, he says, “Thank you. And thank you for being an ally!”

“An ally?!,” she replies. “What? Do I look… I… I’m part of the LGBTQ community!”

“Oh!,” he says, but he can’t continue because the cashier is ready for him to lay out his groceries. They drift apart.

So that’s me. The bi suburban mom. Barely visible to the naked eye, apparently. I mulled over the interaction in my mind. Was he lacking bi-dar? Is he not aware that people of color exist in the LGBTQ community? Does he notice gay men but assume all women are straight? Can I make my way through a Harris Teeter without having to deal with racism, sexism, and bi erasure? I sure would like to try.

Maybe it was my vaguely feminine appearance that threw him. You’ve heard of lipstick lesbians. I’m more of a Chapstick bisexual. No makeup, but I do wear dresses on occasion. Maybe if I was more masculine, he wouldn’t have assumed ally status.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being an ally. Straight people ought to be allies! But I’m not straight, and I’ve been out since I was a teen and would like to be seen as who I am. What does it mean to have—or lack—the ability to clock a fellow member of the LGBTQ community? I could tell he was gay because, well, he looked gay. I was happy to see his gayness shining through. I was excited to acknowledge it and to wish him a happy Pride. But when he looked at me, he couldn’t see what I thought was apparent. To him, I blended in with the het crowd, and, not able to place me and thus wish me the same (“Happy Pride to you, too!,” he didn’t say), he merely thanked me. And in doing so, cast me outside the circle of queerness.

Bisexual people have long been relegated to the margins of our own community— or cast out entirely. But Brenda Howard, a bisexual woman known as The Mother of Pride, was one of the founding organizers of the very first Pride event in the world, which took place in New York in 1970, one year after the Stonewall Riots. She started the event to commemorate the anniversary of the Riots, an event to say, “We won’t be ashamed of our sexualities—instead, we we’ll be proud.”

I wouldn’t have been saying “Happy Pride!” to this man in the first place if it weren’t for a bisexual woman.

Somehow I suspect he doesn’t know that history. Likewise, he might not know that the majority of people who identify as gay, lesbian, or bi, identify as bi. We make up well over half of the LGB population. So most of the time, when you meet someone who is part of the LGBTQ community, statistically speaking, that person is probably bisexual. It’s just simple math.

Then it dawned on me: my kid. Maybe he saw me talking to my son earlier and read me as straight based on my being a mom. Is motherhood a heterosexual thing? Like many LGBTQ parents, reproduction, for me, involved a sperm donor. I’m what’s called a “single mother by choice.” I used a donor to conceive my children. I pursued parenthood on my own, rather than within a relationship or with a co-parent. People become parents in many different ways. This was my path, and it works for me. But does it make me look straight, to have kids?

Then I had to ask myself, why did it bother me so much to be assumed to be straight? Many people are straight. Most of them, in fact! Heterosexual people are not inherently any better or worse than the rest of us. But bother me it did. I’m not heterosexual. I’m not monosexual at all! I’m bisexual, and that’s important to me. I’m proud to have the capacity to experience love and attraction the way I do.

I have nothing against monosexual people, but, honestly, I’ve always thought it seemed time-consuming. In order to be attracted to someone else, a monosexual person first has to figure out each individual person’s gender—and keep top of mind their own gender—and then compare the two. If the genders are the same, and the monosexual person is gay, then they move to Step Two, which is deciding if they find the other person attractive. If the genders are different, and the monosexual person is straight, then that is the point for moving to Step Two. And then they have to do this with the next person they see. And the next person. And the next person. All to determine if the other person is hot or not. Either that, or they have to turn off all desire and shut down the attraction-determination machine that lives in all of us, and just walk around ignoring their own sexuality, so that they don’t get slowed down in going about their day.

It seems exhausting! We bi folks are way more efficient. We can look at someone, think, “Wow, they’re cute!” or not, and keep it moving. We don’t have to know the other person’s gender or even our own gender, because gender is largely irrelevant to the process. I wouldn’t say it’s entirely irrelevant; some bisexual people like gender and are even into gender as a turn-on, and that’s cool if that’s your thing. But the common thread for all bisexual people is that, ultimately, gender is not a deal-breaker. It’s just a detail. Like eye color or hair color or height. I might prefer people who are tall, but I’m not going to deny myself the charms of a cutie on the shorter side.

And that’s just when it comes to attraction. There’s also love itself. Monosexuals, again, have to take gender into account in this realm, the realm of the heart.  Tina Turner asked us, “What’s love got to do with it?” My question to monosexual people has always been, “What’s gender got to do with it?” It being love. In my experience, love doesn’t just transcend gender; it has literally nothing to do with gender. I’ve never loved someone because they were a man or because they were a woman—or in spite of those details, either. I’ve just loved. I’ve loved people because they were amazing humans. That’s it. It’s not that complicated.

My friend at the store thought I was complicated. He thought I’m the type to take gender into account. He thought I’m the type to go through the time-consuming process of always having to figure out what gender each individual person is as they pass by my eyes, all the time, all day, every day. He thought I’m someone who is only capable of falling in love with another adult human if that person a) has a gender, and b) has a gender that is different from mine. He may have even thought that I had experienced love this way, and that love led to reproductive sex, resulting in children. Then, after all that thinking, he may have thought that I was nice enough to be supportive of his community.

And then he thanked me.

So to him I say, “You’re welcome… but you may be overthinking it. Next time, just assume the person is bisexual, for god’s sake. It’s the simplest explanation!”

Amy Pearl is the pen name of a bisexual woman of color living that suburban life! She is a single mother of two wonderful donor-conceived kiddos.