If You Give $100 To A Homeless Person, They'll Be In Shock By Your Generosity. They'll Feel Guilty Taking

“A “conflict model” of bisexuality (in research circles, in researchers’ minds) assumes that homosexual interests eradicate heterosexual responsiveness - that they can’t exist peacefully side by side. But this isn’t true for a significant number of people.”

- Loraine Hutchins and Lani Ka’ahumanu, Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out

“We were told we [could] only talk about the effects on our lives of being attracted to other women or femmes because “no one is oppressed for being in a heterosexual relationship.” We were accused of internalized homophobia… or being the reasons lesbians are fetishized and making lesbians look bad - that bisexual women were the reason why straight men thought that lesbians were sexually available… I never understood it, but it came up a lot… If you didn’t seem like you were a lesbian, or could be confused for one, then your position was a lot weaker. Your opinion didn’t quite matter as much. You were less likely to be one of authority in the group. Your loyalty to the community was more likely to get questioned. You were more likely to get accused of your ideas being part of the problem. Any time something came up, and you talked about it from the perspective of not being a lesbian, you were more likely to be told that your need to bring that up was part of the problem of why progress wasn’t being made.”

- Rylee, quoted by Jayna Tavarez, The Bi-ble: New Testimonials, Further original narratives and essays about bisexuality

“Up against criticism from conservatives and fundamentalists that the gay lifestyle, if not a sickness, was at least a sin and was wilfully “chosen,” gay strategists instead asserted that they were “born that way” and could not change even if they wanted to. It thus became popular, as well as politically expedient, to argue and assume that people are either one or the other. Related to this, an important question is whether one can demand rights for a “choice.” As long as sexuality is seen as fixed at birth or soon after, gay legal theorists who base their gay civil rights arguments on monosexual assumptions about sexual orientation can argue that gays should be a protected class and deserve civil rights on that basis. No one is currently arguing in the courts that same-sex love can also be a choice and, like religion, also deserves defence on that ground.”

- Loraine Hutchins, Bisexuality: The Psychology and Politics of an Invisibly Minority

To be held like that ....

“Although bisexuals have always been part of lesbian and gay movements and communities, they have often not been visible as bisexuals in these groups. Consider, for instance, these little-known historical facts:

A bisexual man was one of the key organizers of the first national March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979. He also cofounder the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays and led a delegation of black gays to meet with White House staff while Carter was President.

A bisexual Washingtonian was one of the first women to write about living women in the national feminist news journal, off our backs, in 1972.

It was a bisexual man who conceived and spearheaded the successful national “gaycott” of Florida orange juice in response to Anita Bryant’s homophobic “Save Our Children” campaign in Dade County, Florida, in the late 1970s.

A lesbian-identified bisexual ex-suburban housewife ran for Vice President on a bisexual/lesbian/gay civil rights platform during the 1984 Democratic Party convention in San Francisco.

In May 1989, a bisexual veteran from New England, representing the National Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Veterans Association, was the first out-of-the-closet veteran invited to testify before Congress on behalf of all lesbian, gay, and bisexual veterans.

But even in these high-profile “out” positions, bisexuals often continued to be perceived as gays and lesbians by both the gay rights movement and the rest of society.”

- Loraine Hutchins, Bisexuality: The Psychology and Politics of an Invisible Minority

“Bisexuality… is a permanent state of flux, a liminal space where you can be either/or, but you can also be neither/nor…

You have chosen (or, if you prefer, been chosen by) an unfixed, untitled, and shape-shifting identity. One that by definition resists categorisation. Instead it commands flexibility, restlessness, the endless possibility of change.”

- Chitra Ramaswamy, The Bi-ble: an anthology of personal essays and narratives about bisexuality