Erasure

During the Republican National Convention in the U.S., Donald Trump set my social media feeds ablaze with comments from well-meaning liberals pointing out the irony of his choice of music. They argued that Trump had committed a faux pas by using the Queen song “We Are the Champions”, not because he had yet again used music without permission but because Queen’s frontman, the late Freddie Mercury, was gay. But here’s the problem: Freddie Mercury never professed to be gay. As far as anyone knows, Freddie Mercury never identified as gay. Indeed, he had relationships with both men and women, and the song “Love of My Life” was written about Mary Austin, a woman.

For some people, this matter might be insignificant: “Gay, queer, bi… whatever; you know what I meant.” But, for me, this highlights the bigger issues of bisexual invisibility and erasure—when bisexuality is ignored or dismissed because it is not seen as a real or valid sexual identity.

Freddie Mercury was a flamboyant performer [tick]; he was known to have had affairs with men [tick]; and he died of AIDS-related complications [tick]. This information is enough for some people to feel entitled to define him and assign him to the “gay” box. But if Mercury himself never said that he was gay, what right do we have to do it on his behalf? Now, I realize that he never came out as bisexual either, but the semantics relating to sexuality are still evolving, and the closest term we have to describing a person who has loved and had sex with people of multiple genders is “bisexual”. It is important to note that Freddie Mercury was not very political and he was not interested in discussing how he defined his sexual orientation with the press. That was his right, as it is everyone’s right to decide how to self-define and whether to share this in the public domain.

As Shiri Eisner points out in the book Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution (2013), the most popular belief about bisexuality may be that it simply doesn’t exist. This “creates the impression that bisexuality doesn’t appear in popular culture (or indeed anywhere) because it really doesn’t exist. This also causes people to ignore (erase) bisexuality where it does appear for that very same reason. (What you know is what you see.)” (p. 37; emphasis mine). In other words, everyone else gets to define a person’s sexuality on the basis of what they feel they know about them.

Not everyone who is bisexual or otherwise nonbinary comes out, or possibly can, in the same way that people who are gay or lesbian do. Ask anyone who has tried it and you will hear stories about being told some of the following:

“You’re just going through a phase.”

“Pick a side!”

“You’re greedy!”

“If you haven’t slept with a guy and a girl (or sometimes, if you haven’t had relationships with both guys and girls), how can you know?”

So, coming out can be met with doubt. And usually, once a bisexual does have relationships out in the open, their sexual orientation will be defined according to whom they’re with (again, as Eisner states, “What you know is what you see”). This revolves around the patriarchal notion that the penis rules all. That is, one’s sexuality is defined according to one’s proximity to the phallus. Think for a second about the term “gold-star lesbian”—that is, a woman who identifies as lesbian and has never slept with a man, as if that somehow makes her “purer” than a woman who has slept with a man, or multiple men. Accordingly, if a bisexual woman is dating a man, she will be defined as heterosexual, and maybe as someone who occasionally has sex with women, but probably as a performance she puts on to arouse heterosexual men, whereas if a bisexual man is dating a man, he will be defined as gay, and any attraction that he has to women will be overlooked.

Often, what comes after doubt or denial is suspicion. Many people feel threatened by bisexuals because they equate bisexuality with promiscuity and assume that a bisexual could potentially want anybody and, therefore, could never commit to a monogamous relationship. While it is important to acknowledge that everyone has a right to sleep with as many or as few people as they want to, and embrace or reject the idea of monogamy, it is insulting to decide that someone who is attracted to multiple genders is going to sleep with every single person they encounter and cannot be trusted to remain faithful in a relationship.

Given these responses to bisexuality/nonbinary sexuality, is it any wonder that there are people who choose not to disclose their orientation?

Monosexism assigns everyone to one of two permissible categories—straight or gay—depending on how we project our sexuality. Thus, monosexism and patriarchy are closely connected; the latter restricts behaviours, roles, and attractions, so the former can identify how to categorize them. These two identities are easy to define, recognize, and police. This has become blatantly obvious in the contemporary “acceptance” of homosexuality in many countries, mostly in the West. By “acceptance”, I do not mean to imply that homosexuality is encouraged or even acknowledged as valid in the way that heterosexuality is. Rather, because it can be identified and because much of the struggle of the privileged homosexuals has been about proving that they are “normal” and deserving of operating within the heteronormative world, it is now allowed under certain conditions.

This is where homonormativity plays a crucial role. I have written about the concept of homonormativity before. Homonormativity mirrors its cousin, heteronormativity, adopting the dominant model that upholds the same values of patriarchy, hypermasculinity, monogamy, family, capitalism, and whiteness that constitute the foundation of heteronormativity, and imposing them on queer people. I can’t accurately use the acronym LGBTQ here, as the existence of bi, pan, trans, etc. people continues to challenge this model—and I hope this continues to be the case. Homonormativity is used to police queer people’s behaviour and choices, to admonish them for not living acceptably—for not being more like upper- and middle class, white, cisgender, conservative, straight people. In this context, the concept of “straightness” extends beyond sexual orientation and can be attributed to the way some fine, upstanding, “normal” homosexuals live their conventional lives. Think of the idiom the straight and narrow. This separates homosexuality from queerness, and unlike homosexuality, queerness is not permissible, as it continues to pose a threat to the oppressive social order that some privileged gays and lesbians have fought to maintain.

This is why it is so critical that we not allow one dominant group to speak on behalf of LGBTQ+ people. We don’t all come from the same background and we don’t all face the same issues. But we do all have a responsibility to listen to each other and challenge our own issues with internalized homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, etc. I walk a fine line between wanting to advocate abandoning labels and wanting to claim sexuality as an important part of one’s political identity, which can require naming it. But I also believe that everyone should have the right to define who they are for themselves and should be able to choose whether or not to share that information. This is very easy for those who identify as heterosexual. The model is set before they enter the world, and their family and society will naturally assume that they will fit into this model. For others, the family and society will make the same assumption, but the outcome won’t be so easy. Even still, some who struggle with being “different” will find their path because, as I said, homosexuality is increasingly gaining recognition as an actual thing, so if one can comfortably identify with gayness, it will make self-definition more straightforward, not just for the gay or lesbian individual but also for everyone else who wants to understand what that person is.

And everyone wants to understand what people are. The problem is that our understanding of what people can be is so incredibly limited.