#biphobia — Public Fediverse posts

I would also want to tell her that the only way through all the #grief, the internalized #biphobia, the #shame, and the confusion is through. And it's not a way out. Those things are still and likely always will be, to some extent, with her. But she'll learn to live with them, and along the way, she'll still find #SelfAcceptance. She'll still find #love, both from other people and from herself. She'll find that #shame and #pride can co-exist, and that in a paradoxical way, the pride can come from the shame. She'll discover that being #bisexual isn't the combination of being straight and gay that she saw in the media but that it's an amorphous, third thing that can really only exist and be embodied by each individual, bi person who is living out what #bisexuality means to them. She'll learn that that's what makes it so powerful and so distrusted and shunned by people who want easy, rigid, simplistic ways of understanding #sexuality.

I began this thread with acknowledging that I was very messily online about my feelings around #ComingOut later in life as #bisexual, as #queer, because I wanted to leave something for someone else, anyone else, who might resonate with it. I was also doing it for my closeted self who wasn't able to grapple with those feelings.

I feel like this thread has been for my past self who was out but who was conflicted about her place in the #LGBTQ community, who was struggling with internalized #biphobia an a lot of #shame, and who was grieving who and what she could have been. I want to tell her it's okay. It's okay for her to feel all the confusion and grief and shame. I want to tell her that, even though she can't see it, there is a way through it all. It doesn't look like what she thinks it does. It's going to involve her shedding some maladaptive ways of thinking to deepen her understanding of love and of herself.

I also truly hope that rather than infighting around who the "right" kind of #queer is, the attacks on #LGBTQ rights overall bring the queer community together to fight #fascism, #queerphobia, #biphobia, #transphobia, and yes, even #kinkphobia. We are all under attack right now,. The only way that we can survive this is to recognize our shared oppression. The #Christofascists don't care about our minor quibbles around labels or life experiences. To them, we are all a threat because we are all different and because we all trouble their very rigid and oppressive notions around #sexuality, #gender, and #sex. We need to simultaneously celebrate and respect our differences while coming together in #solidarity to recognize that our oppression is shared. The more I learn specifically about #bisexual activism, the more I learn that biphobia, transphobia, and queerphobia are all linked. The only way we get through this is together.

Ultimately, to me, being #queer should be about being able to transcend binary thinking and overly simplistic "Are you or aren't you?" questions. I've been able to come to that understanding in a large part through #kink. I don't really want to get into whether or not kink belongs at #Pride, because I think that anyone who says it doesn't is ignorant (often willfully) of the history of support the kink and #BDSM communities have had for #LGBTQRights. I also think a lot of the people who say kink doesn't belong at Pride are honestly bad faith actors trying to undermine both the kink and #queer communities. For me, this #PrideMonth is going to be about celebrating myself as #bisexual, queer, and kinky. It's going to be about taking genuine, hard-won pride in who I am, despite the #queerphobia of the fundamentalist Christian community I grew up in and despite the #biphobia within myself and wtihin the #LGBTQ community.

I'm not saying that all #kink spaces are perfect--many of them have a lot of problems and the more time I spend in my local #kinky community, the more time I discover who the toxic people are and who the harm do-ers who should be dealt with but aren't are. I'm also not saying that all vanilla #LGBTQ spaces are terrible! I have some friends I've made through a local vanilla #CovidCautious #queer group who I'm very close to and who are accepting of me as #bisexual and #kinky exactly as I am. I'm just saying that, for me, accepting myself as kinky has helped me in also accepting myself as #bisexual and working through a lot of internalized #biphobia that I've been carrying. It's given me new ways of thinking about identity and desire that I have found to be more helpful and more healthy than the kind of binary thinking I encountered around what #queerness is in other spaces.

To get to this point of #SelfAcceptance, I've had to sit with and undo a lot of internalized #biphobia. And I've had to come to terms with the fact that, while #bisexuals are part of the #LGBTQ community (in so much as it can be called a unified community), we also have our own unique experiences. So much of the media and discussions around #sexuality, even when they pay lip service to more fluid experiences of #desire and sexuality, is entirely focused on #monosexism, that is, on the idea that sexuality is a fixed and singular entity and experience. For some people it might be! But for others, it is not. And many both straight and cis spaces, as well as #queer spaces, all too often get caught up in one singular idea of what sex and sexuality and desire can or should or do look like, to the detriment of those of us whose experiences are more fluid and more difficult to define.

Right now, I can't bring myself to go back and reread some of my previous threads angsting about my coming out as #bisexual because I imagine that they're too cringe. At some point, I will probably be able to accept and reread them, but not right now. But so many of you read them! And so many of you offered #compassion, whether that was in commiserating about the #biphobia and #panphobia within so many #LGBTQ spaces or in offering a kind of gentle and generous acceptance of my messy and conflicted feelings and my #grief over who I could have been in a more accepting world. I am so thankful that Mastodon offered me a space to work through those feelings and connect with people who responded with thoughtfulness and patience and kindness. I don't know that there's any other online space where I could have found that kind of response. So, if you ever interacted with any of my posts about my #ComingOut as #bi later in life, thank you!

I haven't been posting as regularly on Mastodon, and now, when I do log on and want to say something, I always feel as though I need to start with some sort of apology or explanation.

The explanation is that, as much as I can while still maintaining my #Covid precautions like wearing an #N95 mask anytime I'm in public, I've still been exploring my #kink journey.

A lot has happened to me in the past year--a lot has happened to the world in the past year--and I have some thoughts about #kink, my relationship with my #bisexuality, and #love. And it's #PrideMonth.

Since I joined Mastodon, I have been Very Online™️ about my struggles with accepting myself as #bi, with the #biphobia I've encountered in #LGBTQ spaces, and with the disconnect of what my life could have been had I come out sooner or had the on-going #Covid19 #pandemic not stalled some of those explorations.

So I have a thread...