By VeronicaOfOsea
Bisexual individuals are no strangers when it comes to being invisible and facing erasure from our queer peers. And sadly, our recognition in queer history is no exception. Whenever one looks at the bisexual influence on queer history, one thing is strikingly clear: erasure. Many LGTQIA+ persons will struggle to name a historical bisexual figure, mainly because they thought of them as straight, gay, or lesbian. Even within books, movies, or TV shows focusing on LGBTQIA+ history in general or specific milestones in the shared history of our community, the depiction of influential bisexual voices is scarce.
It took several years after coming out as bisexual for me to learn about influential bisexual voices. Weirdly enough, it was over an article in a queer publication that focused on arguments of biphobia. In the comments section I found a broad discourse with some people doubling down on their biphobia and its arguments while arguing that bisexuals didn’t really belong in the queer community and didn’t contribute much to achievements for LGBTQIA+ individuals. To my surprise, I found people debating them and it was the first time I heard about the groundbreaking work of bisexual activists and how bisexual people as a group played a role in achieving significant developments for our community. As glad as I was to have finally found some positive role models and learn more about bisexual history, I was still a bit disappointed that this knowledge came to me in the form of defense-battling biphobia.
But there’s a quite recent experience I want to mention which made me wonder why bisexuals are so often overlooked in queer history or in the representation of it. I’m fairly certain that literally every queer person has at least once in their lives heard about Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” or seen the TV show, the play, or the 2004 opera by Peter Eötvös. Having lost a family member to AIDS myself, this is a piece of queer media that I thought of as exceptionally significant. I’ve seen various versions of the play and I was glad to learn a few months back that our local theater decided to show the opera. Before attending an open rehearsal in March, I got back into the source material by Kushner, reading the play again and several analyses of it. I was once again confronted with a reality that had plagued me every single time I watched or read pieces focusing on the AIDS epidemic. It was the lack of acknowledging the impact the epidemic had on the bisexual community, which appears a bit odd since it’s a common misconception or negative bias, call it whatever you like, that it was bisexual individuals who were responsible for spreading sexually transmitted diseases due to their “loose lifestyle choices.”
Giving Tony Kushner the benefit of the doubt that he wasn’t intentionally excluding bisexuals from the otherwise carefully crafted characters, I decided to take a deeper dive into statistics and coverage of the AIDS crisis. What became quite obvious was the screamingly loud absence of the word “bisexual.” Some articles awkwardly danced around the “ghastly b word” with the euphemism of “men sleeping with other men.” Ever since coming out as bisexual, every revisit of the play, I wondered if the character of Joe Pitt could have been bisexual instead of being widely portrayed as a closeted gay man trapped in a straight marriage. Very few analyses examined that particular point and I found myself thinking that maybe exploring this possibility would add an interesting and additional layer of conflict, especially in terms of the character’s religious affiliation with the Mormons and being involved workwise with the raging queerphobe Roy Cohn. Imagine my not-so-surprised disappointment when I witnessed a scene during which Joe calls his mother and says, “I’m a homosexual.” With that one small sentence, once again my hopes were shattered that an important piece of queer media—rightfully considered a monolith in queer culture and history—would shed the slightest spotlight on the struggles of a community they tend to overlook but also love to point the finger at.
In the Q&A after the performance, I felt the need to address my concerns and the answer didn’t provide much satisfaction. It was the old tale of “people weren’t really bisexual then or just didn’t identify/weren’t out as such” followed by “just because he’s married to a woman doesn’t necessarily mean he’s bisexual.” I could have gone into a whole debate that people were no less bisexual in the 1980s but probably refrained from being out as such based on negative prejudices and assumptions about them from straight and queer people alike. And I decided to swallow my argument that the character’s sexual and/or romantic same-sex attraction doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s just a closeted gay. I didn’t expect a definitive “yes” on the character being bisexual, but it was the rejection of the sheer possibility that struck me in that moment. In hindsight, I wish I would have said it because these views are the effects of bi history and bi influences being so invisible and silent when we observe or talk about queer history. It was history repeating itself, or more precisely repeating its absence.
With all the advances we have made in regard to technology and medicine, the arguments and biases haven’t changed much. We have remained silent instead of demanding our rightful place in queer history. The question somehow remains as to why bisexual people and their history often seem to be excluded from queer history in general. Did biphobia and bi erasure contribute to our invisibility? Did it silence us and discourage us from telling our history or asking questions about it? It often occurs to me that whenever we talk about bisexual history and the more or less prominent figures of it, it sounds defensive as if we still would have to justify our spot in the middle of the acronym. Why does it appear too easy for others to talk about their prominent figures, icons, or historical events without having to face scrutiny or at least a disapproving side eye? Or maybe that is solely my impression on how bi history is being perceived by both straight and queer peers.
As we slowly learn to stand our ground and demand our space to talk about our specific issues, the same should count for our history, even if it has been a long history of invalidation, invisibility, and erasure. For me, that tells a lot about our resilience and ability to survive among hostile points of view. A part of our history has already been written, but to have it told just as anyone else’s we need to be seen and heard, so that we can continue to write our community’s history out in the open just like our other queer peers out there.
VeronicaOfOsea is a bisexual woman, using she/her and they/them pronouns living in Northern Germany in a monogamous bi relationship, and battling the cliches against m/f presenting bi couples.