“Coming Out”

Lately, I have been involved in discussion surrounding the notion of ‘coming out’ and feeling not exactly a pressure, but an obligation to do so. In truth, I have never in myself felt this need. It’s not that I’m in the closet, or I don’t want certain people to know or whatever, rather than I genuinely never really felt that I had to. For me, sexuality is something that just doesn’t necessarily need a label; that it often cannot be contained by a label. Essentially what I am saying is I believe love is more important than sexual identity, that this is quite often fluid, that we love who we love. In saying that, I believe differences should be celebrated, not simply tolerated, but I genuinely believe that, for most people, sexuality tends to exist somwhere a long a continuum, with many people falling somewhere in the center.  Because of this view I never felt obligated to ‘come out’ to any of my family or friends, because my Bisexuality really isn’t that important to me.

I know that there are many people (of all sexual identities) who say that their sexuality is intrinsic to who they are as a person, that without this, they would not be them. Of course I agree with this, I would not be the Jaen I am unless I did feel attracted to both sexes, but I’m happy with this simply to be a quiet part of me. I can understand that some might consider that to be quite trivialising of other peoples experiences with bisexuality – I am not trying to claim that bisexuality is somehow less difficult or possibly traumatic than other sexual minorities, in fact the idea of someone saying that deeply hurts and offends me. I was very lucky to have been raised in a loving, accepting enviroment, so I knew that coming out would never be a negative event, I simply accepted myself the way I was and let everyone else figure it out.

(And honestly, most people could just kind of assume. Anybody looking at me drunk would gather that I’m pretty handsy with both men and women, and coupling that with my very outspoken views on love equality could honeslty just make up their own minds about this, which I am happy to allow).

To me sexuality has moved from something that is not regarded outside of a heterosexual (even patriarchal) relationship to something that people almost ‘need to know’ about someone before they can understand them truly. In this way, it has become both a both public and personal issue. This is where I feel sad. I dream and hope for a world in which sexuality has become so fluid and natural that it does not need to be questioned or defined by anyone, it just is. You just like who/what you like. So for that reason, I never officially ‘came out’, but just let people figure it out. Of course I never lied about it. And for the most part, people’s reactions are what I would call perfect, that is, completely indifferent. Sometimes I do get asked the idiotic “Which one do you like better?” but those instances have been very few and far between 🙂

Another thing I know people will say is that I’m not really bisexual, because I’ve only ever had ‘official’ relationships with men.It is as though my sexuality is seen as somewhat less legitimate than ‘Lesbian’ or ‘Gay’. This is a really huge thing – I have seen how some people react to the news that someone they know is gay; it’s not necessarily a bad reaction, but generally a reaction takes place. I don’t really see this with bisexuality. It’s as though some people seem to genuinely feel that this is a phase which we will one day grow out of, possibly because, at the end of the day, a bisexual person is going to fall in love with and stay with either a man or a woman. And when this happens, the world will rejoice in triumph at our finally finding a solid place to sit on the sexuality rollercoaster. To this I call back the ‘labelling’ argument – I have had lots of emotional/sexual connections with both men and women without feeling the need to put a ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’ label on it. So there’s that. Also, given the fact that I am in a solid and committed relationship with a man, I might as well pronounce myself as the new messiah for all the good saying “I like women” does. But, at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter how other people take my sexuality. Like, at all.

I also know that many people, both gay and straight, have certain opinions on those who classify themselves as ‘bisexual’. They call us ‘fence-sitters’, ‘greedy’, ‘indecisive’ ‘promiscuous’, ’looking for attention’. In all honesty, the only reason I call myself bisexual is because there really isn’t any other way to say it. It’s just a label that I am forced to use to best describe it. In reality, I would say I am simply just very sexual; I am open to the idea of a lot of things, sex or gender doesn’t really come into in my mind. When I first felt attracted to girls I didn’t have any kind of identity “Oh god, what am I? How am I going to tell everyone?” crisis, I just sort of thought about it, accepted it and moved on.

Now I can almost hear you all thinking “well if it isn’t that important to you, why even put this up? Why go to the effort of writing it at all?” Well, I almost didn’t. I think the reason why is because I like to use this space as a useful reflection of my thoughts, and I really do feel strongly about this “love is love” and “fluid sexuality” stuff, so if anyone wanted to read this they might realise that I actually do have something important to me that I would like to share.

Love love  ❤