COMING OUT OF THE WRONG CLOSET HOW BIPHOBIA STOPPED ME FROM BEING WHO I REALLY AM
urban love story, we tonsil-hockeyed in the morning light amidst the commuters before going to get a bottle of wine and a fry-up in a pub we probably should have been kicked out of. I remember reading a Buddhist book when I was younger. It said to reach true Bliss, one had to destroy their Ego. I remember being appalled, I’d spent so long building a
were the ones who got too used to what Queer meant to us? So used to it, that the thought of being anything else, or new in our community was frightening. For a community so familiar with rejection and violence, change from the status quo is terrifying. But as individuals and a collective, we need to look at how we perpetuate exclusion. I hold my hands up to how I did this as an individual with my own Bisexuality. Now I try to make amends by just showing up as who I am - proudly Bisexual/Pansexual and GenderFluid. I no longer fit in a box, because my identity is circular, cyclical like a spiral of growth. I go through seasons. Months of different types of attractions, presentations, and being. I’m still trying to heal the fear of rejection. I am still worried people will associate negative connotations with me, that I’m flakey and unreliable because I was one definite thing and now I’m something else. (Fluid Phobia?) But I don’t struggle anymore. I don’t question, I just follow my feet. The skill of listening to my body when it tells me how to dress, or how to behave draws me close to those who can appreciate me. It keeps me buoyant in the sea and mist at the root of my anxiety. Our community’s relationship with sexual and gender fluidity has also changed. Every year I see more people who are bisexual and gender diversity in the parade and around the city. Every year I also see more and more labels and colorful flags - like a maximalist menu open to us all, but most importantly, open to the young and confused solo Queers out there, who are just starting to learn that life isn’t all about rigidity. To anyone already in our community, re-questioning their relationship with sexuality and gender I say, we are the rainbow letters and we are more than the rainbow letters. For some people, defined, permanent identities bring joy and resilience. For others, a definition is a limit. But both are valid and the only thing that is one hundred percent right is deciding which one is for you, at which time, in which place, and context of your life. After all, we are allowed to change our minds to mend our hearts.
“happy, healthy” identity, that the last thing I wanted to do was destroy it and start again. Well, double coming out felt like that. I realised that I had come out of the wrong
Like a lot of people in the Queer community, my eventual sexual exploration was alcohol-fuelled. I “preferred to hang at gay bars because there weren’t so many annoying guys there.” I was friends with gay men, from whom the word “lesbian” would spit from their tongue like an empty retch. I lost my virginity at twenty-one to a guy. It was tequila- fuelled and lacking in a lot of things. Realising tequila was my gateway solution, I slept with a woman for the first time shortly after that. She was more interested in me than the guy had been and the sex was great. So that was it, I liked women and felt meh about my sexual experience with one man. I felt coming out would upset my family, so if I was going to do it, it would be best to make it permanent and important… things I’d been told Bisexuality wasn’t. Lesbianism was more definite, defined, and recognised. It leaves no room for doubt. Its motive is easily understood - being straight, or “playing normal” isn’t an option like it supposedly is for Bisexuals. So I chose the title of Lesbian. Hypocritically, anytime another friend came out in the following years, I advised them to perhaps “come out as Bi first “ to make sure. All the while worried I was the one who’d made the wrong choice. In the same way, I’d obsessively taken the “Am I Gay?” online quiz online twenty times a night as a teenager; now I was in my mid-twenties, still completely freaked out and obsessed about the possibility of changing sexual orientation. Even my first girlfriend called me out for still finding men attractive. I informed her that actually EVERYONE thinks young Jason Momoa is hot (I still stand by this). If, like me, you’re drowning in a sea of anxiety about who you are, maybe your identity is more fluid than you think. One significant relationship and a few non-starters later, I was on a hen-night in Dublin. I was allergic to the straight- fest. In a long story (another blog post), which DID involve running for a last-minute taxi to see him (very Hollywood Rom-Com, and I hate it). Outside an early morning pub, I had my first big-spark kiss with a man in five years. Like an
by Grace Ní Dhonnachú I was fourteen when I first realised I was into women. The TV show ‘Charmed’ became more than a Saturday morning thing (I’m still into sexy witches by the way). I had blushing crushes on two of my female friends and I wrote in my diary that I needed a girlfriend. I didn’t dare say it to anyone else. I was already an outcast. Primary school was a haze of neuro-divergent daydreams and early-onset acne. Secondary school was where I finally flourished with a group of fellow outcasts to social butterfly with. Same-sex connections were greeted with “Eewww” (this was the early 00s by the way). I couldn’t risk being an outcast again, so I said nothing. I read Lesbian fiction and waited for my turn. Any day now, my best friend would come out, or I would bump into the new girl, spilling her books everywhere. I’d have even settled for my bully to come on to me, admitting her aggression was a result of internalised homophobia and sexual tension. Everyone in society falls for these modern-day fairy tales, but for solitary queers, sometimes these are all we have. And for every affirming gay love story, there was an equal amount of biphobia. If it wasn’t the invisibility in the books, it was sneers from peers. “Hardly any women are lesbians, they’re all bisexual.”
closet, only to be trapped in another confined space with walls in an identity that didn’t fit me! My friends had different reactions. My closest ones loved me… and let’s face it, weren’t surprised. The same ones whose disparaging remarks had affected me so much were there, supporting me. None the wiser of their role in my arrested development. Some friends had very negative reactions. I’ve since reasoned that the LGBT community is bonded by the trauma of “Other.” Sometimes
we are still frightened, confused closeted children. Sometimes we are also re-enacting how others treated us - othering each other with presumptions, judgments, jokes, and stereotypes. I do think the struggle to accept more dynamic or fluid
identities is a response to this trauma. We become so attached to safe, rigid boxes of identity (what the Buddhists would call Ego). We screamed from the rooftops that we were here, Queer, get used to it. But maybe we
“Bisexuals will just get up on anything.” “Bisexuals just don’t know who they are.”
“HARDLY ANY WOMEN ARE LESBIANS, THEY’RE ALL BISEXUAL.” “BISEXUALS WILL JUST GET UP ON ANYTHING.” “BISEXUALS JUST DON’T KNOW WHO THEY ARE.” “BISEXUALS ARE JUST STRAIGHT GIRLS LOOKING FOR ATTENTION.”
“Bisexuals are just straight girls looking for attention.” I didn’t want to be spoken about like that. I didn’t want to be presumed to be an attention-seeker, confused, or the worst thing a girl could be - a slut. So I masked, whilst dating a slew of guys I did genuinely like but wasn’t sexually mature enough for yet. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what I wanted. The future lay open for me in a dense mist of nothing when everyone else seemed to have the steps all figured out.
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