(Image Credit:) Wikimedia.com/Splette

Like many women and men of all orientations, I’ve had a vested interest in Feminism for a long time. Lately I’ve been reading and learning more about it. I know that the bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgender (BLGT) community has always had a special interest and relationship with Feminism, so I hoped my bisexuality and advocacy work on behalf of the community would give me some unique insight into it. It did, but not the kind that I expected or wanted.

For starters, there are many different kinds of Feminism (while that may seem obvious, it’s not a commonly known fact). You can read about them here on Wikipedia’s article about the different types of Feminism. Naturally, I gravitated towards the more “queer oriented” branches of Feminism. And it was then that I saw something that really bothered me. Several feminist movements  are primarily concerned with straight women, but there are also branches of Lesbian Feminism, and even Transfeminism. In fact, I saw a feminist type of philosophy for almost every group, even plus sized women (which was great to see)!  But there was one type I did not see anywhere: Feminism that talked about the unique experience of bisexual women. We have the lesbian version, and even the trans version, as well as so many others, but, as so many times before, I must ask: where are the bisexuals?

Obviously bisexual women can see things they agree with in several of the different kinds of feminist philosophies, but why don’t we have one of our own? In conversations I’ve had with other bisexual women, they’ve often mentioned that when they came out they hung around in Lesbian Feminist circles, but eventually either someone made it clear that they were not welcome because they “slept with the enemy”, or they just felt left out. However, they also felt left out by many mainstream feminist movements too, because these were targeted mainly towards straight women and completely ignored the same-sex experience. And when both sides talk about the female experience in general, too often bisexuals are either left out completely, or trivialized.

One example of this that really bothered me is in the book He’s A Stud, She’s A Slut, And 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know by Jessica Valenti. It’s a great book, and I highly encourage everyone to read it. However, in double standard number twenty-one, which is called He’s Gay, She’s A Fantasy, Valenti talks about the double standard that exists when it comes to two men together vs. two women together. If two women who are considered attractive are together it’s considered a fantasy and erotic, and often get unwanted attention, while two men together are openly scorned. This is a big one—every out bisexual woman has had to deal with this double standard at least once (obviously lesbians have too, but it seems easier overall for them to refute it because they don’t date men). Valenti talks about both straight women and lesbians, and this would have been a great opportunity to write about what bisexual women deal with—or at least mention us. But it’s like we don’t even exist. She does however, talk about “faux lesbians” (women who have sex with other women in porn for money and the benefit of men and are not really bisexual or gay), but doesn’t go on to say anything like “in contrast to real bisexual women who are not like this.”  Anyone harboring negative stereotypes about bisexuals is only going to have them strengthened after reading that.

Are such oversights deliberate? Well, as we’ve known from certain incidents, they can be deliberate and at times malicious. But from what I’ve seen overall, it seems to mostly just be an oversight based on ignorance. The bisexual female community keeps quiet, and the people who write these books and blogs just assume (if they think about us at all) that we blend quietly into one of the established movements, and see no need to mention us as a separate group.

So what can we do about this? Well, we could start by writing more letters like this one called Letter To The Thistle: On Bisexuality And Feminism by Katharine Holden. When I actually tried to look up anything about bisexuality and feminism together, I found very little. The main book I found that mentioned the intersection of bisexuality and feminism was The Bisexual Imaginary: Representation, Identity And Desire, by Louise Allen. This book confirmed much of what I had already observed; that bisexual women seem to have a hard time fully fitting into any one feminist movement, yet they have no movement of their own. Why haven’t more of us spoken up, and tried to carve out our own niche, specifically relating to feminist issues regarding bisexual women? If the lesbian feminists and transfeminists can do it, why not us?

My personal opinion is that as bisexual women we could help be a bridge between the gay and straight feminist communities. But we won’t know until we try, so ladies, why not give it a shot?