Biphobic Lesbians...?

Personally, I question how anybody could be so insecure about their own attractions that they feel the need to question other peoples.

You are sitting there telling me that you are comfortable being attracted to men and women. Good for you, more power to you.

They are sitting there telling the world that the don't trust anyone girls that have been 'tainted' by guys and that they wouldn't touch a guy or a girl whose been with a guy with a barge pole. How insecure do you have to be to think you can catch straight? It's not better than the people who think you a man will go gay if he accidentally catches sight of another mans dick!

 

This may be difficult to accept, but here it is.

Why would you want to be with someone who holds something against you? It would be like myself ruling out being friends with anyone that likes mushrooms on their pizza, just because I don't like mushrooms on my pizza.

People have preferences, this is life. But if you are bisexual, and people around you don't like or accept that, fuck them (and I don't mean the usually pleasurable kind of fuck either, ha). Life is a one way trip (unless you believe in reincarnation, but that's another topic for another time!), and wouldn't you rather be doing something more positive and productive? Go out and live, be kind, show compassion and provide love. Be accepting and understanding -- be the things that you would like, the things that there needs to be more of.

You can lie and say you're one thing, just to get a girlfriend, but just remember. You're not only lying, you're hiding something, and those are two things you just can't do in a relationship... a serious one at least.

You want to be honest enough that you can say and discuss anything, you want respect so that you can be valued and considered, and you won't genuinely get any of that with someone who can't accept who you are.

 

I think bisexuals, in general, seen and threated like red haired step children of LGBT comminuty.

People have easier time to understand homosexuals or transgender indivudals.

Bi people usually carry stigmata of males, straight ones who can sex around with anything moving(sometimes moving part don't even needed) and still thinks they are straight. So according to them anyone claiming being a bisexual, sleeps with anyone... just like themselves but claiming they are something so they can be/feel different or a trick for gathering attention.

Human sexuality and sexual identity way much fluid then what people used to believe. Just live your life, love whomever you want and be happy. Don't let any kind of labeling idiots rain on your parade.

 

As I've argued elsewhere, not disclosing bisexuality is not morally wrong. The moral justification for lying being morally wrong is that lying misrepresents facts necessary for someone else to make an informed decision based on their stated rational interests or their unstated rational interests that we could charitably and reasonably expect them to have.

If someone doesn't want to date a bisexual, I wouldn't feel bad at all about misrepresenting my sexuality to that person, because their interest in not dating someone bisexual is not an interest that a person can reasonably have. That kind of an interest either proceeds from bigotry or fallacious inductive reasoning. While it may be a stated interest, it's not a rational interest. It's an arbitrary distinction they are making, so I don't feel the least bit morally compelled to honor their right to know.

 

Just not tell them!

 

I agree with your conclusion, but that logic makes me a bit squeamish. It's wrong to disregard someone's wishes just because they don't make sense to you. This is exactly why some meat eaters try to trick vegetarians into eating meat, as a tame example. As a more extreme example, if I don't want to have sex with someone but they decide that my decision is inconsequential, that's what we call rape. There's clearly a difference in magnitude between holding back information and raping someone, but you probably shouldn't make that distinction based on whether their reasoning is agreeable to you. Does that make sense? (I'm sorry if that came off as me attacking you! I really wasn't. I do like debate, though... :icon_wink)

---------- Post added 14th May 2014 at 10:57 AM ----------

As far as a response to the OP, though... Ugh, I'm tired of hearing people like that. You'd think that lesbians, knowing what it's like to have their identity denied by straight people, would know better. Other posters are right, if you want to pursue a relationship with this girl, you might not want to tell her about your orientation, but I would question how intimate I'd want to be with someone I can't show all of myself.

 

I don't f*ck with girls who say that they won't date bisexuals. They're clearly closedminded. Just because someone is gay doesn't mean they're openminded, or a nice person. If they care about personality at all and not just being in an exclusive club that has nothing to do with men, then they won't mind.

On online dating sites I think I get less attention for putting "bi" on there; but yo I'm not gonna lie because that's just contributing to bi erasure. The two girls I've dated were gay and they didn't give a crap. So screw em, all the haters.



That's my gut instinct. But part of me knows that there may or may not be something to what they're saying: if they're out and proud and have been out and proud for a while they might not want to risk dating someone who isn't out, who still claims to be bi because they are working through their sexuality and are not quite "there" yet, or who claims to be bi because they don't want to date guys for whatever reason. Obviously these people, who make up the minority of bisexuals, puts true bisexuals in quite a pickle. But I've had times at the beginning of my coming-out process where I was struggling with the fact that I was dating a girl, that I was not sure if I should just keep dating guys cuz it was easier, and where I assumed I was going through a phase. I can understand someone not wanting to date someone who is in a phase. But don't generalize about every bisexual, that's just not ok.

On the other side of things, when I was first coming out I dated a gay girl who was so eager for me to be gay that she pushed me to come out and be myself and while noble, I realized I wasn't gay and I wasn't ready for all the things she wanted from me and eventually it fell apart. It was not a good match due to timing. If I were more settled in my bisexual identity I could have been like "nope I'm not a kinsey 6 so deal with it! now make out with me". but instead it caused me to question so much so soon and I wasn't prepared.

What I'm trying to say is... I don't know what I'm trying to say. Some biphobia might be due to bad past experiences and who am I to say that those experiences did not cause some valid hurt to a lesbian who is looking for something serious and long-lasting. Maybe it's just simpler for a lesbian to only date other lesbians, but they're missing out on all us wonderful bi women who are interested.

Also I have NO idea what your friend was saying about trusting girls who say they are gay. Like, really? Did she meet one stupid girl who said she was gay but was actually straight because she has no brain, and then extrapolate that out to like the entire queer population? Who ARE these people?

 

Before I discovered that I was bisexual, I never hated them but I'll admit I was confused about it. Being attracted to women in general and not being physically attracted to guys was just so natural that I couldn't understand how someone could have a successful relationship with either gender. Most of the people I met that claimed to be bisexual, particularly in college, were really just bi curious, which led me to avoid wanting to have a relationship with them. And in the back of my mind I was probably worried about being left for a man too, if you're just bi curious. I just know that I am still a one relationship person, and would never leave a woman just to date a man, or vice versa.

Not too long ago, someone at a club told me that when I finally "wise up and dump" the guy I'm dating, that no one will want to date me because of it. My personal opinion is that if someone is going to hold it against me because I slept with a guy in the past then they're not the type of person that I want to have a relationship anyway.

I guess as far as dating, a bi label would be more accurate to tell people if it really doesn't matter. For me though, if I was looking to date someone I would prefer to date only females. If I said that I was bi on some dating site, I'm afraid that I'd get like a thousand straight guy hits, and no female hits. And some of the straight guys probably would want to watch me do it with another female while they watched, or have a threesome.

 

I anticipated that my argument would be controversial, but I am not making it just to be a jackass and nothing more. I sincerely believe in it, both the reasoning and the conclusion.

Let's right off the bat talk about why my argument can't be used to justify rape, or more specifically, rape by fraud. In my argument, I didn't say a person could omit or misrepresent the truth for merely disagreeing with another's stated interests. I merely required the interests to be rational, and I also stipulated that even if someone doesn't state an interest explicitly, it's my requirement as a human being to imagine for them what their rational stated interests might be. Here are some examples of how I imagine my reasoning to work:

Scenario #1: I am HIV+, and I don't disclose my status in my hookup profile. The person I am hooking up with says in their profile or in phone conversations that they only want to hook up with someone clean. We hook up.

My failure to disclose my STI status was a denial of information crucially related to someone else's assessment of health risks they were willing to take. This is clearly a rational interest related to bodily security. Having overrode that interest for the other person, I am now a rapist.

Scenario #2: I am HIV+, and I don't disclose my status in my hookup profile. The person I am hooking up with doesn't say in their profile or in any conversation that they only want to hook up with someone clean. We hook up.

Although my partner never asked, I need to assume my partner is rational. As a rational human being, my partner will want to risk balance on health questions. My failure to disclose here is a direct denial of my partner's ability to risk balance in a situation where the risk is elevated. I am still a rapist.

Scenario #3: I am HIV+, and I disclose my status in my hookup profile. The person I am hooking up with is okay with that, because they are rational and understand how safer sex practices actually work. Therefore, my partner knows they will be effective. We hook up.

Three months pass, my partner tests negative for HIV. I am a virtuous person. My partner was a magical unicorn in the LGBT community for actually understanding sexual risk management.

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The crucial difference between what I'm talking about and what worries you is the rationality of the interest in question. If someone doesn't want to hook up because they don't want to have elevated risk for exposure to HIV, it's their right to decide what risk they are willing to bear in this regard, even though their assessment is very, very likely to be stupid.

A person's desire to know if someone is bisexual is not a rational interest. It is based on hatred; that is, things like stereotyping, refusing to deal with bisexuals because they had a negative experience or two, or thinking that "I relate to other gays/lesbians" better. These are not questions of health that you're entitled to have accurate answers to. These are questions of being arbitrary and capricious.

I guess at the end of if it, my argument is simply that we shouldn't have to honor epistemic interests that are unfair.

 

sldanlm, a popular free dating site has recently added a feature allowing people to hide their profile from straight people. Which prompted a lot of jokes about "straight people can't see bi people" being "bi erasure". But anyways it's helpful. That being said, if you do put your orientation as bisexual you might have to reach out more to gay women. And sometimes they'll ignore you. But sometimes they won't and you'll meet good-hearted lesbians.

 

That's good to know, thanks.

 

Insecure people don't deserve you. That's my stance.

 

Thank you for the clarification. I agree with you, we shouldn't have to honor unfair preferences that are based on irrational reasoning. And we do sometimes need to read between the lines to figure out why someone has a particular preference. I just think it can also be difficult to draw the line on what is and isn't okay for us to decide is or isn't fair reasoning, especially if we have a personal interest in whether or not we can overlook someone's reasoning.

 

The gay community can be their own worst enemy sometimes.
The L G B T I and Q are all very very different to each other and often don't understand each other. And within each one, there are sub-communities as well that are very different.
A friend once called it 'inter-bitching'.
It's basically difficult to accept what you can't/won't understand and that's where the "bi-phobia" comes from. Or any phobia for that matter.

I don't think I can be any help here because I've been both the perpetrator and the victim of inter-bitching in the past.
I actually find reading posts on this forum have helped removed a lot of that judgement. Maybe suggest that to them.

Peace!