Bisexuals face stereotypes and invalidation – 10/15/2023 – Balance

Around the age of 15, like many teenagers, Giovanna de Oliveira had her first romantic experiences. First kiss, first girlfriend. She even managed to guarantee coexistence with her partner and family in what she called a “very teenage relationship”. Today, at 21, she is in a four-year relationship with Vitor Leite, the same age.

“Those who knew me before I dated Vitor kind of forget that I’m bisexual, or think it was a teenage phase. And those who knew me after him, a lot of people don’t even know,” she says.

For Giovanna, the current situation brings a mixture of comfort and discomfort. This is because she considers that maintaining a relationship with someone of another gender identity is easier at certain points. The relationship with family is an example. “I see a very clear difference, not in the treatment on the person’s face, but in the affection they have for the person, for example.”

Friends who met her after starting her relationship with Vitor are surprised to learn that she is bisexual – some even resist accepting it, she says.

“A lot of people think that Giovanna doesn’t exist without dating a man, that bisexual Giovanna doesn’t exist anymore because nowadays she dates a man, so she automatically becomes straight.”

For family members, this erasure comes as a form of relief. As if bisexuality had been a phase of adolescence, now “solved” by a serious and long-term relationship with a man. “I feel that, especially in a family context, it’s much easier for them to forget that I’m bi,” says Giovanna.

When you are in safe environments, especially around other LGBTQIA+ people, invalidation appears when you do not feel included in the acronym or group. “It’s as if my ‘bi card’ has expired. I feel like there’s no support from either side.”

“People in the LGBTQIA+ community think that bisexuals just want to have fun and that they should stay single to have relationships with both sexes,” says event producer Eric Munir, 24.

He realized around age 12 that he was attracted to both men and women. He first got involved with a girl and, at 15, started dating a boy. “My mother ended up finding out and threw me against the wall asking how I was dating a guy if two years before I was dating a girl,” he says. “So I had to let them know I was bisexual.”

Eric seriously dated two men and one woman. He has been in a relationship with a man for three years, and his mother understands bisexuality, but other people don’t.

“Within the community, people who are homosexuals don’t understand bisexuality. My boyfriend is homosexual and when we started talking, he didn’t really understand either. He was like: ‘Bisexual who wants to date a man’?”, says Eric.

For professor Patrícia Porchat, coordinator of the Postgraduate Program in Sexual Education at Unesp (Universidade Estadual Paulista) in Araraquara, there is a difficulty in accepting bisexual people as a category because they occupy a “middle place”. “Even within psychological theories, they work with boxes and categories: hetero or homosexual. Bi is in a middle position, neither there nor here”, she says.

According to her, the imagery about bisexuals suggests that they are confused, unresolved people who did not know how to “choose”, in addition to relating them to betrayal — as if they needed to always be in relationships with both sexes. “It’s difficult to understand because you will rarely see bisexuals with a woman and a man at the same time”, says the psychologist.

Biphobia (prejudice suffered by people who consider themselves bisexual) manifests itself in aspects such as the hypersexualization of bisexuals and the pressure to choose a definitive sexual orientation, say researchers Beatriz Fragoso Cruz, Maria Lúcia Campos Lima and Larissa Raiza Costa, in article published in the magazine of the Latin American Center for Sexuality and Human Rights (CLAM).

Research based on reports from bisexual people concludes that bisexuality, in general, is not viewed favorably by either heterosexual people or homosexuals.

Alexandre da Silva, 27, notices the stereotypes that other people carry, even within the LGBTQIA+ community, especially in relation to their gender identity. Alexandre does not identify as a woman, but is still in the process of understanding whether he is a man or a non-binary person. Her relationship with a man, also bisexual, completes four years in October.

Alexandre says that he has never suffered direct attacks about his sexuality, neither in person nor on the internet. However, in the digital environment, he has already identified discourses of erasure, directed at bisexual people in general. “That usual stuff. ‘Oh, you don’t know what you want, it doesn’t exist’. It’s a lot of attack, actually, coming from gays,” he comments.

Seeing that this resistance exists even within the community can be worrying, but, for Alexandre, it does not affect his real experience, his relationship or the way he sees himself.

Among younger people and in real interactions, Alexandre feels that there is a good receptivity. However, especially with older people, he often feels that there is no good understanding of his identity. “When I say I’m not a woman, they get a little like that [relutantes]and when I say that I’m bi, they get kind of disgusted”, he says.

“What to do, right? I’m not going to interact with these people in any way,” he says. “I don’t really care what people have to say, unless it’s someone I see who is willing to listen to me. The important thing is that we know what we are.”

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