Happy bisexual visibility day! Part of my journey as a writer has been figuring out where my sexuality fits into the grand scheme of things. I don’t mean who I date or anything like that, but how honest did I want to be? Did I want to sit on it, considering the current climate of the US? Did I want to lead with it, like I have since I came out at fifteen? Both had positives and negatives, and it wasn’t an easy decision.
I knew, going in, I didn’t want to sit on it. But the thought of being so open and vulnerable about it was also terrifying. I was privileged to come out at fifteen in an area where it was fairly accepted. I did wait to come out to my parents because I had no idea how they would accept me. Mom didn’t, but my dad was thrilled for me, which is a privilege as well. By that time, though, I wasn’t new to being my authentic self. I was dating my high school sweetheart at the time, a girl my friends from Oakland went to school with after I moved away. My friends all knew and were accepting. My grandma knew, my sister having outed me a year or two prior with the best intentions (grandma didn’t say anything, just quietly started buying me rainbow merchandise for gift giving holidays sometimes.) But my parents? They were harder. My parents would openly make jokes about bisexual people being greedy. They’d say it was for attention. Luckily Dad understood, and when I came out to him he stopped making those jokes. Mom, though, she ignored it unless she was telling me that my girlfriend was the daughter she always wanted, or to use me as her token bi person, to be whipped out to show how accepting she was.
Those were some of the reasons it was so hard to settle on whether to be open about my sexuality. But some of it was the statistics too. Even though I’m not a woman, I presented as one then, and statistics don’t lie. Bisexual women are at high risk of assault, stalking, and harassment. Personal experience tells me that it’s because people believe bi women are unable to say, or mean, no, even if that word rushes past our lips. It’s because bi women are fetishized too, held up as a holy grail of sorts because we’re a box to check. We’re supposed to be freaks in bed, into threeways, the list goes on. We’re targets for unicorn hunters, who seek us out to fix their relationship even when the woman in the relationship isn’t bi. It’s believed we do it for attention, and that we’re looking for the negative attention men give us. This is also not unique to bi women. Bi men and bi trans people face their own struggles as well, with varying degrees of overlap, and if you’re a person of color that compounds the issue. Being a bi trans mixed race person, as a result, felt like I was painting a huge target on my back. It was different with my friends, who accepted me. And it was different from my family, who don’t all openly accept me but they don’t harangue me for it either. But being open about something like this, in the public eye, it was a lot to process.
It was a lot to digest. And as I came closer to finishing my second book (currently sidelined) I needed to make a decision. Do I stealth past the gatekeepers and biphobes and come out later? Or do I lead with it? It probably comes as no surprise that a lot of my friends are queer, and many of us some flavor of bi or pan specifically. So it was them I talked to. They all love science fiction and fantasy as much as I do, and they’re more than aware of some of the unfortunate toxic aspects of those particular fandoms. Nerds don’t exactly have the best reputations after all, and part of it is how many fit the problematic molds that are often made fun of. It was those nerds too, growing up, that made my life hard. And my sexuality only compounded those issues. So, knowing my friends had similar struggles, I turned to them. And one told me that one of the reasons they looked up to me was because I had always been honest about who I was. That I didn’t make excuses for my existence or back down when someone challenged me. And that other people could probably use that same influence.
After that conversation, I gave a lot of thought as to why I was so open in the first place. Part of it was a form of ignorance due to lack of life experiences, though I also came out not terribly long after Matthew Shepard was murdered. Part of it too, though, was I had so few people to look up to. Most of my positive representation was in book form, the vast majority penned by Mercedes Lackey. Every book of hers the library carried I read, devouring them because she took the chance to represent me. And I wanted that freedom to be myself, that her characters did. To not have to skulk around in the shadows, denying my sexuality like others were forced to in order to stay safe. And growing up in the East Bay, it was far more accepting than other places I could live in.
Coming out gave some of my friends the courage to come out too. And my friends’ arguments all hinged on that. That I helped them come out by being my most authentic self, and by having a platform, even a small one, I could help others too. Reminders of Mercedes Lackey as well, and how much she meant to me. Discussions of how queer to make my books happened in this period of time too. Eventually I realized I was too invested to go back in the closet. My books, at the very least, were heavily queer coded, if not outright LGBTQIA+ which was something else that was discussed. How homophobes will quit reading the second they realize it’s a queer story, no matter how far in they are or how invested. But the people that needed it could use something more overt. I myself would suffocate if I had to deny that part of me existed. And one of my lifelong goals has always been to make the world a better place than I found it. I might not be able to solve climate change or world hunger, but I could reach the people that were in a place I once was, struggling with where I fit in the world like I did, and wondering if it was even safe at all. And those people are the ones I want to reach the most. Not the homophobes, and not the allies, but the kids and adults who are discovering who they are, and wondering if anyone would stick around should they come out. I originally came out for me, because I didn’t want to get lost in a closet that was too small and constricting. But I stayed out because it meant the world to my friends who were also going through the same crisis. And I decided to be open in the public eye, too, because you never know who is watching and taking notes.
That’s why we have bi visibility day. It’s not to rub our sexuality in people’s faces. It’s not to brag or boast or flaunt it. It’s to signal to those kids who aren’t in a safe place to come out, and the adults who are afraid of what they stand to lose if they do, that we see you. Sometimes you have to stay in the closet for safety reasons, so I won’t tell people they need to come out. I’m privileged in that regard. As much as my mom didn’t accept me, I was never in any danger because I’m queer. But staying in the closet doesn’t make you any less queer. Prioritizing your safety doesn’t take away anything from who you fundamentally are. And if my stories reach one person that can finally see themselves in someone, give them that hope that it won’t last forever, the whole struggle was worth it.