Course:CSIS200/2024/Bisexual Flag Illustrated Essay

About Me

Hello! My name is Mary Wong and I am currently in my last year of Computer Engineering at UBC. I decided to take CSIS200 out of my interest in sexuality studies and how that intersects with other facets of one's identity. I identify as a bisexual woman so the topic of the bisexual flag and bisexual community issues is personal to me. From the researched information, I found that a lot of the bisexual people interviewed had similar experiences to me in life. For example, I related to the pressure to be either lesbian or straight even within the LGBTQ community. It was comforting to find out that monosexual expectation wasn't something only I experienced. I hope that by reading this essay others may also be able to recognize these experiences or learn something new about the bisexual community.

Introduction

“Put off by claims of the [LGBTQ] and [heterosexual community], yet identifying with the rejection each group feels at the hands of the other, she often feels more defined by what she is not than by what she is”, as one bisexual feminist noted in the 1980s. This quote summarizes a key issue the bisexual community faces, the feeling of not belonging to either group but receiving criticism and discrimination from both. This essay will briefly examine the history of bisexuality that may inform current day misunderstandings and negative biases. It will then discuss the specific problems bisexual people encounter because of their identity. This includes fighting the current ideas of strict heterosexuality or homosexuality, microaggressions in daily life, and invisibility. This in turn affects bisexual people in relationships and their mental health. Finally, positive and negative bisexual symbols will be discussed. The bisexual flag, which serves as the central artifact for this essay was a positive step towards crafting a unique bisexual identity but biphobia and erasure remain pervasive in many aspects of modern and historical society.

History of Bisexuality

The histories of the bisexual community will be first examined to understand the origins of current views on bisexuality. In ancient Greek and Rome cultures, sexual relations with same and opposite sexes was openly encouraged and their mythological deities mirrored this behaviour. Later on, as bisexuality began to be defined, it used to be what we now describe as hermaphrodites—individuals with biological traits of more than one sex.

This image is an engraving from the Yale Centre for British Art of a hermaphrodite. Bisexuality used to be a term to describe hermaphrodites. Perhaps the changes in definition of bisexual influenced society to believe bisexual people can only be sexually satisfied by both male and female sexual organs.

As psychoanalytical sexologists such as Freud started theorizing about why people were attracted to more than one gender, they claimed it was because they were immature and in a phase others grew out of. In addition to misunderstanding bisexuality, many bisexual people were unacknowledged in history and even mislabeled as ‘homosexuals’ by researchers. Examples of mislabeled bisexuals include leaders of the Stonewall uprising, early Pride, and the initial AIDS public health response.

Just as bisexual figures were mislabeled, social occurrences like 1970s swinging parties were also misinterpreted. Swinging parties were parties where married women would engage in sex with other women oftentimes with their husbands as onlookers. Researchers claimed it was only for the husbands’ pleasure while still classifying these women as bisexual. However, testimonies from the women involved said it also was for their own interests. It follows that in the 1980s the women’s liberation movement saw bisexuality as non-existent or destructive heterosexual dabbling with lesbians. There were bisexual feminists that wanted to be lesbians because they viewed it as more desirable to not have attachments to men.

In the present day, bisexuality is commonly defined as by the activist Robyn Ochs as “the potential to be attracted—romantically and/or sexually—to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree”. Despite having an accepted formal and flexible definition of bisexuality, the modern day bisexual erasure and misunderstandings are still pervasive in society.

Bisexual Struggles

Emerging empirical research has shown that the number of bisexual people actually exists in large numbers. If so many bisexual people exist, why was there so much bisexual invisibility in history and in the present? It was theorized by Kenji Yoshino that bisexual invisibility stems from the social response from the gay and heterosexual communities. These communities may fear that bisexuality poses a threat on the current systems they operate on. They are possibly threatened by the following three reasons. Firstly, the need for monogamous relationships is at risk from the supposedly promiscuous bisexual people. Since bisexuality is commonly misunderstood as non-monogamy, some monogamous individuals avoid all bisexual people. There are also stereotypes that bisexual women are promiscuous or sexually indiscriminate. Another threatening aspect of bisexual identity is that they could introduce the idea of being sex-blind. This questions the separation of sexes that can cause erasure in the transgender and intersex communities. Finally, they threaten the stability of one’s sexual orientation. If anyone has the capacity for all sex attraction, one can’t prove they aren’t bisexual by their actions or dating history. Biphobia may stem from the want for a binary system where one can only be purely gay/lesbian or heterosexual. People would prefer to assume that a bisexual person is straight or lesbian just based on their partners’ gender. This then leaks into harming relationships bisexual people are involved in with reports of pressure to change their sexual label to fit the current type of relationship they were in.

Despite these harmful ideas surrounding bisexuality, there are still people who do come out as bisexual. From interviewing bisexual men and women, despite knowing about their bisexuality from a young age the self-doubts and derogatory associations to bisexuality prevented them from coming out until much later. However, finding the term “bisexual” and claiming it for themselves was still a relief for these participants. A participant stated that “Bi’s are too straight for the gay community and they’re too queer for the straight community” which may explain the difficulties that remain even after coming out as bisexual.

In daily life, some bisexual people report that people think their identity is indecisiveness, a transition, or a way to keep heterosexual privilege. Other bisexual people have reported that even within the LGBT community, they have experienced subtle slights and comments just because they are bisexual. A respondent to a study on bisexual microaggressions reported that upon going from having a lesbian identity to bisexual, many lesbian friends were unaccepting or confused. A common lived experience of women’s bisexual identities is questioning their validity or just denying its existence.

The struggles and isolation of the bisexual community has influenced the increased rates of mental health issues for bisexual men and women living in Canada and the USA according to national statistics.

Poor community mental health is the result of the unique challenges bisexual individuals face. In 2010, it was found that bisexual women had significantly higher rates of mood and anxiety disorders than both heterosexual and lesbian women in the USA. In 2009, 45% of Canadian bisexual women and 35% of bisexual men had seriously considered/attempted to commit suicide compared to 30-25% of the lesbian and gay communities and 10-7% of the heterosexual communities. Despite facing bisexual erasure, discrimination, and poor mental health, bisexual people still need their own symbols and avenues to express their pride.

Bisexual Symbols

If one wants to challenge the biases and discrimination towards the bisexual community, how can they display their true colours to the world? Due to the nature of bisexual attraction to multiple genders, they could only display their bisexuality through a three-way relationship with a woman and a man which is not appealing to monogamous bisexual people. It makes it more important to voice their bisexuality in other ways.

The bisexual pride flag was created in 1998 to increase bisexual visibility and represent sexual attraction to same and opposite sex. The overlapping purple section representing attraction to both sexes.

On December 5, 1998, the bisexual flag was first unveiled. It was created by Michael Page to try to boost bisexual visibility at home, pride events, and political rallies. It originated from the bi angles that had similar coloring and overlapping patterns. The pink color represents same sex attraction, the blue represents opposite sex attraction and the overlapping area represents the attraction to both sexes. Michael Page described how they see the purple part as the pixels blending unnoticeably into both the pink and blue thus mirroring how in real life bisexual people blend into both straight and gay/lesbian communities. While this could be seen as a positive representation, it also reflects the issue of bisexual erasure within both communities, a point that has been discussed earlier. The bisexual flag is now frequently seen in pride parades and pride collectives. There was a bisexual woman married to a man interviewed who said that they went through a phase of wearing as many pride buttons, jewelry and rainbow everything to really express their bisexuality. Other bisexual people also report using pride pins and other jewelry with bisexual symbols but they still found that the bisexual specific symbols were not as universally well known compared to things such as the rainbow flag. Some other forms of bisexual symbolism will be examined.

The bisexual flag was created to have a common symbol and flag for the bisexual community to rally under. This image shows the 2016 Vancouver Pride parade with the bisexual flag alongside the rainbow flag and transgender flag. With the issue of bisexual erasure in history and the modern day, it is vital that the bisexual community has their own flag separate from the gay and lesbian flag.

Pride pins are a common way that bisexual people reported displaying their bisexuality. Wearing these pins became particularly important for bisexual respondents that were in a relationship with the opposite sex. A pin such as the "I like girls who like girls" pin may be a tool to communicate their bisexuality when their current relationship doesn't.

Historically, bisexuality and androgyny have been associated together. Bisexual characters in pop culture have even claimed the androgynous style labeled as “butch femme”. Some people found that “a swagger” when walking made them appear more bisexual. Eye contact and playfulness was also important to participants as a way to present bisexuality amongst bisexual women. Conversely, some bisexual people felt that there is no universal way to tell someone is bisexual based on appearances.

Bisexual people have a small amount of supposed representation in popular media. However, modern media has at times been a step backward from moving past harmful bisexual stereotypes. An example being pornography, heterosexual females are portrayed having sex with other females only for the pleasure of men. This is mislabeled as bisexuality. Some bisexual focus group participants reported that they felt that bisexual people were always portrayed negatively. Instead of positively acknowledging their bisexuality, they call it out as a negative thing. Others felt bisexual characters were shown as “crazy, sex-driven”. Many participants in the focus group only felt distaste for bisexual representation in the media which prevented them from identifying with these characters.

In social media, some bisexual men are trying to push past male bisexual invisibility. The societal restrictions regarding homosexual contact between men causes them to immediately be labeled as gay, femme or Other. Many of the posts tagged with bisexual-affiliated hashtags aligned with homonormative visual culture. Homonormative visual culture tends to visualize, fetishize and emphasize male bodies and sexuality. By studying countless Instagram posts with bi-affiliated hashtags, the researchers found that contrary to the usage of stickers, bi colors and pride flags in daily life, the vast majority of the posts didn’t use such obvious material symbols. Instead, they expressed bisexuality through memes, illustrations, and text-posts.

Conclusion

The creation of the bisexual flag was a positive step towards crafting a unique bisexual identity but biphobia and erasure remain pervasive in many aspects of modern and historical society. To build off of the initial statement, the essay examined the following ideas. Firstly, to understand why biphobia exists in the modern day, bisexual histories were examined. From ancient Greek and Rome cultures' openness to bisexual relations, to the mislabeling of bisexual people and the idea that they were immature people. After attaining the widely accepted modern day interpretation of bisexuality, bisexual people are still misunderstood. The monosexual system, microaggressions within and without the LGBTQ+ community, and strain on relationships led to higher rates of poor mental health and difficulty coming out as bisexual. Increasing bisexual visibility through media and symbols has been helpful and harmful. Harmful media representations of bisexual people as promiscuous and sex-driven prevented bisexual people from identifying with these characters. However, certain mannerisms, displaying bisexual flags and colors, and social media posts tagged as #bisexual have been a start in increasing positive bisexual visibility. Having a bisexual flag and place in the LGBTQ+ acronym did not automatically eradicate all biphobia and erasure. However, the best way to combat the negativity around the community is to proudly display what bisexuality truly is beyond the stereotypes and misunderstandings. The bisexual flag serves to differentiate bisexual individuals from heterosexual and homosexual communities, allowing them to unite under shared colors and collectively challenge stigma.

The above video was created by the Canadian news network Global News. It includes Canadian bisexual interviewees and statistics. It was reported that about 500,000 people in Canada identify as bisexual as of the latest information in 2022 from Statistics Canada. The video describes the stigma associated with coming out as bisexual and defines bisexual erasure. It also shares statistics that 41% of bisexual Canadians reported poor or fair mental health in 2018 and 51% report that they were diagnosed with a mood or anxiety disorder.