No One Will Do It for Us (Manifesto for a Bi Reawakening)
“No One Will Do It for Us” by Floralie Resa, October 5, 2022, published on the Instagram account @floralie.resa
Today, when you’re a bi woman, you have a choice: suffer in silence in the heterosexual world, or join the lesbian community, where you will never be entirely at home. Lesbians may, with the best intentions, try to include us. But it will never be more than a guest’s place.
On the one hand, it is common for bi women to be involved in the fight against lesbophobia, because even the most closeted bi woman experiences the consequences of a lesbophobic society, a society where desire for women is not considered the norm and often faces widespread rejection.
Bi women are not allies of the lesbian cause. They are directly affected by lesbophobia.
On the other hand, lesbians are not affected by biphobia. The community of women who love women is currently made up mostly of lesbians, and lesbians can neither fight on our behalf nor fully understand what we specifically experience as bi women.
Why wait for others to make room for us? Bi women do not need lesbians in order to organize. We are capable of organizing ourselves. Many of us are already active in feminist and LGBT activism.
Moreover, if you’re worried that there aren’t enough of us, keep in mind that statistics vary, but current estimates suggest that there are nearly twice as many bisexual women as lesbians in France (IFOP 2019). The difference is that most of us are still in the closet.
And the reason we remain in the closet is that we do not have access to a community. As a result, we must face alone the growing discrimination that comes with coming out. It’s a vicious circle.
To be clear, I am not claiming that staying in the closet protects us from violence. Even bi people in heterosexual relationships experience higher rates of sexual and domestic violence than both heterosexual and homosexual people (Coston 2017). The point is that these forms of violence increase even further as we become more visibly bi in the eyes of society. And in return, we receive very little community support. The bi community is not organized today.
To the well-intentioned lesbians who try to include us because we, too, love women: thank you. But I do not want the support bi women need to depend solely on individual goodwill.
So, bi women, let’s organize ourselves across the country. Let’s create our own media, associations, and collectives. I’m speaking to those who are bi: those who are still in the closet; those in monogamous heterosexual relationships; those who are polyamorous or in open relationships with partners of all genders; those who move within lesbian spaces. Let us build a community of bisexual women.
I asked myself what I personally wanted to do in that direction. My own project is @tomcat.bi.pan, a media platform for bi and pan women.
You can: follow the account, contribute by sending me posts on the topic, organize a local or national event, join a bi association and contact me so I can help promote it. The possibilities are many.
Let’s wake up. No one will organize our community for us.
Sources
- IFOP 2019. « Le regard des Français sur l’homosexualité et la place de LGBT dans la société »
- Coston (2017), Power and Inequality: Intimate Partner Violence Against Bisexual and Non-Monosexual Women in the United States.
///Floralie Resa 