also i know i never stop complaining but it’s really a special kind of awful to talk dismissively about “the tired rhetoric of ‘you can walk down the street holding hands with someone’ ” as if that’s trivial, and as if people in same-gender relationships are weirdly fixated on hand-holding or something when really it gets brought up so much because it’s one of the most obvious examples of the constant threat of homophobic violence faced by people in same-gender relationships

all bi people face the threat of homophobic violence because they are bi, yes. but bi people in same-gender relationships face the threat of violence just for being bi AND the threat of violence specifically because of the gender makeup of their relationships. you say bi people in man/woman relationships may also feel unsafe walking down the street, and of course they may because of other factors — their gender presentation, for example, or their race. but all else being equal, they do not have to fear violence on the street because of the gender of their partner relative to their own (except in cases where their or their partner’s gender is not accurately perceived, which is a very real situation but which obviously doesn’t apply to everyone). acknowledging that while you are under threat for other reasons, you do not experience this specific form of homophobia — that you won’t be attacked on the street because you’re a woman and a man, that you don’t have to constantly hide your relationship because it’s between a woman and a man, that you will never be separated forcibly from your partner or your children because you’re a woman and a man, that you are not told over and over, suffocatingly, that your relationship is fundamentally impossible and immoral and disgusting and dangerous to children because there can’t be real love between a man and a woman, and on and on and on, all these things and more that we face because of our relationships that take an enormous emotional toll at the very, very least — this will not hurt you. but refusing to acknowledge it, and telling those of us who want to talk about it that we just hate bi people (even when we are bi ourselves!) DOES hurt people in same-gender relationships, and people who may one day be in same-gender relationships, gay and bi. so stop casting our pain as bad politics, and start figuring out how bi community can explicitly validate these experiences, and provide support for the specific challenges faced by bi people in all kinds of situations, with emphasis on understanding and dismantling structural homophobia in all its forms.