This is the big one. This is the misconception about bisexuality that is used every day to harm us. For the most part I have gotten away from the kind of “mythbusting” that basically every bisexual activist starts out by doing.

But this is one of the basic issues that plague us.

So let me say it loud and clear.

Being bisexual is not being in the closet.

Now, are there gay people, especially it seems to be gay men, who for an hour day week month claim to be bisexual to others and even to themselves, claim to be bisexual because somehow they think it will make their lives easier?

Sure. In fact, these days it seems that the majority of gay men tell me that they identified as bisexual “for a while”.

But they were not bisexual for a while, if they are gay. They just claimed to be. And they came out that way. And then at a later time (and usually not that much later) they came out as gay, thus somehow “finishing”.

Here’s the part where I get angry (oh, don’t make that face, you knew that was coming, it’s written on the top right corner of the page).

Too many people think that anyone who identifies as bisexual is either really an open-minded straight person, or a gay person who just hasn’t figured things out yet. The first assumption denies us our place in the LGBTQ+ community, a place we need in a community we worked just as hard to build as the people who identify themselves as gay. The second denies us our integrity of knowing who we are.

Because I was NEVER straight. And as I’m not faking my attraction to the person who right now is sleeping not ten feet away, and who is a different sex and/or gender than I am, I’m pretty clearly not gay. So what am I?

I’ve known I was bisexual – even though I didn’t have the words for it – since I was 13. That’s 33 years. Now over those years I’ve had some girlfriends, I’ve had some boyfriends, been married a couple of times (once long-term). I also spent 28 of those years in the closet to all but a few of my closest. And when I say in the closet, I mean trying to tell everyone I was straight. I used every dodge – flat lies, misdirection, hiding (to my shame) behind my wife. But she wasn’t my beard, she was my (not always willing) co-conspirator.

So eventually I finally judged it safe to come out – or more properly, determined the corrosive effects of being in the closet had done and were continuing to do so much damage that the costs and risks of being out in the time and place I was in were less than the risks and costs of staying in. Of continuing to lie.

I’m not kidding or exaggerating when I say that the closet damned near killed me. Seriously, it was worse than grad school, which those of you who are close to me know took a good swing at it.

But when I came out, I came out bisexual. And have continued to do so pretty much every day since then, because although it’s not the complete description of my identity, it is salient. It is an integral and integrated part of who I am. It’s sort of like being 6 feet tall and having hair that’s gray and brown (where I have hair, which as I age seems to include my back, I haven’t the foggiest idea who thought that was a good idea). It’s not the only thing that defines who I am, but no description of me is complete without it.

I’m going to repeat that for all the people who say “Oh, I hate labels” or “Quit talking about your sexual orientation, it doesn’t define who you are.”

No description of me is complete without the information that I am bisexual.

And no one, straight or gay, gets to pat me on the head and tell me how I need to just get with the program and finish coming out. Jeebus, people, if I’m not all the way out of the closet yet there’s no hope for anyone! I mean, have you met me? What do you want me to do, get up on the stage and try to get one past my tonsils? I mean, not to be crude about it or anything, but I can and have – not on stage, though. But what kind of proof do you need?

Because gay men don’t have to prove it. I don’t know about lesbians, because I’m not one, so I don’t know if there’s pressure on them to prove their queerness. All I know is if a man says “Hey, you know what, I’m gay” the gay community will rally around them. No matter what their age is, no matter if they are a virgin or Casanova, no matter what the sex/gender of their last known sexual partner is.

Yup. A man who has had sex with one or more women, who declares in public they are gay, will be accepted as such. And, in fact, if they later say “You know what? I’m pretty fond of {insert euphemism for whatever in your mind constitutes Definitively Gay Sex}, but I also really enjoy {insert euphemism for the other team}”, they are likely to be disbelieved or ignored, or simply erased. At best they are expected to prove it somehow.

What’s the ultimate source of this double standard, this exiling from the community, this devaluation and invalidation? There are a lot of theories (including the one you simply must read, Kenji Yoshino’s Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure). But here’s one that covers at least one part of it, especially for bi men.

The only way that gay man can justify the lies they told, is to normalize it for themselves by accusing everyone else of being liars too. Because if everyone is lying, well, that’s just like telling the truth!

Guys (and it’s guys that are the worst offenders, I think), stop doing this. Stop telling other people where the closet door is. Because for people who can be fairly described as bisexual, it’s behind us.