Researcher Julia Taylor launched Australia’s first national organization to support bisexual people this week.

Bi+ Australia aims to improve the mental health of the community through support, education and research.

Taylor, from La Trobe’s Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, founded the organization after completing the largest ever study into Australia’s bisexual community. She surveyed more than 2,500 people.

The Who I Am study aimed to shed light on the reasons behind the very high prevalence of poor mental health among bisexual people, Taylor told Gay Star News.

‘The sense of feeling like you are invisible if you do not prescribe to the binary of straight or gay and having no community to belong to is a very real issue for bi people’, she said.

Taylor quoted one respondent of her survey, who said: ‘You have to pretend to be straight in some situations and gay in others and there’s nowhere that you really belong so you end up with this fractured self.’

Taylor said she wants to translate her findings into practice. She talked to Gay Star News a bit more about the organization and the reality for bisexual Australians:

What is Bi+ Australia’s mission?

Our mission is to support people who are attracted to more than one gender and enhance the understanding, acceptance, inclusion and celebration of bisexuality and pansexuality in Australia.

Although we are based in Australia and providing counselling services to Australians, our Education Hub provides online education for service providers both nationally and internationally and our research activities will be of interest from across the globe.

What sort of issues do bisexual Australians face?

Some issues commonly reported by this community include: Feeling invisible in society can stem from their being almost no visible role models and bisexual people commonly being incorrectly presumed gay/lesbian or straight based on the gender of their partner.

Many participants in the Who I Am study reported being told their sexuality wasn’t real. Gay men and lesbians tried to convince them they were really gay or lesbian and straight people insisted they were just experimenting.

Bi people report not feeling a sense of belonging anywhere, with bisexual people often experiencing biphobia and discrimination in both heterosexual and LGBTI communities.

Invisibility for bisexual and pansexual Australians is a key issue that can have a profound impact on mental wellbeing.

Bisexual people talk a lot about the invisibility persisting even after they come out because people just don’t understand that ‘bisexual’ is a stable orientation.

How do these differ from the rest of the LGBTI community?

Gay and lesbian people in Australia often have very different experiences from bisexual people with regard to visibility, coming out and community connection. There are more and more visible gay and lesbian role models in mainstream media in Australia and overseas.

Society has a growing acceptance and understanding of gay and lesbian identities which can make these sexual orientations more readily understood and acknowledged and gay and lesbian people are able to access a broad network of LGBTI communities across the nation for support.

The awareness and understanding of transgender and gender diverse people has significantly increased in the past decade and so gender diversity is becoming more visible and more commonly represented in the mainstream media. It is important now that we learn from the hard work of the other groups under the LGBTI rainbow banner and start to work towards an increasing awareness, visibility, acceptance and celebration of bisexuality.

What services will you offer?

Bi+ Australia’s Support Service provides counselling support for anyone who is attracted to more than one gender or questioning their sexuality and their loved ones. Our counsellors can support people to better deal with and overcome issues relating to invisibility in their lives.

In addition, our Education Hub is dedicated to ensuring that bisexuality is no longer invisible to service providers and we are working hard to ensure that service providers from anywhere, both nationally and internationally, can take advantage of our online education to assist them to work inclusively and competently with bisexual people.

Finally, our Research Centre is focussed on increasing knowledge about bisexual people by conducting, supporting and promoting bisexual research both nationally and internationally in an effort to overcome the profound silence around bisexuality in research and literature to date.

What could the rest of the LGBTI community do better to support bisexual individuals?

It is absolutely essential that LGBTI communities are inclusive and supportive of bisexual people and their diverse attractions and experiences.

Whether bisexual people are in heterosexual relationships or same-sex relationships they still belong under the rainbow flag.

Bisexuality is a stable and relatively common sexual orientation and although the challenges bisexual people face might be different to those of other sexual minority groups, there are many commonalities and much we can all learn from one another.

Bisexual people experience alarmingly high rates of poor mental health and we all need to do our bit to ensure that bisexual people feel safe, welcome and valued in LGBTI communities.

What do you hope to achieve?

We need to talk about bisexuality! The biggest issue for bisexual people is that they are essentially invisible in the broader community – an absurd concept when we look at the figures of just how many bi+ Australians there are.

If you know people who have come out to you as bisexual tell them you support who they are. If you hear someone being biphobic or ignorant about bisexuality educate them. If you are a bisexual person, take care of yourself and access support if you need it. It’s time we start supporting, including and celebrating this diverse group of people in our society and stop the silence!

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