The importance of being visible
It seems there’s an awareness day for everything now, doesn’t it? In fact there’s a whole website that tracks obscure awareness days for nearly every day of the year (worth checking out if you want to know when the official Weinerschnitzel Day falls). But something rather exciting has happened to Bisexual Awareness Day.
It’s no longer an awareness day.
It’s now a visibility day.
It’s not something that happened overnight, it’s been a slow creep over the past decade or so. And I’ll admit, as a bisexual person, it’s something that I nearly missed completely.
You might be thinking ‘that doesn’t seem like a particularly important distinction’. But let’s explore why this is such an exciting development for people who identify as bisexual.
Although many ‘awareness days’ now seem to be focused on fundraising, the primary purpose of an awareness day is to draw public attention to an issue, and thereby raise people’s awareness of it.
But we don’t have a bisexual awareness day any more, the same way we don’t have a gay, straight, or lesbian awareness day. Because people are aware of bisexuals!
Still doesn’t seem like much of an achievement does it — people being ‘aware’ of you seems like a very low bar to set. However, for many bisexuals, their experience of their identity has been one of consistent denial from society. “Bisexuality just means you can’t decide” and “It’s just a phase” are some of the tamer things we hear from both the straight and the gay community. Many people are surprised to learn how unwelcome bisexual people feel within the LGBTIQA+ community. Even Pride Parades don’t have the best reputation as a safe space for bisexual people (especially if they’re attending with an opposite sex partner).
The perception, from both the straight and gay community, is often that bisexuality is a stopping point; bi men are just stopping over on their journey to coming out as gay and bi women are using it as a stop over to admitting they’re straight. Interestingly, both perceptions seem to prioritise an attraction to men as the end point. But, more importantly, it perpetuates the idea that bisexuality is part of a ‘phase’.
Because of perceptions like this, many people are reluctant to date people who identify as bisexual. A study that tested people’s assumptions about straight, lesbian, and bisexual women found that bisexual women were viewed as more confused, promiscuous, and neurotic than straight and lesbian women.
So it’s an exciting achievement to have ostensibly reached a point where we no longer have to work on making people ‘aware’ that bisexuality is a legitimate sexual identity, not a phase, not a stopping point, not indecision. Obviously, the transition from Bi Awareness Day to Bi Visibility Day doesn’t mean that everyone everywhere is super on board. There will always be people who struggle to accept diversity, whatever form it comes in.
But what the transition does represent is where we need to be focusing our energy. Not on raising awareness, but on increasing the visibility of bi people in society; we need to combat bi-erasure.
Increasing bi-visbility might sound like it’s just a push to have more bisexual characters on our screens (and yes, that’s definitely part of it), but there’s actually a lot more to it. Currently, even bisexuals aren’t super keen on their own visibility. A Pew Research Study found that bisexuals are much less likely than gay men or lesbians to have “come out” to the important people in their life. Only 28% of bisexuals say all or most of the important people in their life know they are bisexual (contrasted with 77% of gay men and 71% of lesbians).
This is not wholly surprising given that while the social acceptance of gays and lesbians has increased, bisexual people don’t seem to be benefitting. In this study bisexual women reported significantly higher suicide scores than any other orientation. In the same study, bisexual men also reported particularly high lifetime suicide scores.
So why would bi people not want to come out? And, why are they more at risk for suicide and depression? Well Oxford University researchers concluded that “bisexual women may be more likely to experience social stress due to the ‘double discrimination’ of homophobia and biphobia. Basically, if a bi woman dates a man, the gay community doesn’t support her (biphobia) and if she dates a woman she’s subject to the homophobia of the straight community.
Then there’s the increased risks of sexual violence. In a report looking at global LGBT+ issues, the United Nations described the rates of sexual violence against bi women as “shocking”, and bi women as “especially at risk” of sexual violence. Studies in the U.K have found that bisexual women are 5 times more likely than heterosexual women to be abused by a partner. Some reports estimate that up to 75 per cent of bisexual women have been raped or sexually assaulted.
In fact, research suggests that young women who identify as bisexual have worse sexual and reproductive health outcomes overall in comparison to both heterosexual and lesbian young women. Adult women who identified as bisexual have reported a significantly earlier age at first vaginal intercourse than women who identified as heterosexual or lesbian. This research found that bisexual women of reproductive age are at higher risk of reproductive coercion by their male partners. And the Sex in Australia study found that bisexual women had used emergency contraception at twice the rate of lesbian and heterosexual women and had more than 3 times the rate of miscarriages. Bisexual young women in Australia and the USA are more likely to report lower Pap smear (now cervical screen) uptake, abnormal Pap test results and more Urinary Tract Infections.
So in the face of all of this, what can increased visibility possibly hope to achieve? Well, imagine if every time you went and saw a doctor, they were just like you. Imagine that they were from the same culture, spoke the same language, were roughly the same age, and had the same health issues as you. How do you think that would affect the way they treated your health? They’d be more likely to understand your risk factors, more likely to understand your hesitancy around certain treatment options, more likely to explain your health to you in a way you understood. Now imagine if that was the case for every teacher and mentor that you had, every manager or boss you had, every politician in parliament.
Visibility isn’t a one way street. It’s not just about regular people seeing great scripted characters on the television. It’s also about people in positions of power being able to see regular people, and the issues that affect them.
This is why it’s so exciting that we’re no longer fighting for awareness. We’re fighting for visibility. We want bisexual doctors, CEOs, politicians and teachers. And we’re only going to get there by being brave enough to be ourselves. So, this Bisexual Visibility Day, if you’re safe enough to do so, please be out and proud. Be visible.
Sam Wilde is the Social Media and Content Coordinator for Marie Stopes Australia, and identifies as bisexual.
*Images used in this article were created by and belong to Anna Borges, for Buzzfeed.
