Why I'm not bi (anymore)

Hello, I’m GAOT and BAOT’s friend Girl About Chi Town, GACT for short, and will hopefully become a regular contributor to this blog. I'm a 30-year-old Bay Area native, Midwest transplant by way of LA and Japan.

I’m also a genderfluid heteroflexible androfemme queercentric sometimes nonmonogamous but never poly cisgirlfag. Do I sound like an asshole yet? I wasn’t always an asshole, identity politics made me this way.

Ten years ago, I was simply poly and bi, and life was a simpler (naive-er?) place. I've outgrown both of these labels after feeling repeatedly burned by them, and coming to better understand myself and the way these labels don't fit properly. In this entry, I am going to tackle the bi label only.

Ten years ago I didn’t understand why people were so reluctant to claim the bi label or why many former bis ditched the label to fall to one side or the other of the party line. I DO believe that bisexuality is real and I have mad respect for the people willing to put up with the bullshit that comes along with claiming the label. Because IT FUCKING SUCKS.There's already been a lot of talk on this blog about the queer community's negative attitudes towards bi people. The "B" in LGBTQIA feels a whole lot like lip service sometimes.

I will openly admit, I prefer cismen at this point of my life. My relationships with women have been consistently exhausting and drama riddled, no doubt because many of them fell in the context of poly situations where it was never really about just me and that one woman. (The way that the bi community has tied itself up part and parcel with polyamory is another piece of the problem that I'll avoid going into here). I keep saying I'm swearing off women for good, and yet, I never completely do. I still think women are hot, even if I don't currently want to be in a relationship with one. But I have retired the "bi" label, probably for good.

You know what it all boils down to at the end of the day?

You get a lot more shit from the queer community for being a bi woman who prefers men than being a “straight” woman who occasionally dabbles with girls. I could even argue that this sort of dabbling is expected and encouraged in our culture.

I don't consider myself straight and I've always lived, worked and breathed in the queer community. I'm queer oriented, but nothing is going to change the fact that I like dick, and I don't feel compelled to lie about this fact. So I ID as queercentric instead of queer, and heteroflexible instead of bi, and I'm bulletproof. Sorta. (Not really, but it's marginally easier than being bi.)

Nevermind the impressive numbers of lesbians I know of who fuck men on the DL and lie about it. Whatever helps you sleep at night?

I feel like labels are one of those things that generally work better in theory than in practice. Sure, we all agree that in theory, a queer identity can mean any number of non-normative sexual orientations. But in reality, if I claim a queer identity as a ciswoman, people generally assume I’m a dyke, and take issue when it turns out I actually like dicks. This results in a lengthy conversation where I am required to justify my queerness. Really, wouldn’t it just be easier for me to ID as hetero, if that’s what I am (in their eyes)? Why am I making this harder on myself? My queerness is not necessarily about liking to fuck women (which is why I go by queer and not dyke), but the time and energy involved in explaining the nuances of the unique and special snowflake of my queerness gets real tiresome, real fast.