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Bi visibility
Sep. 23rd, 2016 11:55 pmIt's bi visibility day! Bi visibility is AWESOME. You know why? I was interested in LGBT stuff from when I was... fourteen, right, when I got interested in politics generally. I had out gay friends and had a (very vague, born-in-the-wrong-body-narrative) sense of what being trans was. And I was SIXTEEN before I knew what the B stood for. SIXTEEN. SIXTEEEEEEN.
It would've saved me literally all of my sexuality-related confusion, in retrospect, if bi people - who surveys suggest SIGNIFICANTLY OUTNUMBER gay people - were not invisible.
Also, not wanting to make it all about me: bi people are significantly more likely to suffer depression, to be closeted, and to self-harm or self-medicate than straight or even gay people. Bi women are THREE TIMES as likely to be raped as our straight sisters. That last, shocking fact is likely associated with the fact that abusers are really good at finding people who are vulnerable, dismissed by the social order, and unlikely to be believed if they report abuse - and the twin stereotypes of bi people as slutty and deceitful mean that bi women are even less likely to be believed if they report a sexual assault. So we can all do a bit to fight back against those terrible statistics, just in small, day-to-day ways.
♥ Sending hugs and love to all my bi peeps
It would've saved me literally all of my sexuality-related confusion, in retrospect, if bi people - who surveys suggest SIGNIFICANTLY OUTNUMBER gay people - were not invisible.
Also, not wanting to make it all about me: bi people are significantly more likely to suffer depression, to be closeted, and to self-harm or self-medicate than straight or even gay people. Bi women are THREE TIMES as likely to be raped as our straight sisters. That last, shocking fact is likely associated with the fact that abusers are really good at finding people who are vulnerable, dismissed by the social order, and unlikely to be believed if they report abuse - and the twin stereotypes of bi people as slutty and deceitful mean that bi women are even less likely to be believed if they report a sexual assault. So we can all do a bit to fight back against those terrible statistics, just in small, day-to-day ways.
♥ Sending hugs and love to all my bi peeps