Biphobia on parade! (Patreon)

On Saturday I wrote an essay about biphobia while on the bus to a GTA job. Here's my favorite part. there’s an assumption that I think underlies most or all of these fears. The very old and ingrained idea that our worth and lovability is tied to our ability to perform our gender well. It’s an idea so old, we never say it out loud. But it’s the foundation for every joke about a wife’s bad cooking, or a husband’s laziness. It’s the basis for every Ugly Duckling story and every romance that hinges on a man having to show bravery to win the heart of a woman. We soothe our insecurities by striving to better perform our gender. We tell ourselves “If I diet more/If I earn more/if I fuck better my partner will never leave me.” But if our partner is bisexual, we no longer have that comforting delusion. No matter how well we perform our gender, our partner may choose someone who’s performing an entirely different gender. And how can we compete with that? Like most assumptions, this is wrongheaded. A partner may leave us for any reason and often that reason won’t have anything to do with us. To be comfortable with a bisexual partner, one has to recognize this truth and trust our partner to love our self and not any kind of performance.