“What’s a gay guy doing editing a bisexual anthology, anyway?”

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I ran into this on Kickstarter and it really struck a chord with me. From the Anything That Loves: Comics Beyond Gay and Straight Kickstarter page:

TYING IT ALL TOGETHER

While I was on the phone with Matt, talking about the gay and straight people that had such a problem believing he was a bisexual man, I had something of an epiphany.

Some of the people in this study I read about in the Times, it occurred to me, could well be gay, but wasn’t it more likely that most were bisexual? Think about it; why would someone cling to the myth of “it’s a choice” unless they really felt, deep down, that they had to make one?

Could the refusal to accept the existence of bisexuality be the major obstacle to ending homophobia altogether?

I’d always felt really removed from the concept of bisexuality; I’d been supportive of them and their challenges, but they felt like another letter in the list, another smaller category, banding together with us in the battle, out of necessity.

Now I was faced with the prospect that our failures as a gay community and as a broader culture to more fully embrace bisexual people could be actively hurting all of us.

With that realization, I knew I had to change my thinking about the binary nature of sexuality, and rethink the oppositional nature of my gay identity. I had to find a way to welcome everyone who would embrace queer people as sisters and brothers, and tear down the divisions that hurt us and the people we care about.

Why does it say “I’m just this queer guy who occasionally writes science fiction, y’know?” instead of “I’m just this bisexual guy who occasionally writes science fiction, y’know?” in the “About Me” section in the sidebar on the right? Because I feel like there’s a queer identity where there’s not really a bisexual identity, and if I’m trying to explain myself to people it’s a hell of a lot easier if I frame it the first way. There are yet more complicated ways to say it — “I’m a bisexual guy who’s in a monogamous relationship with a guy,” “I’m a bisexual guy who’s been in a monogamous relationship with another guy for about a year, but dated girls before that,” etc. I don’t know which of those identities is the “true” me, so I smash it all up and stick the label “queer” on it and that mostly works. I really wish that there were something more like a bisexual identity — it was something I went in search of which I still haven’t found. In the mean time, eh, “queer” works, but I’m excited to see other people exploring the same space.

The comics look awesome, and I’ve backed at the level to get the T-shirt too, because that’s pretty much how I feel about it.