I mysefl identify as being 'bi' although I like the terms dyke and queer (c'mon, it's like a cute little nickname) When I was a little kid my gurlfriends and I used to play little "let's play doctor" games (but didn't everyone? oh well) and then one day it was just like, "hey i like girls and guys, cool" at least that's how I remember it. I'm sure somewhere on scarleteen I have a post asking "am i a dyke?" I didn't think it was weird or anything because it was the same year that jack on dawson's creek came out and there were a lot of queers out there and it just didn't seem like a big deal.

It's still not a big deal (but maybe because I'm not out...hmmm, you try to come out in a family that voted against gay marriage! my mom even said that she doesn't think gays should have kids *sigh*) I've never known anyone to go around yelling "i'm straight i'm straight" so I don't see a reason to yell out "i'm bi i'm bi!" People that I don't know that well know I'm bi, when I meet new people I usually tell them but none of my friends know.

So that's my little story and I hope to hear yours!

Brittany

PS: when I get my first girlfriend at *home* (meaning, in Vegas) I'll tell everyone

I think y'all knew that, though.

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Hanne Blank
Co-Editor, Scarleteen

Bisexuality is just one of those things people are. Fighting bi invisibility is very difficult, and can be very personally taxing. But it doesn't get any easier, for you or anyone else, if you don't resist prejudice. Being closeted doesn't feel very good, and it still doesn't protect you from the biases.

I highly recommend the resources available from www.biresource.org -- you may well be able to find a Dallas-based bi people's group or a bi women's group, too, through the biresource.org listings.

By the way -- I don't think it's inherent human nature to want to pigeonhole our identities. I *do* think it's human nature to want to avoid pain and suffering, and when not pigeonholing our identities means that we suffer, then yes, we're going to want to pigeonhole ourselves. But fear of stigma, pain, suffering, or being an outcast are not the same thing as an inherent need to pigeonhole one's self.

I say pigeonholes are for pigeons. People often ask us to pigeonhole ourselves -- or try to force us to in various ways -- because they themselves are insecure, and because ambiguity scares them.

I say there's nothing more ambiguous about bisexuality than there is about heterosexuality, homosexuality, or any other kind of sexuality. Human lives are messy, splattery, weird, funky things. There are not a whole lot of self-identified homosexuals who have never had any sexual thoughts or experiences involving members of a different sex. There are also not a whole lot of self-identified heterosexuals who have never ever had any sexual thoughts or experiences involving members of their own sex.

Insisting that bisexuality is "confused" or "ambiguous," calling someone a "wannabe" or a "traitor," are ways of hiding from one's own confusions and ambiguities, one's own fears of not being acceptable or of doing something that would get one cast out of a community. Nothing more, nothing less. There is nothing traitorous about being human. There is nothing confused about loving other human beings, or desiring them. There is nothing ambiguous about bisexuality -- it's simply that it's not "either/or," it's "either/or/both/and."

And as for the indignant straight people, I counter with this wonderful sentence from the redoubtable H.G. Wells:
"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."

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Hanne Blank
Co-Editor, Scarleteen

(P.S. Just so you know, all 3 of Scarleteen's primary staffers, including myself, are bisexually-identified women. We're very bi-friendly in these parts!)

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Hanne Blank
Co-Editor, Scarleteen

Just for the record, we don't "encourage" any one kind of sexuality here at Scarleteen. What we do encourage is an awareness that people do have the potential to be attracted to a lot of different things, and that people can be perfectly healthy, okay, functional, normal people and be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, intergendered, heterosexual, celibate (someone who does not have sex with a partner), and even asexual (someone who does not have sex at all, even masturbation). We also encourage people to be honest and forthright about themselves and their identity, no matter what that identity may be. At Scarleteen, we welcome you no matter what your identity or who you're attracted to, because no matter who you are, it is always a good idea to learn more about your (and other people's) sexuality. It's all part of our world.

But back to your question...
Like most people who do not think of themselves as bisexual, gay, or lesbian, I did not just arbitrarily make a decision to be that way. I didn't wake up one morning and say "gee, I think I'm going to be bisexual from now on."

Rather, the feelings came first, and the label -- the word "bisexual" -- came much later.

I knew when I was a little girl that I thought both boys and girls were pretty, and that both boys and girls interested me, and that I wanted to be friends with both boys and girls, and play with boys and girls. Not so unusual. As I got a little older -- around 10 or 11 -- I also realized that I sometimes got crushes on both boys and girls, and I didn't really understand it, but it just kind of happened that way.

As I got older and my sense of being a sexual being became more intense. Puberty hit, and the crushes I would get on people were more specifically sexualized: I would think about kissing and touching the people I had crushes on, just like anyone else does at about that age (12-15 or so). I imagined what sex might be like with some of the people I had crushes on, both boys and girls. I discovered that, for me, the strength of my feelings for someone had more to do with who the *person* was as an individual than they did with what gender or sex that person was.

When I was 15, I realized that I still had attractions for both male and female people and that they weren't going away. I'd always had them, and it looked like I probably always would. So I started thinking of myself as a bisexual person. That still feels pretty comfortable to me.

So that's how it happened for me. From talking and working with lots of other people who are bisexual, I have noticed that that's the way it seems to happen for a lot of us (probably the vast majority) who are bisexual. The feelings and thoughts come first, way before we ever think about calling ourselves "bisexual."

When you think about it, that makes sense. Heterosexual people don't just decide to become heterosexual, either. They know who they are attracted to and who they think about, and later on they discover that there's a name for it. It works pretty much the same way for everyone, whether they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or anything else.

Sounds pretty normal, doesn't it? That's because it is. Bisexuals are normal people, just like you and your parents. We go to work, we buy groceries, we worry about whether or not the turkey is going to come out well on Thanksgiving, we take our dogs for walks, we love our families, we brush our teeth, we pay taxes and get picked for jury duty and all those everyday things. Some of us get married, some of us have kids, some of us live in life partnerships without getting married (it doesn't matter what sex your partner is). There are bisexual ministers and priests and nuns, bisexual politicians and teachers and police officers, bisexual farmers and economists and mail carriers and everything else under the sun.

Most of the time, you have no idea whether you're dealing with a bisexual person, or a gay person, or a lesbian person, or a heterosexual person. We don't look different. We don't wear little neon signs. You and your parents have probably met plenty of people who aren't heterosexual and never even knew it. And that's really okay. That's basically the way the world works!

If you'd like to know more about bisexuality, we have an article about it here: http://www.scarleteen.com/gaydar/pages/biquiz.html
You can also go to www.biresource.org and find out more, too. And you can ask questions!

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Hanne Blank
Co-Editor, Scarleteen

Start a Revolution -- Stop Hating Your Body!

I'd say my own identity happened in a very similar way, compounded by the fact that my first fully-recognized consensual experiences happened in the span on just a week or two, and one was with my female best friend, the other with a boy I liked. Then are there alone, I had a pretty good idea. It may have helped that I don't ever remember my mother or my father giving me any messages that the people I'd love in life would be one gender or another. No one in my family ever said to me, "You'll find them man for you someday," or some such.

It's a pity, in my mind, when people judge others not by who they are, but by what they think they might be by virtue of their race, socio-economic status, sexual identity or gender. But what combats that, you know, is doing what you just did, kiddo: asking questions openly and sincerely and understanding our identities -- all of us -- aren't about anyone fitting into one mold or label, but about who we are, what your life experiences have been and what identifiers we feel fit us best.

In other words, if you're heterosexual, ask yourself if you feel you could just choose to be homosexual. probably not. While we can choose what we call something, I can't choose not to find someone attractive whom I do -- I can choose whether or not to act on that attraction, but not whether I have it. make sense?

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Heather Corinna
Editor and Founder, Scarleteen

I didn't even know that is was possible to be bisexual until I was in my mid to late teens and learned the term. Gay, straight I knew about that. I didn't quite fit in with straight, but I was sure I was not gay, so I chose the label straight. Once I learned about bisexuality I realized there were other people like me.

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Louise Lalonde
-Scarleteen Sexpert & Volunteer du Jour

In other words,I know Hanne and myself realized very early we were attracted to both men and women, but the langauge wasn't really out in common use like it is now. I know I knew what was up with me when I was eleven years old, but even in a big city in a liberal family and an artistic community, I didn't hear the term "bisexual" used at all until I was 17.

quote:

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If I were a boy, I would marry her.

---

Now, I am currently crushing on a girl named Allison in my music class. She's got short brown hair, and she's beyond cute. She's straight (I just went and asked, she wasn't offended), but I still like her.

When did I know I was bi? I dunno. Probably just a few months ago. I used to consider myself "straight but not narrow." After I "fell in like" with Allison, it all became so clear. I like girls. And when I think about it, I always used to look at girls, and check out girls, but I still never thought I was bi. I thought I was a straight person who liked to look at girls. Hmm.

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Hanne Blank
Co-Editor, Scarleteen

I'm sorry to hear that you have had to deal with so much homophobia in your life. That stinks. Good for you for perservering! It can be really hard sometimes, but it's very worth it.

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Hanne Blank
Co-Editor, Scarleteen

Sexual roles are established by society, but as each person here has testified, sexual identification is an extremely person issue no matter what parents or peers say. Sooner or later everyone comes to their own idea of who they are interested in sexually. Those who swallow somebody else's idea of what sex should be (from whatever source or for whatever reason) usually fall into a sexual role, whether it be strictly hetero or homo.

Those who feel different (and refuse to deny those feelings) usually question whatever status quo is in effect for their society, and eventually come to a place where they accept who they are.

What's more, sexually thoughtful people seem to end up denying all sexual stereotypes, as we've seen here. Where in the world will you find better sexually educated people than on the scarlet sites? To me it says something that these people all say the same things about orientation--it is personal, and the result of honest thought.

It seems to me that the more people think about sex personally, the more they realize that the object of a sexual focus doesn't have to have certain genitals. The most important thing is for each person to be honest and thoughtful--let the genitals fall where they may, I say.

Personally, I came to these conclusions in a much faster way than any other poster I've read here. I actually grew up a good mormon girl, never questioning my heterosexuality, and denying the fact that I had thoughts/dreams about women and men. I never even touched myself "sexually" until I separated from both my husband and my church. Truly.

Then I started thinking deeply about myself, and finding out who I was. In a matter of months I went from totally straight to lesbian to bi to what I call nothing at all.

Does sex even need to be a topic once we reach a point of understanding? What makes my kiss to an adult male into "sex," and my kiss to a girlchild notsex?

Why do I need to come out, when my sexuality doesn't have a name? I am just me, no matter who I'm with. I don't think I'm so different--it's all in how you see yourself, and how you define yourself. I think we're all the same on the inside.