The 3 constants in life: change, choice and Homo-Journal

The perks of bisexuality are endless. I, being a bisexual female, enjoy many advantages you mere mortals cannot comprehend. Allow me to list a few:

1. Things don’t get awkward when my male work colleagues rate girls, wolf whistle or attempt chat them up.
2. Things don’t get awkward when my female work colleagues rate guys, wolf whistle or attempt chat them up.
3. A larger dating pool of both male and females.
4. More leeway in my sense of fashion. Nobody has yet questioned my varying styles.
5. More leeway with my hairstyles. Nobody questioned the shaved head incident, which was in hindsight perhaps a mistake.
6. I can make out with my girlfriend in school as much as I like without getting told off. Teachers tend to feel slightly awkward and don’t interfere for worry of looking homophobic.
7. Lesbian sex.
8. Straight sex.
9. Having an excuse to go to gay pride every year.
10. Feeling smug and superior to the masses that have yet to appreciate the beauty of the female form or penis.

Now in all fairness we must list the downsides:

1. The awkwardness of coming out. See week 6 for our coming out stories.
2. Having to assume people are straight until given evidence otherwise.
3. Fancying straight females or gay males.
4. Earning the frowns of the older generations and homophobes.
5. There is never a bisexual box to tick on forms. Only gay or straight. It is very very hard to decide.
6. People who assume you are a slut.
7. People who think bisexuals are just indecisive gays or that it is an experiment.
8. Marriage. We’ll pick this up in a later week. But it’s a very sensitive issue to me. If I wanted to marry a woman I could not stand up in church and declare my love for her in the eyes of God.
9. Having identity crises with alarming regularity.
10. The strange crowd of people who suddenly get bi-curious if you hang around them too long.

So as you can see being a member of the LGBTQ community has its downsides too.

This seems like the opportune time to address the choice issue. Do we choose to be queer? Is it a lifestyle choice? Are we inflicting this on ourselves? The answer is yes only if you believe we can choose who to love. Anybody who has ever had an unrequited love (oh wait, that’s everyone) will know that’s not the case. I don’t choose who I love any more than I manipulate my own blood type.

Looking at those two lists in a detached way it is fair to say that the downsides might put you off being bisexual. My list of downsides is not nearly as bad as some people face and it’s still a little daunting. So, logic says I should give it all up and become straight. And how would I feel about that? God dammed awful. I am bisexual. I can’t change that and shouldn’t want to.

So fare thee well until next week, lots of love,
Mel