Lesbians and bisexual women often seem like natural enemies, rather than participants in a supportive community. This article shares my own experiences as a bisexual woman, and explores some of the ways forward to building a true community of lesbian and bisexual women, where mutual trust and respect exist within a safe and friendly environment.
Like many bisexual women, I came to full realisation of my nature somewhat late in life. I had written off my attraction to the same sex from a very early age, and it wasn't until 5 years ago, when I reached rock bottom that I finally had to face up to and accept my bisexuality. It was only then I got clarity on why I'd become increasingly isolated socially, withdrawing from all friendships. I'd been kidding myself that it was because I was too busy working, or that it was because I was such an introvert (no-one is THAT introverted!) or that it was because my IQ was so high (arrogant, I know). The truth was that I just didn't fit in with heterosexual women, had little in common, and felt deeply uncomfortable constantly censoring my thoughts and language. And the truth was I didn't feel I had a right to friendship because as a bisexual I wasn't a "nice person".
With this realisation and acceptance of my bisexuality, came the realisation that isolation is a cruel and unusual punishment, and that I didn't deserve punishment in any case. So what does a naive bisexual woman do when she arrives at this point? Go looking for community of course!
The most obvious starting point seemed to be the local GLBT community. I know that my wiser lesbian and bisexual sisters will smile at that, because I couldn't have been more wrong. I had taken the acronym at face meaning, defined myself as the "B" in GLBT, and assumed that this was "my place". I dived right in, worked hard to support my sisters, even founding and single-handedly running a free support group for lesbian and bisexual business women and professionals.
But I was never treated with anything but suspicion and disdain. Often I was subject to the most atrocious abuse and personal attack. I was accused of being a cheat and a liar, of being a coward who wouldn't accept her homosexuality, but I never once came close to being accepted. I got the hell out. And I went looking once again to try to find a bisexual community.
The trouble with trying to find a bisexual community is that you get assailed with sexual hobbyism everywhere you look. You land on a site that purports to be a support/resource/information/community site, and find that it links off in 2 clicks or less to the kinkiest porn you've ever seen. The associated chat lists are over-run with requests for sexual acts, and come across more like free prostitution than a discussion list. If you look long enough, you'll start to believe that all the stereotypes about bisexuals are true.
So you begin to understand the suspicion and defensiveness of lesbians toward bisexuals. Hell, I was even starting to dislike bisexuals as well!
On the other hand I was disappointed to see some genuinely bad behaviour by bisexual women who clearly had little understanding or respect for lesbian sensitivities. One married bisexual woman publicly berated her lesbian girlfriend for wanting more time with her, saying that she should have understood from the beginning that she was only the piece on the side! How can anyone who claims they love someone have such little regard for their feelings?
After all this time some things have become very clear for me. Firstly most bisexuals live lives of isolation because they're repelled by the sexually-charged environment they find on the so-called support sites. And they're rejected in the GLBT community. So they give up and basically just try to live without community, which is rather sad. Secondly the stereotypes are not true. Bisexuals don't lie and cheat. People lie and cheat. Bisexuals don't leave lesbians. People leave lesbians. Bisexuals don't all need more than one partner. Some do, some don't.
But that leaves us with a great divide, and a fractured, half-baked GLBT that isn't representative, or even supportive, of the people it claims to include. How do we move ahead? I believe there are 3 requirements:
It is vital that lesbians and bisexual women have their own homogeneous communities in which they actually feel accepted, understood, and safe. There must be at least one safe harbour in the world where you know you are loved without question because from there you can go out into the world and engage strongly.
It is vital to create spaces which act as bridges between these communities, so that mutual trust and respect can develop over time. If we stumble, we can go back to our own community, obtain comfort and sustenance, regroup and try again.
These spaces and communities need to be totally free of sexually explicit material, and need to refrain from linking to sex sites, no matter how impactful that may be upon revenue. For most of us, if our local supermarket employed a spruiker selling bondage, vibrators and lubricants we'd quickly find another supermarket. For most of us, our sexuality isn't actually about sex. It's much deeper than that, and the focus on sex belittles our identity.
As a bisexual woman, I couldn't find the spaces I was looking for, so I created my own. I created www.community-for-women.com as a networking/social/dating site for bisexual women, and I created www.dykepage.com as a networking/social/dating site for lesbian and bisexual women. True to my philosophies, both remain free of explicit material, and every single embedded video or audio, photo or article is manually checked before upload.
Will bisexual women like having their own interactive space on Community for Women? Will lesbians and bisexuals form a genuine community on DykePage? I have no idea. While it's taken months of hair-tearing work to build these, learning and configuring Joomla and various add-ons, maybe the whole thing will fade off to nothing. Or maybe I'll actually see the changes I've been hoping for, and we'll build true, quality communities for women, and we'll begin to see real trust and respect bridging "the great divide".
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i found being a lesbian sometimes i can feel so isolated,my partner won't even go to gay clubs she is to scared.i just want to embrace who i am after living in denial for so long,i find i just want to yell hay i'm still the same person when i tell my freinds that i am gay and i want to be happy with who i am instead of hiding it.it is fustrating trying to be true to yourself and not what any one else thinks, they just assume if your gay it means you want to jump them soon as you can .
