What Does Bisexual Mean? What You Should Know About the ‘Invisible Majority’ of the LGBTQ+ Community
Bisexuals make up the “B” in LGBTQ+ and that’s no small thing. In fact, bisexuals are the largest group under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, according to Gallup in 2022. They make up 57 percent of queer Americans, whereas 21 percent identify as gay, 14 percent identify as lesbian and 10 percent are transgender (with 4 percent being “something else”). So with so many people within the LGBTQ+ community identifying as bisexual, do you know what it means to be bi?
There are so many misconceptions when it comes to bisexuality, as it can be hard for some people to conceptualize not being either gay or straight. How does that work? Read on to find out what bisexuality is, why certain stigmas or stereotypes of bisexuals exist (and why they're wrong), plus learn some important statistics about bisexuals.
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What does bisexual mean?
You’ve heard of gay and lesbian people and you definitely know what it means to be straight. But what does bisexual mean? According to the Human Rights Campaign, someone who’s bisexual has the potential to be attracted to more than one gender. As bisexual leader and activist Robyn Ochs describes bisexuality, it can be romantic and/or sexual attraction “to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree."
While “bi” is in the label’s word, it doesn’t mean that bisexuals only have an interest in two genders or that bisexuals believe there are only two genders. After all, the Bisexual Manifesto—a document published in Bay Area Bisexual Network’s magazine Anything That Moves in 1990—states that bisexuality is fluid and not “binary or duogamous in nature...” Bisexuality includes transgender people, non-binary people and more, on top of cisgender people.
Bisexuality is a sexuality that falls under the bi+ umbrella, a term that covers a variety of sexualities that include attraction to multiple genders. This is notably different than lesbians and gay people, who typically are only attracted to one gender, and so are straight people. This bi+ umbrella includes pansexuals, polysexuals, omnisexuals and others along with bisexuals.
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Where did the word ‘bisexual’ come from?
With all that said, and the prefix “bi” already established, where did the word “bisexual” come from? According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the term popped up in writing in 1824 and was originally used, in this context, to refer to someone who has both male and female sexual organs (what we would now potentially call intersex or hermaphrodites).
As Julia Shaw wrote for Literary Hub, American neurologist Charles Gilbert Chaddock is presumably the first person to use “bisexual” in English to mean attraction to multiple genders. He translated Psychopathia Sexualis from German to English in 1892 and used bisexual the way it’s (basically) used today while doing so.
Despite that popping up in the late 1800s, Stonewall reported that even in the early 1900s, "bisexual" also referred to people possessing both masculine and feminine traits, something we’d now call androgyny. As they also write, even though the term bisexual didn’t pop up as a label or identity until much later, people who were attracted to multiple genders did still exist. Stonewall just writes that they either considered themselves straight or labeled themselves as gay or lesbian. The 1970s is when the true modern definition of bisexuality came to be popularized.
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When is Bisexual Visibility Day?
Just like there is a Lesbian Visibility Week and other weeks, days or months celebrating different identities in the LGBTQ+ community, there is also a Bisexual Visibility Day and week. According to Stonewall, Bi Visibility Day is September 23, 2023. This day is also referred to as Celebrate Bisexuality Day, Celebrate Bisexuality+ Day, Bisexual Pride Day and more.
BiWeek, or Bisexual+ Awareness Week, lands on September 16 to September 23 every year, according to GLAAD. Not only is this week meant to honor bisexuals, it’s also a week to celebrate anyone under the bi+ umbrella. GLAAD writes that the week is meant to draw “attention to the experiences, while also celebrating the resiliency of, the bisexual+ community.” We’re meant to learn about bisexuality and its history, and support the bisexual people in our communities. BiWeek was co-founded by GLAAD and BiNet USA in 2014.
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What’s the difference between being bisexual and pansexual?
We already did a bit of heavy lifting when it comes to the difference between bisexual and pansexual. While there are a range of identities under the bi umbrella, they all mean different (but somewhat similar) things and it’s up to individuals to choose how to identify themselves. Two of these labels that might confuse people are bisexual and pansexual.
Bisexuality is the potential to have an attraction to your gender and others, and pansexuality is an attraction to people regardless of gender. Bisexuality is sometimes misunderstood to mean attraction between binary genders (men and women). This has made some people think that it’s limiting or outdated, making some choose pansexual to feel a bit more inclusive. But as already stated, the Bisexual Manifesto has stated that bisexuality is fluid, not binary and inclusive since the 90s.
As Bi.org has reported, “While anyone who experiences both homosexual (same sex) and heterosexual (opposite sex) attractions is bisexual according to the scientific definition, that does not mean that they will label themselves or even think of themselves (identify) as bi.” People feel more compelled to identify with one label over another for their own reasons. One label is not more “correct” than the others under the bi+ umbrella and it’s up to each person to choose a label that feels most comfortable to them.
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Who identifies as bisexual? What stigmas and stressors do bisexuals face that others don’t?
As stated before, bisexuals make up the majority of the LGBTQ+ community. According to Gallup, nearly two-thirds of young, queer people identified as bisexual, with women outnumbering men 3 to 1. As The Hill reported, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission referred to bisexuals as the “invisible majority” in a 2011 report because of the stigma against bisexuals even within the LGBTQ+ community, despite the fact that they make up so much of it.
Bisexuals exist in a very tricky spot within the queer community due to the simple fact that they have a sexuality that includes more than one gender. Due to that, there’s this tendency to either diminish bisexuals’s queerness or hypersexualize them. If a bisexual person is dating someone of the opposite gender, and are in a “straight-passing” relationship, other queer people might consider them not queer enough and straight people might not see them as queer at all. If a bisexual person has never dated or been with someone of the same gender, the same invalidating misconceptions about them might exist. As the American Psychiatric Association reported in January 2020, this is called monosexism (“the belief that people are only heterosexual, lesbian or gay”).
According to the American Psychiatric Association, the stressors associated with being bisexual—the biphobia and bi-erasure mentioned above—leads more bisexuals to hide their identity than gay people or lesbians in the community. Because of all of this, bisexuals have “increased experience” with depression and suicide than straight, gay or lesbians. They also have higher rates of mood or anxiety disorders and a higher risk of suicide. And, according to the National LGBTQ Task Force, the CDC reported data that showed “bisexual women experience higher rates of rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner” than lesbians or straight women.
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How do you know if you’re bisexual?
Sexuality is a deeply personal personal experience and it can be confusing to figure out. If you’ve only been with people of the opposite gender romantically or sexually, and like it, but you think you might like people of other genders or your own, you might be bisexual. If you have a long-time partner of the opposite gender but think you do like people of the same gender, that also might mean you’re bisexual.
The same goes for the opposite side of the spectrum. If you’re a guy or gal who’s only ever dated people of the same gender, but you want to start dating the opposite or other genders—or if you think there’s a potential for attraction there—you could also be bisexual. Sexuality can be fluid and you don’t have to feel like you’re stuck in a “straight” box or “gay/lesbian” box just because you’ve identified as that before. Things change and new experiences or people can introduce us to new perspectives about ourselves we didn’t realize.
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It’s hard to definitively give a checklist of things that mean you are for sure bisexual, because it looks and feels different for everyone. As The Trevor Project answers in their bisexual FAQ, how you choose to identify or label yourself is your choice. If straight feels more authentic to you, despite some queer crushes here and there, then go for it! If the label “bisexual” feels comfortable to you, claim it! You also don’t need to lean into labels if you don’t want to, either.
Remembering that you don’t have to prove your queerness to anyone is key. And finding a group of accepting queer friends—either online or in-person—and dating people who don’t diminish your bisexuality is a great way to cultivate healthy conversations and surround yourself with people who don’t invalidate your sexuality.
Next up, read why Allan from Barbie might be gay.
