Bisexual visibility month: Recognizing biphobia is simple feminism
Kind of inspired by Steinem and some threads over the last few days.
Feminism recognizes that disproportionate violence against women in relationships is both cultural and systemic. This has been accepted since before I was born. The existence of relationship abuse is a problem that requires rethinking cultural norms around heterosexual relationships. And we've made some good progress in that area with marital rape laws, increased support for survivors, and better awareness of consent.
And most people sympathetic to feminism would say that intimate partner violence and rape in aggregate is a symptom of sexism in American culture.
Take the frequency of intimate partner violence (IPV) against heterosexual women. Double it. And you have the frequency of IPV against bisexual women. Approximately 50 percent of bisexual women will experience some form of IPV in their life. This relationship is true across multiple English-speaking countries including U.S., U.K, Canada, and Australia.
That difference — twice the risk — is what I call biphobia.
Straight men experience IPV as well, which is another expression of sexism albeit one with its own complexity. Compare the lifetime frequency between straight and bisexual men, and it is ...
... twice the risk.
I call that biphobia.
Let's look at passing for a moment.
Some argue that passing negates prejudice. But passing is just a bandaid. Passing occupies freeze-fawn branches of the threat response. And you may have escaped a beating, but you've given someone permission to treat you as inferior next time.
The emotional toll associated with this has a name: minority stress. Individuals who don't experience any violent prejudice or discrimination still have adverse health outcomes. As one joke/not-joke goes, "the trans agenda is an average lifespan." Just living in a toxic culture is a health risk.
This isn't a new concept. The novel Passing by Nela Larsen is nearly 100 years old. It discusses the emotional costs of passing as white in segregated America in the 1920s. LGBTQ communities have accepted that living honestly is an existential need that sometimes justifies putting other needs at risk.
Social and emotional isolation kills as many LGBTQ people as violence.
That difference — adverse health outcomes from minority stress — is also something I call biphobia.