kidgecat:

tomcats-and-tophats:

Straight women hurt bi women through homophobia, men hurt bi women through homophobia and misogyny, acting like bi women form a coherent and inherently benevolent allegiance with straight women by virtue of a nebulous idea of “relationship to men” is absolutely absurd and serves to do little other than continue to minimize the complexities in our experiences with both homophobia (from men and women) and misogyny

The idea that bi people can somehow “blend in” with straight people is absurd. We are not straight, and straight people will simply never be able to understand us, which means they’ll never be truly free of bi/homophobia towards us. The only way we can align ourselves with straight people is by closeting ourselves and habitully denying who we are, and that doesn’t make the homophobia go away. It simply masks our pain.

I can’t turn off being bi. I can’t turn off the hurt and fear I feel when the straight women I work with call people f*ggots, letting me and everyone else know that anyone who isn’t hetero isn’t welcome around them. I can’t be the Good Christian Heterosexual Woman my abusive straight mother wanted me to be. When I dated straight men after I was out, I had to deal with them being extra possessive of me because I was the double threat of both a woman and a woman who wasn’t exclusively attracted to men.

We can pretend, we can “appear straight” to outsiders by dating people of a different gender presentation, but that doesn’t change the fact that who we are is still in a marginalized class that bigots can still use to oppress us.