How does the bi community define visibility?
Bi Visibility Week has just come to a close. It’s celebrated internationally every year September 16-23.
By Angie Pulmano and Sheridan Hunter
September 24, 2024 at 7:03PM PDT
How do members of the bisexual community define visibility, and what makes visibility so important for the queer community?
Alicia Alvarez remembers when she came out to her family.
“I’m half Mexican and half European, and I didn’t come out to either [of] my parents until I was 18,” said Alvarez, an award-winning graduate student journalist at USC Annenberg. “I was really lucky that my brother, my half brother, on my father’s side also came out a little bit before me.”
As a journalist, Alvarez focuses on cultural and international stories in her reporting. She spoke about her experiences as a woman of color in the bi community.
To her surprise, “[My dad] was actually really accepting and really welcoming, and he really started asking me more questions about the community,” she said. “He started educating himself and then, in turn, my Hispanic family started educating themselves.”
According to data from the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute, almost 14 million adults in the U.S. identify as LGBTQ+, and over half as bisexual. Despite these numbers, visibility for the bi community remains a challenge, and bi-phobia -- discrimination against bisexual individuals -- contributes to the erasure of the community.
Alvarez said she experienced previous partners invalidating her identity.
“They just don’t really understand that just because I’m dating men more often doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in women, or that I don’t still identify as bisexual,” she said.
Stereotypes also contribute to the erasure bi people face.
“Especially for bi women,” Alvarez said. “We’re [seen as] straight with a little bit of zest.”
Bisexual men are often stereotyped to be gay and questioning.
Dr. Mimi Hoang, co-founder and board member of the grassroots non-profit Los Angeles Bi+ Task Force, spoke about common misconceptions of the community.
”You know, your family may not accept you ... I think there’s still a lot of negative stereotypes that bisexual people are promiscuous or unfaithful,” she said. “There’s that mislabeling that also happens that’s kind of a microaggression or [form of] erasure.”
So where does this culture of invisibility come from? In the 1950s, during the Cold War, queer Americans were targeted in workplaces when many people felt threatened by communists, immigrants and queer communities. Tens of thousands of queer folks lost their jobs in the federal government or were forced to resign due to an order signed by President Eisenhower during an era called “the Lavender Scare.”
PBS released a documentary in 2019 about the Lavender Scare. USC Annenberg professor and senior producer on the documentary, Barbara Hyde Pierce, said the movement ultimately galvanized the queer community.
“It was a horrible thing,” she said. “The aim was to drive them underground, to make them invisible, but eventually, what that actually ended up doing was to make them very visible and very angry. It led to the Gay Rights movement, which we’re still seeing the effects of today.”
Hoang lists just some of the places these days for bi folks to be visible and immersed in community.
“Bowling, potlucks, movie nights, things like that,” she said. “There’s also different discussion groups that are around L.A. as well ... What better way to be visible in going to these events, right?”
At USC, however, it’s not that easy.
“I definitely haven’t really made my identity known that much at USC,” said Alvarez, the grad student. “I feel safe in our own bubble of Annenberg, but if I were to go wearing the pride pin, I definitely would be concerned that I would get at least some type of verbal harassment.”
While progress has been made and safe spaces have become more common, people like Alvarez say there is still much more work that needs to be done for bi people to feel both visible and safe.