In the month or so that I have been absent from here, a lot has been swirling in my head. I have started multiple posts but haven't actually finished a complete thought in any of them. Since my surgery I have been focusing on healing and have found that even thinking is exhausting. As the days pass by I feel a little better and/or different. I am back to doing some writing and even conducted an interview last night. The conversation I held with this man has hopefully sparked enough thought to get my first back-in-action post out.
I was contacted by a promoter to take a look at a web series based on the "controversial subject of the blurring of gender known as “bisexuality”. And while I uncomfortably read that statement linking gender and sexuality, I decided to watch the series, look into the man behind the movie and have an open mind when reviewing it. The series was about a woman who identified as a lesbian but found herself interested in pursuing a relationship with a man. The story takes you through the trials and tribulations of both main characters when dealing with their peers etc. The series itself was engaging enough, but the man behind it was who got me thinking.
During our interview, the writer spoke about his life as a bisexual man. I was quite candid about my feelings on the bisexual label and how they have morphed throughout my own maturity and self identity. And while I am not bisexual, nor do I know many people that honestly identity as bisexual (outside of the fashion trend), I found it interesting that he faces the same challenges as many of us in the LGBT community, or most specifically the smaller subcultures of the community. He considers himself queer, as do I. Queer itself is a broad label. For me, queer allows me to be something other. Other than what? It doesn't matter. Just other. It made sense then that he identified similarly.
Up until last night I would have said that I have very little in common with someone who is bisexual. It always seemed like they had their cake and ate it too; when the world came crashing down they could opt to jump on the "normal" bandwagon. However I learned last night that the bisexual community does indeed belong to the bigger LGBT community and that they fit into society more sometimes only because that is what society has determined, not what they have. The bisexual community is very much like the smaller gender queer and transgender communities in the fact that they seem to always be battling the very community they are fighting the same fight as. It makes me sad when I step back and look at the intolerance, when in fact we are all victims of the same intolerance on the grander scale.
I admit I have never reached out to the bisexual community. But I also admit I never gave anyone in that community the opportunity to show me just how much we are the same. We all want to know we belong, to be a part of something bigger, something stronger, something that will fight for who we are. He too is an "other". And even if I don't understand it, I am tolerant and accepting of it and believe the "B" in LGBT does belong.
