By Angélique “Angel’’ Gravely
The first time bisexual+ history saves me, I don’t understand the significance of what’s happening. I’m sitting in my first day of my first human sexuality class of my master’s program, struggling to hear my professor over the anger pounding in my chest. Incredulous that even here, with an out queer professor, biphobia has ambushed me once again.
I don’t want to start an argument when my professor misdefines bisexuality. I don’t want to be the angry Black woman picking fights on the first day of class. But I am so angry I cannot do as I once did, clenching my jaw and hurting myself instead of calling out what I know is wrong. I am too tired of hearing straight and gay people tell me that because I am bisexual I am not trustworthy, inclusive, necessary, or enough. I am fed up with letting monosexism have the last word.
Still, I am calm and articulate when I correct my professor. I am even calm the first time a classmate decides they must back our professor up. It’s only when the classmate implies I don’t know my own community well enough to understand how we describe ourselves that I become less polite, and an argument ensues.
No one backs me up when the argument escalates. Not my professor. Not the other bi students I’ll learn later are in the class. No one comes to my aid except bisexual+ history.
I haven’t memorized much of it yet. But I know enough to paraphrase the Bisexual Manifesto (see below) and its charge not to view us through a binary lens. I know enough to mention Lani Ka’ahumanu’s speech at the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights & Liberation, where she uplifted the link between bi and trans movements and our similar potential to disrupt oppressive systems. I know enough to understand that even when my professor doesn’t admit her mistake and my classmates don’t change their minds, bisexual+ history is on my side.
That experience helps me survive my remaining years in graduate school because it teaches me that bi+ history can protect me when professors don’t value bisexuality enough to educate themselves on it, when classes reference the bi+ community only as a footnote, or at my insistence. Bisexual+ history shields me from the messages that invalidation sends. Because it’s hard to accept that bi+ people are inconsequential to the LGBTQ+ movement overall when bi+ history teaches that from the homophile movement to the modern LGBTQ+ movement, from the first LGBTQ+ college student group to the first national *SGL/LGBTQ Black organization, we have been present, not just as participants but as leaders.
By realizing I am part of a long lineage of bi+ educators in schools, bathhouses, and wherever else we have been needed to create resources and education from our unique vantage points and multidimensional perspectives, I refuse to give into the isolation monosexism fosters. It’s hard to get stuck begging people to value us, when I know there are bi+ leaders who wanted so much better for us that they created an entire bisexual holiday (Celebrate Bisexuality Day on September 23) so we could rest in the certainty that we deserve celebration and joy no matter whether others validate us or not.
Knowing bi+ history saved me from succumbing to monosexism while I was in graduate school and it continues to save me to this day. Even as the scars from bi-negativity sting me, I can withstand the hurt because I know our identities are not contingent on who monosexism claims us to be. I know who I am and who we are as bi+ people because bi+ history tells me the truth. As long as I have bi+ history on my side, I will never again settle for believing anything else.
*SGL: same-gender-loving
Angélique “Angel’’ Gravely is a Philadelphia-based LGBTQ+ educator and the author of Finding the B in LGBTQ+ History: Tips and Tools for Learning Bisexual+ History. Find more of her work at angelgravely.com.