By Lisa Quark
When I began using the internet, I did not know there was a bisexual community. I lived in a small town, where I knew of no other bisexuals, except for those I read about who had died before I was born, for example, Anne Frank and Virginia Woolf. But with the internet I found my siblingren (a gender-inclusive term I created as a gender-inclusive alternative to brethren). Not only did I find them, but I was able to share in their knowledge. Before meeting my bisexual friend Cindy, I never even knew there was a bisexual flag!
The internet helped me discover so many things about my bisexual heritage. For the first time I was able to celebrate Bisexual Pride Day. But the people on the internet were the real treasure. They were able to encourage me in my coming out and sympathize with me when coming out to my parents didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped. (My parents are cool now, don’t worry.) They were able to point me to dating websites that accepted bisexual people. Some of them became my close friends—and all of them helped me navigate my bisexual life.
Even without the internet, I would probably have met some bisexual people in my “real,” away-from-keyboard life. Which, eventually, I did. But I couldn’t meet them when I was still living in my small town. And I could never have met those who lived far away, across the globe. For making the bisexual community truly global and within reach of even the most unaccepting and provincial areas, I—and we all—have the internet to thank.
Lisa Quark is an autistic bisexual woman living in the eastern U.S.