Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “Rumors that this person had different gender attraction as well as same gender attraction were created to make them seem straight.”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “If you headcanon this character as bi instead of gay you’re forcing heterosexuality on them.”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: (calls past mixed gender relationships of a bi person “straight relationships”)
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “As much as we’d like to let bisexuals into our community, when the going gets tough they’ll probably align themselves with heteros to save their skins.”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “So you’re only half queer?”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: (assumes all bi women date men and all bi men date women)
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “Bisexuals will never know what it’s like to experience real bigotry the way we do.”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “I’d rather have a straight ally represent me than a bi person, at least good allies acknowledge their privilege.”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “You have a preference for different gender people? So you’re actually hetero then?”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: (assumes all bi people date straight people)
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “Why would you need ‘bi pride,’ gay pride already celebrates same gender attraction, isn’t that enough? Do you really need to celebrate your heterosexual side too?”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “You need to acknowlege your straight passing privilege.”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: (bi person breaks up with them) “So it turns out they were hetero all along.”
Bi Person: …
Bi Person: “Sometimes Monosex-”
Gay and Lesbian Monosexuals: “Excuse me? Did you just lump US in with STRAIGHT PEOPLE? Do you realize how much it hurts to be put in the same category as your OPPRESSOR? Why are you obsessed with proving that you’re QUEERER THAN US? If you don’t issue us an APOLOGY and then NEVER use that word again it will prove that bi people are the most HOMOPHOBIC people in the world!”

bubblegum-tremens:

bi-privilege:

the universe did not converge in the series of improbable events that ended in your existence on this flying rock in the middle of space so that you could discredit the identity of teenage bisexual girls

This statement would be perfect if it didn’t discredit the identity of every other being on this flying rock.

this just in: i can in fact encourage people to support bi teenage girls, who experience some of the lowest levels of social support from their friends and family and some of the highest prevalence rates of mood and anxiety disorders and suicidality without discrediting everyone else’s identity, similar to how i can say ‘save the whales’ and not mean ‘and let everything else die.’

Some ways in which gay and lesbian people benefit from monosexism

bidyke:

First – some background:

I’ve been seeing more and more people on tumblr arguing that monosexism can’t exist because gay and lesbian people don’t benefit from the oppression of bi people

This is a rebuttal of this argument

However, monosexism isn’t about gay and lesbian people

Seriously, read the links

No, SRSLY

Pulling the discussion that way DERAILS IT YET AGAIN and draws attention away from the real issue – centering it around gay and lesbian people when it’s supposed to be about bi people and our oppression

I’m posting this anyway because JFC already

Now, some statistical facts (sources are linked):

Gay and lesbian people suffer less from suicidality

Gay and lesbian people suffer less sexual violence and intimate violence

Gay and lesbian people are less in poverty

Gay and lesbian people are less in need of food stamps

Gay and lesbian people are far less closeted at work

Gay and lesbian people are less erased in the media

Gay and lesbian youth are less bullied online

In years 2008 and 2009, out of over 200 million dollars given by US foundations to LGBT organizations as grants, not a single dollar went towards bisexual-specific organizations or projects. Trans exclusion notwithstanding, that means (white, cis) gay and lesbian people got pretty much all of it.

And there’s more

And more

And even that’s partial

Social benefits (all elaborated in my book please just read it if you want to know more, I promise it’s all in there):

Bisexual erasure stabilizes the heterosexual/homosexual binary. Acknowledging that it exists would insinuate that sexuality is changeable, making it impossible to argue that gay people were “born this way”. So monosexism makes it easier to legitimize homosexuality.

Bisexual erasure makes it possible to create (usually binary, cissexist) gender-segregated gay and lesbian environments. Because bisexual people always carry the “threat” of being with “other genders” and then “bringing them into the community”. So monosexism makes it easier to organize and maintain gay and lesbian communities.

Bisexual erasure makes it possible for gay and lesbian people to use respectability politics with regards to sex. Because bi men are viewed as closeted men who sneak out to have unsafe anonymous sex behind their wives’ backs, and because bi women are viewed as sluts who make lesbians look bad because they’re “sexually available to men”. So monosexism makes it easier for gay and lesbian people to appear sexually “moral”.

These are all points made by gay scholar Kenji Yoshino (and elaborated by me in my book). Go read his article.

Material benefits (all elaborated in my book please just read it if you want to know more, I promise it’s all in there):

Gay and lesbian people benefit from the work that bi people put in promoting and being active in queer movements/communities without having to credit them or give anything back to them.

Because bi people are excluded from leadership in these movements/communities, gay and lesbian people are the leaders and decision makers. That means they control communities’ agenda, money and resources.

Since internalized monosexism often makes bi people believe that bisexuality isn’t important enough to organize around, many contribute most of their activist time and energy to promoting gay and lesbian issues – again meaning queer movements benefit from the work of bi people at the expense of bi people and movements.

And of course there’s the part where (as stated above) almost all LGBT money goes to the GGGG part of it, and that bisexual people actually earn less money than gay and lesbian people.

These are points made by bisexual scholar and activist Miguel Obradors (and elaborated by me in my book). Go read his article.

And then there are other side privileges…

Then combine all this with the fact that bi people are DISPROPORTIONATELY WOMEN, PEOPLE OF COLOR AND TRANS PEOPLE. Then do the math.

Want to know more? Follow the goddamn links.

Now –

[Image: Samuel L. Jackson from the movie Pulp Fiction aiming a gun towards the camera looking angry (Say What Again meme). Top text: “SAY MONOSEXISM DOESN’T EXIST”. Bottom text: “ONE MORE TIME”]

androgynistic:

The word Monosexual and Monoromantic are so important because otherwise

when Bi/Pan/Omni people vent explicitly about Gay and Lesbian people straight people will side with us not to support us but because of their own Homophobic and Lesbophobic agenda

when Bi/Pan/Omni people vent explicitly about Straight people Gay and Lesbian people will side with us not in support of us but to co-opt our experiences and erase that our experiences with oppression are always linked to us being bi, which may help to fight Homophobia and Lesbophobia but do fuck all about Bipobia