Last year, at age 39, I sat in a room full of other bi people for the first time. For most of us, this space organized by the nonprofit Still Bisexual offered us a rare sense of belonging. We all understood the unique ways we have had to code switch to survive in a society not intended for us—a society built on binaries that demands that we fit into one of two molds that never quite feels right.
Bi+ people are the invisible majority, making up approximately 60 percent of the LGBTQ community. Our invisibility isn't an accident. Our legal, political, and philanthropic systems work in tandem to reinforce the prevailing view of sexual identity as binary. This prevailing view has remained largely unchallenged by progressives even while they advocate for advancements in civil rights.
Progressives have been pushing against the moral majority for generations, with LGBTQ advocates often risking their lives for change. The movement has won protection against employment discrimination, a repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell," and the right to marry. I am heartened by this progress. However, when I protested California's ban on same sex marriage 15 years ago, I never thought bi+ people would continue to be left out of many of the wins for the broader LGBTQ community.
Take the landmark case Bostock v. Clayton County. The U.S. Supreme Court failed to name bi+ people, finding that an employer who fires an individual merely for being "gay or transgender" violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bi+ people were never once mentioned in Justice Neil Gorsuch's majority opinion, nor in the plaintiff's briefs.
Bostock is not an outlier. There are nearly no references to bi+ people in published legal opinions, including in the Supreme Court's historic same sex marriage decision. By refusing to name us, our courts risk denying bi+ people legal protections extended to others.
Our erasure from legal discourse is not an issue of semantics. Bi+ employees are less likely to be out at work, and those who are out report high levels of discrimination. Studies demonstrate that bi+ people earn less than gay, lesbian, and straight people. The law's role in producing and even insulating anti-bisexuality in the workforce is evident in these statistics alone.
Funding and political decisions shaped by anti-bisexuality have helped embed bi+ inequity in our legal system. According to legal scholars, the LGBTQ political movement "chooses which cases to uplift, fund, and support" and most concern monosexual plaintiffs. This perpetuates a cycle in which the courts' failure to name bi+ people in opinions delegitimizes bisexuality, which in turn cautions more advocates against bringing cases with bi+ plaintiffs.
It's not only the legal system that's rooted in anti-bisexuality. Bi+ advocates fighting for equality in education, health care, and other fields face similar roadblocks. Less than 1 percent of all domestic grant dollars awarded to LGBTQ communities and issues goes toward bi+ issues. This creates stark inequities with devastating consequences. Compared to gay, lesbian, and straight people, bi+ people suffer from higher rates of mental health illness, poverty, and sexual violence. Funding the larger LGBTQ movement does not result in a trickle down of funding for bi+ issues, and it certainly does not translate into protections for bi+ people. Perhaps this is why it took me 39 years to finally find a space organized for and by bi+ people.
Let's be clear: I am not saying that progressives harbor prejudice toward bi+ people. While anti-bisexuality can operate at the interpersonal level, it is systemic. In other words, the structure and ideology of anti-bisexuality is thoroughly embedded in all our systems and persists even in the absence of individual bad actors.
However, a progressive movement that's complicit in keeping one group invisible isn't living up to its values. It's time to dismantle anti-bisexuality that encircles all of us, and progressives can start by acknowledging it exists. We need philanthropists to correct funding disparities in ways that build the power of bi+ leaders. We need state bar associations to require ongoing training for lawyers on elimination of bi+ bias, and we need our allies to interrogate policies and practices that routinely produce inequitable outcomes for bi+ people.
Only then can progressives rightfully claim inclusivity. Only then can bi+ people gain the visibility we should have had all along.
Christina Fialho is an attorney in California and the founder/president of Rewrite the BiLine.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
