Tag Archives: BiVisibility Day

Uniting as a community to support bisexual awareness and visibility

With Bisexual Awareness Week running from 16 to 23 September 2022, Birkbeck Students’ Union LGBTQ+ officer, Tonya Moralez (Xe/Xem), talks about why it’s an important week, and what their plans are as LGBTQ+ officer to support the bisexual community.

Bisexual Awareness Week (also known as Bi Week) is an important part of the LGBTQ+ calendar and is different from Bisexual Awareness Month, which takes place in March. It was co-founded in 2016 by charities GLADD and BiNet USA to celebrate bisexuality and bring awareness to bisexual or bisexual plus (Bi+) people within the LGBTQ+ community. As well as celebration, the aim is to educate about obstacles faced by the bisexual community and to encourage positive action and policies.   

One of the well-known challenges unique to individuals identifying as Bi+, is that those who ‘accept’ homosexuality can still be prejudiced or condescending towards Bi+ people by not taking their sexual orientation seriously. 

Examples of this include Bi+ people being told that they’re ‘greedy’ for ‘wanting’ more than one gender, or that they must be ‘confused’ about their orientation. Often these types of comments come not only from conventional heteronormative, cis-gendered people, but also from members of the LGBTQ+ community itself. In my early years within the community, I regularly heard people claim with mocking frustration that they wouldn’t date bisexuals, out of fear that Bi+ people couldn’t be monogamous or loyal due to having multi-sexual interests. Without question, this sentiment is Bi-phobic. 

The fact that Bisexuality has often been fetishized in the media does little to help this. Often portrayed as changeable, overtly attractive, desirable and trendy, Bi+ characters are either reduced to sexual objects or plot devices. This sort of reductive portrayal can contribute to the false idea that Bi+ people’s challenges are trivial, and make it difficult for them to feel truly seen and accepted by both sides: ‘straight’ and ‘gay’. 

I think most LGBTQ+ people can agree how patronizing and invalidating it is to be told that you don’t actually know who you are, or that you should be something else. To hear these sorts of comments still regularly directed towards Bi+ people from both outside and within the LGBTQ+ community, is not only annoying, but deeply saddening. Enough of this repeated invalidation of your identity over time, can start to take its toll emotionally and psychologically. That’s why Bi-visibility Day and Bisexual Awareness Week are so important; those identifying as Bisexual, Omnisexual or Pansexual, should be visible and listened to in the LGBTQ+ community. 

I personally feel that the LGBTQIAA++ community is reaching such a large and diverse scale, that sections within the community need to have sub-groups and communities to support each category’s individual needs as much as possible. Bisexuals (along with all other identities) have their own unique social needs and issues to be accommodated and considered. Part of the solution, in my view, is to have Bi+ specific events, educational channels, and spotlight whenever possible, to raise awareness of these needs. The hope is that these activities will not only empower Bi+ people with words, resources, and information allowing them to find their voices and express their sexual orientation and identity with confidence, but also create plans for positive social action.   

As the LGBTQ+ officer at Birkbeck, I will organize events to celebrate each sub-group within the LGBTQ+ community, and ensure that a healthy portion of these are focused on Bi+ specific themes. I will work with requests and feedback received from Bi+ students within the LGBTQ+ network at Birkbeck to host Bi-visibility focused events, workshops that are shaped collaboratively and sensitively. I will also ensure I use Birkbeck Student Union’s LGBTQ+ platform to create Bi+ awareness content, to increase understanding within the LGBTQ+ community itself. 

Let us work together to ensure our Bisexual students feel as visible and supported as others within the community, let us work together to have Bisexual voices amplified by the LGBTQ+ community and allies at Birkbeck and beyond. 

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