How to Become a Bisexual/Queer-Identified/Questioning Person in Several Easy Steps

by Karen D.

(Four women’s experiences.)

1. Crush on your boyfriend’s female roommate. Spend way more time in your strained relationship than you should.

2. Date your first girlfriend, in college.

3. Tell EVERYBODY.

4. Have a terrifying existential crisis about “what you are.” Come out to your parents, who are more confused than you are.

5. Graduate, still date men and women. Feel excited about not being a LUG, then feel ashamed of yourself.

6. Debate whether it’s worth coming out to your extended family. Wonder whether you’ll be allowed to bring your girlfriend to your brother’s wedding.

***

1. Make out with boys when drunk.

2. Date boy.

3. Make out with girl when drunk (kissed a girl and I liked it).

4. Break up with boy.

5. Sudden desire to spend time with girl.

6. Watch first episode of The L Word.

7. Watch three whole seasons of The L Word … in two weeks.

8. Become Best Friends with girl.

9. Fall in love with girl.

10. Date girl.

11. Family is confused/concerned.

12. Still sometimes make out with boys.

13. Cut hair off.

14. Date another girl.

15. Become a top.

16. Date straight and straight-looking girls.

17. Develop “Shane Complex.”

18. Become an outspoken sex activist.

19. One day my girlfriend tops me and I really like it.

20. Enter working world, learn how to dress professionally.

21. If I like wearing dresses, am I attracted to men?

22. Try dating men.

23. Family is confused.

24. Grow hair out.

25. Make out with men.

26. Underwhelmed, but I like a man-made penis.

27. Attracted to men when they are handsome and seem like good guys.

28. Wonder.

29. Fall in love with a girl who loves me and likes to be both top and bottom.

30. She is beautiful and I am very happy.

31. Not out at work.

32. Human sexuality is not in the scope and sequence for 10th grade Geometry.

33. And yet, straight teachers show pictures of themselves with their partners in first-day powerpoints and on their desks.

34. I am visible and I am invisible. In love with a woman but still attracted to men.

35. Wouldn’t know what to say, or what would be okay.

36. I choose silence and safety.

***

1. Crush on boys who read books you like. Crush on boys who announce their attraction to you to the entire class. Crush on any and every male friend you make.

2. Develop a dazzlingly close friendship with the most fascinating girl you have ever met. After two years of sleepovers and cuddling, realize that you want to kiss her. And do.

3. Remember that you are in high school and homosexuality is something for only gross, perverted people. Recoil and tell the girl that you made a horrible mistake. But you still love her. Platonically, of course.

4. Agonize for a while over the implications of your attraction, because you are still attracted to many boys and (even though you won’t admit it to yourself) girls as well. Tell your closest friend, “I think I might be bisexual,” and wait for her horrified reaction. It doesn’t come. Instead, she acts like this is totally normal.

5. After the thing with the girl doesn’t work out and after exclusively dating men for years, feel uncomfortable identifying as “biexual,” but equally uncomfortable identifying as “straight.” Make up your own identity and realize that the shape of your genitalia is just not as important as the book you’re reading.

***

1. Pretend to be a lesbian in high school to “get back” at a boy you were seeing who was nonconsentually non-monogamous.

2. Realize that you actually have romantic feelings for your fake lesbian partner.

3. Come out as bisexual, but date solely men for the next seen years with the occasional casual lady-partner.

4. Realize that you’d rather sleep with women, and end a long-term relationship with a man to pursue the unexplored territory of actually dating women.

5. Embrace new identity as “gay” or “lesbian,” whichever is most poetic at the time.

6. Fall in love with a male friend, have a crisis of identity because “lesbians aren’t supposed to love guys!”

7. Remember that being queer doesn’t mean you can’t love men, too.

8. Dream of having a big house with multiple partners of various sexes and genders along with children and pets.

Karen D. wants to create more posts like these! If you have them, please send your experiences of being attracted to more than one gender to [email protected].