"Straight Passing"
This poem is about how I feel in response to bi-erasure, both in the cis-het community and the LGBT one.
Content Warnings: Biphobia
By Emily Metcalfe
I hate the term "straight passing". I am not straight. I'm bi and demisexual, when I'm in a relationship, regardless of that person's gender, I'm still bi. When I'm single, I'm still bi.
When you say "straight passing", all that does is erase who I am. When you look at me and tell me I look straight, you're just saying that you think I'm something different to who I know I am.
When coming out to a friend, one of the first times I'd said the word 'bi', meaning me, I was told I "don't look bi". I look straight. That's not who I am.
***
I hate it when people say "gay" as a term to include me too. I'm part of that wider community but there are more letters in the acronym than G.
Yes, I feel something inside me relax in the spaces you call "gay", something I didn't even realise was tense until I walked in. Yes, I can be myself here - hold my partner's hand and kiss them more freely than I sometimes can in other venues. But I am still bi.
With a different partner I suddenly no longer belong. I'm not quite like you anymore, and you think it's fine to tell me this space isn't for me. But I was bi all along, you just wouldn't see it.
***
I'm no more gay than I am straight or straight than I am gay. I'm part of a spectrum, a planet full of diversity, not defined by the polar opposites, pulling and pushing.
Emily Metcalfe is the founder of Leeds LGBT+ Literature Festival and Book Club and has been an LGBT+ activist in Leeds since 2014. They can often be found in queer book stores and cafes, and will need to move house soon to make room for their TBR pile!
https://nettikasinosite.com the part about being told "you don't look bi" hit close to home, because I've had friends say something similar after I mentioned being with a woman for years. What stuck with me was the line about feeling something relax in gay spaces but still being told those spaces aren't for you with a different partner, which captures that weird in-between feeling so well. I've noticed bi folks often end up doing the emotional labor of explaining ourselves twice, once outside the community and once inside it.