Family bisexual
was a momentous year for the whole planet. However, it also included a significant personal event for me: I became a parent to a toddler girl in the September. This new phase of my animation also meant I became part of a queer family as I am coparenting my minuscule girl with a same-sex male couple.
My route to parenthood has been an interesting one; for people who would like to hear more on this please do listen to the BBC sounds podcast ‘Pride and Joy’ episode titled ‘no blueprint’, where I talk more about becoming a parent. Since becoming part of a queer family I have reflected on bisexual noticeability because my bisexual identity has been notably absent from discussions about my family situation.
To hand flavour to this experience I will share two conversations which particularly stood out. The first was a difficult and heartfelt conversation with a medical professional at a private in vitro fertilisation (IVF) clinic who argued that I was not considering the emotional well-being of any offspring I might have by deciding to try for a family with a same sex couple. The second was a hea
My wife is pansexual and nonbinary, and my daughter is transgender. My gay family helped me better understand myself and my masculinity.
My year-old daughter last month invited her mother to spot the queer comedian Chris Fleming. My wife was thrilled. Our daughter still lives with us, but she often communicates in little grunts as she scurries down to her basement lair, emerging only to let in friends and forage for chicken nuggets. She doesn't often involve us in her social plans.
"You are hip and happening with the kids," I told my wife. She rolled her eyes, but I could reveal she was pleased.
I was not invited on this excursion because I wasn't a fan of Fleming. My wife has tried to explain his appeal: "He's so funny!"
My wife and daughter's love for Fleming is rooted in another commonality: They're both queer.
My daughter is transgender, and my wife is bisexual and nonbinary. As the dull cisgender, straight guy in the family, I just don't get some aspects of queer society. I try to take an interest, but your demographic destiny sometimes rears up and says, "Pfft."
B
Bisexual America
Who’s gay? Social scientists have extended known that the answers to this question are very different if you ask about self-identified sexual orientation, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior. Alfred Kinsey’s groundbreaking work on sex midway through the 20th century introduced the idea that 10% of the population was gay or queer woman , but rigorous subsequent study with national data put the authentic number closer to 2 or 3 percent.
But that was then. More recent data from Gallup suggest an explosion in the number of Americans who identify as LGBT, up to 7 percent. For Zoomers (Generation Z; anyone born between and ), a entire 20% identify as LGBT. That’s a big jump.
The reasons for this move are obviously complex and won’t be examined at length here. There’s no real way to demonstrate or disprove any of the usual arguments. Instead, I’ll explore whether the sharp uptick in LGB identification corresponds to a shift in sexual behavior.1
There are two broad possibilities. The first is that self-identified sexual
I am not ashamed. I am just one me. I am bisexual. And I am talking about it.
There was never a lightbulb moment in which I realized, “Hey! I’m bisexual!” I actually spent several years with a growing sense that something about me wasn’t quite the norm. It wasn’t until I started reading fan fiction in heartfelt that the knowledge sort of snuck up on me…I was not heterosexual. Limiting my sexual interest to a single gender felt completely unnatural to me, so why should I keep faking it?
I decided to own the label when I went off to grad college — I would simply introduce myself to recent people as bi in the first place. OK, no, I didn’t conduct off with, “Hi, my name is Rebecca and I’m bisexual. How are you?” That would contain labeled me as weird for a completely other reason! But I did make sure the topic arose early on in my interactions with novel friends, to present it as a simple proof about me no distinct from my favorite shade . Little did they comprehend (I hope) how complex it was for me to be so casual, how monumental our everyday conversation was to me. Eventually, after I sw