B

B — The B in LGBT+ is for BISEXUAL and BIGENDER. The B in BDSM is for BONDAGE.

BATHHOUSE — A gay public sex venue.

Before indoor plumbing was common, bathhouses were public spaces for people to bathe. As showers and toilets become the norm in homes, bathhouses became spaces for men to cruise. Sometimes they’re saunas; sometimes they’re bathrooms in gyms.

Bathhouses are not only public sex venues; they’re also community and social spaces, many doubling as gyms, performance venues, and dance clubs. Bathhouses tend to be more social than other physical gay cruising spaces, like cottages or parks.

The role of bathhouses in modern gay culture is shifting as people increasingly use online spaces for cruising and private spaces for group sex. Public sex venues became less popular in the 1980s during the AIDS crisis, and although they experienced a short resurgence they are less popular again now. Monied queers are hosting private parties in their apartments and hired-out venues, or in private members’ clubs which boast exclusive lists and membership fees of $150+. Bathhouses have connotations of shame and stigma and dark secret encounters; private parties are luxurious and are somehow both more exclusive and communal. The decline of genuinely public sex spaces locks out low-income people and anyone who lacks the social capital to network their way into an exclusive event.

Agism may also be a factor. Younger people have new modes of cruising and navigating anonymous sex, and are not necessarily invested in keeping physical spaces open because they don’t have the same utility to them. Is it worth it, history for history’s sake? Some young people reject everything tied with history because it’s old, and old people are seen as gross.

But older queers still use bathhouses. Like gay bars, bathhouses are closing not because people aren’t using them, but because gentrification and rising rents are making them unsustainable as businesses.

Bathhouses are also targeted by legislation which effectively criminalizes queerness and perceived sexual deviancy under the guise of sanity or hygiene laws.

see also: SEX (n.); TRANSMISOGYNY; TERF

BIOLOGICAL SEX — see: SEX (n.).

BIOPOLITICS — The intersection of biology and politics. The social and political power over life. Politics of the body.

Biopolitics is a wide term encompassing biotechnology, eugenics, race theory and scientific racism, the body as a political weapon (e.g., suicide bombing), and environmentalism. Foucault used it to refer to the application and impact of political power on all aspects of human life.

The social contract—the state will protect and the citizens will participate, pay taxes, and sacrifice their bodies to war—is obsolete. There is no opting out, and the state will kill you if you try. Stateless people are extremely precarious: Palestinians, Kurds, any diaspora, refugees, and asylum seekers being some examples.

The state regulates the body: healthcare, sexual practices, environmental issues, and disaster relief (or lack thereof). The state has tried to regulate trans people and queer people out of existence, through lack of healthcare (AIDS crisis, trans healthcare), queerphobic adoption policies, and criminalizing queerness. The state also uses biopolitics to target people of color, women, poor people, and disabled people, and makes their lives less livable.

Biopolitical resistance is happening all around us. It’s in indigenous movements, squatting, food banks, communal childcare practices, and queer porn. Any act which empowers marginalized people (including yourself) to live more full and dignified lives is an act of biopolitical resistance.

see also: HIV; TRANS HEALTHCARE; FASCISM

BIPHOBIA — Fear of, or contempt for, bisexuals. Behavior based on those feelings. A system of oppression in which bisexuals are marginalized and subject to violence.

Biphobia is the denial that bisexuality is valid, and the association of bisexuality with negative stereotypes or behaviors. It’s also called “monosexism,” which more broadly enforces a hetero/homo binary that alienates bisexuals and asexuals.

Bisexuals experience discrimination from both straight and queer communities. Biphobia takes the form of outright violence and discrimination, fetishization, and erasure. There are unique discriminations, stereotypes, and assumptions around bisexuality which make bisexuals vulnerable. Biphobia also affects people who are pansexual, polysexual, and other queer sexualities which are not asexual or exclusively monosexual.

Bisexuality is subject to many stereotypes and misconceptions. Bisexuality does not require an equal attraction to different genders: you can be bisexual if you’re mostly attracted to one gender, but also occasionally attracted to others. Likewise, bisexuality doesn’t require sexual experience with more than one gender (or any): it’s about attraction, not behavior. Bisexuals are bisexual regardless of who they’re in a relationship with. Bi people cannot be in a “straight” relationship because they are not straight—however, the dynamics of bisexuals being in a “gay,” “lesbian,” or “queer” relationship are more complicated, and a bi person may choose to describe their relationship that way whilst still asserting their bisexuality.

Biphobia is a particular aspect of homophobia/queerphobia, and shares many of the same characteristics as monosexual homophobia: assuming bi people want to pass as straight; assuming bisexuals are just seeking attention; fetishizing and objectifying bisexual women; lack of access to, and representation in, public life; and physical and emotional violence.

Like other queerphobias, there is the assumption that bisexuality is a phase; but both queer and straight communities perpetuate the idea that bisexuals will eventually “settle down” and “pick a side” of either being gay or straight. Bisexuals are assumed to be “greedy,” promiscuous, and incapable of monogamy. This overlaps with stereotypes about gay men, but bisexuals are also assumed to be unsatisfied unless they are in sexual relationships with men and women. Of course, bisexuals are no more or less likely to be promiscuous or non-monogamous than other people.

Biphobia is gendered. Bisexual women are especially fetishized, and bisexual men are especially vilified. Bisexuality is more acceptable in women because it caters to heterosexual men’s fantasy about women having sex with women; the existence of bisexual men is itself a threat to the fragile heterosexuality of the straight man, who is afraid of being hit on and seduced by another man. One common manifestation of biphobia is the “seeking bisexual unicorn girl” on dating apps, which fetishizes bisexual women as promiscuous fuck toys for straight-man-heteroflexible-woman couples to project their fantasies onto; she is a unicorn because she’s not real, just a fantasy. In the 1980s and 1990s bisexual men were demonized for “spreading AIDS and HIV” to straight women, when their bisexuality was less of a factor than the complete lack of access to both healthcare and safer sex information about HIV/AIDS and women. Bisexual men are also fetishized by straight women, albeit to a lesser extent than bisexual women are fetishized by straight men.

Bisexuals are rarely represented in the media, and most representations are biphobic: bisexuals are portrayed as violent and mentally ill; ruthless seducers; or cheaters and betrayers to straightness, gayness, and their partners. The implication is that bisexuality is selfish, amoral, and hedonistic.

Bisexuals are also under-represented and under-served in queer communities, even though bisexuals (or, queer people who are not exclusively homosexual) outnumber gays and lesbians. Bisexuals lack our own community because we have such little and poor representation, so we tend to identify with a gay community or a straight community instead. We’re also pressured, from straight and queer communities, to blend into monosexuality.

One key factor of biphobia is that bisexuals are erased when they’re in relationships with people of the same gender and assumed to be gay, or a different gender and assumed to be straight.

When bisexuals are assumed to be straight, some people consider this “straight passing privilege,” which allows bi people to avoid direct violence and discrimination; but erasure is its own violence, and the absence of violence is premised on denial of their bisexuality. Biphobia also includes telling bisexuals that they don’t have a legitimate “queer experience” if they are assumed to be straight.

Being an outsider and rejected by the in-group of people who are supposed to be like you is more painful and emotionally damaging than being rejected by mainstream society. Bisexuals face this rejection from the queer community (as do queer people of color, fat queers, and queers who are alienated by queer culture such as poor queers, disabled queers, and sober queers). Some gay people assert that bisexual men are homophobic and afraid to claim their gayness. “Gold star” gays and lesbians are monosexual gays who have never had sex or relationships with people of the opposite sex; this positions bisexuality below monosexuality in a hierarchy of “authentic” queerness. Many gay people refuse to date bisexuals because they are “tainted” with a less legitimate queerness, or because the monosexual fears that the bisexual isn’t earnest in their queerness and will eventually “return” to heteronormativity.

Bisexuals are more likely than gays, lesbians, and heterosexuals to suffer from: mood and anxiety disorders like depression; hypertension; smoking; risky drinking; and suicidal ideation. Bisexual women who are in a relationship with a monosexual person are more likely to suffer domestic violence. Bisexuals are less likely to come out to their healthcare providers, and by extension are more likely to get incomplete safer sex information. Bisexuals are likely to earn less than straight people, lesbians, and gay people; and they are more likely to live in poverty.

Bisexuals suffer these discriminations and violences regardless of whether they are read accurately as bisexual or inaccurately as monosexually gay or straight. Bisexuals don’t have “straight privilege.”

In the 80s bisexuality was excluded from research on sexuality, deemed to be “secondary homosexuality.” In 2005, a study called “Sexual Arousal Patterns of Bisexual Men” allegedly “proved” that bisexuality in men does not exist. The media jumped on it, claiming to have “solved the problem of bisexuality.”

Subsequent studies, including by the original author, have proved it wrong. Even today, cishet and LGBT+ publications alike fail to account for bisexuality, and bisexuals are often not included in research on sexuality. A recent trend is speculating why so many “straight” men have “gay” sex with other men, whist completely evading the possibility of bisexuality as an explanation.

In 2015, biphobia was added to the name of the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), which falls on May 17 every year. It was previously named the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT), and was started in 2005 as the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO).

The word “bisexual” is subject to unique scrutiny. People get fixated on “bi = 2” and implore that bisexuality is therefore a “binary” sexuality meaning attraction to the “same” and “opposite” genders, or men and women. Bisexuals do not reinforce the gender binary by claiming the label “bisexual.” “Bi” can mean “two,” but also means “twice,” as in “bimonthly.” Likewise, “oct” means eight but October is the tenth month in the year; we’re able to appreciate that the meaning of words isn’t necessarily anchored to their original meanings or etymologies.

Despite not really being any more problematic a term than “gay” and “lesbian,” “bisexual” gets scrutinized, dissected, and problematized to a much higher degree. Biphobia pressures bisexuals (and people who aren’t hetero or homosexual) to reject “bisexual” as a label and instead pick something less “problematic,” to “pick a side” (hetero/homo), or to reject labels altogether. This further divides what could be a bisexual community. Extra scrutiny of “bisexual” forces us to constantly defend our label of choice.

There are other, newer words to describe bisexuality which some people prefer: “pansexual,” “polysexual,” and “omnisexual” among them. But “bisexual” is still extremely relevant and has a long history of activism. It’s the most commonly understood sexuality to describe attraction which isn’t limited to one gender. “Queer” also encompasses bisexuality. We should totally embrace having new words to describe things as complex as sexuality, but in activism and forming community there is value in highlighting similarities as well as differences, and building solidarity based on those similarities (e.g., “gay” or “queer” to encompass all LGBTQIA+ identities). Having an umbrella term is valuable when we face erasure and invisibility.

Like all systems of oppression, biphobia intersects with other marginalizations: classism, racism, ableism, misogyny, agism, transphobia, and fatphobia.

BISEXUAL — Someone who is attracted to more than one gender, someone who is attracted to two or more genders, someone who is attracted to the same and other genders, or someone who is attracted to people regardless of their gender.

Bisexual is both a noun (“She’s a bisexual”) and an adjective (“He’s bisexual”). It’s the B in LGBT+.

The definition of bisexual has shifted from its older meaning, “Someone who is attracted to the same and opposite genders.” All major bisexual organizations now use an updated definition, which allows the term to include non-binary people.

Until the late 1800s, the word bisexual was interchangeable with “hermaphrodite” (a term now outdated and rejected in favor of “intersex”). The first use of bisexual to describe sexual attraction was in American neurologist Charles Gilbert Chaddock’s 1892 translation of Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis (1886). Alfred Kinsey’s research in the 1940s and 1950s popularized the concept of bisexuality, even though he rejected the modern use of the word.

Bisexuals are the largest single group in the LGBT+ community. Because of biphobia and bisexual erasure, bisexuality is often interpreted as homosexuality. In an American study from 2013, four in ten LGB adults surveyed identified as bi (with 30% identifying as gay men, and 19% identifying as lesbians).

Bisexuals were and are very involved in LGBT+ rights movements, and civil rights movements more broadly. Bi activist Stephen Donaldson (aka Donny the Punk) founded the Student Homophile League at Columbia University in 1966, and the university recognized it in 1967, making it the first officially recognized queer student group. Brenda Howard, an active member of the Gay Liberation Front and considered the “mother of Pride” for her role in coordinating a rally to commemorate the one-year anniversary in 1970 of the Stonewall riots, was a bi activist.

The modern bisexual political movement began in the 1970s. In 1972 the National Bisexual Liberation group was founded in New York City by bi activist Don Fass; they issued “The Bisexual Expression,” most likely the earliest bisexual newsletter. The same year, a Quaker group called the Committee of Friends on Bisexuality issued their “Ithaca Statement on Bisexuality” in support of bisexuals. In January 1977, one of the first pieces of successful gay rights anti-discrimination legislation in the US was passed in Dade County, Florida, after successful campaigning by Alan Rockway, a psychologist and bi activist who co-authored the ordinance; this was a short-lived victory and the ordinance was replaced on 7 June that year following a national anti-gay rights campaign led by Anita Bryant and wasn’t reinstated until 1 December 1998. In 1979, the first black gay delegation to meet with White House staff was organized by A. Billy S. Jones, who was a bisexual and a founding member of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, and a core organizer of the 1979 National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights, as well as the first national conference for gay and lesbian people of color, the “Third World Conference: When Will the Ignorance End?” By the late 70s, activist and support groups for bisexuals had been created in Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, New York City, and the Bay Area.

The 1980s saw a number of “firsts”: the foundation of the first explicitly bisexual political organization, BiPOL, (1983, San Francisco); the first bisexual rally (1984 outside the Democratic National Convention in San Fransisco, organized by BiPOL); the first regional bisexual conference in the US (1984, East Coast Conference on Bisexuality in Storrs School of Social Work at the University of Connecticut, with about 150 people participating); the first US-national bisexual newsletter (1988, Gary North, “Bisexuality: News, Views, and Networking”); the first non-heterosexual veteran to testify in front of Congress (1989, bisexual Cliff Arnesen, on gay, lesbian, and bisexual veterans’ issues); and the first BiCon UK (1984, London). The Boston Bisexual Women’s Network, the oldest bisexual women’s group still running, was founded in 1983 when they began publishing their bi-monthly newsletter, BI Women, the longest-existing bisexual newsletter in the US.

Bisexuals were also active in combating the AIDS crisis in the 80s: doing safer sex outreach, and insisting that women, and bisexual men who have sex with men, be counted in AIDS statistics. Bisexual activist Veneita Porter, of the Prostitutes’ Union of Massachusetts and Call Off Your Tired Old Ethics (COYOTE) advocated for women, trans people, and injection drug users living with AIDS in the mid-80s. Cynthia Slater, openly bi and HIV-positive, organized the first Women’s HIV/AIDS Information Switchboard in 1985. One of the first needle exchanges in the US was set up by bi activist Liz Highleyman in 1991 with the founding of the Boston ACT UP IV League.

The 1990s saw yet more developments: BiNet US (the first and oldest national bi group in the US) was founded in 1990; the first academic course on bisexuality in the US was also established in 1990 (by Susan Carlton at UC Berkley); meanwhile, BiPhoria, the UK’s oldest extant bi organization, was formed in Manchester. Bisexuality began to be included in large-scale surveys about sexuality as its own identity, and a subject worthy of its own research. The Journal of Bisexuality, the first academic journal on bisexuality, was founded by Fritz Klein in its current iteration in 1999, though some sources suggest Klein began collaboratively publishing the journal in 1982. The bisexual pride flag, designed by Michael Page, was unveiled on December 5, 1998: three horizontal stripes (magenta, lavender, and royal blue at a ratio of 2:1:2). Page explained the design on the now-defunct biflag.com:

The key to understanding the symbolism of the Bisexual pride flag is to know that the purple pixels of color blend unnoticeably into both the pink and blue, just as in the “real world,” where bi people blend unnoticeably into both the gay/lesbian and straight communities.

Current bisexual activist organizing is more likely to be explicitly queer in its approach than gay rights organizing. Ongoing bisexual issues include: fighting domestic and sexual violence; poverty; access to healthcare; and resisting the simple “inclusion” of bisexual people into positions of power, and instead challenging power structures which disenfranchise bisexuals.

Other words which have the same definition as bisexual, though they have different connotations, are “pansexual,” “polysexual,” and “omnisexual.” Bisexuals might also call themselves “gay,” “lesbian,” and/or “queer,” either in addition to bisexual, or alternatively.

There is a fascination with the difference between bisexual experience and bisexual identity. In a 2006 study, 73% of men in New York City who had sex with men identified as straight. However, bisexuality is defined by sexual attraction, not sexual experience; and like all gender and sexuality labels, it’s up to each person to define their own experience and identity.