Cryberspace

Before I start, I will say frankly that yes, this was prompted by a recent incident in the FFXIV fandom where a well-known fan artist expressed sentiments that many others (myself included) felt were biphobic. I am not naming that fan artist because if you're in the fandom you're probably already aware of it and if you're not, well, it's out there, and this isn't a callout post. I am not addressing that artist directly because I don't know him or follow his work, and he's already been addressed directly and in good faith by people more familiar with him. This is aimed at a more general audience, with the intended goal of promoting greater understanding.

Just to absolutely emphasize this, do not send the artist hateful or harassing messages. It will not help anyone.

In all of this, it also important to bear in mind that queer people of all stripes are under attack to various degrees all over the world, and the fact that we are all navigating our safety and wellbeing outside of fandom only intensifies the hurt when we feel attacked from those we consider our own. With that in mind, it's important to keep some perspective. First, it's fandom. Fandom is important to many of us, and as with any group context, how we behave toward one another matters, but fandom is also a small niche hobbyist subculture and as serious as it may feel in the heat of the moment, this came about in a discussion about who gets to have their OC kiss a pixel person.

Second, the incident that sparked this is fundamentally an intracommunity conflict, regarding the way LGBTQIA+ people of different identities treat one another; I'm primarily addressing that audience, and frankly I think the majority of my followers are some flavor of queer (though of course there's some straight-and-cis folks in there and you're also welcome here so long as you're chill). To me, the artist in question who expressed the biphobic sentiment is still fundamentally a part of my community even if I don't know him, even if he wouldn't much care for me as an individual, even if he wouldn't think the same of me. The LGBTQIA+ community is not a social club, it's a political alliance, and at the end of the day we all need each other more than I think we sometimes realize. That informs how I respond to things like this, even when someone within the community isn't behaving well toward others. I also don't want to imply that homophobia doesn't exist within fandom, or that bi fans are immune to perpetuating it by virtue of being bi. Just as it is possible for gay people to perpetuate bigotry toward other queer identities, it is possible for bi people to perpetuate homophobia, and we all bear a responsibility to be mindful.

With that incredibly long preface out of the way, here's two videos from trans bisexual YouTuber Verity Ritchie that I think offer accessible context to some common anti-bisexual tropes. Each is under 20 minutes long. Obviously, this is not a comprehensive history of biphobia (though the creator has a lot of other videos about bisexuality and bi history, and if you find these two informative, I do encourage you to go watch more).

Because society is gendered, anti-bisexual tropes are also gendered, and manifest in different ways. Bi women experience a type of biphobia that intersects with misogyny; bi men experience a particular type of biphobia because they are men; nonbinary people will experience types of biphobia that intersect with transphobia and cissexism.

But if you watched both videos, you may notice a common trope that emerges: the bisexual as an insidious, malevolent interloper, invading both straight and queer spaces and tainting them, ruining them, making them unsafe. The bisexual as a dangerous outsider who fundamentally does not belong, and cannot be trusted.

Many bisexuals, I think, are familiar with the feeling of being perceived this way, and the sense of isolation that often comes with it. Before coming into contact with queer community and queer history, we may not be able to understand or explain why we are experiencing this, or why we react so strongly to it. But it does go deeper than simply rejection and hurt feelings. There is history to this trope.

And when someone says, "This used to be a safe space but then they [a group that implicitly or explicitly includes bisexuals] came in and ruined it," this is the trope that is invoked, intentionally or not.

Hearing this from within queer fandom strikes a particular nerve for me, not because it is shocking, but because it is so familiar.

You may also recognize this trope if you're a queer person of color, or asexual, or transgender, or nonbinary, or a lesbian. It turns out to be infinitely reusable.

And to anyone who has spent a fair amount of time in this fandom and interacted extensively with other creators, it is just... self-evidently obvious that there are a lot of queer fans here shipping all kinds of ships. Quite a few of those fans are bisexual or pansexual (and I've been using bi and bisexual as umbrella terms here, because I'm old, but consider that umbrella to include any and all multi-gender-attracted people). Among these fans you will find all kinds of ships and headcanons. And yes, this does include m/f ships (among any and all other categories), because for many of us, that is a part of our experience that we may reflect in our creative work.

It also worth mentioning that some bi women, in particular, have been driven away from shipping m/m because they found themselves regularly accused of fetishizing gay men. In other fandoms, I have seen harassment campaigns launched again female authors of popular m/m fic on this basis--in at least one case, led by gay men. It might surprise some of my followers to hear this, but there was a time when I was seriously questioning whether I should ever write m/m again because I'd experienced so much shaming around it. I did not, in fact, swear off shipping m/m; I still read it, write it, and enjoy it, and my AO3 catalog bears that out, but I won't pretend the discourse around it never got to me.

I would go on to discover, however, that there is nothing a bi woman can ship that exempts her from criticism and scrutiny. If you ship f/m, you are an annoying het shipper ruining fandom with your annoying het ships. Even a mention of the fact that you headcanon the characters as bi and that this informs the way you portray them will only get you further derided, and in some cases will lead to people openly questioning your identity or insinuating that you're lying about it. (The "straight woman pretending to be bi for attention" trope never goes out of style.) And if you ship f/f, your ships and the characters in them will be more heavily scrutinized and moralized because that is what happens to female characters generally. Or you will hear the characters and ships you love dismissively called "vegetables," implying that no one could truly enjoy them authentically.

You will never "win." The only winning move is not to play.

This isn't really about shipping.

Bisexuals are not invaders of queer spaces, or of fandom. We have always been here... shipping all kinds of ships, loving all kinds of characters. Our own lives and relationships are diverse, complex, and not always easily categorized.

And please, don't take the word of one tumblr fandomite, or one youtuber. What I've said here is incredibly incomplete. Go out and learn more about bisexual history.