bisexual diaries

I’m witnessing an ending (with freshly made banana bread) the ending of a self, one that disowns responsibility to one that owns it. Responsibility to itself and others, not environmental impact, but care and attention - to its needs, its words, its body. The ending of a self that second guesses itself. That shrinks from the decisions that responsibility throws up, perceiving these as challenges. Instead I will attend to them while fully present. As new choice paths to be attended to.

I choose to welcome the ending of the self and relationships that keep me inattentive, disowning and dissociating from responsibility for myself and others, at the choice paths I come to. No matter how scary, weighty or new these may seem.

Happy (belated) May Day. I often think of workers’ rights as empowerment, but less often do I think about how it also implies conscientisation and self-knowledge. as sovereignty over oneself and solidarity, attentiveness to others.

I choose to end what’s androidic or machine-like in me, understanding this will unsettle boundaries, temporarily. But this will soon be accepted.

I grew up reading and watching books for girls. Drawn to books by women, and increasingly, strong feminist, lesbian authors. But the earlier novels that stayed in my mind and moved my fantasies and ambitions were still shaped for girls who would go on to become women in heteronormative nuclear families. Much later, I encountered poetry by lesbian authors (of whom I would later learn, Carol Ann Duffy was not lesbian but bisexual), books about lesbians. I was drawn to lesbian works but didn’t dare to watch them. In them, I felt I would come too close to seeds of something too much other, to be made visible to others. Even to my queer friends.

I had many queer friends, in university and thereafter. But I felt trapped anyway. In university, the seniors were queer and loving it, but they held a privileged position — untouchable in their elevated status. The more flamboyant and gay or lesbian they were, the more they held that status of exception: they could be anything they wanted and no one would hold it to them. And they defended that position well, with harsh cynicism and witty, holier-than-thou remarks at the non-queer majority.

It didn’t help that people closer to me rubbed shoulders with them, but confided in me their discomfort with them. Feminism came to me: to amount to nothing: in the practice of feminism amongst some individuals, I found scarring, violent, tendencies towards dominance and subjugation.

By university, I was well into ignoring my doubts about my own sexuality. I had dated a boy by then, I had crushes on boys, I shipped boys and girls in fanfiction, I stayed well away from girl-on-girl romances. I felt so strongly the male use of the female body, that I would not submit to indulging in or consuming media that celebrated the female body, except in the permitted instance of a heteronormative coupling: yes, I could not possess the female body from a female’s point of view, but I could do so with the male gaze as wingman. If only I had been less strict with myself, less Virgoian Moon, more Taurian Venus.

bisexual diaries

- representation

- self knowledge

- not being hidden

- becoming visible

- constant regular flow

Dis-Content

What was it like for you, coming out to friends?

Scenes from the life of a bisexual person

Character study

Re-membering