[Guest post by: The Bride]
I fantasize about men and women. But I’ve become wobbly about using the word bisexual.
It all goes back to my university days in Hyderabad again. Here, I met a significant number of openly gay people. It was rather fashionable to declare one’s alternate sexuality. So then a number of women started professing to being bisexual and wearing their girl-crushes on their sleeves.
However, this was greeted with scorn by the lesbian community in the university. They said that claiming to be bisexual was a convenient choice because as long as men were in the picture, you weren’t really taking on the special (unpleasant) reactions that society in general reserves for women that choose to not make men the centres of their existence. In fact, being bisexual sort of exoticised one, a matter of broader sexual horizons rather than deviance.
Anyway, that was the gist of it. So under the grim glares of the lesbian community in college, the word bisexual became taboo.
So, the first question is – what do the lesbians out there think? Is being bisexual a matter of sexual laziness and social convenience?
Second, a friend pointed out that mere fantasy does not a sexual orientation make. You have to actually do the deed to be one way or the other. I’m not sure about this either. Does only action have meaning?
Third, there is my belief that all women are bisexual to a greater or lesser degree. It’s not a question of orientation but of freeing one’s mind to other possibilities and if you let yourself, the sky’s the limit. So many women I’ve talked to have admitted to fantasizing about women so it’s only a matter on having the erm… balls to act on that. A few say they haven’t and I wonder if that’s because they haven’t let themselves.
Given that theory, the whole term bisexual seems pointless. And by extension in a perfect world so would the terms gay, lesbian, homosexual etc. We’re just people aren’t we?