#and all the other small queer authors who have flipped my life over dozens of times

[wiltking]

crying howling shivering shaking

[hellomynameisbisexual]

As I spoke with other self-idenitified bisexuals throughout my college career, I realized that many, including myself, felt a dose of imposter syndrome in both gay and straight spaces. Whether it be comments from fellow queer folk invalidating our sexuality or the general queerphobia prevalent in the larger society, many bisexuals resent the heteronormative stereotypes imposed on them from both the gay and straight communities. Further research into the erasure of the bisexual community indicated that its impact on the mental and physical health of bisexual individuals is tangible.

The term “bisexuality” encompasses many sexual identities including queer and pansexual. According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), “Studies suggest that bisexuals comprise nearly half of all people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, making the bisexual population the single largest group within the LGBT community.” As the largest subset of the gay community, it is interesting to note that bisexuals are routinely discriminated against in the LGBT community as well as in the straight community. Despite being the largest population behind heterosexuals, studies suggest biphobia in all facets of society has facilitated the erasure of the bisexual community to the extent that bisexuals can expect to be systematically disadvantaged regarding their physical and mental health,

The prevalent stereotypes about bisexuality that keep bisexuals from coming out are noted in the essay “Bisexuality and Mental Health: Future Research Directions,” published in The Journal of Bisexuality in 2015: “It has been argued that bisexuality has been delegitimized by negative stereotypes, such as ‘bisexuality doesn’t exist as a sexual orientation,’ ‘bisexuals are sexually promiscuous,’ and ‘bisexuals are confused.’ Several studies have found that heterosexual, gay and lesbian individuals may all have negative attitudes toward bisexuality, indicating that bisexual individuals face double discrimination.” The authors, Persson & Pfaus, assert that bisexuals are hesitant to identify themselves for fear of backlash from all facets of society, a statement I can firmly attest to having been personally asked “Can’t you just pick one or the other?” by both gay and straight people. In a press release regarding a study focused on HIV/AIDS in the bisexual community, published in the American Journal for Preventative Medicine by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, researcher William Jeffries⁠ stated, “Societal biphobia is more prevalent than antigay sentiment.”

Biphobia is prevalent enough to keep bisexuals from coming out to their homosexual counterparts. Historically, homosexuality has been considered taboo and punished with imprisonment and even death; pro-gay movements all over the world trumpet the importance of acceptance and inclusivity, yet gay communities globally refuse to acknowledge bisexuality as a legitimate orientation and discriminate against bisexuals based on this belief. In her article “Inside, Outside, Nowhere: Bisexual Men and Women in the Gay and Lesbian Community,” Kirsten Mclean examined the impact of bisexual attitudes on a group of 60 Australian bisexual men and women, “in terms of their perceptions of, and participation in, the gay and lesbian community.” Analyzing the range of biphobic attitudes within that homosexual community, Mclean’s study attempted to expose how these attitudes effect bisexual participation in said community. She found that, “though some participants were active within the Australian gay and lesbian community, many were not, due to the belief that they would be rejected or discriminated against as bisexual. Furthermore, those who did participate in the gay and lesbian community tended to keep their bisexuality hidden, for fear of being made unwelcome.” I related so much to that sentiment, having been called a “tourist” at a local gay bar when I mustered up the nerve to go with my fiance, a cis bisexual man. We left shortly after, feeling exiled to a life of languishing among the straights at tacky sports bars.

Ostracization from the gay community encourages bisexuals to pursue opposite-sex partners and fade into heteronormative society. A Pew Research Survey conducted in 2013 revealed that 84% of bisexuals end up in hetero relationships. Award-winning bisexual writer Kristina Marusic discussed this statistic, asserting that hetero relationships among bisexuals does not delegitimize their preferences and that the odds of a bisexual having an opposite-sex partner “fall enormously in their favor… the [percentage of the population that is LGBTQ] is actually closer to a scant 3.8 percent. So not only is it statistically more likely that a bisexual person will wind up with a partner of the opposite sex; it’s equally likely that they’ll wind up with someone from the over 96 percent of the population who identifies as straight.” In an interview with the HRC, an anonymous bisexual said “I wish that more people inside the gay community itself would support my decision to call myself bisexual. I am not being selfish. I am not a liar. I am not gay. I am not straight. I am bisexual.” Additionally, according to Mclean, “a large number of gay men and lesbians still flat-out refuse to date bisexuals.” Thus, many bisexuals couple with opposite-sex partners and identify as straight despite their true orientation, as is reflected by Marusic’s statistics.

The idea that there are two exclusive sexualities, gay and straight, has effectively gagged bisexuals, preventing their self-identification in the heterosexual and homosexual communities and ensuring their assimilation into heteronormative society. In her study “Living Life in the Double Closet: Bisexual Youth Speak Out,” Mclean states, “Dominant public discourses endorse heterosexuality and homosexuality as legitimate sexual identities, but do not recognize that some people are neither exclusively heterosexual nor exclusively homosexual.” Mclean interviewed 22 young bisexual people living in Melbourne, Florida. A bisexual woman herself, Mclean employed an interpersonal, interview approach to this research because she was “examining a group that had thus far been both silenced in traditional research on sexuality, but had also, for the most part, silenced themselves.”

There is nothing quite like silencing oneself, no greater discomfort than suppressing an inherent part of who you are. When I was twelve, I was at a large sleepover at a close friend’s house. Her older sister was “watching” our group of a dozen or so girls. At some point, a large bag of assorted liquors was procured. I have always been impulsive: always picking “Dare,” never scared to sneak out and certain in every situation that I was indestructible. As a seventh grader intent on proving my invincibility, I drank eagerly and abundantly. After taking several shots that blazed through my undeveloped chest and sent unfamiliar chills up my spine, I opened my eyes to the stars spinning above me where I lay in the lawn, both exhilarated and terrified at the realization that I was “completely smashed.” My next decipherable memory depicts me sitting semi-upright in the RV parked near the side of the house, the drunken faces of a few of the other girls swimming in front of me as I swayed.

Truth or Dare. I remember thinking, “This should be good.”

I was dared to kiss the girl next to me, a close friend who was as wasted as I was. I recall the nervous flip of my stomach as my lips neared hers. The Dare and I smushed our faces together clumsily. I could taste the vodka and orange juice on her mouth. I found myself falling into the kiss and she seemed receptive. We made out passionately as the other girls leered at us in an inebriated stupor. Eventually, they left us alone in the RV. I woke up the next morning in a crumpled heap on the floor of the RV; my eyelids crunched as I opened them and my lips were so dry they cracked when I sat up and coughed. The Dare was still asleep on the RV couch; last night’s events played through my head as I gazed at her sleeping face. I felt lighter than I ever had, despite having the worst hangover of my existence. I stumbled out of the camper and entered the house; girls were draped all over the furniture, looking at pictures from the previous night and nursing headaches. The room quieted when I entered; they stared at me, their faces inscrutable. I scrubbed my face with my hands to dislodge the various body fluids dried there. Under heavy surveillance, I procured some water and sprawled on the living room floor, head pounding and hands clammy.

“Z, do you remember anything about last night?” Someone asked. I sat up and put a palm to my throbbing temple. “Not really, did anyone get hurt?” I asked, doing a headcount of the girls in the room to see who was missing. Only The Dare was absent. “No..” Another girl piped up, “But you and The Dare like, hooked up.” She giggled anxiously. I flinched at the thinly veiled disgust in her voice, shrinking further and further into myself as I saw it reflected in the eyes of many of the other girls. Instantly, I realized my mistake.

It was a harmless thing to kiss a girl as a dare. It was another, far more heinous thing to enjoy it.

Panic engulfed me as my pubescent brain scrambled to find a way to maintain my position in the social hierarchy of my seventh grade class. Stalling, I sipped my water. I imagined being one of the “dykes” at school, of losing every inch of social capital I’d managed to attain. Frigid tendrils wrapped around my heart and, for the first time in my life, I consciously gave in to cowardice.

I feigned surprise as best I could: “What the fuck are you talking about?” I said, doing a small spit take to really sell it. A titter travelled through the room and girls started talking at once. “During truth or dare!” “You got dared to kiss her and you did!” “You were literally all over each other!” “She touched your boobs!” Their exclamations overlapped, the cacophony splitting my skull open. I silenced them with a shout of my own⁠— “Oh em GEEEE!” I yelled, burying my face in my hands so they couldn’t see the humiliation there. “I was completely wasted, I don’t remember anything. Did she have as much to drink as me?” I said. I knew that she’d been as drunk as I was⁠ but⁠— as I’d known (and maybe even hoped) it could⁠— the question changed the tide of the conversation. “You’re right,” a girl said from the couch, “she like.. Took advantage of you.”

That was not what I’d said but I let her comment fester as the other girls eyed me sympathetically. They no longer saw a lesbian; they saw the victim of one. My insides clenched uncomfortably and I ran to the bathroom, where I emptied my stomach into the toilet bowl.

I felt close to death as I leaned against the bathroom sink, staring at myself in the mirror. I remember my face so vividly: the self-loathing, the repulsion, the guilt and loneliness so clear on my young features as I silently tried to justify what I’d just done. My cheeks were sallow and slick with shameful tears and perspiration as I sweated liquor from my pores.

Not invincible, after all.

The Dare and I’s friendship was never the same. When our classmates made cruel remarks about what happened, I didn’t defend her. I apologized profusely to her after I came out in high school, but I know that wasn’t enough for the trouble I caused her. Though we were just kids experimenting, the reactions of the other girls solidified my denial of my bisexual identity for years to come. I tentatively called myself Bi-curious to a few close friends, but I’d temper it with comments like, “I think girls are pretty but I would never date one.” and “I don’t know how lesbians do it, vaginas are so weird!” My internalized homophobia manifested as a total denial of my bisexual identity when that identity threatened to make me even more of an outsider at my predominately white, conservative middle school. I had boyfriends and a social circle, but suicidal thoughts became a daily occurrence as the hatred I felt for myself deepened.

My experience is more common than I could’ve ever imagined then. After polling and interviewing hundreds of adolescents, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) concluded that “bisexual youth were much less likely to be out to their families, friends, peers, and communities” than exclusively gay youth. Only 33 percent of UK bisexuals surveyed by the Scotland-based Equality Network felt comfortable telling their general practitioner about their sexual orientation, and nearly half had experienced biphobia when accessing health services. Though there are many variables that contribute to a person’s ability to come out⁠— including but not limited to social and political climate, familial relations, and personal values⁠— the UK’s statistics raise alarms about global attitudes regarding bisexuality and health concerns for bisexuals.

In the United States, lack of preventative care for queer folk begins in grade school, as proper sex education for students attracted to the same sex is sorely lacking. According to a 2017 report by Guttmacher Institute, of the 22 states that mandate sex-ed, only 12 are required to acknowledge sexual orientations. Of those 12 states, 9 mandate inclusive discussion of the different sexual orientations, and 3 “require only negative information on sexual orientation.” Poorly educated bisexuals are less likely to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases into adulthood. When The Dare and I were exploring each other, I had absolutely no frame of reference for what we were doing and how to do it safely aside from mainstream pornography tailored for hetero, cis male consumption. No lessons on safe queer sex were taught at my middle or high school; it angers me to know that is the norm.

Erasure impacts mental health as well as physical health for bisexual folk: according to the HRC, “Bisexual adults were also more likely to engage in self-harming behaviors, attempt suicide or think about suicide than heterosexuals, lesbians or gay men.” Bisexuals, especially adolescents, were also more likely to engage in risk taking behavior like alcohol and drug abuse, which negatively impacts both mental and physical health. HRC’s 2012 survey of LGTBQ youth found “only 5 percent of bisexual youth reported being very happy, compared to 8 percent of lesbian and gay youth and 21 percent of non-LGBT youth.” The HRC asserted that poor emotional well-being during adolescence translates into bisexual youth being “twice as likely” to experiment with drugs and alcohol. Furthermore, during research regarding the disparity between bisexual health and that of individuals in the exclusively gay and straight communities, the HRC found that “more than 40 percent of LGBT people of color identify as bisexual, and about half of transgender people describe their sexual orientation as bisexual or queer – making these groups vulnerable to further disparities that occur at the intersections of biphobia, racism and transphobia.”

The well-known yet oft-forgotten “Mother of Pride,” Brenda Howard, spent her life advocating against bi-erasure. She said, “The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why Gay Pride Month is June tell them ‘A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought it should be.’” Until general attitudes in both the gay and straight communities change, bisexuals will continue to repress themselves and feel excluded from both groups. Bisexuals: never let the ignorance of others repress you. You aren’t confused, you aren’t inherently hypersexual and your queer identity is valid. Don’t let anyone, gay or straight, take away your seat at the Pride table.

[femslashrevolution]

Why I Love Strangeness, Smut & Fic with Lots of Feelings

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

TW: non-graphic references to kink, taboo fantasies, abuse, and eating disorders.

I’ve started this piece about a dozen times, trying to figure out what it wants to be. As a writer, words are important to me, but as a human I want the content to say something true, to be provocative and unflinching. I want the things I write to be a sledgehammer that breaks down the walls of shame that isolate us. Shame wants to stop us from connecting, because if we do, we’ll find out we’re actually not broken or twisted or strange, or that we are but it’s okay. We’ll compare notes and realize none of us have any reason to hide who we are, because we’re all perfectly flawed. 

I write femslash to make connections. I’ve made friends, real friends, in the comments section on AO3. I help other writers, and I have other writers who help me. They’re art midwives; like a baby, sometimes a fic needs a little assistance to be born. Little international virtual villages pop up around characters or ships and we bond with each other over shared fandom. We are different ages, races, nationalities and orientations, but there are parts of us that are the same. 

It goes deeper, to the things that scare us, turn us on or make us blush. I’ve compared notes and realized that society’s “sick and wrong” is often someone’s vibrant fantasy. When I write something that feels “too weird,” either because it’s dark or kinky or too emotionally naked, I force myself to post it. I always expect the comments to say “you’re a sicko” or “how can you write about this?” but usually they’re “I thought I was the only one who was into this” and “This is the fic I’ve been searching for.” We connect over the things that isolate us, that whisper “You’re strange.” 

Maybe we are strange, but we are also the same. Isolate us, make us feel bad about who we are or what we want, and we’re powerless. When we find each other, we learn to stop apologizing for our strangeness and we become unstoppable.

I write graphic sex that’s filthy but full of feelings. I write little heartwarming drabbles about romantic misunderstandings or murderers who find kittens in the trash. I write fills for the weirdest kinkmeme prompts I can find, for pairings that make me think, “That can’t work.” I make it my mission to find a way. I kill off beloved characters, I break their hearts, I build them up, I toss them into bed together, I dissect the worst moments of their lives, I put them in sexual situations that push them too far, I make them lash out at each other, I turn them upside down and shake them until the confessions of love fall out.  

There is not always a happy ending. There doesn’t need to always be a happy ending. My best friend says she reads fic to escape the terrible state of the world. She wants a distraction, and that’s valid, but it’s not the purpose fic serves for me.

I read (and write) to feel things. Grief, rage, discomfort, joy, anxiety, arousal, heartbreak, hope. I process my life by chucking the pieces of it into a cement mixer and flipping the switch until it’s something I can build on. My triumphs and tragedies join up with the things that delight me and the ones that confuse me and the ones that scare me, and then it’s all ground down and shaken up until it’s something solid. 

I wrote the kitten!fic soon after my beloved tortie compatriot died. I used to joke she was so evil she’d live forever, but I guess even cats made of razor blades eventually need a rest. I decided to funnel my grief into something worthwhile by writing something heartrending and sad. Once I started it, the fic wrote itself into something gentle and bursting with hope. 

I wrote a dark fic in the usually-light Ghostbusters fandom; a lot of readers didn’t like it, but there were a few who connected with it in powerful ways. I often write the shades of grey, the complicated parts, the “won’t tie up neatly at the end of our hour-long episode” stories. 

I wrote an intimate fic about taboo fantasies, in which one partner had to admit to the other that she had a rape fantasy. The partner didn’t consider herself kinky, but she listened, didn’t judge and was willing to talk about helping the woman she loved explore that desire. That fic exists because in six years I was never completely honest with my ex-partner about my own fantasies, because I knew she wouldn’t have been that caring and supportive. 

I wrote a story about a lesbian whose bisexual girlfriend wanted to watch interact sexually with a man. She agreed and it was a disaster. The story struck a nerve, because a lot of queer women have had sex with men that felt “wrong” like that. I’d intended it to be a one-shot about the ways we disregard our own safety for the people we care about, but the readers’ reactions were so powerful, it prompted me to write more chapters. It grew into something much bigger about trauma, friendship and understanding.

I wrote a fill for the Ghostbusters kinkmeme prompt “anorexic Holtzmann,” because the mere idea of writing it scared me. I explored her childhood, the difficulty of being much younger than her academic peers, the way she discovered her sexuality, and the people who shaped her along the way.  I dug deep into my feelings of otherness and my lifelong complicated relationship with food and body image. Someone commented that she’d been looking for an ED fic in the Ghostbusters fandom, because she struggles and reading about it helps. “As a smart, chubby girl with an eating disorder, well done and thank you,” she wrote. It resonated with her, because we share something that makes us feel different.

I’ve written more than thirty fics centered around How to Get Away With Murder’s Bonnie Winterbottom. I’ve paired her with half a dozen different characters. Some of the Bonnies I write are fragile and sad; others are voraciously sexual, unapologetic queer dynamos. I love writing characters standing up for themselves and fighting for what they want, and Bonnie? Canon Bonnie? She wants, so desperately it sometimes makes me uncomfortable.

Before I discovered HTGAWM, I’d taken a two year hiatus from writing fic. I’d never been prolific in the first place. But there was something about Bonnie, and her complicated, imbalanced, maybe-not-sexual-but-still-intensely-passionate relationship with her boss Annalise that cut through me. It made me want to write again, made me NEED to write again. 

In Bonnie and Annalise, I saw a dynamic I’d never before seen represented on television, one that I’d lived myself. As more of Bonnie’s tragic backstory unfolded, our stories didn’t align so perfectly, but the moment she knelt weeping at her magnetic, brilliant boss’s feet still lives inside me. It resonates. I saw my past reflected in Bonnie’s devotion, her barely-concealed feelings, her tragically low self-esteem. I saw the truth of one of my own complicated relationships in the way Annalise manipulated her. I watched her give Bonnie exactly enough affection to keep her hopelessly entangled, and just enough praise to make her work until she dropped, and it made my guts ache.

And yet, I knew Annalise Keating wasn’t a monster, because I’d loved a woman who had walls like that. I knew what could happen once the lights were out. I’d seen the teflon shield come down, exposing the sort of wraith that lives inside powerful, beautiful, charismatic women who have learned to be those things to survive. The kind of woman who needs to drink most of a bottle of wine before she can let herself be vulnerable, and who wants nothing more than a moment to be soft. 

Femslash is a small corner of the wider fic world. The HTGAWM femslash community is very small. This year I discovered the Ghostbusters fandom, which offered me another character who reflected parts of myself I never thought I’d see on screen. It was bigger, more active, and the kudos and comments were addictive, but I keep coming back to Bonnie. In my stories, she faces the things I’m scared of and she says the things I wish I’d said. Life tears her apart; she collapses, but then she rises again and rebuilds herself from the ground up. And she’s so very strange. Like I am. Like we are. 

I write fanfic because I’m strange, and by putting my own strangeness on a page, I connect with other people who are like me. I write the stories I need to read, because I know there are other people out there who need to read them too. I write the kinks that shouldn’t turn me on and the confrontations that hurt my heart and the sweeping strangeness because it scares me, but it also starts a conversation. 

Hey. I understand that. I’m the same way. You’re not the only one. And we’re both okay.  

—

About the author

I’m Audrey, I’m an artist in my thirties, I live in Los Angeles and I write smutty literature. On some level, every story I tell is a love story. I like writing deep, complicated feelings into filthy smut, filthy smut into angst fic, angsty arcs into love stories, and profound epic love into fic about kittens. I’m drawn to characters who are broken but persist. My ask box is open and I am always up for a conversation about femslash, “extreme” fic, writing sex, kittens, and any character played by Liza Weil. We are all strange and weird is wonderful.

Tumblr: audreyimpossible.tumblr.com

AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/users/AudreyV/works