Since 1999, 23 September has been celebrated as Bi Visibility Day every year. Bi stands for Bisexuality within the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) community. While the world has seen several queer pride marches in various countries over the world, Bi Visibility Day specifically caters to bisexuals.
Conceptualised by three bisexuality advocates- Wendy Curry, Michael Page and Gigi Raven Wilbur- the Bi Visibility week is celebrated in multiple ways across the world with bisexuality meetups, clubbing nights, picnics, lunches, film festivals, art exhibitions, awareness workshops etc. being organised. The idea behind bivisibility.com’s social media campaign was to get the #BiVisibilityDay and #BiPride tags moving, and help people find resources that can tell them more about September 23 Bi Visibility events around the world and gain access to information, awareness and support material. This year it received so much traffic that their website crashed temporarily.
While inconvenient, this is an encouraging sign, for out of all the terms, bisexuality faces the most discrimination, even within the LGBTQ community.
Bisexual activist A.J. Walkley told Huffington Post, “Due to a general misunderstanding of bisexuality, a large part of society views bisexual individuals as cheaters, confused, indecisive, greedy and incapable of monogamy; members of the straight community and LGT communities don’t trust entering into relationships with bisexuals in some cases, believing that we will ultimately leave them for someone of another sex or gender”.
Bisexual activist Lauren Michelle Kinsey hosted a FAQ session on her blog on huffingtonpost.com where she said, “I’ve been a bisexual my entire life. I tried identifying as a lesbian for a while, but it just didn’t feel like an authentic label. I went through a phase where I thought I was a heterosexual who just hadn’t met the right man yet. That was not accurate either. Sometimes I wish I were one because it would make my life easier.”
According to a post on psychologytoday.com, science has debunked three major myths surrounding bisexuality:
Bisexuality doesn’t exist
Bisexuals are just confused
Bisexual youths are just going to transient phase.
Here are some incisive, some hilarious memes surrounding bisexuality floating on the internet:
In serendipitous move, Nepal became the first Asian country, and the third country in the world, to have introduced strict anti-discriminatory laws for the LGBTQ community. The citizens can now choose their gender in their citizenship documents, the options being male, female and ‘other’. Not only will the community be spared discrimination by the State and the judiciary, they will also be beneficiaries of protection, empowerment and advancement of their rights by special provisions through laws.
