From: dbshapco@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu (Brad Shapcott)
Subject: The War Between Us (Long)
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 20:56:26 GMT


Well, I've spent the last month in a bad mood that I seem to just be
getting out of.  The suprising part is that I'm getting out of it at
all, considering all the nasty stuff that's happening to me these
days.  After a time though, even the worst crap rolls right off my
back.

Anyways, I always know when I'm in a bad mood because everyone else
seems to be in one.  If I meet a few people who seem to be in the
black, it's them.  If everyone I meet seems in the black, it's me.
Last couple of days I posted some silly stuff in alt.sex and soc.bi,
amusing myself at anyone else's expense, and finally started feeling a
little better.

Well, so what do you care?  Well, this is just one of those's preambles
to let you know I've been thinking again (a sort of warning) and
bweep-bweep- bweep this is gonna be long.

I don't know if one ever fully gets used to or accepts their
sexuality.  Hets smugly think they do, but only because they haven't
ever thought to question it -- but for queers, there always is a time
where one deals with what they are.  I thought it was easier for me,
being bisexual with a wife who came out as bisexual too.  As for
putting up with shit and going through hell, compared to other stories
I'd heard, we were having it easy.

I was thinking about coming out more broadly, felling pretty safe in
this little niche I'd carved out for myself, and then I got
broadsided.  Hell, I never saw it coming, because it came from a
direction I didn't expect.

Here I am, thinking that I'm in my tribe and I'm safe and welcome and
everyone is all warm and caring.  Then, I get hit by 'Bi's and
Marriage'.  And of course the follow-up is Steve Dyer's 'every
"bisexual" has a MOTOS hanging off hir arm'.  Boom.  The earlier
elation, the halcyon days (brief as they were) are over.

I guess the first reaction was anger.  I was thinking, how audacious to
think that I should give up marriage just because I'm bi.  Then, as
brains are wont to work, it turned things around on me.  Maybe I wasn't
a good enough bi to really belong to this tribe, and maybe I deserved
the slap in the face.  I said it then and meant it -- if I had to
choose I'd choose against you (meaning all of you, as a tribe).

My wife is more 'bi' than I am, if one can quantify these things.  I
won't explain how because it's mostly intuition that tells me this.
This makes things worse because it seems even less like I should be
feeling good about myself and feeling free and unburdened about finally
touching down with my sexuality, and that in fact I'm wrong.  I don't
belong here, and I have no right to be milking this queer thing or
cavorting with this tribe in a big egocentric feel-good.

That's where the title of this article comes from, because I spent some
weeks working this out (in the midst of a black mood that might be
partially due to this subject) and think I've found my footing again.
As I said, I'm gonna be a bit long, and I'm also going to be
politically incorrect.

I'm gonna drop my bomb to start with -- maybe the homosexual community
is correct in excluding the bisexuals.  How much of our sense that
these communities should be one, and that the tribal spirit should be
shared comes from having a common enemy, and similar goals?

I think there is a rift between the bisexual and the homosexual
community that we try to pretend doesn't exist at times because we know
that such dissent damages efforts to tear down the heterosexual
assumptions.  We are together more because we are not heterosexual than
that we are cut from the same cloth.  This isn't much of a revelation
to most.  You'll excuse me for being shocked at realizing that being
married didn't make me as good a queer as the rest of you, and getting
my first taste of the bitter harvest that has been in everyone else's
diet for so long.

But, I mean, I'm putting this on a personal level because that's the
only level it works on (I wrote a really nice sounding article about
the same subject that I never posted, because it was so much crap and
wasn't about my feelings at all, but it sounded nice).  So bear with my
naivety for a bit.

I read things like bisexual women playing stealth lesbians so they
don't get booted from womens' space, or how bisexuals are really just
either closet queers with the fashion sense to accessorize with a MOTOS
on one arm, or really hets being a bit risque and joining in the current
sexuality fad to chase a trend.  The one I took most personally was
Ellen Clary's (please correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm attributing
from memory) 'maybe we'd take bisexuals more seriously if they didn't
do things like get married'.  I'm not sorry that I can't make myself
more palatable.  You either accept who I am or reject me, but I'm not
changing to make myself more acceptable.

After a bit I wasn't questioning whether I was bi anymore (I am, get
used to it) but whether a bi is just a queer by any other name.  I'm
not going to pretend to speak for masses of people, but I'm not queer.
Not if queer means I'd give up marriage, not if queer means trying to
please Steve by finding an appropriate gender to hang off my arm, and
not if queer means I have to act the way you expect me to act to be
accepted by you.  Finding another colour of conformity does not set me
free.

I'm gonna do a lot of things and say a lot of things that won't please
the homosexual community.  I would rather be with a bisexual man than a
gay man, and rather be with a bisexual woman than a straight woman --
because they understand my sexuality.  I would rather be married than
not, and have a family than not, however politically poignant denying
myself either would be.  I'll choose for bisexuals before I'll choose
for queers as a whole.

So that's what it looks like from this side of the mask.  If I cannot
have acceptance without concessions, then I surrender: I'm not queer at
all -- I'm bisexual and proud of it.  I know I'm bisexual, so if I'm not
queer, then they must be different things.  That really where my
thinking lead me, that there is a wider rift between these communities
than we all think, and it is fundamentally deeper than we like to
imagine.  And over this rift I can hear some voices of anger, because
people are upset that bisexuals are who they are.  But we're here,
we're bi, and we need a word that rhymes with 'bi'.

If queers were telling me that I wasn't measuring up and that I wasn't
helping the cause, in the end I was inclined to agree.  I'm a terrible
queer.  It didn't take all that long to realize I was an absolute
failure at being queer.  I honestly didn't feel what I was supposed to
be feeling, and thought I'd been had or fooled myself.  The only
possible resolution that I could come to, that would explain the
hostility and exclusiveness, was that being bisexual and queer didn't
necessarily go together.

Maybe other bisexuals feel it, and I'm missing something (I'll know
better when I see some responses to this article, if I get any).
Saying I was queer seemed like a convenient short-hand for saying I was
not het, but as far as I can tell it doesn't fit.  As much as being
queer is much more than merely not being het, being bisexual is more
than just being both queer and het, and yet being neither.  Language
fails us.

In a sense I feel that we would be cheating to lay claim to the queer
space created by others, and in another I feel that too high a price is
sometimes asked.  At best I can feel like a guest in the house who
makes his hosts uneasy (while they make their guests feel the same
way).  As much as I feel I'm departing from the heterosexual world, I
don't feel that I'm drawing nearer the homosexual one.  We as bisexuals
don't seem to have a well defined community, both because we are
younger and have milked off the community created by others.  Maybe it
is time we are weaned.

Of course, these are my feelings.  Perhaps no one else in the bisexual
community feels them as well, in which case perhaps I have no tribe to
turn to.  It's so profoundly ironic that the next place I had to come
out was to a community of homosexuals, as a bisexual.  But my real
expectation, and the reason maybe it took me so long to touch down with
this subject, is that I'm about to be shut out by the people of
soc.motss when all along I'd assumed their understanding would be
second only to the people of soc.bi.

Another irony is that if our society was less infantile, we would not
need these tribes and communities to protect us from scorn and give us
shelter against a sea of hate.  We would live in peace with our
neighbours and in peace with our brothers and sisters, not despite our
differences, but in celebration of them.

But to bring this down and bring it to a close, I think recognizing the
inherent differences between the homosexual and bisexual community is
important in maintaining the alliance that should be there against the
prejudice we both face.  If I am invited into your house, I shall
enter; if I am asked to your table, I will sit with you.  But I make no
pretense of being the same thing that you are; I ask for no part of
your glory, nor can I at times understand your suffering.  But I shall
not cut off what displeases you, nor shall I hide it away.

I would have that we were at peace, but I would not have that it were a
false one.  If the rest of this has seemed puerile or silly, then
perhaps that one sentiment can be understood.  I have said all this
not to incite anger or drive a wedge between our communities, but so
that if there is any bond it is a true one.


Brad