#RecognizeBiMen during Bisexual Awareness Week #biweek

For Bi Guys on the Threshhold
by Eponymous Fliponymous,
bi blogger at Angry Bisexual with a Keyboard

As part of Bisexual Organizing Project's continued blogging for #biweek we asked nationally known bi blogger Eponymous Fliponymous to share something from his archives. Excerpted here, we encourage you to visit his blog and read the entire post.


Welcome, Bi Men About To Come Out!

Hi! I’m not sure if we’ve met, but that’s OK, I do know that we’re a lot alike. I’m here to answer some of your questions and hopefully to make the experience you’re about to have a little easier. I’m going to make a lot of assumptions about you, and they may not be accurate – and that’s OK, because the ones that aren’t, you can scroll past, because they will be accurate for someone else. These assumptions come from a few places: my own experiences, experiences of others that I’ve been told or read about, and some research that’s been done. One assumption is that you’ve been in the closet by identifying as Straight. If you are someone who was identifying as Gay, then you already know a lot of this and your experience may vary quite a bit.

There’s a standard “Coming Out” narrative that is available to most Gay men. It takes two main forms: “I never liked women”, and/or “I was married/engaged/dating women because I didn’t realize/was hiding/was trying to change”.

For us Bi guys, those two narratives don’t work quite as well, because we have been and are genuinely attracted to women, and we are also genuinely attracted to men. This seems to complicate things, but it really doesn’t, at least not for you. You know who you are.

Coming out is not easy to do, but it’s the lifting of a giant weight off your shoulders. You’ve probably spent a lot of time cringing inwardly at people who make homophobic remarks. When you’re out, you get to fight back without fear of blowing your cover. That alone is a huge benefit for you, because let’s face it, not being able to stand up for yourself out of fear is emasculating as hell – and one of the ignorant and hateful things that people say about queer men is that they are “not Real Men”. I know – my ex-wife used to throw that one in my face, along with my mother, my peers, and pretty much all of society.

It’s OK. There is no actual Man Law. No one can take away your Man Card, because there are no Man Cards. Man Law and Man Cards are just crap that men who are insecure about their own masculinity make up because someone told them they weren’t “Real Men”, so they try to do it to everyone else.

Read the entire post here!