Ruby Mountford will speak about bisexuality and women’s health at the 2018 LGBTIQ Women’s Health Conference, July 12 & 13 at the Jasper Hotel, Melbourne.

For more information and to register for the LGBTIQ Women’s Health Conference go to lbq.org.au

It started with a mention of The L Word.

I was sitting at the dinner table with my parents and their friends Martha and Todd (I’ve changed names for privacy reasons). The conversation had lingered on politics and how much longer the Libs could delay marriage equality, then moved into lighthearted chatter about TV.

“I’ve been watching The L Word,” Todd said. He looked at me knowingly. “You’d have seen it, Ruby.”

I shrugged. I’d watched a handful of episodes several years ago, and all I could recall was the bisexual character’s lesbian friends telling her to ‘hurry up and choose a side’.

“It’s alright,” I said. “A bit biphobic though.”

There was a heartbeat of confused silence before half the table erupted with laughter. I felt my tongue dry up, sticking to the roof of my mouth.

“Biphobic? What the hell is that?!” my dad shouted from the kitchen.

Only 10 minutes earlier, my mum had been telling Martha how my gay brother and his boyfriend had been chased down the street in Collingwood, a few minutes drive from our house. They had both named homophobia and nobody had laughed.

The quiet, lazy happiness I’d been feeling was yanked away. How can you laugh like this? I thought. How could you think this is funny? What the fuck is wrong with you?

I knew if I opened my mouth there would be tears and I didn’t want to make a scene. My brain switched to social autopilot. I stayed quiet until I could make an escape.

I remember the first woman who told me that most lesbians don’t want to date bisexual women, only a few months after I’d come out. I remember the first time a guy on Tinder told me it was “hot” that I was bi.

I remember talking to my friend over Skype as he cried, anxious and wracked with guilt because he’d broken up with the first guy he’d ever dated, and was terrified it meant he wasn’t a real bisexual, even though he’d been attracted to men all his life.

I remember the therapist who told me I was just straight and desperate for affection. The paralysing self-doubt and guilt still haunts me a decade later.

Growing up, there were no bisexual figures to model myself after; no bi women in government, in media, or in the books I read. Bi women were either being graphically fucked in porn, or cast as psychotic nymphos in thriller movies. I never saw bisexual women being happy and healthy and loved.

By dating men, I felt I had foregone my claim to any queer space. To do otherwise would make me a cuckoo bird, pushing our siblings out in the cold, only to abandon the nest for the safety of heterosexuality.

I didn’t dare venture into my university’s Queer Lounge until two years after I’d started my degree. A friend had mentioned the great people they’d met there, the parties they went to, the discussions they’d had about gender, sexuality, politics and love and everything in between and it had filled me with longing.

As a rule, homophobic people didn’t stop me and my girlfriend on the street and politely enquire if I exclusively dated women before they called me a d*ke. And there had been nothing to counter the crushing shame, rejection, self-hatred and isolation. I wanted solidarity. So next time my friend was on campus, they took me in.

Image: Peter Salanki. Licensed under a Creative Commons 2.0 Licence.

Inside, beautiful queer women gossiped about the girls they’d slept with, the bullshit of the patriarchy and the general grossness of straight men who leered at them when they kissed their girlfriends.

I smiled and nodded along, gripping the armrests of my chair and clenching my teeth. You’re not queer enough, I told myself.

I was dating a straight cis man. He was sweet and affectionate and a huge dork in all the right ways. When we kissed, it sent little golden sparks shooting through my veins. In that room, when I thought of him, all I felt was shame. My struggles weren’t deserving of queer sympathy, and I definitely wasn’t worthy of queer love.

You don’t belong here, and they’re going to find out.

It was March 2017, and I was preparing for an interview with Julia Taylor, an academic from La Trobe University’s Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society looking for bisexual and pansexual Australians to complete a survey as part of her PhD research.

Despite eight months co-hosting a bi radio show on JoyFM, this was the first time I’d looked into mental health research. The overview in Julia’s email suggested that bi people had worse mental health outcomes than gay and lesbian people, which seemed like a pretty radical notion.

I’d accepted the mostly unspoken consensus that bisexual people were ‘half gay’, and so only experienced a kind of Homophobia-Lite. By that logic, I figured our mental health issues would be worse than those of straight people, but better than the stats for gays and lesbians.

That hypothesis didn’t survive my first Google search. In 2017, a study titled ‘Substance Use, Mental Health, and Service Access among Bisexual Adults in Australia’ for the Journal of Bisexuality found that 57% of bisexual women and 63% of bisexual non-binary people in Australia were diagnosed with a lifetime mental health disorder, compared to 41% of lesbian women and 25% of heterosexual women.

Another study, ‘The Long-Term mental health risk associated with non-heterosexual orientation’ published in the journal Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences in 2016, determined that bisexuality was the only sexual orientation that presented “a long term risk for increased anxiety”.

Around 21 times more likely to engage in self harm. Significantly more likely to report life was not worth living. Higher risk for suicidal behaviour, substance abuse, eating disorders and anxiety.

Anxious has never been a word I’ve heard the LGBTIQA+ community use to describe bisexual people. Confused, sure. Attention seeking, promiscuous, unfaithful — I’d heard those plenty of times from both gay and straight people.

But despite studies dating back over a decade showing that bisexual people, particularly bisexual women, are suffering, so few people had bothered to ask why.

On the drive home from work, Dad asked what I had lined up for my radio show that week. My heart started to pound.

“Interviewing a researcher. She’s doing a survey to try and find out why bisexual people have worse mental health outcomes than straight and gay cis people.”

“Worse? Really?”

Was it my wishful thinking, or did he sound concerned?

“Yep.” I rattled off the statistics. When I stole a glance at him, there was a deep, pensive furrow between his eyebrows.

“What’s causing that, do you think?”

“I don’t know. It’s mostly guesses, but when I think about it… it makes sense. Homophobia affects us, but we don’t really have a place to go where we’re totally accepted,” I said.

“Before my radio show, I’d never been in a room with other bi people and just talked about our experiences. Before that, if I’d gone into queer spaces, I just got told I was confused, or not brave enough to come out all the way.”

My voice quivered. It was terrifying to try and explain. I was only just starting to comprehend how deeply biphobia had damaged my sense of self worth, and only just beginning to think of my bisexuality as a beautiful, valid thing.

But I needed to find the words. If I could get my straight, middle aged father to understand, there was a chance my rainbow family would understand too.

“People don’t think bisexuality is real enough to be discriminated against, so they don’t think about it. They don’t think they’re actually hurting anyone. But they are.”

My dad went quiet for a moment, eyes locked on the windscreen. Then he nodded. “Fair point.”

An old tightness in my chest unclenched. As the car trundled forward, Dad took my hand in his and squeezed it tight.

Ruby Susan Mountford is a Melbourne-based freelance writer and radio host, and a passionate advocate for Neurodiversity and the Bi/Pan community. As well as producing and hosting Triple Bi-Pass on JoyFM, a weekly radio show and podcast, she is currently serving as President of the Melbourne Bisexual Network committee.

 
Ruby Mountford will speak about bisexuality and women’s health at the 2018 LGBTIQ Women’s Health Conference, July 12 & 13 at the Jasper Hotel, Melbourne.

For more information and to register for the LGBTIQ Women’s Health Conference go to lbq.org.au

The LGBTIQ Women’s Health Conference is a proud supporter of Archer Magazine.

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