PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Anita Rao 0:00
In a world that runs on binaries, that exists on creating categories for people to fit into, what happens when you fall somewhere in the middle? I have lived this question as a mixed race person, and know that it's sometimes a fight to be recognized on the outside the way I feel within. Some folks experience this tension with regard to their gender identity, and for others, their sexuality. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, bisexual adults make up the largest share of the LGBTQ plus population. Bisexual folks exist in the gray areas of the sexuality spectrum. But even though evidence suggests they have strength in numbers, many bi people struggle with misconceptions, invalidation and biphobia. Understanding the term bisexual requires history, context and conversation, and raises an interesting question, when is a label necessary to help us thrive, and when does it limit us? This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao.
Today, we're learning about bisexuality through the stories of folks who have grappled with its meaning in their own lives. To set up all the context for this conversation, I sat down with our producer, Kaia Finlay, who started by sharing a finding that really piqued her curiosity.
Kaia Findlay 1:34
So I was doing research for this upcoming show on bisexuality. And research is fun and all, but it's a lot of reading articles. And then I came across a quiz. We love a quiz. We do love a quiz. And it is actually a research tool, okay, it's called the Klein grid, and it was developed in the 1970s to kind of map out nuances of sexuality. So there had been some research in the 40s that this was building off of, and it has, like a 21st century version that is online. So I was interested, because I do identify as bisexual, but I just, like wanted to see what the quiz would tell me.
Anita Rao 2:12
Okay, I love it. So this isn't like a 17 magazine like, are you bisexual quiz? This is like a real, like a researched, established protocol.
Kaia Findlay 2:21
Yeah, this is an academic thing, and this is like how bisexuality started to get part of the academic sphere is through the Kinsey scale, which maybe you've heard of, and then the Klein grid.
Anita Rao 2:31
Okay, so tell me about this experience of taking this quiz.
Kaia Findlay 2:34
Okay, so there are seven questions, like, Who are you sexually attracted to? Who have you, like, engaged in sexual behavior with? And then you go into actually, some questions about, like, social interactions and emotional connections, and then lifestyle and identity. So not just sexual behavior, but who you spend time with. And then you also answer in terms of your past self, present self and future self.
Anita Rao 2:59
Okay, so you went into taking this quiz knowing that you identified as bisexual. What did the quiz tell you?
Kaia Findlay 3:07
As a matter of fact, it said I was bisexual, yay. And I was like, okay, cool, so I did know that.
Anita Rao 3:15
Did you learn anything new?
Kaia Findlay 3:17
It didn't tell me anything new. And I will say that the grid has a big drawback in that it only asks you to talk about your relationships with people of a different sex or the same sex, so it's not taking into account gender identity or non binary Ness at all. But I do feel like I was curious why I was so interested in taking the quiz, and I think it's because I have felt doubt about how my bisexuality has changed over time, and if maybe, like, now that I'm in a monogamous partnership with a man like does that affect my identity. And I was curious maybe if that quiz would say, like, oh yeah, in your past you're more bisexual, but now you're more heterosexual. And so if it was going to, like, give me some insight into what stake I had in different communities, and I do think that was interesting.
Anita Rao 4:18
So obviously, by the first time you heard the term bisexuality. It had been around for a long time, more than 100 years, actually. So what do we know about the origins of the term?
Kaia Findlay 4:30
So we know that it first was used in the English language in the 1890s and there was a translation of a study of sexual disorders called psychopathio sexualis, which was published by the German psychiatrist Richard von Kraft ABing, who we actually talked about in our show about BDSM. So this is a pretty famous document, and he has a whole chapter about homosexuality, and like the causes of homosexuality and bisexuality shows up there in. Just in the context of the desire for more than one gender. He doesn't really define it, but he just says that, like homosexuality or bisexuality at least, is going to only appear if it's had some like, exciting cause, to quote, rouse it from its slumber.
Anita Rao 5:17
So we love these older depictions of the body and sex a recurring theme in this show. Exactly. Okay, so it emerged then in the more formal, like psychology textbook. When did it start to come into, like, public discourse in our cultural consciousness?
Kaia Findlay 5:34
Yeah so we did mention the Kinsey scale in 1948 and then the Klein grid in the 1970s and it was the 70s and 80s that a lot of activists, and particularly bisexual rights activists, who started using the term more and bringing it into the public consciousness, along with gay and lesbian rights. And there were some pretty prominent activists, including Brenda Howard, who's known as the mother of pride, because she was really instrumental in getting marches and protests going after the Stonewall uprising. She did a lot of work to get by. Included in the 1993 march on Washington for gay, lesbian and bi rights, and then in the 2000s that's when we kind of got more terms for different identities, and those words started, just like keeping that more in the public consciousness as well.
Anita Rao 6:23
So we're talking about the term when it emerged, when people started using it. But obviously people have been bisexual for all of history. Like, how do we make sense of this moment where people feel like being bisexual is kind of a trendy thing to do in the context of the deeper history of bisexuality.
Kaia Findlay 6:46
Yeah, and so this sort of awareness of bisexuality often gets conflated with the idea that bisexuality is a trend that's emerging, but we didn't know that people were bisexual in the past because there is a lot of biphobia, or there was a lot of stigma around like bisexual people being promiscuous or untrustworthy, so people would keep a bisexual identity hidden historically. And we also know that I read a really interesting article from Dr Julia Shaw, who published a book in 2022 all about the history and culture and science of bisexuality, and she made the note that when academics are looking at people who had homosexual relationships, even when they were in heterosexual partnerships, they were labeled as like, oh, lesbian or gay, when really they could have been bi, but it's like, oh, they were just kind of ignoring the fact that these people were in bisexual spheres and just misidentifying them as gay or lesbian.
Anita Rao 7:45
Okay, so that brings me to this question about how our understanding and conversation about this term has evolved over time. Some of the early, more medicalized uses of it may have been referring to bisexuality as attraction to two genders. But there are lots of folks in the BI community who argue that the term transcends the gender binary. So help me unpack that misconception?
Kaia Findlay 8:10
Yeah, I think there's been a lot of push to explain how bisexuality includes more than one sex and gender, and one way that this has been pointed to is that if we think about the origins of the term heterosexuality and homosexuality, hetero is other and homos is same, so the BI isn't men and women, it's same and other. There have been activists like Robin Oaks is a pretty prominent bisexual rights activist, and she has the most widely accepted definition that talks about how bisexuality is the potential to be attracted romantically and or sexually to people of more than one sex and or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree. So there is a lot of nuance built into that definition that people are working with today. And oaks lobby to even get that definition changed in Merriam Webster, and they did change it in the spring of 2020, so there's been a lot of push for not thinking about bisexual as a binary term, and that's been reflected in some of these working definitions that we're seeing today.
Anita Rao 9:23
Okay, so in current discourse today, there are many folks who use bisexual as an umbrella term that includes other expressions of sexuality, like pansexuality. So tell me more about that.
Kaia Findlay 9:35
Yeah, so a lot of the folks in the bisexual community will use like bi plus as a way to describe all the people who are part of the bisexual umbrella. And that's because we have terms like pansexual, and because bisexual is defined as attraction or relation to one or more genders, that has given a. Lot of opportunity for a lot of different kind of identities to arise in that umbrella. So like, pansexual is attraction regardless of gender. And so if you identify as bisexual, you might be just attracted to like men and non binary people. But if you're pansexual, like it doesn't matter. Like gender doesn't matter at all.
Anita Rao 10:20
So we've gone on this long journey, and to bring it full circle, I'm curious about when and why and how you first kind of claimed the term for yourself.
Kaia Findlay 10:35
It didn't really happen all at once. I was just like, dating only men, and then I was dating not men. And I was like, Well, I guess I'll say bisexual to let people know that I, like, am still open to relationships with men. I remember my dad asked me if I had decided on his sexuality when I was at the end of college. And I was like, Well, I guess this is why this term is created. I was like, Yep, I'm bisexual. So it's useful to have to describe yourself to others. It doesn't always come up. I think it also. I have grown to identify with it more as I've gotten older, when I think about the communities that I really love and am a part of, and I am a part of a lot of queer community, and I like to use the term and really associate with it so that I don't feel like outside of those communities that I really value and am a part of.
Anita Rao 11:28
Since having this conversation with Kaia, I have been noticing just how often this debate comes up around what bisexuality means, and it's not just from non bi folks because of a lack of visibility and trends of BI erasure. Many bi people spend a lot of time searching for the right way to describe their identity. We're going to get more into that experience in just a minute when we meet an author who has a helpful reframe on the difference between sexual orientation and sexual identity. That's going to be right after this break.
This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao. Bisexuality appears smack in the middle of the LGBTQ acronym, which, in some ways, is fitting. It's a term that describes the many people who feel that their desires and attractions don't fit into purely homosexual or heterosexual boxes. The lived experience of that identity is what gets more complicated. Bisexual folks face constant questions about their validity. A 2005 article from the New York Times headlined straight, gay or lying. Really says it all the way our society views bisexual people has real life impacts on folks who fit under that umbrella, from adverse mental health outcomes to bi adults being much less likely than gay or lesbian folks to be out to the important people in their lives to challenge these expectations about what bisexuality is and should be, I'd like to introduce someone who's done a lot of research and reflection into the forces that shape how bi folks show up in the world. J.R. Yussuf is an actor and the author of dear bi men, a black man's perspective on power consent, breaking down binaries and combating erasure. J.R., welcome to Embodied.
J.R. Yussuf 13:26
Hi. Thank you for having me.
Anita Rao 13:28
So for the start of this episode, I talked with our producer, Kaia, introducing some of the evolving definitions of bisexuality and touching on some of the issues and complexities that people in the biplus community face, and one of these is that you need to have receipts or proof of your bisexuality. People feeling like having more than one gender in their dating history, for example, is necessary for people to believe and validate their biness. But you start and end your book reinforcing this idea that sexual orientation is about what you cannot see. It's about who you desire, not who you're dating or who you're engaged with sexually. So can you talk to me more about that distinction and why that sentiment was so important for you to convey in this book?
J.R. Yussuf 14:16
I think it was important for me to convey because the more I did my research, the more I realized that even if you have actual proof, you know things like having exes or even having you know, I don't know tapes or photos, as was the case for many asylum seekers, people seeking asylum from their Countries with the UK, they had to prove it in court, and even with pictures, even with testimonies from people that they've been with and things like that, it still was not enough. It was not enough for a judge to grant asylum seekers refuge and safety from their countries. And so I think realizing that. It, and then combining that with some of my own experiences, I realized, for some people, there's never going to be enough proof. They don't want to believe it. They don't want to accept it. Their current sort of mindsets, their current there's a word, paradigms, that's kind of a big word, yeah. But basically, the patterns that their their minds take it doesn't allow for bisexuality, pansexuality, fluidity in terms of sexuality. And so I realized, like me, trying to prove it is a losing battle. And so I think for me, I started to just kind of go inward and try to get to really what I'm talking about when I say that I'm bi, which is really about desire, that's like a simple and as close to reality as I can really get. It's about desire, which is something that you can't see.
Anita Rao 15:53
I'd love to hear a bit about your relationship with the term and how it's evolved over your life. You illustrate in the book that you knew what this was at age 10. You knew about the desires that you felt, but it took you a long time to get comfortable using it and really expressing your sexuality that way. How did your relationship with the term evolve over your lifetime?
J.R. Yussuf 16:16
Yeah, so 10 is when I first learned about the word, and I was like, Oh yeah, that's me. I had desires for other people my age, and that was across genders. And by the age of 10, people were already using, you know, different words to describe me, usually gay, and they meant that in a derogatory way, not just in a neutral way. So I think by the age of 10, I was like, trying to, like, not figure out, but like, trying to be like, well, there's another word for that feels a lot closer to what it actually is for me. And so let's use this word. And it's like, no, we're not going to use that word. We're going to use the word that we want to use for you. So I think that word has always been important to me because it described aspects of my own internal world. And even though I found that word at a pretty early age, it took a long time for me to get comfortable with it because of misconceptions about what that word means. I think a lot of people think it means that you are attracted to men and women at the same amount or frequency, intensity, whatever. And that's not true. So, so yeah, I think it took me longer to get comfortable using it, because so many of the people around me were so oppositional toward me, and they also misunderstood that the word doesn't mean, like, a 5050, split. It doesn't mean what a lot of people think it. It has to mean there's not, like, a litmus test, you know, yeah.
Anita Rao 18:00
Well, it's also interesting that you really illuminate in the book How perceptions of bisexuality are affected by gender presentation. And in the last few years, you've personally experienced a shift in how you're read by other people, from being perceived as more feminine to being perceived as more masculine, and you've noticed how that has shaped how your own relationship to bisexuality is and how other people view you. Can you talk a little bit about those ties between feminine and masculine and the experience of bisexuality?
J.R. Yussuf 18:35
Yeah. So, as I said before, prior to the age of 10 people would understand me, read me, tell me I was gay, and that was because I was more feminine. And I would say, over the last like 10 years or so, that's changed a lot, with me gaining muscle mass so people see a muscular, dark skin, tall, black man, and it's like, if I do say that I'm bi, I feel like it has more weight, and people are more likely to believe me, the more they read me as masculine versus before, when I was read as feminine. It was unbelievable for people.
Anita Rao 19:20
What is some of the mythology that you have begun to interrogate that leads to these assumptions?
J.R. Yussuf 19:28
So I think that some of the things I get to in my book is essentially because we live in a patriarchal society. Masculinity is one of the things that is necessary for you to be legible, for people to even see you. It's through the lens of how masculine you are. And so, because I appear more masculine now, I am not only legible or more legible, but there's some gravity to what I'm saying now, whereas before. Four when I was read as more feminine, it's like, no, that's not true. What we say matters about you, like what we think about you is what you are, versus now that I have, I guess, access to some forms of social currency, some forms of social cache, as I have more masculinity now it's I get to define who I am a bit more, and this is not like absolute so still they'll doubt and I'm not trying to say that masculine bisexual men don't experience invalidation or people don't believe them, but I am making a distinction that when I was read as more feminine, I was almost never believed, and now that I'm read as more masculine, people are at least more open to hearing what I have to say.
Anita Rao 20:53
This erasure that you talk about and describe in your book is so layered and it looks different whether you're interacting with people of different generations, with people of you know different notions of what the term bisexuality means, and you share some examples in your book of where the kind of existence or legitimacy of bisexuality as an Identity is questioned within the queer community in particular, can you talk about when and why this erasure happens?
J.R. Yussuf 21:27
I think that it's easier for people to place you in a distinct category of either you're in my in group or you're outside of my in group. And so I think that sexualities Like bisexual, pansexual fluid really automatically begin to challenge some of that when it comes to identity alone. And so I think it's been more helpful for me to form in groups and out groups around things like treatment. So you are in my in group if you treat everybody with humanity, dignity, decency, and also you understand things like power differentials in society, and you're in my out group if you don't do those things, versus, versus, oh, sexuality and like, who you're dating, you have to be dating someone of the same gender, you know?
Anita Rao 22:28
Yeah, you kind of make this point in the book where you say, like, visibility is important, but visibility is not enough, because there needs to be this bigger revolution around in groups and out groups, and how we relate to one another. Like, I know this is a big question, but like, what does that revolution against by erasure look like beyond just being visible as a bi person?
J.R. Yussuf 22:52
Yeah, so I love this question. So in the book, I talk about, like you said, visibility, representation not being enough, especially because in order to be represented, sometimes you have to buy in to a system, into a group that is oftentimes predicated on really negative things or things that are harmful to you. And you know, while I was doing all of this research for the book, it's like, oh yeah, bi people are the least likely to be out blah, blah. And so some of the implicit learning that you might take from hearing that is like, Oh, well, bi people just need to come out more. And it's like, that's one way to think about it, but another way to think about it is that the society or the people that they're close to are not equipped to be supportive or to understand what they're saying. And so when you talk about revolution and things like that, that goes into what people believe and subscribe to, and how people think the patterns of their minds. And I think that if we see representation, or see coming out to important people in our lives as a goal. That means that, as a society, people have to become more supportive of BI identities.
Anita Rao 24:10
This really gets to the disparities that I mentioned earlier. Bisexual plus people have high rates of poor mental health, as you said, They're less likely than gay men or lesbians to be out to their folks in their life and also their healthcare providers. So what conversations do you see happening that change those patterns, or what kind of change needs to happen to change those patterns?
J.R. Yussuf 24:37
I think back to almost all of my experiences going to get tested, and almost all of them are negative.
Anita Rao 24:49
So for Oh, STIs or...
J.R. Yussuf 24:52
STIs, HIV, yes, exactly, and almost all of those are negative because of the practitioners and people. You know, asking questions or taking blood, things like that. When it comes to the question of, you know, sexuality, and it's like, oh yeah, bye. There's always, almost always, some kind of reaction, some kind of negativity or surprise, or now they look at me completely differently, or things are just weird. And so, like I was saying before, when you hear about these statistics, it's like, oh, well, more bi people just need to come out. And I'm saying that, no, that's not the solution, and that's not all that's happening here. When bi people do come out, there is this explosive reaction, or there's this negativity, there's not ample resources. The medical professionals are not trained, or the training that the medical professionals have are outdated or stigmatized by sexuality. You stigmatize being gay, so yeah, like you're putting the onus on bi, pan, fluid people to be out when that doesn't make sense, if the society reacts poorly to you, then it makes sense not to be out. It makes sense not to share certain things about who you are or how you experience the world. And I think it's also important for us to validate people who share their internal world with, people who they want to share their internal world with, or feel safe doing that with, versus Oh, people who are not out as bi pan fluid are the problem.
Anita Rao 26:38
There's such an important relationship that you point out about our internal world and our ability to connect to our desire, and you draw this, this connection between what you're saying to yourself, what your internal dialog is, and your ability, at any given time to know how You're feeling, know what feels good know who you like, and I'd love for you to talk more about that, about that relationship between kind of healthy introspection, healthy internal conversation, and when it shifts to a place that feels limiting and is keeping you from Being in touch with what you like.
J.R. Yussuf 27:21
Yeah, I think learning more about different types of therapy, so things like coherence therapy and internal family systems, those are like modalities in therapy that have been extremely helpful to me. They essentially talk about various parts of human psychology, brain and internal world, and how sometimes those parts of yourself have differing opinions or differing needs. And so when I hear people talk about healthy introspection versus becoming your own internal critic, that's kind of what I'm thinking about, about these different parts that want different things. And so maybe our internal critic wants to keep us safe. And so it thinks that keeping us safe means foregoing this other part of ourselves, or being critical toward this other part of ourselves. So I'm thinking about these therapy modalities and how for certain people in certain areas, living in certain communities, being connected to different people, it feels safer to be negative toward those parts of ourselves, because our environment, the people around us, they feel negatively toward those parts of ourselves. Yeah, and so this is like a larger conversation, and you know, like I said before, it can be easy to then put the onus on the bisexual, pansexual fluid individual, right? And it's like the onus belongs on to the society that makes the bisexual pansexual fluid individual feel bad about themselves and who they just experienced attraction to. I think that for me, it's been important for me to develop this sort of nurturing, curious part of myself that is interested in who I am, outside of what I can produce in the world, just curious and loving toward who I am, just appreciative and nurturing toward who I am internally. And I hope that anybody who reads the book kind of can take some of that away too.
Anita Rao 29:53
We're going to talk more about the role of labels and how they're continuing to evolve as we continue this. Conversation, but I'm curious at this moment in your life about the importance of the label bisexual for you. And do you imagine a time when you would want to let go of that label?
J.R. Yussuf 30:14
Hmm, I've never been asked this before. That's cool. Yeah, I don't know, I like, bi, like, yeah, I use bi and fluid kind of interchangeably. There was this one time somebody kind of asked me, like, if I was pan pansexual. And I was like, yeah. I mean, like, yeah. That kind of that. Like, yeah. Like, I mean, the word I choose is bi or fluid, but essentially, kind of saying says very similar things. So I don't know, it is kind of important to me. But at the same time I don't know, I guess I'm like, sometimes I'm also like, oh, I don't like labels, so
Anita Rao 30:56
it's in process. Yeah, I know that you, are a student of black feminism, and you think a lot about or you really enjoy thinkers that are trying to teach you how to think, not what to think. So in that vein, I would love to ask you how you'd like people to start thinking about bisexuality in a new way.
J.R. Yussuf 31:24
I think you can think about bisexuality as being about connection. Is people who are really interested in connecting with people in a variety of ways.
Anita Rao 31:39
I love that reflection from J.R. that sexuality is at its core about connection, and it opens up lots of avenues for self exploration. Your sexuality is not about your behavior. It's about how you feel, even when those feelings are unexpected, and it makes me wonder about how we're using a label like bi when it encompasses so many different kinds of experiences. Do we ever get to a point where we no longer need labels, where, as JR puts it, we stop organizing ourselves into in and out groups based on sexuality? We're gonna open that can of worms in just a moment after the break.
This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao. The term bisexual challenges us to think about the true meaning of a spectrum, despite misconceptions you may have heard, it's not half straight and half gay. It's an identity of its own that describes love and attraction to multiple sexes and genders, like any term, how it's used, changes and evolves over time, and with bisexuality in particular, there is a tension now that it's a term that includes many variations under its umbrella, how much does it still resonate? Jazmín Aguilera is someone who has thought a lot about this push and pull of identity labels and where her own relationship with bisexuality fits within all of it. Jazmín is a senior audio producer and host for the Boston Globe. Hey, Jazmín, welcome to embodied.
Jazmín Aguilera 33:11
Thank you for having me.
Anita Rao 33:13
So I want to start at the beginning of your journey with bisexuality to talk about this idea of when and where we need labels for our identities. You've described your early relationship with the term as feeling like you really had to fight for it. What was the nature of that fight?
Jazmín Aguilera 33:32
Well, the nature of that fight was both internal and external. I'll start internally with just a refusal to commit to any one thing. I like to think about it as I did as a child, where I couldn't decide if my favorite color was pink or purple or blue, and just taking a stand on one way or the other just felt like such a such a decision that you couldn't come back from, and that scared me externally. Of course, I am bicultural myself. I grew up in a Mexican American family and also in a very progressive town in California. Theoretically, homosexuality, bisexuality, any kind of queerness, was not as taboo as it was in other parts of the country, but at home, it was so navigating kind of those two realities at the same time was difficult, and in particular, coming out at 18 to my father, who had no problem with gayness or straightness, but had a problem with bisexuality in particular, was kind of a perfect symbol of what that struggle was for me in my own life, which is, you could be one or the other, but you can't be both, because that's greedy or that's selfish, or that is confusing to me...
Anita Rao 34:52
Is that your dad's language that you're quoting there? Or...
Jazmín Aguilera 34:54
Yeah, okay, for sure. I mean, there was probably some more choice languages. It was a chaotic conversation. Happened on Christmas so, you know. And now I want to be clear, I have a much better relationship with my father, and he has a much better relationship with the concept of bisexuality. But at the time in 2008 it was, you know, a very hostile, confusing, scary reckoning that I had to make externally, and something that I that forced me back in the closet for many years.
Anita Rao 35:25
When you did begin to embrace it and name it externally. How did you feel about claiming that identity in your dating life?
Jazmín Aguilera 35:36
Well, I didn't claim it. It was a secret. It was something that I only told to people I trusted, and even then with massive caveats, because I wasn't afraid of being viewed as gay. In fact, if I knew clearly that I was a lesbian, it would have been a much easier process, because I came from a very progressive area, and that was there were a lot of gay women around, and it was easy to see that the problem for me was the fear that people would think that I'm just being gay to be cool, and that scared me a lot. I really did not want to be a quote, unquote poser, and I was terrified of the idea that if I wasn't ready to let go of my attraction to men and also still have an attraction to women and any gender in between that people would assume that I was doing so for the male gaze to be more attractive to men, because I wasn't a masculine presenting woman. I was still and still am now a feminine presenting woman that the assumption is is, oh, you're just experimenting, or you're just making out with women so that you could be more attractive to men with lesbian fetishes. I did not want to be perceived sexually that way, so I stayed in the closet, despite being somewhat out to certain people and in very important moments of my adolescence and into my young adulthood, it would pop back up and mortify me every time something came up, where other people thought that I was hiding something In order to appear aloof or interesting. I was just very concerned with people thinking I was performing my sexuality, so I just chose to hide it instead.
Anita Rao 37:30
When did you become more comfortable identifying as bi publicly?
Jazmín Aguilera 37:35
You know, I don't think I ever got comfortable with it. That's the sad reality. Because as I got more comfortable with just being honest about being attracted to women, it was very suddenly turned to in my queer circles, being bi, especially as a bi woman, was seen as you haven't fully committed to our lifestyle, so you were like, one foot in, one foot out, and therefore not to be trusted, and then in straight circles, it was very much, oh, you're you're interesting or cool, you're trying to be this kind of worldly person, and you're trying to be that worldly person, not that you just are who you are. So I was never comfortable with either of those scenarios, and I don't think that I ever got to a place where I was which led to me exploring that, why I feel weird calling myself bisexual in that episode that I produced a couple years back, I really wanted to drill down on if I could ever be comfortable with labeling myself that way, and I don't think that I ever got comfortable with it.
Anita Rao 38:44
Yeah, you're referring to an episode of the cut podcast that used to co host called Why do I feel weird calling myself bisexual? And yeah, you explore this being in the thick of examining your relationship to bisexuality, conversations you had with other folks in the queer community that made you second guess using or owning that label. And soon after that episode, and since you've started identifying less with the term bisexual, more with the term lesbian, talk to me about that shift for you.
Jazmín Aguilera 39:19
So it really came in with the start of my long term relationship with my current girlfriend. And it was that long term relationship that gave me a sense of validity and a sense of legitimacy in queer circles that died down. That sense of I don't belong here with other queer women. And I'll give you an example for why that happened. There was a moment at my birthday party a couple years ago where a couple of queer women were talking to me about my dating life, and I was telling them, you know, some women that I had gone on dates with, and how it went. And. And one of those women was a bi woman as well, and immediately one of the people listening to my story, she was like, oh, no, no, no, don't. Don't even do that. Don't go there, not knowing that that's how I identified myself at the time. So she had thought that I was fully lesbian and no longer attracted to men and trying to data by a woman, and she was counseling me not to do that, and knowing that that was the perception, even in my own queer circle, scared me, because I did not want to be perceived as somebody who was playing games. So starting that relationship a few months later, with my now girlfriend, I was able to point to I am gay. I'm not just lying about it. I've been dating the same person for years, and that gave me a sense of confidence to say, you know, you can't doubt me there. And in that process, identifying more with lesbian just made that shorthand easier for me, and also because of fluidity that I think a majority of people experience at some time or another in their life, whether it reflects around sexuality or gender identity or just cultural identity, any kind of identity that isn't easy To categorize one way or the other. It's fluid and ever changing. The idea that I now identify as a lesbian is is a lighthouse for me. It's It's a landmark that I can post up to that gives me a sense of stability when I've felt so at sea for so long.
Anita Rao 41:38
This really reminds me of a clarification between sexual orientation and sexual identity that J.R. talks about in his book, which is that sexual orientation is something nobody can see or know, and sexual identity is a label that feels most freeing in the moment, as you're saying, like claiming the label Lesbian is what makes you feel free and seen and able to kind of live into this relationship. Does that distinction land for you? And do you feel like bisexuality as the orientation versus lesbian as the label? Is that a distinction that makes sense for you?
Jazmín Aguilera 42:17
Absolutely, actually hearing him say that felt very illuminating for me just 10 minutes ago. Yeah, I felt very that distinction makes a lot of sense, because if I were to say a label, I would say lesbian at this very moment in time. It's what makes sense for me. I really don't see myself ever dating or being attracted to another man for a while, but the possibility is there, and knowing that the actual orientation, my actual attraction, my actual desires, are so so so fluid, that distinction actually makes me feel more at ease with this weirdness that I feel where, if I had to kaboom those two things together, I would Say I'm on the fence between bisexuality and lesbian, and I'm sticking to lesbian because it's just clearer for other people to understand, and I don't have to walk them through my dating history to make that stick.
Anita Rao 43:14
I love that, that that distinction lands for you, and I want to take you into another part of this conversation, which is how generational differences influence how we think about and talk about labels. We mentioned that cut podcast episode. Why do I feel weird calling myself bisexual, and in that conversation, you talked with a teenager named Frances, who you met through your coworker, and you talked with her about terminology and labels and how important coming out is for folks of her generation, I guess Gen Z. And I want to play a clip of Frances and have you reflect on that. So here is Frances.
Frances 43:55
I don't think I personally fit into any of the labels that I know of like that's something about our generation where it doesn't really matter what label you are, but you can just, like, I usually just word use, the word queer, like, just broader, because I don't really have to know who I am attracted to. I just need to, like, know that they're a person. I don't really know how to describe it. But the labels don't really matter at the moment in our time.
Anita Rao 44:21
Okay, so my first impression was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, so labels don't labels, labels don't matter. Is something that I feel like for millennials and Gen Xers is maybe not exactly where people feel in the moment, but I'm curious about this. Like, what do you think about this generational difference in whether or not labels matter at all?
Jazmín Aguilera 44:46
Well, I think it's an interesting generational change, specifically with Gen Z and alpha, is there is a trend to disrespect labels for lack of a better term. It's a lot more prominent. When speaking about gender identity, if you've seen some Tiktok trends that say my gender is and then something nonsensical comes out, like my gender is cat, my gender is something else, there's a kind of joke about that, yeah, and I feel like there is kind of a absurdist take that the generations below me are taking with sexuality, and so it makes total sense why Francis had that take for me and perhaps older people. Labels actually had a lot of power and and did affect our lives. That did force me in the closet for 12 years. It did terrify me for for a long time, I did have a shortcut to identity, whereas I hope now the label has lost some of its effect on a life, that it can be something that is played with and manipulated to fit whoever is using the label. As we would talk about hair color. You know, if you have dishwater blonde hair, you can say I'm a light brunette or a dark blonde, or make up some adjective, and it's non consequential. It doesn't matter. Really, nobody cares in the same way anymore, which is great.
Anita Rao 46:09
It's interesting, because there is an underlying question about existence. We were talking a lot about BI erasure earlier, and there is a famous bisexual rights activist, Robin oaks, who said in an interview, some people question why we need labels at all, but there are still people who don't even know that we exist. So the value and the need for a label to assert your existence, versus when does a label kind of lose its weight when it no longer has a negative charge. It gets really complicated really quickly, I feel like.
Jazmín Aguilera 46:45
Yeah. And in fact, labels in general, and their power, it's really a push and pull, because labels and names are identifying markers. And so if your identity is something that you're struggling with, labels are going to be a huge force in your life if you're very confident and very at home with who you are. Already labels don't mean anything, because you already know who you are. So it's kind of, you know, guns don't kill people. People kill people. Scenario, it's, it's a tool that you can use, and it can either be very harmful or completely inconsequential.
Anita Rao 47:23
The term bisexuality obviously illuminates that binary thinking is flawed, is limiting. We've talked about various ways that folks are pushing back against this, but I'd love to kind of close on how your experience with your sexuality has opened up ways of ridding other kinds of binary thinking in your life, if it has at all.
Jazmín Aguilera 47:47
Yeah, I think it has. I think back on all of the people that I've dated in my life who I cringe about now and how other binary decisions I made because I felt like I had to fit in one way or another. It helps me kind of realize, in the words of a former editor, people contain multitudes, and those multitudes can be contradictory and still true at the same time. And knowing that that is just like a everything, all at once all the time. Kind of situation has really helped me release some of the stress and anxiety around finding the category that fits. I don't need to do that work and other people that need those categories, census data forms or what have you, just choose what feels right in the moment or what's the easiest path of resistance, and don't think about it too much, because we don't need to think about this too much. If it doesn't matter to you, if it doesn't affect your life, to think about it that much. Don't, and that has been very freeing. I just don't have this conversation anymore because I'm so free from it. I don't need to anguish about it anymore.
Anita Rao 49:10
Embodied is a production of North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC, a listener-supported station. If you want to lend your support to this podcast, consider a contribution at wunc.org now. This episode is produced by Kaia Findlay and edited by Amanda Magnus. Nina Scott is our intern and Jenni Lawson is our technical director. Quilla wrote our theme music. If you have thoughts after listening to this episode, we would love to hear them. Leave us a voice note in our virtual mailbox, SpeakPipe, write us a review, let us know why you listen, or text your favorite episode to a friend. Word of mouth recommendations are the best way to support our podcast.
Until next time, I'm Anita Rao taking on the taboo with you.