Pride Month 2021: Back, Black, and Bi-er

Long time, no see eh? I’ve missed y’all. Grad school was one of the hardest experiences of my life, and these last two semesters put me through it, to put it lightly, but that’s over and done with now. I’m going to take this summer to re-configure my relationship to sex ed work in general, but this feels like a good way to get my feet wet again. This Pride Month in particular has been a lot, so I’m glad I waited until the end of the month to post this.

The last time I wrote about Pride Month was back in 2018, when I was a baby bi and still monogamous. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was still very much invested in the biphobic idea of being validated as a bi person in a heterosexual-appearing relationship. This need for validation obscured my perspective and made me feel that I didn’t really have a place in the community. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had internalized a lot of rejection from the queer community at my undergrad university, most of whom were lesbians and who, for varying reasons, don’t give the time of day to bi women.

As an aside, I don’t know where I’ve landed in the whole “it’s biphobic to not date bi women that date men” conversation, but I do think it’s more nuanced than we want to acknowledge. It might be biphobic, but I also think it’s okay for someone who wants nothing to do with men to refuse to date people that still prioritize them as romantic partners. As I get older I’m just less invested in making people interrogate potentially problematic lines of thought. Unless I’m directly in community with you I’m not gonna spend my time debating this point.

Back to the topic at hand, I felt that I had to be out AND dating a non-man in order for people to let me claim the title of bisexual, but I don’t have to “let” anybody to a damn thing. Identity is weird like that; some of them, like race, are generally inflexible and if I say I’m something no one is going to see me as anything else (Rachel Dolezals of the world notwithstanding). But because sexuality is a spectrum it’s harder for people to understand that it’s more transient and can change between weeks or months let alone years. I don’t believe in the concept of coming out as much anymore either, which definitely shapes this new perspective.

Chalk it up to age and experience, but I care less about who does or doesn’t think my identity is valid. In the past few years, I’ve learned so much about compulsory heterosexuality and higher violence rates experienced by bi people, things that are missed when we spend days on Twitter arguing about the validity of a bi person who primarily dates people of one gender or another. So somebody thinks I’m not a real bisexual because my primary partner is a man…….okay? That has nothing to do with me. I remember going on a date with a woman a few months ago and wondering if I looked queer enough. That thought in particular makes me laugh because most days I look at myself and wonder how anyone thinks I’m straight. Perspective is key and validity is a scam.

I don’t necessarily feel more bisexual than I did in 2018 now that I’ve dated people who aren’t men. They were relationships just like any other, and I don’t think gender dynamics were as big of a deal in those relationships as I thought they would be. It’s funny because I always thought that dating a person who wasn’t a man would unlock some new level of gayness for me, but it didn’t. It was regular relationship stuff, just with another pair of titties and commiserating about period cramps.

Relationships are hard work regardless of gender, and people are capable of doing you dirty regardless of gender too. I’m less focused on labeling and describing every small facet of my identity and just making sure that I’m living in alignment with my goals, values, and priorities. I don’t know what my pride post in 2025 will look like (or if I’ll even be blogging then), but I hope whatever version of myself writes it is living their truth.

Review: Panorama, an Upcoming Memoir by J. Ross Victory

From its opening pages, Panorama, authored by J. Ross Victory, shows the reader that self-growth and self-discovery are not easy journeys to embark on. Positioned as a standalone narrative but also an extension of the author’s memoir Views from the Cockpit, Panorama is a soul-baring look at how one man reckons with identity and healing past wounds, told through a series of narrative vignettes based on the author’s time in South Korea and his life post-return to the United States. His voice is a welcome one to the world of memoirs, as there is a noticeable literary dearth of bisexual Black men openly discussing their challenges and successes in love and life. 

Coming off the heels of recent representation via Love is Blind, the Netflix reality show in which a man named Carlton made a name for himself by going on a hyper-misogynistic rant about being rejected by his fiancée for being bisexual, Black bisexual men have been on the offensive doing damage control. With an essay after the book’s conclusion positing the development of a BSP (bisexual-sapiosexual-pansexual) identity umbrella, Victory’s positioning of his bisexuality within the larger story arc is a needed reminder that hypermasculinity and biphobia do more than just oppress people who are on the receiving end of it; they develop a form of spiritual death in the people who embody them as well.

In talking about his love(s), loss, and the consequences of avoiding pain, Victory seeks to remind readers that our decisions are ours alone to make, and while you cannot undo something once it has been done, you can use that knowledge to grow as a person. Whether that growth is always at another person’s expense is up to us to decide.

While Panorama is better contextualized when read directly alongside Views from the Cockpit, it reads easily on its own once you, the reader, understand that the book drops you in the middle of an existing story. It can be a bit jarring at first because you feel like you’re missing some important background information, but everything that needs to be explained, is, over the course of the book. This kind of structure demonstrates the tension and urgency that Victory feels, due to the stream-of-consciousness narration style at certain points. Within this tension is, to me, the fundamental question the book wants us to answer: “where do we find love?” and its companion, “what do we do with it once we’ve found it?”. 

Panorama does a great job of telling us what NOT to do with love. The major concern that most people have when reading a first person narrative about real life is the risk of an unreliable narrator. We’re only receiving one side of the story so it would stand to reason that the author would want to make himself look better. If that’s the case in Panorama, then the real story behind some of the experiences described in the book must be abhorrent, to say the least. Victory is not a particularly likable character for a decent portion of the book — I often found myself wanting to shake him back to reality or give him an Iyanla Vanzant-esque dragging for his behavior. 

Panorama’s power lies in its nonchalance. On its face it appears to be simply part of a memoir by a Black bisexual man who has chosen to publicly reckon with his misdeeds via his art. And while it is that, it also pushes readers to look at themselves and where they find themselves — politically — in the world. Where is love there? How can we all extend grace to ourselves for what we feel are unforgivable mistakes? Victory doesn’t answer this for readers, obviously. But by sharing his story, after reading, you are left with a need to reach into yourself and see how you can answer those questions. I urge you to pick up a copy of Panorama — and Views from the Cockpit while you’re at it — if you are interested in a Black ex-pat perspective of South Korean life, want to support a Black bisexual male author, or want to know how one man has chosen to search for answers to life’s difficult questions.

Link to Panorama

Link to Views from the Cockpit

Ross Victory’s Website

Instagram: @rossvictoryofficial

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!

It's June 1st, also known as National Donut Day and the beginning of LGBTQ Pride Month.

As a quick history primer: Pride Month is celebrated in June to honor the Stonewall Riots, an uprising led by Black and Latinx queer and trans people in response to police violence in Manhattan, New York in June of 1969. This riot is known as the beginning of the modern-day LGBTQ+ rights movement that continues today.

After Stonewall, the last Sunday in June was known as “Gay Pride Day” around the United States. In 1994 a group of organizers selected October as Gay Pride Month. Over time, October became LGBTQ History month and the designation of Pride Month shifted back to June. With this shift, the scope of the celebration expanded from just gay pride to the entire LGBTQ+ spectrum.

This is the Bisexual Pride Flag. It becomes relevant soon.

My relationship to Pride Month is constantly evolving. I don't think I genuinely knew about Pride Month until I was in college, so around 2013/2014. I'd questioned my sexuality since I was a kid, because I knew I was attracted to boys and girls during elementary and middle school. By high school, I'd convinced myself that it was a phase, even though my first crush and the first person I ever kissed was one of my childhood best (girl) friends. I somehow convinced myself I was straight for the better part of 4 years, because I couldn't agree with the concept of a more expansive sexuality, I thought you had to pick a side, and I knew I wasn't a lesbian.

Couple that with being part of a super-religious Black family, and I honestly decided that trying to figure out who I really was wasn't worth the headache. I've still never had an open conversation with my family about my sexuality and don't really plan to unless it's necessary, as in I start dating someone who isn't a man. I feel like I'm fighting battles every day for my existence because of my other, more visible identities, I'm not sure if I could handle more.

Once I got to college I met new people, joined organizations, and went to lectures and events geared to LGBTQ identity because I considered myself an ally. These experiences gave me the language, history, and validation needed to start processing my feelings toward my sexuality again (spoiler alert: I'm bisexual). The thing about coming to an epiphany about your sexuality while you're 2 years into a long-term relationship with a cisgender man is that it's hard for people to believe you, for lack of a better word. It's why I consider myself eternally closeted. 

I've been told so many times to my face that I'm just a straight girl who wants attention. And i'd be lying if I said that those statements didn't get to me. If I'm in a heterosexual monogamous long-term relationship, does the fact that I'm bisexual even matter? It's not like anyone can tell by looking at me or my partner. I'm "straight-passing" for lack of better words, and while it gives me a level of privilege many LGBTQ don't have to be free from harassment about my relationship, it also means that my identity as a bisexual woman isn't seen as legitimate and I feel constantly on the fringes of the community. Which comes with its own pros and cons, because the mainstream LGBTQ+ community definitely struggles when it comes to supporting most of the letters in the acronym that aren't "G". 

I wish I could say that I've reached closure regarding my own identity and the general idea that all sexualities are valid regardless of how they're presented, that you can't judge a book by its cover, etc. but these feelings of confidence in my own identity are few and far between for me. When it comes to Pride Month specifically, I normally opt to take a back seat to the more marginalized whose voices should be heard more often. And I still plan to do that this year, but maybe I'll also choose to be more open about my identity and experiences in the hopes that it makes others feel seen and heard as well.