Thoughts on an involved process.
Materialize. As you’ve now been noticed, your powers of invisibility have been rendered temporarily inactive. On the bright side, being visible will make the clicking noise your keyboard is making much less alarming to those around you.
Begin gathering all of your thoughts, which have up until this point been inevitably floating in and out of your stream of consciousness fairly continuously for several years. Realize that all of your thoughts have been said before, or just that you’ve read too many articles about multisexuality.
Become determined to write something new, innovative, daring, and creative. Become immediately stressed when trying to think of something new, innovative, daring, and creative. Desire a drink.
Try to figure out what the Indy has said about bisexuality in the past. Find last year’s article “Dissecting Biphobia: Myths and Facts,” which puts forward the argument that “gender-normative bisexual people” are inherently privileged over other queer people, and therefore have it easy. Immediately set off on an all caps fit of rage. Realize that as a femme bisexual woman, your anger does not perfectly align with your assigned gender role and is therefore rendered invalid.
Check your phone to see you have a notification from JSwipe about the super bowl, for some reason. Consider tindering for academic purposes, obviously. Think about how you felt compelled to take bisexuality off your tinder bio because people don’t want to date bi women and it seems like the only people who do are couples looking for a third. Quickly abandon the idea.
Immediately feel that somehow you are sucking up all of the crippling self-doubt and anxiety emanating from Lamont and incorporating it into the very fabric of your being. Feel bitter that no one is thanking you for these moments of relief.
Try to get back on track. Begin thinking very deep® and important® thoughts about the perpetual biphobia both among straight people and within the LGBTQ+ community. Think about Harvard’s LGBTQ+ community. Think about the incestuous nature of Harvard’s LGBTQ+ community. Wonder what the hell happened to the Queer Resource Center (seriously, if anyone has any clue please let me know. They had great couches).
Inevitably begin thinking about all the people you’re disappointing. Think about your mother, who keeps telling people you don’t label yourself, whom you keep having to tell that you are in fact a very labeled, very aggressive bisexual. Think about your Texas born and raised father, who seems fine with you being kinda gay but is very perturbed by the idea of you becoming goth. Think about cute tumblr lesbians who will barely talk to bisexual women.
Think about just writing another piece breaking down harmful myths about bisexuality, because no one seems to have figured it out yet. Grow bitter that you feel you inevitably have to take this tired approach instead of telling the stories you want to tell about kissing cute girls at peer counselor parties (validate and relate indeed), about making new friends and realizing that collectively, you’re a walking gay stereotype, about going to a party and talking to two people of different genders and wondering which is going to try to hook up with you, about your high school boyfriend who joked about watching you make out with your best friend, about the fact that you’re still confronting you’re own internalized biphobia that inevitably stems from an accidental viewing of Tila Tequila’s A Shot at Love at age 12.
Realize that dating in college, especially dating at Harvard, is confusing, messy, and often fruitless, and being bisexual doesn’t change that, for better or worse. As you recede back into the mist of bi-invisibility, remind the world that even if they can’t keep all the myths about your sexuality straight, bi and large, treating us with respect is enough (if that doesn’t sound too greedy).
Megan Sims ’18 (megansims@college.harvard.edu) prefers an extra Bi byline.