The Fatal Potential Of Bi Erasure

Not Queer Enough To Be Protected, But Queer Enough To Be A Victim

This is Sitting Queerly, a newsletter focused on the late blooming queer experience, the lofty goal of opening up conversations and celebrating those who embrace their full selves.

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Sending out this second newsletter partly because its newsworthy but also so y’all have something thought-provoking to read this week and not just my pitch for you to get a paid subscription. Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who has taken the leap and agrees that my writing is worth paying for. I appreciate you more than you can know.

Obviously most people think I’m straight when they first meet me because I’m married to a woman, have children and dress like a typical white suburban dad.

Go into most any online groups for bi/queer folk or talk to them one-on-one and you’ll hear anecdotes about folks having their bisexuality dismissed by straight and queer folk alike. You know, the comments like “oh, it’s just a phase,” or “you’re just greedy,” or “you’re just on the first step to becoming gay.”

Admittedly, I was a little raw when I wrote about my first encounter with bi erasure and biphobia when I was first accepting myself. 

Now, while it still irks me, it doesn’t get my dander up like it used to. In all honesty, because I only care about those who know me accepting me, strangers not seeing my queerness immediately doesn’t bother me. When it comes to the queer folk I’ve connected with since accepting myself, none have questioned my self-described sexual identity.

So, bi erasure is definitely annoying and wrong and needs to be addressed. But there are many things facing those in the queer community—i.e. trans folks—that are more of a real physical threat than having your specific form of queerness questioned, right?

Then I learned about Charles Mwangi.

The 48-year-old undocumented resident has been in Canada for five years, working in long-term care facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic before finding his current role as a personal support worker at two Toronto shelters. Before that, he worked as a contractor for the United States government in Afghanistan.

Just days ago the Canadian government gave a last minute stay to his scheduled deportation back to his native Kenya after protests, petitions and the intervention of a migrant workers organization. 

Mwangi first came out publicly as bisexual and an undocumented resident in Canada back in May. It was part of a publicity effort by activists to urge Parliament to act on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s call to develop a pathway to permanent resident status for tens of thousands of undocumented residents.

“I just want to live a normal life without fear,” Mwangi said in May.

The Toronto Star reported at the time of Mwangi’s declaration that he had exhausted his appeals of his refused refugee application with Canadian authorities. And why had his application been refused?

Because he is married to a woman and has children so authorities said that proved he isn’t bisexual.

A similar petition to the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission was also denied for the same reason. Per The Globe And Mail:

A copy of the UN application says his refugee claim was denied because the adjudicator did not find Mr. Mwangi, who is married and has two children, to be a credible bisexual man despite his sworn testimony, the testimony of a man he was said to be dating in Toronto and his activism with local LGBTQ organizations.

Currently, sexual relationships between men carry a seven-year prison term in Kenya. However, some African nations, most prominently Uganda, have instituted the death penalty for such acts in recent years, and there are efforts to institute them elsewhere in Africa, thanks to the efforts of vehemently anti-LGBTQ+ Christian groups based in the United States and elsewhere.

According to Nation.Africa, an independent news outlet serving the African continent, there have been some judiciary wins for queer rights and organizations serving queer folk in Kenya. However, that nation’s highest court declines to overturn “colonial-era laws criminalizing gay sex…on the grounds that Kenya’s 2010 constitution, which defines marriage between people of the opposite sex, would be undermined if gay people were allowed to live together.”

It is terrible enough that there are places in the world where it is deadly to simply live as your true self, to love who you want to love. But to have the authorities of a nation that claims to be a safe place for queer folk deny someone’s sexual identity because preconceived notions tell them to, and potentially send that person to their death, is abhorrent. Though data and reporting on bi erasure shouldn’t make this surprising. Despite the fact that, at least in the United States, bisexuals make up two-thirds of queer millennial and Gen Zers, bisexual folk are often lumped in with gay men, lesbian women or trans folk depending on their gender identity in research studies. Very little funding is allocated to bi-specific outreach or initiatives compared to other queer identities. And many bi folk, especially bi men, are reticent to disclose their identity because of real and perceived prejudice, ignorance or dismissal of their sexual orientation.

And this is on top of the data showing that bisexual folk are among the most likely to be victims of rape and other forms of sexual assault, be bullied as youth, live in poverty, lack health insurance and much more.

In the end, it sounds like it took a last-minute meeting with a Canadian MP to get Mwangi’s asylum request granted. I can’t imagine what it would be like to go before some government bureaucrat and somehow prove I dig dudes even though I am married to a woman and have children. What proof is sufficient? I have some guys I’ve gone to bed with who could give testimony for me, though apparently such evidence wasn’t sufficient in Mwangi’s case. Would I need to provide documentation of my PrEP prescription? Of my routine HIV testing? A note from my therapist about the psychological rollercoaster she has seen me ride for the past year and a half as I wrestled to make myself whole?

It’s a sobering reminder that even with all the progress made in queer rights in past decades, it’s not a guarantee those rights will always be respected. Especially when people don’t believe you’re queer in the first place.