Claiming the B in LGBT: Illuminating the Bisexual Narrative by Kate Harrad

Author:Kate Harrad [Harrad, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Family & Relationships, Love & Romance, Social Science, LGBTQ+ Studies, General
ISBN: 9781944934613
Google: kj5nDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Thorntree Press LLC
Published: 2018-10-05T23:21:09.218953+00:00

My Invisible Skin

By Omar Sakr, reproduced with permission from the website Human Parts.

How do I talk to you about something that most people think doesn’t exist?

How can I stand up for a community that doesn’t believe in me?

Sometimes, I feel like an empty chalk line on bitumen, a once-man forever being filled in by other people’s expectations and ideas. I try to tell them who I am. I try to show them my depth, my range, the texture and color of my experience, but I may as well be a passing gust of wind. They see my outline, the most basic sketched detail, and immediately fill it with their preconceived notions.

As a mixed-race bisexual, I cop it both ways (ha, yep, I can joke about it — often, humour is all I have). I’m a half-Lebanese, half-Turkish Australian; I look like your fears. Tall, dusky and bearded, I get it in the sidelong glances on public transport, in newspaper headlines and politics, and the fact that at every checkpoint, be it police at train stations or airports or anywhere, I’m stopped and questioned. It’s not always by a faceless white authority figure either, but often by men who look just like I do. They’ll hold up their arm with an apologetic grimace, as though saying, “I know. I do. But I have to stop you.”

Because stereotyping is so pervasive, we’re even suspicious of each other. Just a few weeks ago, I was going into work on a cold, rainy day, wearing a nice formal winter coat, and actually thinking to myself, I look so presentable today, so officious (read: white), I don’t think I’ll be stopped. And when I was, it broke me just that little bit more — there’s really nothing I can do, no mask I can wear to hide who I am, no way to change how they think of me.

This is my skin.

Which brings me to bisexuality, my invisible identity. Like it or not, it’s as much a part of me as my coloring, my racial markers. Sadly, my experience with the latter has informed how I express the former — namely, I don’t broadcast it. I’m a big guy, I like watching sport, burgers, girls and going to the gym. I have a lazy masculine attitude, including a general disdain for cleanliness and fashion. You know, the broad caricaturist strokes of your average straight man. It’s incredibly easy to play to those elements and let people assume what they will without ever having to speak a lie.

Of course, I’m also a geek, writer, poet, and lover of all things Disney, musical, and theatre. My loves are numerous, my personality multifaceted, and yet, there are so few people willing to accept me as such. Even among my friends — my progressive, left-wing heavily pro–LGBTQIA+ friends — I can count on one hand the people who know and love me for all that I am, and not just a part they find acceptable. Bisexuality, I have discovered,

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