I consider myself a bisexual, and, yes, at times, I feel self-conscious about it which is why I don’t let a lot of people know. Whenever I hear someone say, “Bisexuals just can’t make up their minds,” or, “no one in a monogamous relationship is bisexual,” I feel weird and a little strange. It makes me wonder how they would talk to me if they knew I identified that way. I have some pretty cogent arguments as to why both of those statements are incorrect but people who make these kinds of statements tend to be resentful about bisexuals for some reason.
I also sometimes wonder how my romantic and sexual relationships could differ from those of people who are chiefly attracted to only one sex. For example, my boyfriend has told me that, as long as there was no danger of my leaving him and as long as I asked him first, I could engage in sexual activities with another female. I am four-square against that because, in my opinion, cheating is cheating, it doesn’t matter what genitalia the person has and I have told him this. His response was that he knows that females have something he does not and could therefore meet sexual needs that he could not. Personally, I disagree with this statement because every person on the planet could meet my sexual needs differently than he could. However, it makes me wonder if, as a bisexual, am I exempt from certain rules of homosexual and heterosexual people? I think not but apparently other people, my boyfriend among them, think differently.
I also sometimes feel a little weird when I tell someone usually a heterosexual male that I am bisexual and he is aroused. In American culture, women who engage in sexual activities with other women have been hyper-sexualized because most of these women are not actually bisexual, but only participate in sexual activity with other women because they are encouraged often quite strongly to do so. I have never been asked to make out with a chick but once, when I was dating a guy who rode a motorcycle, he told me that one of the girlfriends of one of his motorcycle buddies was bisexual and often made out with the girlfriends of the other guys. He implied that I would be expected to make out with her and, as I was in a committed monogamous relationship however brief it was, I had no desire to do so. Thankfully, the situation never came up.
As a bisexual, I sometimes feel as if my orientation is owned by everyone else and I am only defined by how the majority wants to define me.