The trials and tribulations of bi dating

For a bisexual, dating is like a wide-open field of choices dotted with hidden landmines where things can get weird fast depending on the players in the field, and how one approaches the dating game. I find that things get weird most often in the world of online dating. At least more websites now have a "bisexual" option when signing up and indicating one's orientation. Which is a marked difference compared with Plenty of Fish and E-Harmony, which only offer matches for either straight or gay/lesbian members but not bisexuals. Match.com has similar limitations as you have to choose one gender or the other to search for. The site that I used to be on the most was OKCupid because it allowed me to identify as bi and put search filters for people that I was interested in. But there's a problem with the way OKCupid filters matches, as noted by Maria Burnham in 2012:

"After I check “bisexual,” I have the option to click “I do not want to see or be seen by straight people.” But wait! I like men, too! In my previous relationships, both short ones and long-lasting ones, I have dated straight men, so of course I want them to be able to view my profile. My profile now states that I am bi and looking for guys and girls who like bi girls.

And so another conundrum. As much as I like to avoid stereotypes, I couldn’t help but wonder how many gay women would actively search out bi women on a dating site. Even if a gay girl is open to dating a bi girl, even if she doesn’t harbor preconceived conceptions about bisexual women, my guess is that to make things easier and more streamlined, she is going to search for gay women."

This author, and many others who have written similar articles about dating bisexuals, offers up lists of helpful ideas for "how to date" bisexuals. If you don't believe me, go to Google and type in "dating bisexuals is hard" and see what comes up. You'll see link after link of articles from Cosmopolitan to a variety of online zines that outline the stereotypes that prevent straight/gay/lesbians from dating bisexuals.

I gave up on OKCupid a few years ago because I felt like I was meeting friends, not matches. I thought I'd give the less wordy Tindr a try. What a mess! There is less text so you can't really write about your personal ethos or wax poetical about your love of butter chicken, or really give a potential date/hook-up/future partner a real idea of what you are like. Instead, Tindr connects to your Facebook profile (ugh, don't even get me started!) and your "likes" and photos end up on your profile. You get 140 characters to explain your awesomeness (gah, its like Twitter!) I signed up and because I have indicated on Facebook that I'm interested in men and women, it automatically signed me in as bisexual. Over the course of my trial use of this dating app, I was approached by 10 men for every 1 woman. It wasn't possible to only show me women interested in women, so I felt like I was swiping left for forever...and all that swiping made me give up on Tindr. It simply wasn't the dating app for me.

Too true! This has been my dating experience as well. Graphics courtesy of the Rogue Feminist.

I cannot tell you how many times I was messaged online by couples looking for a third. Although I do enjoy threesomes and group sex, I have never found a fun, sexy way of making them happen by setting something up with randoms from an online dating forum or Craigslist. It just doesn't happen. I'd rather meet someone in real life and if things progress into consensual group-sex territory, then great. But trying to organize something like that ahead of time online with someone(s) you've never met? Sketchy and creepy.

Bisexual dating is also tough because of a seemingly small dating pool. I think this graphic sums up what I'm trying to express here:

It took me some time to find these "mythical" peoples, but they DO EXIST!

Something that keeps coming up in online literature, and that has occurred in my own dating history, is the apparent need for bisexuals to be legitimized under the LGBTQ2 banner by dating partners of the same sex. We have to "prove" our queerness to folks who are monosexual. It's especially difficult when you physically look straight. My friends and I have this joke about 100-Mile Queers - basically, you can tell that the person is queer from that far away. On most days, my gender expression is fairly feminine and I get read as straight. I have longish curly hair in a natural colour (but I dream of magenta), I like to wear make-up and dresses, and don't have any visible body piercings (except my ears). I'll never forget when I outed myself to a co-worker about 8 years ago when I told her that my friend and I had entered a photo of me into an LGBTQ2 photography contest, and my co-worker asked me why that contest applied to me. Bam! Read as straight. This video that I found on YouTube brings up some issues that pop up for bisexual women who date both genders that I could relate to:

 

Just in case you are wondering, there is also a similar video about bi guys. Check it out!

Below is an interesting YouTube video about lesbians dating bisexual women. It's really interesting to watch how lesbians describe being with bi women. Insecurity around gender betrayal (in this case, "going back to men") seems to be the key issue around why perhaps lesbians are hesitant to date bisexual women. This YouTuber also had a very contentious video 3 years ago about what Lesbians Think of Bisexual Woman. Its shocking to listen to! There has been much dialogue on YouTube around that video, I recommend falling down that particular internet rabbit hole for half an hour to hear both sides of the story.

It's clear to me that things are harder for bisexual men than women when it comes to dating. Don't know what I mean? Well, I came across this article today and I was horrified by a piece data that came out of Glamour Magazine's sex survey:

This overt biphobia is very disheartening, and I think that this statistic may be a signpost of how Western culture shames men who have had sexual contact with other men. There is so much hype around masculinity, and there is a pervasive  belief that a man being sexual with another man somehow diminishes their masculinity and worth vis-a-vis straight men. Bisexual male writer, Eliel Cruz, writes that biphobia also:

"[can lead] to the idea that bisexual men are more likely to be HIV positive than men who have sex exclusively with other men or women...Our meta-analysis shows that bisexually behaving men are significantly more likely than heterosexually behaving men to have HIV but significantly less likely than gay-behaving men to have HIV," a primary author told HIV Plus magazine.This reputation stems from the early days of the AIDS crisis, when bisexual men were blamed for spreading HIV — then understood to be a "gay disease" — to women." 


I personally would date a bisexual man, its just that I've actually never had the chance. I'd love to hear from any bi male readers out there - what have your dating experiences been like? I'd love to compare notes...hit me in the comments below.