Eric Pulaski has fallen in love with both men and women, but often his gay friends will insist that he has to choose men.
“There’s no way you’re bisexual, just fully commit to being gay,” they’ll say to him, compared to taking another friend who identifies as gay at his word.
“As if his attraction to men was ‘normal,’ but my attraction to both is not,” says Eric, 24, of Oakland.
It happens in everyday life just as it does with high-profile people, as when British Olympic diver Tom Daley came out late last year, dating a man and said “I still fancy girls,” but was questioned.
Men and women who identify as bisexual face discrimination from both heterosexual and homosexual people, according to an analysis led by Mackey Friedman, a researcher with the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
Straight men were three times more likely to categorize bisexuality as “not a legitimate sexual orientation,” according to the research, which surveyed 1,500 adults.
The results of the survey, sponsored by the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University Bloomington and the National Institutes of Health, were presented at a November conference in Boston.
The surveys included 33 questions based on one-word responses in relation to bisexual people, both positive and negative, like “different,” “experimental” and “confused.”
“We did see that folks who were bisexual had much more favorability to bisexual people than gay and lesbian people did,” Mackey says.
Men who identified as bisexual were more likely to face discrimination than women who identified as bisexual, according to the research.
Eric says he understands that feeling attracted to more than one gender challenges our culture’s definition of masculinity and the gender binary that dictates how men and women should act.
“If something clicks for me, I can fall head over heels,” he says. “For me, bisexuality is to take things on an individual level.”
When the negative reactions are internalized, however, they can cause depression or isolation, which can cause more instances of substance abuse in women and eating disorders among men.
“I think for different people it’s different stories, but the examples have been described over and over again, so we know it’s real,” he says.
Stephanie Hoehn, 24, of Marshall-Shadeland said she had to deal with those feelings of isolation after her parents couldn’t understand her identifying as bisexual. Those feelings have also pushed her away from other women – both lesbian and straight.
When she mentions it to straight women, “I think at first they seem to think I’m attracted to them,” but lesbians also have trouble relating, since “I like men so they assume that I’m straight,” Stephanie says.
That may be part of the reason more people want to cast off identifying themselves as “bisexual” and instead use “queer” or “heteroflexible,” Mackey says.
“Even just saying ‘bi’ is simplifying things a little too much,” he says. “I think the more we try to simplify things and collect things into boxes, the less we can have a real sense of human diversity.”
Using the more ambiguous terms allows a freedom that reflects the progress of recent years.
“I think sex and gender freedom has really been what the LGBT rights movement is all about,” he says.
Both Eric and Stephanie agree, though, the word bisexual reflects how they identify most accurately.
“I feel that’s a good blanket term for me,” Eric says. “My sexuality changes all the time, depending on what my context is, depending on where I am in my life.”
