How to Talk About Being Bisexual

Making a choice to come out about your bisexuality is a healthy part of affirming your choice and your worth as a human being. By discussing what it does and does not mean to be bisexual, you may also help to educate others and even to empower some individuals to accept their own bisexuality.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Share a positive, matter-of-fact approach when you talk about being bisexual. Regardless of their own sexuality, most other people will be better able to understand and accept you if your self-confidence communicates that you are not ashamed, closeted or merely going through a phase.
2. Consult your own preferences, as well as your sense of your "audience," in deciding whether to talk about being bisexual in a circumspect or an explicit, sex-positive manner. Bisexuality is essentially about attraction, and can be discussed in a non-sexualized way if that is the most appropriate approach in a particular setting.
3. Talk about what being bisexual does not mean, as a way of helping people understand what it is. Being bisexual does not mean you are gay, just as it does not mean you are heterosexual. It does not imply that a person is promiscuous, polygamous, polyamorous or even sex-positive. It simply means being attracted to people of either gender, and what happens from that point on is up to the individual.
4. Help people understand that a bisexual person may be as likely as a heterosexual or gay person to thrive in a long-term, monogamous relationship. If you are involved with woman and one of her friends asks her why she isn't worried that you will cheat on her with a guy, she should be able to explain that this is no more likely than the prospect of her lover cheating on her with another woman if she were dating a heterosexual or a lesbian.
5. Let people know what you do for a living, what your hobbies and interests are or how you like to spend your Sunday mornings in order to help them accept you as a complete human being rather than a one-dimensional caricature. Your bisexual orientation is just one part of who you are, but sometimes other people have trouble focusing on the rest of you.

Tips & Warnings

• Take care with your privacy. There are many personal benefits to playing an active role as a bisexual person in your community, but it is also important to protect yourself from others who may see you as vulnerable in some way by keeping personal information to yourself.