People seem to have these preconceived notions regarding bisexuals: that they’re promiscuous, they can’t commit, they have one foot in the closet, they want attention or that bisexuality is just an easy way out.  These responses always confused me. After all, being bisexual just means that someone is attracted to both men and women; it doesn’t sound like that hard of a concept.

“Oh no, Lauren, you can’t be attracted to both, that’s just not how it works.  You can only be attracted to one or the other.”  How, exactly, does that make sense?

When a friend of mine told me I was just confused, I just got even more confused.  “Well, am I a lesbian?” I would ask myself, but no, I had been attracted to guys before, and I couldn’t be straight since I had found other girls attractive.  What in the world was I, if bisexual wasn’t an option?

So I just kept it to myself, and not just that, but I would try to completely deny it within myself and I would try to just stick to one outlet of attraction so that society would give me as little hassle as possible.  But ultimately, this just resulted in me becoming extremely unhappy.  I’m not gay and I’m not straight, and I feel uncomfortable identifying myself with either.  I don’t like lying, especially when it’s to myself.

So you know what?  Screw that.  I’m done with being silent about it.  I’m bisexual and perfectly fine with it.  No, I’m not “doing it for attention. I’d rather have people pay attention to me for reasons other than whom I happen to find attractive, thank you very much.

I’ll have you know that bisexuals are no more or less promiscuous than anyone else.  Seems obvious, right?  Unfortunately it isn’t, at least to a good portion of the population.  Even so, there’s nothing wrong with promiscuity, so long as you use protection.  The same idea goes for commitment issues.  If someone has a problem remaining committed in a monogamous relationship, then that’s a reflection of them as a person, not of everyone who happens to share some particular trait with them (well, unless that trait happens to be “˜commitment problems,’ then yeah).

Lastly, bisexuality is not “an easy way out.”  If it were, then I wouldn’t have to explain this to people! If it were easy, then I wouldn’t have written this, and instead I would have written about milkshakes or something.  I don’t know.  Now, I’m not saying that being gay is easy, nor am I implying it.  LGBTQ people all face varying degrees of hardship in their lives.  I’m just focusing on bisexuality since it’s what I know the most about, it’s what I consider myself to be and, therefore, the problems they face are what I’m most familiar with.

Lauren Schroeter, junior religion and geology major.