#CelebrateBiNonBinary | Charlie Mathers
The Oxford Dictionary definition of Bisexual is: ‘Sexually attracted not exclusively to people of one particular gender; attracted to both men and women.’ So it comes as no surprise that there has long been a misconception that bisexuality is inherently transphobic.
It was also one that I unfortunately believed for many a-year. It wasn’t until I came across a far better definition of bisexuality that I realised the issue with the dictionary definition.
Long-standing Bisexual activist Robyn Ochs defines her own bisexuality as: ‘The potential to be attracted–romantically and/or sexually–to people of more than one gender, not necessarily at the same time, in the same way, or to the same degree.’
Despite it being 2020 and the community having made leaps and bounds in some ways, it’s incredibly unfortunate that biphobes rear their ugly heads and try to make people who choose the label of Bisexual over Pansexual feel bad.
When the hashtag for Bisexual men, and subsequently hashtag for Bisexual women, were created I was obviously delighted. Any and every part of the Bisexual community deserves so much more love than it already gets.
But, not only were those two tags alone not covering every part of the Bisexual community, but I had this awful lingering fear that they leaned into that old-fashioned belief that Bisexual was only a male and female thing.
While I’ve been out as Bisexual and a member of the LGBT+ community for almost a decade now, I came out as non-binary less than a year ago so I nowhere near consider myself a good “spokesperson.” But the longer I waited for someone else to start a Bisexual tag for enby people, the more I realised that I just had to take the stand and do it myself.
And so - I threw the #CelebrateBiNonbinary hashtag out into the stratosphere. It immediately received support from both the bi men and bi women communities which was so heartwarming to see! And then the Bisexual non-binary community took the tag and ran with it. The rest, as they say, is history.
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My name is Charlie Mathers, and my pronouns are they/them. I’m a bisexual demiromantic, polyam non-binary person. I was born in Birmingham but now live and work in London. Since moving to London, I have been an active member of the LGBT+ community, making sure that bisexual voices are always heard and listened to. There weren’t very many specifically bisexual activists when I came out as bisexual, aged 14, so now strive to be the visibility younger me would have wanted! I’ve written for Gay Star News, The LGBT History Month Magazine, appeared in Refinery29 and on The BiCast.
