A friend from college came out as bisexual last month. She's married to a man and did a Q&A on her blog about how they're not getting divorced and are still going to be monogamous. There were 11 or 12 questions like that, complete with gifs. She had only come out to her close friends a day before she made it public on Facebook, so I'm not sure who exactly was asking all those questions.
We also went to a Christian college together, and she maintained (until recently, apparently) that homosexuality was a choice and a sin. She talks about being an LGBTQ+ affirming Christian in her blog but doesn't mention ever thinking/saying that being gay was a sin. She doesn't talk about the change of heart. She just appears, fully formed, as an apparent expert on bisexuality.
She says she's not coming out for attention. She's coming out because it'll mean she no longer has to pretend to be straight.
I went to the Audacity Book Club zoom event last night. Roxane Gay talked with Torrey Peters about her book Detransition, Baby. Peters talked with security, insight, and grace. She talked about how Cis people look to Trans people for ideas about gender. Straight people to Queer for ideas about family. They're the people who see that the traditional set up doesn't really work for them and are going about trying to figure out new ways of living. She said that Cis women are -- in some part -- starting to look to queerness as well because the system doesn't really fit them either and they want alternatives.
Maybe that's the case for my college friend, even though she maintains that she is happy with her current status quo. I'm wondering about claiming an identity without any change or follow-up action. Maybe she's laying the groundwork for a change in her life, even though she says that she's not. She's not forfeiting any of her straight white woman privilege (or acknowledging it).
I wonder if she thinks about how her life could have been different if she grew up in a different environment, if she had come out earlier, dated women. Maybe coming out now connects her to that would-have-been life. And maybe as a straight white lady myself, I just don't get it. I certainly am not some qualified queerness gatekeeper.
On my college friend's Facebook post, several other women (who are married to men) from our Christian college said that they were bi as well. Is that anything? It feels like a queerness smash and grab. Is it meaningful? Do I have to regard these women as an embattled sexual-orientated minority, now? I'm confused and would like someone more qualified to weigh in.
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