Why do you care about bi erasure? I like guys and girls and everything else, but it doesn’t bother me what other people do. I feel like as people attracted to both sexes representation is easiest for us, given that there’s always going to be somebody attracted to somebody and we can at least understand the basics of that attraction no matter what the gender pairing is. I’ve never worried about representation of my any of my identities in media, but bisexuality least of all.

rwby-analysis:

Because society literally tells me that my sexuality doesn’t exist all the time. 

Yeah, I can find myself in parts of straight and gay characters in media because I have the attraction to men or women in common with them, but that’s not bisexual representation. Being bisexual means more than that. 

Being bisexual means that at some point someone will always tell you to pick a side. Being bisexual means that you will have a hard time understanding what your sexuality really is because you don’t really fit into the two boxes that society presents to you, gay and straight. Being bisexual means that people will believe you’re not really queer enough to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community, but straight people won’t fully accept you either. Being bisexual means that people will tell you you’re just faking it for the attention. Being bisexual means that people will think you’re either destined to cheat on your partner or just very good threesome material. Being bisexual means that there are both gay and straight people who will see you as too much a part of the other side to really belong to them, until you don’t belong anywhere anymore. Being bisexual means that some gay people will tell you you just haven’t realised you’re actually gay yet. 

Being bisexual means that people will constantly tell you your sexuality doesn’t exist. 

Bisexual erasure in media is a part of the problem. There are characters who happily date people of the opposite gender until they meet that one person who turns them gay. Yeah, that might be the reality for some gay people, but media rarely ever acknowledges that bisexual people exist too, and always presents us with a reality where there are only gay and straight people, nothing else, which can be incredibly hurtful to a lot of us bisexuals. And even when a person shows attraction to more than one gender they’re often walking trope, ready to jump at everyone they see, and almost always say something like “I don’t need a label, why do we even need labels at all, love is love” which might be true for some people, but the label is very important to many of us. 

I care about bisexual erasure because media is partly to blame for me not feeling comfortable with my sexuality for a very, very long time. Bisexual representation isn’t about seeing someone on screen being attracted to people of a gender I’d be attracted to too, it’s also about acknowledging that our sexuality is real and exists, it’s about showing younger bisexuals that we are fine the way we are and to educate people about bisexuality to fight biphobia. It’s about acceptance, acceptance from others and from ourselves. 

If you don’t know why representation is important then please educate yourself. Even if it doesn’t matter to you, it matters to a lot of us and no, straight or gay characters aren’t bisexual representation.