I complained once at a bi evening that my life is now so straight that calling myself bi feels wierd, especially since a woman in a public relationship with a man calling herself bi has connotations of swinging and treating women like sexual accessories, which is not me. The organiser of the evening said, “well that ambivalence sounds pretty bi to me.” And that was that. Works for me. Feeling confused and ambivalent is my bi experience, it’s not hiding something else. So if I’m confused and ambivalent, who am I to call monosexuals ‘hateful’ for not quite getting it? People don’t quite get lots of things (quantum physics, how anyone could eat their most-disliked food, poetry) without being hateful. It’s really not a big deal.

I talk about my exes of different sexes, I’m coy about the sex of my spouse who I refer to as ‘my beloved,’ am careful to not make assumptions about the sexes/genders of other people or their partners and am generally as out as I can be without wearing a bisexual label on my forehead. I agree that being out is good for oneself and for other people. I hope that by being out I can help make the world easier for other people with less oblivious temperaments than mine.

I also recognise that there are fewer occasions where bisexuals can come out naturally in conversation the way monosexuals can, and I am grateful to same-sexers for doing the everyday heavy lifting. (Which heavy lifting I participated in too, in my ten years as a lesbian that preceded my 17 years as a bisexual and followed my ten years as straight bi-curious.)