Bifobia

Bifobia adalah istilah portmanteau mengikuti istilah homofobia. Ia berasal dari awalan bi- (bermakna "dua") dalam biseksual dan -fobia (dari kata dalam bahasa Yunani: φόβος, phóbos yang bermakna "ketakutan") dalam homofobia. Bifobia, homofobia, dan transfobia merupakan istilah-istilah utama yang menjelaskan intoleransi dan diskriminasi yang dihadapi kaum LGBT. Bifobik merupakan kata sifat yang menjelaskan sesuatu yang berkaitan dengan bifobia, sementara dalam bahasa Inggris turut pula dikenal kata biphobe yang bermakna orang yang diduga menyimpan bifobia.^[2]

Bifobia tidak bermakna fobia dalam pengertian psikologi klinis, tetapi seperti makna fobia dalam istilah xenofobia.

Bifobia dapat mengakibatkan orang-orang menganggap bahwa biseksualitas "tidaklah nyata", dengan menekankan bahwa orang yang mengaku biseksual tidaklah murni biseksual, atau bahwa fenomena biseksualitas lebih jarang terjadi daripada klaim yang ada. Salah satubentuk penyangkalan ini didasari pada pandangan heteroseksis bahwa heteroseksualitas adalah satu-satunya orientasi seksual yang alami. Penyimpangan dianggap sebagai sebuah patologi psikologis atau sebuah perilaku antisosial. Dengan demikian, homofobia dan bifobia tidaklah banyak berbeda secara substansi.

Bentuk penyangkalan lainnya adalah berdasarkan pandangan biner akan seksualitas : bahwa semua orang dianggap monoseksual, atau dengan kata lain hanya gay/lesbian atau heteroseksual. Pada tahun 1980s, kajian modern terhadap seksualitas didominasi gagasan bahwa orientasi seksual yang sah hanyalah heteroseksualitas dan homoseksualitas, manakala biseksualitas dianggap sebagai "homoseksualitas kedua".^[3] Kaum biseksual dianggap sebagai orang-orang homoseksual yang tidak terang-terangan akan identitas mereka atau seseorang (baik gay/lesbian maupun heteroseksual) yang ingin bereksperimen secara seksual di luar seksualitas "biasanya".^[4][5][6][7] Pernyataan seperti "hanya ada orang gay, heteroseksual atau pembohong" merupakan pengejawantahan pandangan dikotomi akan orientasi seksual.^[8]

Ada pula yang menerima keberadaan teoretis biseksualitas tetapi dengan pemahaman terbatas sebagai ketertarikan yang sama terhadap laki-laki dan perempuan.^[8] Kaum biseksual yang tidak memiliki ketertarikan yang sama pada kedua gender dianggap sebagai homoseksual atau heteroseksual, tergantung pada tingkat preferensi mana yang lebih tinggi. Ada pula yang hanya mengakui bahwa perempuanlah yang dapat menjadi biseksual, dan menyangkal keberadaan lelaki biseksual.^[9]

Some denial asserts that bisexual behavior or identity is merely a social trend – as exemplified by "bisexual chic" or gender bending – and not an intrinsic personality trait.^[10] Same-gender sexual activity is dismissed as merely a substitute for sex with members of the opposite sex, or as a more accessible source of sexual gratification. Situational homosexuality in sex-segregated environments is presented as an example of this behavior.

Biphobia is common from the heterosexual community, but is frequently exhibited by gay and lesbian people as well, usually with the notion that bisexuals are able to escape oppression from heterosexuals by conforming to social expectations of opposite-gender sex and romance. This leaves some that identify as bisexual to be perceived as "not enough of either" or "not real."^[11] An Australian study conducted by Roffee and Waling in 2016 established that bisexual people faced microaggressions, bullying, and other anti-social behaviors from people within the lesbian and gay community.^[12]

Bisexual erasure (also referred to as bisexual invisibility) is a phenomenon that tends to omit, falsify, or re-explain evidence of bisexuality in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources,^[13][14] sometimes to the point of denying that bisexuality exists.^[15][16]

One cause of biphobia in the gay male community is that there is an identity political tradition to assume that acceptance of male homosexuality is linked to the belief that men's sexuality is specialized. This causes many members of the gay male community to assume that the very idea that men can be bisexual is homophobic to gay men. A number of bisexual men feel that such attitudes force them to keep their bisexuality in the closet and that it is even more oppressive than traditional heteronormativity. These men argue that the gay male community have something to learn about respect for the individual from the lesbian community, in which there is not a strong tradition to assume links between notions about the origins of sexual preferences and the acceptance thereof. These views are also supported by some gay men who do not like anal sex (sides, as opposed to both tops and bottoms) and report that they feel bullied by other gay men's assumption that their dislike for anal sex is "homophobic" and want more respect for the individuality in which a gay man who do not hate himself may simply not like anal sex and instead prefer other sex acts such as mutual fellatio and mutual male masturbation.^[17][18]

Many stereotypes about people who identify as bisexual stem from denial or bisexual erasure. Because their orientation is not recognized as valid, they are stereotyped as confused, indecisive, insecure, experimenting, or "just going through a phase".^[19]

The association of bisexuality with promiscuity stems from a variety of negative stereotypes targeting bisexuals as mentally or socially unstable people for whom sexual relations only with men, only with women, or only with one person at a time is not enough. These stereotypes may result from cultural assumptions that "men and women are so different that desire for one is an entirely different beast from desire for the other" ("a defining feature of heterosexism"), and that "verbalizing a sexual desire inevitably leads to attempts to satisfy that desire."^[20]

As a result, bisexuals bear a social stigma from accusations of cheating on or betraying their partners, leading a double life, being "on the down-low", and spreading sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS. This presumed behavior is further generalized as dishonesty, secrecy, and deception. Bisexuals can be characterized as being "slutty", "easy", indiscriminate, and nymphomaniacs. Furthermore, they are strongly associated with polyamory, swinging, and polygamy,^[21] the last being an established heterosexual tradition sanctioned by some religions and legal in several countries. This is despite the fact that bisexual people are as capable of monogamy or serial monogamy as homosexuals or heterosexuals.^[22]

The mental and sexual health effects of biphobia on bisexual people are numerous. Studies show that bisexuals are often trapped in between the binaries of heterosexuality and homosexuality, creating a form of invalidation around their sexual identity. This often leads to recognized indicators of mental health issues such as low self-esteem and self-worth. These indicators and pressures to "choose" a sexual identity can, in many cases, lead to depression as they may feel they live in a culture that does not recognize their existence.^[23]

While doing research on sexual tendencies of women who have sex with women, one study, from the Journal of Bisexuality, concluded that bisexual women are more likely to engage in various high risk behaviors and were at a higher risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.^[24] These behaviors have been attributed to the unlikeliness of bisexuals to discuss their sexuality and proper protection with health professionals for fear of judgement or discrimination, leaving them uneducated.^[25]

Feminist positions on bisexuality range greatly, from acceptance of bisexuality as a feminist issue to rejection of bisexuality as reactionary and anti-feminist backlash to lesbian feminism.^[26]

A bisexual woman filed a lawsuit against the lesbian feminist magazine Common Lives/Lesbian Lives, alleging discrimination against bisexuals when her submission was not published.^[27]

A number of women who were at one time involved in lesbian-feminist activism have since come out as bisexual after realizing their attractions to men. A widely studied example of lesbian-bisexual conflict within feminism was the Northampton Pride March during the years between 1989 and 1993, where many feminists involved debated over whether bisexuals should be included and whether or not bisexuality was compatible with feminism. Common lesbian-feminist critiques leveled at bisexuality were that bisexuality was anti-feminist, that bisexuality was a form of false consciousness, and that bisexual women who pursue relationships with men were "deluded and desperate." However, tensions between bisexual feminists and lesbian feminists have eased since the 1990s, as bisexual women have become more accepted within the feminist community.^[28]

Nevertheless, some lesbian feminists such as Julie Bindel are still critical of bisexuality. Bindel has described female bisexuality as a "fashionable trend" being promoted due to "sexual hedonism" and broached the question of whether bisexuality even exists.^[29] She has also made tongue-in-cheek comparisons of bisexuals to cat fanciers and devil worshippers.^[30]

Lesbian feminist Sheila Jeffreys writes in The Lesbian Heresy (1993) that while many feminists are comfortable working alongside gay men, they are uncomfortable interacting with bisexual men. Jeffreys states that while gay men are unlikely to sexually harass women, bisexual men are just as likely to be bothersome to women as heterosexual men.^[31]

Donna Haraway was the inspiration and genesis for cyberfeminism with her 1985 essay "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" which was reprinted in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991). Haraway's essay states that the cyborg "has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labor, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all powers of the parts into a higher unity."^[32] However, the book Feminist Essays (2017) by Nancy Quinn Collins states that in the opinion of its author this "is wrong because bisexuality is a sexual orientation, a harmless attraction some people simply have, not something they try to have or do in order to create organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all powers of the parts into a higher unity. Therefore, I [the author] would say that cyborgs can be bisexual, and cyberfeminism can and should be accepting of bisexuality."^[33]

While the general bisexual population as a whole faces biphobia, this oppression is also aggravated by other factors such as race. In his examination of the bisexual male perspective, entitled, Managing Heterosexism and Biphobia: A Revealing Black Bisexual Male Perspective, Grady L. Garner delves into the oppression that he faces as both a black and bisexual male. He explains that the internalization of negative sociocultural messages, reactions, and attitudes can be incredibly distressing as bisexual black males attempted to translate or transform these negative experiences into positive bisexual identity sustaining ones.^[34] The experience of bisexual black males is different from that of bisexual white males. As the demands and tribulations of black bisexual males appear to be comparatively more distressing than those that black and white, homo- and heterosexual individual's encounter, this acknowledgement is important and vital to the understanding of biphobia from an intersectional perspective.^[34]

• Garber, Marjorie (1995). Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life, pp. 20–21, 28, 39.
• Fraser, M., Identity Without Selfhood: Simone de Beauvoir and Bisexuality, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 1999. p. 124–140.
• Rankin, Sam; Morton, James; Bell, Matthew (May 2015). "Complicated? Bisexual people's experiences of and ideas for improving services" (PDF). Equality Network. 
• The fencesitters? Suspicions still haunt the bi/homo divide - article in Xtra, Gay & Lesbian news site, 2006]

• Bialogue/GLAAD Bisexuality Packet for Mental Health Professionals
• Curiouser and curiouser Diarsipkan 2008-09-05 di Wayback Machine. by Mark Simpson
• Bisexuality Basics, UC Riverside LGBT Resource Center, Riverside, CA