As a bisexual bride who's marrying a man, I spend a lot of time feeling ambivalent about how much a bride is allowed to like weddings… and what it means to be a bride with a queer identity.
Decades of dealing with bi-erasure
I've fought against erasure since coming out (at age 13–now 15 years ago). I'm from a small, conservative town, where the general wisdom was that I was only “doing it” – performative sexual identity, apparently – to get men.
Within the lesbian community at my college, I was dismissed as somehow not actually into women, not committed to gay rights (I don't even get to be in the name), not involved in the political aspect of being queer.
I also got flak from straight people for being “too queer,” too sensitive, too invested in gay rights. Which was all bullshit. Every last piece of that was identity politics, gender normative bullshit. And somehow I didn't have a problem recognizing that and, in general, telling people off.
Being a bisexual bride marrying a man
But now that it's about weddings I'm once again in that corner: am I being queer enough? Too queer?
Will people take away my queer card? I “earned” it, in the eyes of my alleged peers, by sleeping with women. This still seems ridiculous: I didn't have to sleep with them to know I wanted to, any more than I have to actually go to Hawaii to know I'd like to vacation there!
Now that I have a male fiance, it's like the years that I have spent out (years of being aggressively political, aggressively visible, coming out to the people I go to school with and work with because I know that if I'd known a single queer person in a responsible position as a teenager it would have meant so much to me) mean nothing.
And WTF to wear
When it comes to deciding what to wear, I've felt the urge to react in both ways. Part of me wants to dress uber-femme for my wedding because I want to and for no other reason and to hell with the haters. Part of me wants to dress uber-butch because I hate the wedding-industrial complex and to hell with the homophobes.
It's been a huge challenge to keep it on track and keep it about the love, rather than the frustration. Because that's the whole point behind everything: I love the person I'm committing to. I love whoever I chose to commit to like this. My love is more than a feeling–it's a series of decisions that are made over and over again.
There are no easy answers, so all I can do is keep asking the questions.
I could have written this post. I struggle with this so much! <3
I really needed this post as a fellow Bi marrying a man. Thank you for writing this, it made me feel less alone.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU so much for writing this post. I could have written every word of it. I’m bisexual and marrying a man, but to complicate things I met him less than two months after coming out, so I’ve never dated a woman and have always felt a little bit like some of the queer folks in my life didn’t see me as entirely valid. I’ve felt that same dual pressure – straight family members think I’m being overly dramatic and controversial by including gender neutral language, having the SCOTUS marriage equality reading as one of our readings, and donating to the Trevor Project as favors. Meanwhile, I’ve gotten shit from my queerer-than-thou friends about wearing a princess dress and a veil, following a lot of wedding traditions, hell, even having a wedding. In so many ways it feels like weddings are microcosms of all the joys and struggles of ordinary life turned up to 11, and this is no exception.
This is something I have struggled with in the past. not the wedding part, because i am not (yet?) married, but the whole “am I queer enough if I have only dated men, even though I have been in love with women…”
I am now (mostly) over it. I have finally internalized the idea that my sexuality is between me and the people I date. I don’t have to fall into some per-described category to be bi. The only per-requisite for being bi is that you identify as bi. Nothing more, nothing less.
You are marrying the person – not the man, not the woman – the person you love. And they are too! So I would say give them the honer of being the most yourself you can be. With your clothes, with your style, with your choices. Don’t dress for the haters. Either to agree with them or to give them a big ” fuck you”. Don’t feel the need to have your wedding be anything more than what it is: a celebration of the two of you. You don’t have to perform or make a statement. This is about what you want. Since you are a queer person, the only thing you need to do for it to be a “queer wedding” is to get married. You are queer so your wedding is too. Be you! That is enough!