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We Exist: Anonymous

23/9/2018

2 Comments

 

Tell us about you!

When did you first know you were bi+?

I am a cisgender bisexual woman with a history of mental illness.
I have known I was bi for as long as I can remember, I thought that everyone was and that just nobody spoke about it! ​

Are you out as a bi+ person?

I am out to my college friends and have been out to all of my partners, essentially anyone who I would feel comfortable talking about my sex life with. I know that being bi+ is about so much more than sex but in a funny way it feels like when you come out people perceive it as being about just that. I think that has been a major barrier it terms of me coming out at work and to family. ​
Picture

When have you felt the most accepted as a bi+ person? The least accepted?

I have felt super accepted by my friendship group. I was the first of my friends to come out as bi and quite a number of them ended up coming out as non-monosexual over the years. I like to think that my openness has played some small role and allowing them to think about their own sexuality in a way they may not have before. After I came out to my current partner and explained bisexuality he came to identify as bisexual himself! It has been really wonderful for me to have a bisexual partner who understands.

When I first became involved in the LGBT community I frequently felt overlooked. When the group was being addressed I found myself piping in with "and bisexuals" a lot.
​
I have found that in some female LBTQ spaces the narrative has been lesbian dominated and not inclusive of those who were attracted to genders other than female. 
"It has been really wonderful for me to have a bisexual partner who understands."

What is something no one asks you about being bi+ that you wish they would, and what would you want to tell them?

I wish I was asked more about the good side of being bisexual. There are many wonderful things. I love that I am never limited by anyone's gender. I feel so at home in the amazing new bisexual community that is emerging. I love how being attracted to more than one gender makes you really question and challenge gender roles and hetero-normative aspects of relationships and really work towards creating your own framework for what works for you and your partner(s).  
2 Comments

We Exist: Rachael Kelleher

30/11/2017

0 Comments

 

Tell us about you!

I'm a fat bisexual woman and an aspiring writer, who loves music and kittens and good food. I have an alarming appreciation for puns. 

When did you first know you were bi+?

I knew I was attracted to more than just men when I was quite young, though I didn't have the word for it at the time. I knew I was different to the people I lived with because it was more than just Leonardo Dicaprio that had this heart hammering when watching The Titanic.

It was Kate Winslet too.
Picture of Rachael Kelleher with black glasses and a smile
Rachael Kelleher
Picture of Jack and Rose from the Titanic
I had an overwhelming crush on her before I'd even hit puberty; just looking at her had me struggling to breathe. It made me squirm and look away, and then look again.

I couldn't stop looking.

I didn't learn the term for what I was experiencing until later, having picked it up through an overexposure to adult literature and fanfiction. I was 12 when I learned the term and 13 when I dared to mumble it in front of a girl from school that had knots forming inside me whenever I was alone with her.  

Are you out as a bi+ person?

I am as out as I can be without shouting it from the rooftops with a megaphone while planes streak the bi-pride tricolour through the air overhead.

I've been out online since I was a teenager, though it was to a few select people that I trusted.

I didn't come out to people offline until the summer of 2014. I was almost 22 at the time. That summer was when I came out to family, and it didn't go well in the least. I was told I couldn't be trusted to go on a vacation alone with the most wonderful female friend I could ever ask for - even though we all knew she was as straight as an arrow. I was no longer trustworthy, as though being attracted to women made me a danger suddenly, as though I couldn't control the urges I felt.

Understandably, I was more hurt than I can ever express...but I pushed past the pain of that moment. I refused to retreat into the closet. If anything, I became more prideful. I've come out to more and more people since then.

I don't think it ever stops.

But I still get to choose who has the right to know who I am because some don't deserve the right.

When have you felt the most accepted as a bi+ person? The least accepted?

I have never felt more accepted than when I discovered Bi+ Ireland existed.

Largely, I'd been isolated from other people like me. I felt like I was the one queer in the entire village. Online friends living in other countries were the one solace I had at the time.

I was suffocating from loneliness and isolation.

But that changed in 2016.

The shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando happened earlier that year, and that was what drove me out the door. It drove me to attend the Pride festival scheduled in Cork City, and it was the first time I'd ever been brave enough to do so because I was an introvert that often struggled with anxiety. I went to the Pride Picnic and came upon one of those info books that gets printed around that time.

There was an article from a member of Bi+ Ireland inside.

I almost ran home once I was finished at the picnic and I scrambled to turn the computer on. I found their facebook page as soon as possible and liked it immediately, and I was quick to inform the administrators that I wanted to join the secret group being advertised on their page.

That night I was invited to join an unofficial meet-up later that week. I couldn't breathe. I was shaking with nerves. It was the first time I ever dared to go to a bar where I wouldn't know a single person. The first thing I saw when someone from the group arrived was a man wearing a purple shirt and pulling a bi-pride flag from his backpack.

I almost cried in relief and euphoria.

I was home.
The shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando happened earlier that year, and that was what drove me out the door. It drove me to attend the Pride festival scheduled in Cork City


The moment I felt least accepted? That was during the marriage referendum in 2015. My best friend was on her erasmus in Germany, and I was visiting her family, because her home had become a refuge to me whenever mine was too toxic for me to cope with. I went to her house so I could breathe. I went to her house so I could feel loved and wanted.

I made the mistake of mentioning how excited I was for the impending referendum and my best friend's mother thought I meant the other one. I was quick to correct her.

The kitchen went dead silent as soon as the words escaped me. It was as though I'd been plunged into the heart of the Atlantic at the height of winter.

No one spoke afterwards.

I was being driven home within an hour of mentioning the referendum. Usually, my best friend's mother would drive me home after visiting, but she didn't drive me home that night. It was another visitor to the house that drove me home instead. While she was driving, she told me "it wasn't personal."

But it felt damned personal. It felt like I'd been stabbed in the heart with a shard of ice.

She went on to say, "We don't talk about the referendum in that house. It just starts arguments between the parents and kids."

Neither of us spoke after that. She dropped me outside my house. I had to hide the trembles in my hands as I opened the door and stepped inside. I didn't speak to anyone. I just went down to bed.

I broke down in tears.

What is something no one asks you about being bi+ that you wish they would, and what would you want to tell them?

I just want people to ask: How can I help make it better?

I want people to want to help us. 
0 Comments

We Exist: Jon Hanna

8/8/2017

0 Comments

 

Tell us about you!

Bisexual, Irish, cis, white, male, pagan, witch, parent, kinky, pro-choice AF, occasional depressive, rape survivor, of a working-class Northern Irish upbringing.

When did you first know you were bi+?

I realised I was bisexual during puberty, finding myself attracted to boys and men around the same time in early adolescence I found myself attracted to girls and women (knowledge of other genders didn't come until later). I had some knowledge of issues around LGBT liberation before then, and did consider that maybe I was projecting those politics, but I soon realised that when I mooned over River Phoenix that talking about politics wasn’t top of my list of things I would like to do with him. (Though it was still up there; in hindsight my teenage romantic fantasies had a certain earnest quality).
Picture of Jon Hanna
Jon Hanna

Are you out as a bi+ person?

I came out toward the end of my time in grammar school, first to someone who I thought might be bisexual too (who came out to me pretty much simultaneously), and then to others I trusted. Soon I was quite assertively out there, even if still not out at home.

I took going to college as an opportunity to be fully out, and was active in the LGB (now LGBTQ+) society, leading it during the second year of my studies. Since then I’ve been pretty thoroughly out in just about every context and circumstance including at work, in professional organisations, to my kids, and so on. How I’m perceived is another matter though, and people will almost always assume you are monosexual. When I was younger I was sometimes read as gay, and now I’m almost always read as straight, either way an assumption that isn’t correct.

When have you felt the most accepted as a bi+ person? The least accepted?

Most of all when among other bi+ people. Bi+ Ireland itself would be a prime example, and the last three years at Pride when I’ve marched with them have had much more of a sense of belonging than the first Prides I went to in the 1990s. But there have been other times in my life when I’ve been in groups where several of us where out as bi+ and it was just part of the norm of that group.

Circles that might sometimes be considered “alternative” like the kink scene and the pagan community can often be among the most accepting groups, but they can also be among the least so, too; being deemed as outside of the mainstream can often encourage acceptance but also lead some to exclude those who are outside of that perceived mainstream in more ways than one.
Biphobia within the LGBTQ+ community can be all the more alienating
Least accepted in a rather blatant sense during physical attack, as I’ve had eggs thrown at me while doing LGBTQ+ work in college and had people try to beat me up more than once around the same time in my life.

Biphobia within the LGBTQ+ community can be all the more alienating though, as well as being more clearly biphobia when less accompanied with or parcel of homophobia from the majority community. The LGBTQ+ community is after all something we are meant to be part of, and a community so many of us have worked to serve, but still we find biphobia ranging from the subtle and plausibly deniable through to demanding outright that we should be silent so we don’t “complicate the message” during the fight for marital equality.

What is something no one asks you about being bi+ that you wish they would, and what would you want to tell them?

Whether we feel we might have a different perspective on some of the assumptions cissexist-heterosexist society expects us to make, because just sometimes we can do; not to an extent that gives us any sort of get-out-conditioning-free card, but enough to make different contradictions stand out
But mostly I’d say that we are not only diverse but where we find ourselves rubbing up against expectation will make us hesitant to deny that diversity, and that is when we as a community are at our best. Whether or not I might match some stereotype isn’t the point. Maybe I do, but another bi+ sibling does not. Maybe I do not, but another bi+ sibling does. Do not ask me to deny them in order to define me.
Do not ask me to deny them in order to define me.
0 Comments

We Exist: Jess Connor

2/8/2017

0 Comments

 

Tell us about you

​Irish, cis woman, fat, supremely privileged, bi as fuck, pro choice, feminist. I've worked in tech as a Project Manager for 7+ years.

When did you first know you were bi+?

Picture of Jess Connor
Jess Connor
I've had bi+ experiences since I was very young. They never felt weird to me. I never stressed about it. Well, that's half true. I have two distinct memories of having anxious times, mainly I wanted to explore more with women, but I had no idea how to. 
As a 17 year old teenager I remember being online and talking with women, and desperately wanting to meet up with them, but being terrified at the prospect of meeting someone 'from the internet'. LGBT+ womxn just weren't around where I grew up, and so I felt trapped. This was the first time I ever felt like I was doing something taboo. There were no LGBT resources, and there wasn't a lot of representation in the media. I felt lost and alone. ​
"There were no LGBT resources, and there wasnt a lot of representation in the media."
When I was about 22, and in a long term relationship with a cis man, I began to wonder about being with womxn again. Because it was something I was still unsure of, I became incredibly focused on it. I spent a whole summer wondering if I was, in fact, gay.

Anyway, all of this is to say, one day my boyfriend at the time walked out of the shower naked and I grinned while checking out his behind. And I had this sudden realisation (or affirmation) that no, in fact, I was absolutely attracted to him and men in general. And to womxn and non binary folk. And that was just undeniably true. A fact. And it was ok. It was a huge relief, because I hadnt been able to bring myself to speak to anyone about my feelings that summer. I stayed happily in that relationship for many more years. And I found my voice and talked about it with my partner and friends about being bi+.​

Are you out as a bi+ person?


​Yes, but it took me until I was 29 to be 100% public about it even though I've been having bi+ experiences since I was very young and my partners and friends had known. When I look back at my life and experiences, I feel denied. ​
Denied a community, a language and experiences. I try not to be regretful, but so much of my anguish could have been avoided. That's why I volunteer as a coordinator with Bi+ Ireland. Visibility matters. It's also why I am labouring over this series, I think/hope it can make a difference.

When have you felt the most accepted as a bi+ person? The least accepted?

The most accepted? The Bi+ Ireland community. The group. The people who I march with us at pride, who might be total strangers, but who stand with me and all of us and declare that we are here and queer and we matter. We exist.

The least? I hated talking about or marching for equal marriage rights, and feeling like I was 'just an ally', and not someone who this directly impacted. So that was an internal struggle. It was part of what made me come out, and eventually find acceptance.​

What is something no one asks you about being bi+ that you wish they would, and what would you want to tell them?

​I wish people understood the complexity of being bi+. Because we are everywhere on the spectrum, we're not easy to put in neat little boxes. So I wish people would ask how they could help more. I'd tell them to accept us, no matter where we are in our bi-ness. Just to believe us, and accept us as valid without question.
"Ask us how you can help. Believe us."

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Bi+ Ireland is a network of people who fit somewhere under the bi+ umbrella, and who have close ties to Ireland. We are community group run by volunteers. You can reach us at biirelandnetwork@gmail.com.
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