The guilt of taking up space in feminist rooms as a bisexual woman
There is a particular kind of hesitation that arrives before I speak in a feminist meet-up — a small inward flinch, a tightening behind the ribs, the voice in my head scanning the room for permission before I open my mouth. I have watched other bisexual women fold their hands in their laps at the same moment, eyes dropping to the floor, as though our bisexuality was something we had accidentally left on the doorstep.
This essay is for anyone who has felt that inward fold, who has rehearsed their credentials before pressing "send" on a feminist email list, or who has apologised for occupying a chair that no one asked them to vacate. It is a road map through the strange, persistent guilt that visits bisexual women inside feminist rooms, and a few ways I have learned to soften its grip.
Where the guilt actually shows up
It is tempting to treat bisexual guilt as a single emotion, but it behaves differently depending on which room I walk into. The following table shows how the same feeling reshapes itself across the spaces most bisexual Australian women move through.
| Space |
What I'm afraid of |
Who I'd have to convince |
Cost of staying quiet |
| Mainstream feminist circles |
Being read as "not queer enough" |
Cis lesbian and queer feminist peers |
Smaller voice on issues that affect me |
| LGBTQ community events |
Being read as "straight-passing" |
Gay male and lesbian communities |
Smaller chance of finding bi-specific mentors |
| Straight social circles |
Being read as "the one who makes it about sexuality" |
Heterosexual friends, family |
Years of conversations fumbled or avoided |
| Workplace or campus feminism |
Being read as complicit or performative |
Feminists who frame bi as a lifestyle |
Quiet burnout from being both representative and invisible |
The shape of the same fear changes with the audience, and that is part of why it is so exhausting to name and so easy to misdiagnose as plain shyness.
The double bind that keeps me rehearsing
When I sat in my first Sydney feminist book club, I had spent the previous week practising how to introduce myself. If I said "bisexual" too quickly, I worried I would be slotted into a stereotype about bisexuals being greedy or unfaithful. If I left the word out entirely, I worried I was reinforcing the same erasure.
The double bind sits like a coin with two blunt edges. In queer rooms, I am sometimes asked about my "real" orientation, as though I had borrowed my queerness for the evening. In feminist rooms, the question mutates into something softer and stranger: am I allowed to bring my whole self when my whole self is built partly on attraction to men. It is the same question wearing different mascara, and unpacking biphobia within the LGBTQ community has become its own long, slow education for me.
The performance of justification is relentless. I have explained my dating history to acquaintances I barely knew, framed my bisexuality as if I were applying for a grant, and laughed off questions that deserved full sentences. None of this was asked for by the women around me. Most of it I imposed on myself, after watching the room go quiet when someone else had been openly bi.
Australian rooms, Australian silence
Australian feminism has its own weather. Sydney's Mardi Gras Fair Day in February and Brisbane's Pride Festival in September are framed as joyful occasions, but they sit on top of decades of legislative change, including the 2017 passage of same-sex marriage, that was won through painstaking community lobbying rather than spontaneous celebration. Bisexual women in Melbourne's inner north, in Adelaide's hills, and along the Sunshine Coast have spent years pushing for visibility inside organisations like Bi Alliance Australia and inside queer institutions that have not always known what to do with a sexuality that does not fit a binary script.
Local realities shape the guilt in concrete ways. It is harder to feign confidence at a Newtown café when your barista knows the woman you brought to Mardi Gras last year and the man you cycled beside through Glebe the year before. It is harder to whisper my bisexuality into a small group in Fremantle when the same group is active on a local feminist Facebook page where I have read comments about bi women being "half straight."
Legislation also matters. Federal protections under the Sex Discrimination Act cover sexual orientation, and Victoria and the ACT extend protections to gender identity, but everyday bisexual women still report being told their orientation is "a phase" by medical professionals, HR officers, and even some family lawyers. Each dismissive sentence lands on top of the previous one, and the body learns to brace.
The mental load of constantly proving you belong
There is a particular kind of tiredness that feminist women of colour have written about with great precision, and which bisexual women also recognise: the tiredness of being your own ambassador. Every meeting at a feminist community garden in Marrickville, every panel at a Brisbane writers' festival, every late-night argument in a Fitzroy share house can quietly become a referendum on my right to be in the room.
I started noticing the load when I kept postponing my own writing deadlines. I told myself I was busy. The truer reason was that finishing an essay about my bisexuality would mean publishing it, and publishing it would mean dealing with the comments — the genuine ones, the dismissive ones, and the accidentally cruel ones. The anticipation was heavier than the actual feedback.
Australian therapists trained in trauma-informed and LGBTQ-affirming practice are now easier to find than a decade ago, especially in capital cities, and this kind of deferred emotional labour is increasingly recognised as its own form of burnout. Naming the load does not always make it lighter, but it does make it harder to mistake for personal failure.
When community care looks like calling each other in
The guilt rarely loosens on its own. It eases when other bisexual women show me, with their own clumsy bravery, that the feminist room can hold more than one narrative at a time. I have watched a friend in Perth stand up at a feminist fundraiser and quietly mention her wife and her ex-boyfriend in the same breath, without apologising. I have watched a pansexual organiser in Hobart correct an audience member's assumption without flinching and without making a scene. Each of those moments is a small piece of data: the room can stretch.
Calling each other in, rather than out, has become its own quiet skill. In feminist spaces I trust, this often means pausing a discussion about compulsory heterosexuality to ask whether bisexuals feel included, or letting a bi+ speaker finish her sentence before challenging her politics. It can also mean accepting that some bi women will centre lesbian or queer-only organising, and that this is not a betrayal. What we are reaching for is a community that can survive its own disagreements, even when it disagrees with itself.
Make a Change collects small, concrete actions that people inside queer and feminist communities can take to make bi+ members feel less ornamental, from adjusting meeting language to funding bi-specific mental health support.
Reclaiming space without rehearsing a justification
I used to think reclaiming space meant arriving louder — speaking first, raising my hand, taking up the front row. Some days it still does. Other days it looks quieter and stranger: arriving on time, sitting at the table I would normally avoid, publishing the essay I would normally file away, wearing the ring I would normally explain.
There are gentle, private ways to dismantle the guilt between public acts. I have started keeping a small list of moments when I was present and it went fine — when no one challenged my bisexuality, when I was simply one of several women in the room. Reading it back feels a little embarrassing, the way gratitude lists can, but it has slowly retrained the muscle that braced for rejection. Bisexuality is ordinary. I am allowed to be ordinary inside feminism too.
Sometimes the work of reclaiming space is as small as renewing a commitment to one personal practice that does not need to be defended in front of anyone. For me, that has included a slow, low-stakes ritual of reading the weekly newsletter that changed my relationship with myself each Sunday with a real cup of coffee, letting the words land before I open my inbox.
Small shifts that soften the guilt
A handful of habits have steadied me more than I expected. None of them are revolutionary, and all of them are doable inside a single Australian week.
- Practise a one-sentence introduction in front of a mirror, including the word "bisexual," without an apology clause at the end.
- Choose one feminist event a month and arrive ten minutes earlier than feels comfortable, so your body has time to settle before the room fills.
- Save the contacts of two bi-affirming therapists or peer-support workers in your capital city, even if you do not need them today.
- Send a private thank-you note to a bi woman whose work you appreciate, naming how her voice shifted something for you.
- When you catch yourself rehearsing credentials, write down the sentence you were about to say, then delete half of it and send what remains.
The list is short on purpose. Each item is a small interruption of the rehearsal, rather than another thing to feel guilty about for not doing.
I am writing this on a slow Sunday in Adelaide, flat white going cold on the desk, with a Melbourne feminist literary festival bookmarked on the other tab. The festival has a bisexual panel this year. I am not yet certain I will go, but I have bought the ticket. My concrete next step is a single one: I will reply to the festival email tonight, simply confirming my attendance, with no extra explanation of who I am or why I belong there.
