Narwhals. Horses. Unicorns. You've probably heard from every neon-loving preteen that putting a horse and narwhal together results in a magical, ever-graceful unicorn.
If we apply the same logic to sexualities, gay plus straight equals bisexual, right? That is the magic bisexuals gain by liking more than one gender. We receive admittance to the queer community while also being able to have a heterosexual relationship and remain "normal" in the eyes of society. The best of both worlds.
But what if I told you that being both a narwhal and a horse meant you were neither of them at all?
Hold onto your hats—it's time for a crazy allegory about sexualities. And if you're uncomfortable talking about that sort of thing, great; this story is about unicorns.
Yes, I know. Unicorns. Hear me out and work with me here.
Congratulations, you're suddenly a unicorn. You're sparkly, you're magical, you're able to fly, whatever—give yourself any of those wicked unicorn powers you want. After you've spent some time skipping through the flowers and figuring out how to make yourself glitter on command basic unicorn things, you go off to find some friends.
You trot over some hills and come upon a herd of wild horses. They're all different colors, and they all munch grass peacefully with their tails blowing in the breeze.
They're not unicorns like me, you think. You're obviously not a horse, you've got a giant protrusion on your forehead. But who cares? Everyone's cool. As long as they don't care you've got a horn, your unicorn self could chill with them.
You're at least kind of a horse, right?
You find out, after integrating into the herd, that some of the horses do care about your horn. Not all of them, by any means, but there are a few that scoff when you try and speak with them. Go be with the narwhals, they say. You've got a horn like them, you can defend yourself, you don't deserve the safety of the herd. You stick out too much, you'll attract predators, you're not a real horse.
It kind of hurt. Even if it was true; you couldn't say you were a horse or even just a horse with a horn. You were something entirely different: a unicorn.
And so, despite the pleas of your few horse friends, off you go to the tundra. The journey is arduous, but eventually, you make it north to the ice caps, to the cold place where the horses said you were supposed to find your kin.
And eventually, you do see the narwhals once they surface from a hole in the ice. Shivering, you tell them your predicament, say that the horses told you to join them.
"Can you swim?" asked the narwhals.
You said no, but you had some sweet magic. You could figure out a spell so that you could pretend to be a narwhal, and you even had a horn so you could bash open the ice for air.
"Even so, you're really not a narwhal," they replied. "Go back to the horses. You're more like them than you are us."
They're gone before you can yell at them that I was just there, you stupid whales.
Such is the predicament of the unicorn—it is its own creature, despite the fact that it's seemingly an amalgam of two. It can't be considered the same as a herd of horses because of its horn, and you can't lump it in with the narwhals because it most certainly can't swim without magic. It's not a mixture of narwhal and horse, it is a unicorn, something that comes with its own unique experiences and challenges.
Not a mixture of gay and straight, but bisexual.
In the LGBTQ community, which is represented by the herd of horses in this story, a bisexual identity is sometimes considered a threat. It can seem as though bi people are invalidating the struggles of being gay, that we are claiming a label that they do not deserve because, in a certain relationship, we can pass as straight to an outside observer or bigot. It looks like we're just wanting to slap a label on ourselves to feel special while keeping the ability to dodge the negative things that come along with that label.
As a result, some horses don't take well to unicorns.
That said, a bi person can't pass as straight all the time either, because to do so would be to deny our attraction to multiple genders. To say that we are straight—a narwhal—is to work against ourselves, to be constantly casting that spell so that we can blend in and go with the flow. It's denying who we are. We can do it for a while, but the second we let up and comment how cute that stranger of the same gender is, we no longer belong in the straight community either, and then we're told that we're just confused.
A bisexual identity is not a gay identity, a straight identity, or a mixture of the two. It's an entirely separate beast with entirely unique experiences. We do not get 'the best of both worlds.' Being bi is easier than being gay in some ways and harder in others.
Not somehow better or worse, just different. And that's perfectly OK.
