I take a rest on the oily, heat-stained seats of the L Train to Brooklyn. My feet tingle after the long summer walk to the station, buoyancy enveloping my limbs. I feel the body heat of a close friend from Brown next to me. She sports jorts. Classic. A navy tank top and rose-gold jewelry, too. She is fabulous. First, a whisper, and then a laugh, and then an all-consuming, unstoppable, throat-clenching, tonsil-popping, eyes-watering kind of laugh; the one you just have to accept because someone said something so hilarious your body recognizes its timelessness before you do.
“I think a lot of people in our generation are what I call ‘bi non-practicing,’” she says.
She explains it as if it were a religion. Something you had, in a sense, the choice to practice, observe, partake in. How comical. How irrational. Could it be true?
“Explain more,” I ask, trying to hold in a giggle. My fingers trace condensation patterns on the metal pole beside me, leaving temporary hieroglyphics that evaporated almost as quickly as the certainties in our conversation.
“I’m talking about people who publicly identify as bisexual but only engage in relationships with people of the opposite gender,” she explains. “As a lesbian, I don’t really get that choice.”
“But bi people—”
“Yes, not to say bisexual people as a group ‘choose’ to do this. But that, in theory, they have the option to. And so there’s a growing trend of people who are, effectively, straight but claim the label of bisexual.”
Sexuality is fluid! I think. We all know this. Hell, I’ve even changed my own sexuality over the years. I have engaged in relationships with girls and guys for that matter.
Yet, I couldn't help but wonder…Is there a pressure there? Is there a reason that, allegedly, people are identifying as bi because there’s a pressure to be, in order to obtain some sort of social currency? And what does that say about our social environment?
I want to make this clear from the get-go: my intention with this piece is not to question bisexuality or to dismiss people on their sexual journeys. I shouldn’t have to say this, but bisexual people are real! I would know! Of course, someone is still bisexual even if they have not “experienced” it. I’m also not talking about women who have had relationships with other women and are now dating men—they’re bisexual and in a relationship with someone who they’re attracted to. Rather than questioning the legitimacy of a sexuality, I am genuinely curious about what seems to be a trend of people identifying as bisexual but avoiding intimacy with someone of the same gender. So, I asked around.
(Note: All individuals quoted in this piece requested anonymity to speak freely about their personal experiences and observations.)
It is undeniable that there has been a massive cultural shift even within the past 20 years. I grew up watching Sex and the City, filmed right before my birth. I distinctly remember Season 3, Episode 4: “Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl…” in which Carrie began dating a cute guy she was very into. But there was a catch: “He’s bisexual,” she proclaimed with a tinge of sadness to her friends.
This episode is now recognized for its open biphobia. Viewers of my generation can clearly identify that eliminating someone from one’s dating pool simply because of their sexual orientation is discriminatory.
Today, at least within the circles that I am in at Brown, it feels like “everyone” is bisexual.
“For me, I’ve been compelled to question my sexuality because, at Brown, the majority of my friends are LGBT,” says a female friend who added women to her preferences on Hinge for a single day this past semester. “So it’s been sort of an influence on me on a subconscious level to be more free-thinking with what attraction might mean. But there’s also an external push. It can almost feel like a mode of conformity when you’re in a minority-majority situation. And Brown facilitates majority-gay groups.”
Another female friend of mine announced she was bisexual, only to take it back the next day.
“I feel like bisexual has become the new straight,” the friend said. “It’s easier to be bisexual non-practicing because I thought, oh, I can still date men, almost as a fallback option, kind of like appeasement.”
I even heard a man on the Main Green say he is “socially bisexual” recently.
“Socially bisexual?” I questioned.
He explained that he is not romantically or sexually attracted to men but feels a connection to “queer culture.” He seems drawn to express his allyship by adopting the label, even when it doesn’t reflect his romantic or sexual experiences.
This feels like something that could only happen at a place like Brown. I’ve rarely met a non-practicing bisexual outside of this environment, where, in the larger, more heteronormative U.S. society, queerness is not just an aesthetic but also a potential risk for discrimination, even violence.
“I get annoyed by [bi non-practicing], but when I think about it, it doesn’t seem like a bad thing. It just means that people are, like, more open to dating all people even if in practice that’s not at all happening,” a gay male friend said.
In some liberal circles, there seems to be even “straight shame.”
I can count dozens of female friends who have boyfriends and have nervously texted me at 11 p.m.: "Is it ok if I still attend Dyke Night?"
This seems to complicate the dating scene for “practicing” bisexuals or gay and lesbian people, who are looking for partners but must navigate bi non-practicing people who “flirt for the bit” or feel a need to uphold their label as visually queer. It is as if heterosexuality has become the little black dress of sexuality—classic, reliable, but somehow not quite special enough for the occasion, even if you always go back to it, leaning into the soft material’s comfort. What happened to just being an ally?
“As the pendulum swings toward allyship and acceptance, people who are further away from the pendulum want to chase after it,” a “practicing” bisexual friend said.
Further complicating matters are the very real, very scary effects of contemporary politics, in a sense, repeating the Reagan 80s and undergoing a right-leaning cultural shift.
“I think the coinciding cultural and political shift to the right is making it structurally more difficult to be gay. Because we know more people are aligning with Trump, people are aligning to heteronormativity if they can,” a gay male friend said. “Being bisexual non-practicing is almost a way of pronouncing your allegiance in the face of all the right-trending news.”
Unable to discern the true roots of this trend, I think back to my expectations of Brown’s social environment compared to what I’ve experienced.
Picture this: I stand in the middle of an overwrought, pretentious, beautiful Brown function. I observe the lights—a dim, tinfoil-blue—as I am at a party dubbed “Down Under The Sea.”
I stare at a painting created for the occasion, a blue so deep it is almost black cherry, where you can see yourself reflected in its dark hues. To the left is a DJ booth, where "Soda" by Azealia Banks is blasting. Sweat dripping from the back of my neck from jumping around, I decide I need a break. I walk down the creaky, twisting, jet-black steps and reach the outside, where it is picturesque: The snow is pouring down, the houses are all late-modernist with perches of ice leering out from their roofs, and I realize that Providence is a genuinely stunning place. I take my jacket off and let the coolness envelop me. It reaches through the bright red fabric of my tank top, making me shiver in a way that I can't deny I need.
I notice some other folks basking in the snow, passing around a cigarette. Their attire: either little-shirt-big-pants or big-shirt-little pants—slightly androgynous vibes but not enough to bring their gender identity into question. I begin to converse with them.
“In the context of trying to cultivate the aesthetic of coolness in which everyone feels, like, pressured to elevate their style, but also be different in the way that is socially acceptable, because bisexuality, especially in the context of Brown, has become so socially acceptable, maybe more people identify as bi,” a gay male friend said. “But it’s like also not necessarily leaning into the potential ways you can be subversive.”
There is also a level of aestheticization and the intersection of visual culture with sexuality, where some individuals may identify as bisexual for social image or cultural cachet. This phenomenon is distinct from “non-practicing bisexuals,” which includes people in this group but also could be people who happen to only date the opposite gender.
“As younger generations become more liberal, with liberal allyship, people flock to being bisexual,” a “non-practicing” bisexual woman said. “In the same way that being political has been aestheticized, a lot of this has to do with social media, and the ability and necessity to make everything presentable and public-facing. It is no longer ‘my identity is X,’ but ‘here is how I can display that visually.’ It’s, like, Pinterest vibes. People realized it’s swag to wear jorts and the straights wanted in.”
These are the circumstances that seem to be informing our social environment. How are people reckoning with it, even quantifying it?
“One time someone asked me my percentages, right? Like, which gender I like more,” a bisexual woman friend said. “And, I didn’t really like the question because I think it’s a little bit reductive, but if I really think about it, I think I just lean in the direction of heterosexuality a lot more in terms of choosing partners.”
Nine months after that conversation on the L train, my friend and I are sprawled across my bedroom floor, two açai bowls scattered between us. The winter semester has faded into spring, and the window is cracked open to let in the March breeze. She's still wearing jorts—seasonally inappropriate, but her signature look, now paired with thick wool socks that speak to her stubborn refusal to be defined by weather or convention. The açai melts. We lick our spoons; our smiles reach our eyes.
What started out as an ironic phrase seems to have captured a moment in culture. Whether it is driven inextricably by politics is uncertain, but we are undeniably facing a wider political shift to the right. How the Brown community will negotiate that phenomenon remains at the devices of each individual navigating their own complex identity—practicing or non-practicing, labeled or unlabeled, performing or simply being a Bruno (even in jorts!).
