Bisexual Is Not Always An Umbrella

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I'm leaning away from using bisexual as an umbrella term; umbrellas are supposed to keep the rain off of you, instead of bring it. Bisexual is a political term that the bisexual community fought 40 years to see used with pride.  Just like gay doesn't always mean happy and lesbian doesn't refer just to an island, bisexual does not refer to two; it refers to “more than one”. We are the people with the capacity to be attracted to more than one type, and we have many ways to describe that. Please don't "identity police" and ask us to erase the generations of activism that led us to this point. Words like bisexual can change over time, but what doesn't is the need to respect complex sexualities. If you identity yourself as pansexual, polysexual, multisexual, fluid, queer, and/or non-monosexual, do so with the full knowledge of what the term bisexual has meant politically and how it was also used as a tool to serve transgender communities and re-frame the dialogue about sexual minorities away from gay and lesbian alone. I am proud to stand by bisexual, are you proud enough to stand by me, no matter what the wind and rain may bring?

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Thank you to The Daily Beast for covering the continuing saga that is the blocking of the word bisexual on the internet. For those without memories like mine, a look back on previous bans of the word bisexual online.


GOOGLE BANS BISEXUAL (2009 - 2014)

"Google’s Bisexual Problem", HuffingtonPost.com (by me, Faith Cheltenham)

"Google restricts ‘bisexual’ from autocomplete because of correlation to pornography", Pasadena Star News

"Google Autocomplete Still Blocking ‘Bisexual’: LGBT Advocates Fight For Fair Treatment Of Search Terms", International Business Times (with a helpful quote from Jeff Hermes, director of the Digital Media Law Project at Harvard University).

"Google still blocking the word ‘bisexual’ from autocomplete", PinkNews


APPLE BRIEFLY BANS BISEXUAL (2013)
(see Sarah Prager, Quist co-founder's petition)
"App maker petitions Apple to remove 'bisexual' from flagged list", Baltimore Sun

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