Writing Bisexual Characters In Monogamous Relationships - Bi Awareness Week - Bi Visibility Day

Without accidentally steering into the slutty bisexual trope...

#BisexualAwarenessWeek #HowToWriteLGBTCharacters #BiWeek

[CoraMaria]

Nice video! I'm writing a fanfiction with a bi man being shipped monogamously with a woman, and it's a setting where "bisexual" doesn't exist as a label. My approach for portraying his bisexuality mostly boils down to these two points:

1. He is shown to be attracted to people other than his love interest, but those connections usually don't develop into much, unlike the pages-upon-pages of chemistry built between him and the love interest. I don't want to confuse readers about what the ship is. (His bisexuality actually began with me accidentally adding homoerotic subtext to the scene where he meets the male villain for the first time, so I decided to just... accept the bi-ness.)

2. He comes from a culture that constantly erases queerness and pushes compulsory heterosexuality, while his love interest comes from a world where being queer is as normal as being cishet. Thus she is one of the first people he can share this part of himself with (when it becomes natural for him to bring up, that is). It also ties into his eventual motivation for wanting both cultures to coexist and learn from each other, so that he doesn't have to worry about hiding a part of himself.

I'm not bi myself, but I am a heteromantic asexual, and so I do relate to and want to see bisexual characters be in monogamous m/f relationships and still be depicted as valid and visible in their queerness. It may not be my orientation, but there are some things bisexuals experience that I relate to, and some kinds of representation that I want to see as well. If I saw someone erasing or ignoring a character's bisexuality, I'd feel just as hurt as if they were erasing a character's asexuality, hence why I want my character's bisexuality to be clear and visible, even in a "straight-passing" relationship.