User:KGundred/Bisexual erasure

Bisexual erasure
Bisexual erasure or bisexual invisibility is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or reexplain evidence of bisexuality in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources. In its most extreme form, bisexual erasure can include the belief that bisexuality itself does not exist.

Bisexual erasure may include the assertion all bisexual individuals are in a phase and will soon choose a side, either heterosexual or homosexual. One reason for this is the belief that bisexual individuals are distinctively indecisive. Gross misrepresentations of bisexual individuals as hypersexual erases the sexual agency of bisexuals, effectively erasing their true identities as well. Bisexual erasure is also often a manifestation of biphobia, although it does not necessarily involve overt antagonism. Bisexual erasure often results in bisexual-identifying individuals experiencing a variety of adverse social encounters, as they not only have to struggle with finding acceptance within society but also within the LGBT community.

Another common variant of bisexual erasure involves accepting bisexuality in women while downplaying or rejecting the validity of bisexual identity in men.

There is increasing inclusion and visibility of bisexuals, particularly in the LGBT community.

In schools
More schools teach about heterosexuality and homosexuality, not solely heterosexuality. Support for gay and lesbian people has come to public schools in the form of the gay-straight alliances (GSAs). According to John Elia, this can cause harm to students who do not identify with either of those sexualities. However, some schools have adapted this acronym to include other LGBTQ+ groups. For instance, West Ranch High School has the "gender-sexuality association" on their club list for the 2020-2021 school year. Melissa Smith and Elizabethe Payne state there are several instances where faculty have been silent when it comes to bullying of LGBTQ students.

Television
Main article: List of bisexual characters in television

On December 30, 2009, MTV premiered their 23rd season of the show The Real World, featuring two bisexual participants, Emily Schromm and Mike Manning. Although Manning himself identifies as bisexual, many bloggers and commenters on blogs claimed he was gay. Furthermore, while a behind-the-scenes MTV Aftershow and subsequent interview revealed that both Manning and Schromm had had encounters with both men and women while on the show, the show was edited to make it seem as though they had only been with men. In 2016, popular sitcom The Good Place aired on NBC starring Kristen Bell as bisexual Eleanor Shellstrop. However, many were disappointed in the show's portrayal of Eleanor's sexuality as a joke and therefore devaluing the validity of bisexuality on the television screen.

In Game of Thrones, The Red Viper is a character who is presented as bisexual. However, the character’s bisexuality is not a facet of his identity. Rather, it is used as a way of characterizing him as someone who is greedy. Pedro Pascal, who plays The Red Viper, claims that his character “does not discriminate in his pleasures…to limit yourself in terms of experience doesn’t make any sense to him.” Thus, his bisexuality is erased and replaced with the stereotype that bisexual people are overly promiscuous.

Frank Underwood from House of Cards is similarly characterized. His philosophy is that “sex is power.” He has sex with both men and women for the purpose of controlling them, using bisexuality as a ploy rather than an expression of identity.

Canada
A study of the labor market conducted in Canada in 2019 found that bisexual men and women do not fare as well as their peers in the workplace. Sean Waite, John Ecker, and Lori E. Ross discovered that “bisexual men earned less than both heterosexual and gay men,” and “bixsexual women were at the bottom of the gender and sexual orientation wage hierarchy.” In the article it is also admitted that research on bisexual individuals is limited because of erasure in the census. The census does not allow an option for bisexuals, and thus they are reduced to heterosexual or homosexual depending on the sex of their partner.