Bisexual identities are frequently misunderstood and narrowed down to a stereotype, resulting in marginalisation and discrimination, even from within the LGBTQI community itself. Virginia Magwaza, Executive Director of Parents, Families & Friends of South African Queers (PFSAQ), highlights this issue, stating, “We often talk about the LGBTQI community, but how united are we if we still discriminate against each other?”
PFSAQ is dedicated to engaging families, friends, and allies in South Africa to deepen their understanding of issues related to sexuality, gender identity, and sex characteristics, ultimately helping them become more effective advocates for LGBTQI individuals.
To mark Bisexual Awareness Week, we spoke with Virginia Magwaza about the specific challenges faced by bisexual people in South Africa and explored how LGBTQI organisations and allies can better support and advocate for bisexual individuals.
Do bisexual individuals in your region experience erasure or invisibility? If so, how do they experience this?
Bisexuality in our region is often hidden, and unfortunately, bisexual individuals experience discrimination even within the LGBTQI community because they feel like bisexual people have not made up their minds and they feel like bisexual people are the ones that are perpetuating hate crimes. For instance, if a bisexual woman leaves a male partner for a female partner, the former partner might react violently towards the woman’s new relationship.
So there’s always the tension about bisexuality in our region and they also have these names that they call them which are very derogatory, like there’s one that I remember which is double adapter. They are always regarded as straight people, especially if at that time they are dating someone who was assigned male at birth.
About four or five years ago, we started seeing bisexual people speaking up and sharing their experiences in our sessions, and there was this LBQ conference in Cape Town where bisexual people could make their voices heard and demand the space to be visible. We are now seeing a number of visible bisexual people, even at pride marches where we see them with their flags.
“They are very scared to come out and they don’t feel safe, they don’t feel protected and the sad thing is that they don’t feel protected within the spaces that we claim are safe because there is biphobia within our spaces.”
What role do local LGBTQI organisations play in supporting bisexual communities?
There isn’t much. There are organisations like the Forum for the Empowerment of Women that have organised the LBQ conference post the international LBQ conference. So we had the regional one which included countries in the Southern Africa region and we’re supposed to have a follow-up conference as well as local conferences but I think the issue is funding. They have not managed to raise funds in a way that takes the work forward.
In that conference, what I liked was that the bisexual women were very vocal, so there’s a little bit happening, but only on bisexual women. There is nothing that’s been done on bisexual men because it’s very rare you find a bisexual person who is a male saying I’m bisexual. I think this year I only had two people in the spaces that we’ve been in.
They are very scared to come out and they don’t feel safe, they don’t feel protected and the sad thing is that they don’t feel protected within the spaces that we claim are safe because there is biphobia within our spaces.
How does cultural or religious context influence the visibility and acceptance of bisexual individuals in your region?
In some ways it is similar to gay and lesbian individuals where the culture does not promote same-sex relationships. It becomes more burdensome if you are bisexual because now you’re constantly having to explain yourself and also you are in a situation where you are seen as someone who actually does not know what they want.
We are seeing lesbians and gay people in communities being accepted, there are weddings where even communities attend but there’s never been a situation where a bisexual person is openly bisexual. If a woman marries a man but the marriage doesn’t work out and she later dates a woman, it’s assumed she was confused. The reverse is also true—if she marries a woman and then later marries a man, people think she’s “come to her senses.”
Bisexuality is still a concept many struggle to grasp. When I break down the LGBTQI acronym to people, particularly in rural areas, I’ve realised that it’s much easier now when I explain lesbian and gay, but when it comes to bisexual it is more difficult. You constantly have to bring in the political aspect of it in terms of the human rights of everyone and the right to choose who they want to be in love with and also their right to exist.
“We always talk about the LGBTQI community but the question always remains how much of a community are we if we are still going to discriminate against each other.”
Why is it important to amplify the experiences of bisexual people in your region?
It’s very important to raise awareness about bisexuality, and consciousness begins within the community itself. When I chant, I always say, “Down with biphobia, transphobia, and intersexphobia,” because people need to understand that biphobia is harmful. We need to raise awareness around bisexuality both within the LGBTQI community, but also with bisexual individuals themselves as some of them are not yet capacitated to understand that it is in their own right to be attracted to whoever. Much like with the awareness around lesbians and gay people, this understanding has to begin internally and then expand outward.
We always talk about the LGBTQI community but the question always remains how much of a community are we if we are still going to discriminate against each other. It happened with the trans community for some time, although it’s getting better and I’m also hoping that as time goes on you know it’s going to be better for bisexual people. We need to focus on both the political and human rights of bisexuality. Their identity should be respected, not judged based on who they’re with at any given time.
It also ties into the politics of gender, are you attracted to a person or to their body parts? I don’t think we have reached that point where we understand that attraction is about the person and not what is between their legs. Even for lesbians, we get asked if we are a femme or a stud, like I don’t care, I feel attracted to a person no matter what label they carry. The same goes for bisexuality, the sex a person was assigned at birth should not be a barrier for being attracted to someone.
How can we effectively support and be allies to bisexual people in your region and globally?
I think in the future we need to have targeted awareness activities that specifically focus on bisexuality. My concern is that bisexuality gets fused with many other issues but it is high time that we visibilise the bisexual flag. As organisations, we need to think about how we raise funds to address the marginalised with the community. If we can begin to channel our funding proposals so we also have spaces where we can talk about specific groups of people within the community and what can be done to support them.