Bisexuals: Not Unicorns.

Truth: if you are American and female, and the conversation somehow ends up outting you as a bisexual, someone will bring up high school/college girls and experimentation, even if you are pushing 40 and haven't been near a school in over a decade.

It's a nasty little line...

"All the girls at my school said they were bi, because it was cool." But the speaker knows better, for he knows conclusively and unequivocally every one of those girls' heart of hearts and who was tapping each and every pussy. Verily, it cannot be that girls simply were bisexual (though probably fewer in number than he remembers), for there is no such creature.

"I've read about how often college girls are 'gay till graduation' and use bisexuality to feel out a sense of identity." Well, I'm glad the New York Times has once and for all declared that the bisexual college girls are simply taking their gonads for a test drive, and that these experiences didn't count, thereby reassuring parents and young men everywhere that the girls will come to their senses and back to dick once they've got a BA.

"I know this chick who said she was just experimenting in college." Well, she is our queen, and her word is law, so I guess that's that.

Yes, college students experiment with a lot of things on their way to figuring out who they are, regardless of gender. Yes, our society has been more open to girls experimenting with sexuality than boys, and yes, there are studies galore suggesting that females in our society are more open to a fluid sense of sexuality than males in our society. Yes, this is an interesting discussion to have in the context of human sexuality in general--but not as something to bring up whenever you find out someone is bisexual.

If every time you hear 'bisexual', you immediately jump to a casual remark about high school or college girls just experimenting, or just saying it to be cool, you are essentially negating bisexuality entirely as just a bit of immature experimentation. You're also declaring yourself the arbiter of other people's sexuality. (Sorry college girls, you can't really be gay/bi unless we say so!) Oh, and setting yourself up as the judge of how valid other people's sexual experiences are. (No no no, Friday was 'experimenting', it doesn't count. But we'll let you keep Saturday!)

We exist, motherfucker. We are not suspicious cryptids lurking at the edges of your college experience, the chupacabras of the dating scene. You don't get to say who is and isn't really bi, what does or doesn't count. Nobody has to pass a test, list their lays or meet a certain quota within six months of graduation to count as actually bisexual. You are not the vagina dictator. You don't get to make that call.

Even, I swear to you, even if someone mentions experimenting in their college days. Even if a classmate you know well graduates, get a boyfriend, decides her vaginator days are behind her and dismisses it all as youthful experimentation. That's just her take on her experience, which only she has the right to make, and only regarding her experiences. One chick declaring herself over pussy does not disprove the existence of all bisexual chicks.

Every time I'm talking with someone and we trip over the big reveal*, they bring up high school/college girls, with that dismissive 'only experimenting' or 'only to be cool' decree. Every goddamn time. It's never relevant. It's so irrelevant, it's like responding to someone introducing themselves as a stay-at-home parent with, "That's interesting. I hear most murdered children are killed by a parent. I read an article in the New York Times about it."

Interesting, in an objective discussion about that topic, but totally fucking irrelevant here.

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* Guys, if you mention that a chick is hot and reveal yourself to be hetero/bi, you don't get to complain about anyone 'forcing their sexuality down your throat' by agreeing with that assessment.

Posted to LJ instead of Tumblr because I'm not an 18 year old.

"why is it that were always told not to get tattoos at a young age because we 'will regret it later on' when we are basically told to choose a career path by age 18? i’d rather be 40 years old with a tattoo that meant something to me when i was young than be 40 years old not wanting to get out of bed to go to a job that i hate because i was forced to decide on a career in my teens" (Some kid on Tumblr.)

Because careers take years to build.

If you wait till you're 40 to pick one and start working your way up the ladder, from the tiresome training to the shitty entry level jobs on your way to the sweet position you actually want, you're more likely to hit retirement age before you get the career you envisioned--and that's if you can even get a foot in the door, given the unapologetic ageism that runs rampant in many fields.

And you still have to support yourself in the meantime. If you have no particular career path in mind, that usually means a succession of really shitty jobs in which you're just getting by, and if you're just looking to get by that's fine, but they don't leave you in a position to uproot your life and pursue training for a career when you finally know what you really want to do. They also work against you when you're out there looking for a shitty entry level job, because you're up against younger people who have also been working really shitty jobs, but while they put themselves through college or while they do the work they really love on the side.*

That younger person's string of really shitty jobs is a badge of honor proclaiming them a determined go-getter. Your much longer string of really shitty jobs is a note pinned to your shirt informing potential employers that you don't really do 'goals' or 'hard work'.

It is easier for a 40 year old to get up, decide they hate their career and want to start over, than to get up, decide they want a career, and start fresh, because the first 40-year-old isn't really starting over: they've got the training and experience of their previous career, and even if these aren't relevant to their new career path, they tell potential employers on that path that this person can get shit done.

To answer the real question, though: because most young people tattoo themselves with stupid shit. The names of girlfriends that will dump them in six months, bands that they'll have stopped listening to in two years, stupid cartoons and memes that nobody will remember in five years and oh so rebellious sexalicious/pothead graphics that will embarrass them in ten years when they've grown the hell up and are trying to hold down a job and pick their kid up at school without being labeled a 'creep'.

In all likelihood, the tattoo you get at 18 will mean something entirely different to you when you're 40. Mostly, that you have to cover it with Ace bandages when you're forced to get out of bed in the morning to go to a really shitty job you hate, because the dress code on really shitty jobs is pretty much universal ("Nothing that would scare little old white ladies").

But also that you're embarrassing your 18-year-old, because dad will you please put a shirt on so my friends don't see your janky tattooes? Ugh.

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* I speak from experience: really shitty jobs look really shitty on a résumé, especially as you grow older, unless you have something going on the side, e.g. "...to support myself while I pursued my passion of writing," or "while I built the world's first goat space program." And even then, they can be a sneaky trap from which it's difficult or impossible to escape if you ever decide that just paying the bills isn't enough.