Active prejudice towards bisexuality

Elizabeth Childress Burneson of the Richmond Law Review writes: "Bisexual individuals face unique challenges and varied forms of discrimination and erasure. While bisexuals face many of the same hardships that gays and lesbians encounter, bisexuals face the additional burden of “double discrimination”: they face discrimination by both heterosexuals and homosexuals. Bisexual people are often seen by monosexuals (both straight and gay) as 'greedy' and 'promiscuous,' as having not 'picked a side,' or as just 'going through a phase.' Some people refuse to believe that bisexuality exists at all.

Bisexuals are relatively invisible because most people have a tendency to presume that all individuals are either gay or straight, depending on the gender of their current partner. Bisexuals are also less visible because they are less likely than their gay and lesbian peers to come out: overall, bisexuals are 'less than half as likely as gays and lesbians to have told most or all of the important people in their lives about their sexual orientations.' This invisibility is especially evident in the fact that only twenty-nine percent of respondents to a 2017 GLAAD survey reported knowing someone that is bisexual ... Bi discrimination and erasure have a significant impact on the bi community. Recent data shows that bisexual men and women face more mental and physical health problems than gay men or lesbians: bisexuals have a higher rate of suicide ideation and bisexual women are more likely to 'experience frequent mental distress' and have 'poorer general health' than lesbians.