Ask any bisexual; they’ve most likely heard the phrase ‘grasping’ a lot. In reality, if you happen to have been to do a phrase affiliation recreation with the overall inhabitants on the phrase ‘bisexual’, I’m fairly certain ‘grasping’ can be up there in huge flashing lights.

One of many greatest sexual stereotypes round is that bisexuality alerts a voracious sexual urge for food, a whim-driven courting life, and promiscuity. These stereotypes abound, particularly on the subject of girls, whose sexuality is scrutinised and fetishised in a very voyeuristic method. However if you happen to dig just a little deeper, don’t you begin questioning what’s fallacious with any of these issues?

Haven’t you ever questioned what’s really fallacious with a voracious sexual urge for food, what’s really fallacious with a whim-driven courting life, and what’s really fallacious with promiscuity?

Look, I get it: there’s a detrimental stereotype about being grasping. You get accused of being the detrimental stereotype; you push again towards the detrimental stereotype. That appears to be the cycle that bisexual folks discover themselves in on the subject of the phrase ‘grasping’.

However nowadays, I merely can’t inspire myself to push again towards the label. I merely don’t care about being referred to as grasping. In reality, I actively suppose wanting issues is nice, when there’s an infinite provide of these issues. I would like issues! I really like wanting issues! I really like being hungry for the various and various parts of human life that I can expertise in my temporary time on this earth! Perhaps I’m bisexual exactly as a result of I’m grasping, and that’s one thing I’m more than pleased to personal.

‘Grasping bisexual’ falls into the identical class for me because the accusations of being a ‘egocentric child-free particular person’. In fact, my preliminary response was to push again towards it, my instinctive impulse to defend towards a culturally loaded label, however after I gave it greater than ten seconds of thought, I realised I used to be extra inclined to ask about what that cultural load is, what it means for me and for different folks.

I’ll be a egocentric, child-free particular person if it means not bringing one other undesirable baby into the world! I’ll be a grasping bisexual if it means I get to specific my enthusiastic need for folks of a couple of gender! Certain! Signal me up! Perhaps accepting and proudly owning these supposedly detrimental traits makes the cultural load lighter for myself and for others on the receiving finish of the identical stereotypes.

I can’t assist however marvel if what underpins the concern of the ‘grasping bisexual is definitely the concern that Grasping Bisexuals In Your Space Are Coming To Steal Your Man (Or Lady, Or Associate Who Is Neither). Despite the fact that sexuality is a just about infinite useful resource (not like coal or Hermes baggage), we’re so locked into the shortage mindset that we’ve got to connect a concern of loss to every little thing in our lives, and bisexuals are a handy place to hold these fears. I might argue that whereas greed shouldn’t be one thing I’m excited by rejecting, the concept we’re inherently untrustworthy, immoral and susceptible to unethical courting behaviour is, the truth is, deeply biphobic and a attribute I’m more than pleased to reject.

Perhaps I’m much less petrified of being referred to as grasping as a result of it’s a phrase I’ve felt haunted by my entire life. I’ve been some number of ‘chubby’, ‘fats’ or ‘plus dimension’ just about since delivery, and spent a lot of my grownup life unpacking the stigma, determining how I really feel about myself, how I wish to transfer or costume or use my physique alone phrases. Perhaps it’s the data that due to the way in which my physique appears to be like, I’ll all the time be perceived as grasping, it doesn’t matter what I do, that has made it simpler to simply shrug my shoulders on the stereotypes round bisexuality.