McKenzie said it’s been difficult to disclose his sexuality while dating because of the stigma he faces.
Those portrayals often perpetuate stereotypes that bisexuals are “deviant” or untrustworthy, he said, and can influence how bisexual people see themselves, and how other people treat them. “It’s impossible to find the right support,” she said.Ĭhristopher McKenzie, 46, a film professor at Boston University who identifies as bisexual, said he pays close attention to the ways in which bisexual people are portrayed onscreen - or not. Miller said she has struggled to find a therapist who understands the conflicting emotions around bisexuality and internalized biphobia. “It was other people who instilled in me that there was something wrong with me, that I didn’t know who I was,” she said. She said she was never ashamed of her sexuality until her 20s, when both gay and straight friends and family started telling her they didn’t believe she was really attracted to women, and that she was going through a phase. Jessie Miller, 27, a graduate student in sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago who uses she/her or he/him pronouns, came out as bisexual at 14 in a speech at a schoolwide assembly. health disparities, and can discourage bisexual people from accessing the community’s resources and support. Meyer, a public policy scholar at the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. It can also create a hostile social environment, which in turn can contribute to mental health disorders, said Ilan H. It’s like being in a ‘double closet.’Įthan Mereish, a psychologist and associate professor of health studies at American University in Washington, D.C., said that this kind of discrimination from in and beyond the queer community can create “a double closet” that can discourage bisexual people from coming out, in part because they may worry they won’t find a welcoming community. health at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “We see it in research that the more anti-bisexual experiences someone has, the worse their health can be,” said Tania Israel, a psychology professor who studies L.G.B.T.Q. people under 25, concluded something similar among America’s youth: Bisexual high school students reported more feelings of sadness and hopelessness and more thoughts of suicide than those who identified as heterosexual or gay. A 2019 research brief from the Trevor Project, a national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to L.G.B.T.Q. That said, some studies suggest that they may be suffering a disproportionate amount.Ī 2017 review of 52 studies, for instance, found that when compared with heterosexual people, bisexual people had higher rates of depression and anxiety, and higher or equivalent rates of those conditions when compared with those who identified as gay. Fish and other experts said, because the research is limited and tends to focus on younger, single people - especially women. Understanding the mental health experiences of bisexual people is challenging, Dr. That can be really influential on someone’s mental health.” ‘The more anti-bisexual experiences someone has, the worse their health can be.’ “The stereotypes of confusion, that it’s a phase, that they’re promiscuous, those perpetuate on both sides.
Fish, a researcher at the University of Maryland School of Public Health who studies L.G.B.T.Q. “Bisexual folks experience stigma not only from heterosexual communities, but also from - even though they’re named in it - the L.G.B.T.Q. She didn’t know where she fit in, or how she should define herself. She felt like her queerness alienated her from her straight friends, and her relationships with men prevented her from fully relating to her gay friends. “My anxiety was always so high, because I was like, ‘I don’t understand, I don’t understand,’” she said. High school friends who had come out to her as gay didn’t believe her when she told them that she was bisexual, citing her past relationships with men. She would print bisexual fan fiction and read it at night, thinking to herself, “This is totally me.” Still, she said, her father told her she was just confused. Lindley did get a boyfriend, but she found she was still also attracted to women. “Just wait ’til you get a boyfriend,” she remembered her mother saying.Ī few years later, Ms. When Brooke Lindley was 13 and first came out to her family as being attracted to both boys and girls, she didn’t even know the term “bisexual.” It was 2003, and her parents responded dubiously.