Bisexuality is the most common sexual orientation among people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, according to multiple surveys conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. And yet bisexual people are, in many contexts, the least visible and least well-represented group within LGBTQ spaces. They are routinely assumed to be straight when in different-sex relationships and gay or lesbian when in same-sex relationships. Their identity is described as a phase, a form of confusion, a temporary stop on the way to something more definite, or an attempt to seem interesting. Their specific health and mental health challenges are less studied, less funded, and less discussed than those of gay men or lesbians.
This gap between demographic reality and social visibility has a name: bisexual erasure. Also called bisexual invisibility, it refers to the pattern of denying, dismissing, or failing to acknowledge bisexual identity — not through direct hostility (though that exists too), but more often through assumptions, omissions, and explanations that replace bisexuality with something else.
Understanding bisexual erasure requires understanding both how it happens and why it persists, including within communities that might be expected to know better.
What bisexual erasure actually looks like
Bisexual erasure is not usually a single dramatic event. It operates through accumulation — through the sum of many small gestures, assumptions, and omissions that together produce the effect of making bisexual identity disappear.
Relationship-based erasure
The most common form is relational. When a bisexual person is in a relationship with someone of a different gender, they are typically read as straight — by strangers, by acquaintances, and sometimes by their own family members. When they are in a relationship with someone of the same gender, they are read as gay or lesbian. The bisexual person’s actual identity becomes invisible in both cases, defined entirely by who they happen to be with at a given moment.
This creates a specific kind of invisibility that does not depend on hostility. Nobody has to say anything cruel. The person is simply not seen as bisexual. They may be welcomed into heterosexual social spaces in one relationship and gay spaces in another, without ever having their actual identity named or recognized. The pattern can persist across decades of adult life.
The “pick a side” assumption
Closely related is the assumption that bisexuality must resolve itself into something else eventually. “Are you sure you’re not just gay?” “Are you really bi or are you just experimenting?” “Do you actually prefer men, or is it equal?” These questions encode a belief that attraction is inherently exclusive — that a person cannot genuinely be attracted to more than one gender without one attraction being more real or more legitimate than the other.
This assumption often comes from people who are trying to understand, not from people who are overtly hostile. But it communicates something specific: that bisexual identity is not taken seriously as a stable, valid, self-sufficient description of a person’s sexuality. It implies that there must be a real answer underneath the bisexual label, waiting to be uncovered.
Erasure in media and representation
For much of the history of mainstream media, bisexual characters were either not present at all or were coded in ways that required interpretation — the character who was never quite named, whose relationships suggested same-sex attraction but who was never allowed to say so directly.
When bisexual representation has appeared more explicitly, it has often been shaped by particular tropes that reinforce erasure rather than challenge it. The bisexual character who “goes back” to a heterosexual relationship at the end, confirming that their same-sex relationship was a detour rather than a destination. The bisexual character who is treated as inherently promiscuous or untrustworthy — unable to commit, always looking elsewhere. The bisexual character whose identity is described only in terms of what it means for others, rather than as a genuine part of who they are.
Positive bisexual representation — characters who are clearly identified as bisexual, whose bisexuality is not a punchline or a plot device, and who are treated with the same depth as other characters — remains genuinely less common than representation of gay and lesbian characters, despite bisexual people outnumbering both groups in population surveys.
Erasure in health and research
Bisexual people are significantly less likely than gay men or lesbians to disclose their sexual orientation to healthcare providers. They are also less likely to access LGBTQ-specific health services, partly because those services have historically been designed with gay and lesbian patients in mind.
The health consequences are measurable. Research consistently shows that bisexual people experience higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidality than both heterosexual people and gay and lesbian people. They have higher rates of certain physical health risks and lower rates of accessing preventive care. These outcomes are not explained by sexual orientation itself. They are explained by the experience of being systematically unrecognized and unsupported — the specific burden of erasure on mental and physical health.
When someone’s identity is invisible to the healthcare system, the health programs designed to help them are also invisible. Bisexual people are less likely to see themselves represented in LGBTQ health campaigns. They are less likely to be asked about their sexual orientation in clinical settings. When they are asked, and they disclose bisexuality, clinicians may make assumptions based on the gender of their current partner rather than their actual orientation.
Why erasure persists within LGBTQ communities
Bisexual erasure from straight society is perhaps unsurprising — it fits a larger pattern of LGBTQ identities being rendered invisible or pathologized. What is more striking, and more painful for many bisexual people, is that erasure also operates within LGBTQ communities.
This is sometimes called biphobia when it takes an actively hostile form, but more often it manifests as lower-level dismissal or skepticism. Bisexual people in LGBTQ spaces report being told they are not “queer enough” when in different-sex relationships, being assumed to be straight until they prove otherwise, or being treated with suspicion — the assumption that bisexual people in same-sex relationships will eventually leave for someone of a different gender.
Some of this comes from the same binary logic that shapes erasure in the wider culture: an assumption that sexuality must be one thing or another, and that bisexuality complicates a narrative of LGBTQ identity that has historically been built around same-sex attraction specifically.
Some of it is historical. The political visibility of the gay and lesbian movement in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s was organized partly around clear in-group and out-group categories. Bisexuality complicated those categories. There were real debates about whether bisexual people could be trusted as political allies, whether they benefited from straight privilege in ways that made their claims to LGBTQ community membership weaker, and whether the acronym should include the B at all.
Those debates have mostly resolved in favor of inclusion, but the residue persists in some community attitudes. Bisexual people who are not in same-sex relationships may find their access to LGBTQ community spaces, support services, or social events treated as conditional or contested.
Bisexual identity is not a transitional state
One of the most persistent forms of bisexual erasure is the treatment of bisexuality as a phase — a transitional state that precedes the arrival at a more definite gay or straight identity. This framing is applied both sympathetically (“it’s fine if you’re still figuring things out”) and dismissively (“you’ll realize what you actually are eventually”).
The evidence does not support this framing. Longitudinal research on sexual orientation shows that bisexual identity is not reliably more unstable than gay, lesbian, or straight identity. Some bisexual people’s self-identification changes over time, as does some people’s self-identification in every orientation category. That fluidity, where it exists, is not evidence that bisexuality is inherently less real or less stable than other orientations.
More importantly, treating bisexual identity as provisional depends on a circular logic: if bisexual people who later identify differently are cited as evidence that bisexuality is transitional, but bisexual people who maintain that identity are simply not noticed, the data is being selected to fit the conclusion. Many people identify as bisexual throughout their lives without that identity “resolving” into anything else, because there is nothing to resolve — bisexuality is already a complete and accurate description of their experience.
The specific burden of dual erasure
Bisexual people in different-sex relationships often experience what might be called dual erasure: they are invisible to straight culture as queer, and they are invisible or conditional in LGBTQ culture as insufficiently queer. This can produce a particular kind of isolation — the experience of not fully belonging to either community, of having your identity contested from both sides.
This is not a universal experience. Some bisexual people navigate both communities comfortably. But the pattern is common enough, and its mental health effects well-documented enough, that it deserves to be named rather than glossed over.
The isolation is compounded by the fact that bisexual-specific community spaces and resources are rarer than gay and lesbian ones. Bisexual support groups, bisexual-centered media, and bisexual-specific organizations exist, but in smaller numbers relative to the population. A bisexual person looking for community that explicitly acknowledges their identity — rather than absorbing them into a more generic LGBTQ umbrella that often defaults to gay and lesbian frameworks — has fewer ready-made options.
What it means to take bisexual identity seriously
Taking bisexual identity seriously is less complicated than it might sound. It largely involves extending to bisexual people the same basic assumption of self-knowledge that we extend to other people describing their own experience.
In everyday interactions, this means not treating someone’s current relationship as the definitive statement of their orientation. A bisexual woman in a relationship with a man is still bisexual. A bisexual man in a relationship with a man is still bisexual, not gay. Asking someone to clarify “but are you mostly attracted to men or women?” in order to determine their “real” orientation is not appropriate.
In LGBTQ organizations and spaces, this means ensuring that bisexual identity is explicitly named and included, not just implied by an umbrella that tends to default to gay and lesbian in practice. It means ensuring that health services, support programs, and community resources are designed to reach bisexual people, including those who are not in same-sex relationships. It means treating bisexual people’s claims to membership and solidarity as equally valid to those of gay men and lesbians.
In media, this means allowing bisexual characters to be named as bisexual, to have their identity be part of who they are rather than a plot point, and to be shown in a range of relationships without those relationships determining whether their identity is considered real.
In healthcare, this means asking about sexual orientation regardless of the gender of a patient’s current partner, and being aware that bisexual patients may face distinct health risks related to under-recognition and social stress rather than to their orientation itself.
In research and policy, this means ensuring that bisexual people are counted separately from gay and lesbian people in surveys and data collection, rather than being grouped into a generic “sexual minority” category that obscures the specific needs and experiences of different groups.
Why this matters beyond bisexual people specifically
Bisexual erasure matters beyond its direct effects on bisexual people because it reflects a broader pattern of thinking that does harm more widely. The assumption that attraction must be exclusive — that you are either straight or gay, either attracted to one gender or to others — is a simplification that fails to describe human sexuality accurately.
It produces specific harm for bisexual people. But the underlying binary logic also shapes how many people think about themselves and others, in ways that can prevent honest self-understanding and restrict what kinds of lives and relationships feel possible. When the available categories for describing attraction are too narrow, people either squeeze themselves into ill-fitting boxes or have no language for what they actually experience.
Recognition of bisexual identity is, in that sense, part of a broader project of making better-quality space for the actual diversity of human experience — not as an abstract virtue, but as a practical matter of accuracy.
Key takeaways
A few points worth keeping in mind:
- Bisexuality is a stable, complete identity, not a transitional phase or a form of confusion that will eventually resolve.
- Relationship-based erasure is the most common form: assuming someone is straight or gay based on their current partner, rather than taking their self-description seriously.
- Bisexual people have distinct health and mental health outcomes that are tied to erasure and invisibility, not to sexual orientation itself.
- Erasure happens within LGBTQ communities too, not only in mainstream straight society — and that dual erasure has specific and measurable consequences.
- Taking bisexual identity seriously is not complicated: it largely means extending the same basic respect to bisexual people’s self-knowledge that we extend to everyone else.
- Representation matters — not because representation alone changes anything, but because the repeated absence of bisexual identity in media, research, and community spaces reinforces the message that it is not quite real.
Bisexual erasure is not a minor grievance or a matter of political sensitivity. It is a pattern with real, documented consequences for the people it affects. Understanding how it operates is the first step toward doing something different.
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