“Belonging” As A Biracial Bisexual Is All About Fear And Freedom

I've existed in states of "bi" my entire life, always straddling the line between two different identities. From my very first breath, my biracial identity had already determined my pretty undeterminable place in the world — and it didn't take me long when growing up to figure this out.

While my face says one thing about my ethnicity, my words and behaviour say something else about my cultural upbringing entirely, and I quickly had to get used to my existence confusing both my communities. But as hyphenated and fractured as my relationship with my two cultures has always been, I was getting along just fine with my lack of a fixed position in any cultural community — that was, until I came out as bisexual.

Such is the way with many queer stories, my coming out was a long process of unlearning heteronormative scripts and figuring out what, and who, exactly I was. So, I was around 19 years old when I finally felt as though I could confidently call myself bisexual. But instead of feeling excited about my first queer experiences and enjoying this new stage of my life, I was mostly just struck with fear. All of a sudden I was biracial and bisexual, and I officially didn't really belong anywhere.

As anyone who has to reconcile two or more ethnicities into their identity will tell you, it's far from easy. From the way I look to the way I speak and behave, to the things I like and the people I know, I'm always too Japanese to be Australian and too Australian to be Japanese. And as any bisexual who has dealt with biphobia across both the queer and heterosexual communities can confirm, we're often made to feel not queer enough to be queer and not straight enough to be straight.

So when it comes to my race and my sexuality, two big pillars of my sense of belonging in the world, I often feel like I exist in total limbo. And it's completely terrifying, but freeing.

Being bi in any way teaches you a lot. Firstly, our desire to belong to defined groups might feel safe and comforting but is inherently very constrictive. Of course, it will depend on my mood or confidence levels on any given day, but sometimes, the ability to belong nowhere — or somewhere in the middle of two communities — is as much a gift of freedom as it is a battle of fear. Knowing that I don't have just one script to follow means I often feel freer to make an array of decisions about how I want to express my multifaceted identity, and no one can tell me I'm doing it wrong.

As for any exclusion or hatred that people who are bi might get from binary communities, it actually says a lot more about them than about us. Our inability to fit into their categories is a threat to the order of things, a threat to their own sense of security. That said, I understand that some cultural spaces (such as queer communities and ethnic minorities) have been hard-won and their exclusivity is actually essential to their safety. And bi-ness often flies in the face of that.

As completely unacceptable as biphobia and racial prejudice are, learning to accept my bi-ness fully also meant being okay about not being invited into spaces where firm and defined boundaries are so important. I will never understand the experience of being Asian without the privilege of whiteness, nor can I ever appreciate the challenges of being openly queer without the privilege of passing as heterosexual. But in the same way, none of those people can know or understand exactly what it's like to be me. And, in fact, that's actually okay.

For the past couple of years, I've slowly but surely been creating a space of my own — one where people who find themselves in between cultural spaces and groups can exist together and celebrate one another. My connections with both biracial and bisexual communities have grown ever since I stopped trying to be part of all the individual communities that I, in part, belong to. Instead of trying to tear the parts of myself apart and allocate them to different spaces, I finally had to accept that my duality is a whole identity in itself. Not only does that make for an interesting and unique identity label, but also an interesting and unique life.

Being inextricably dual in a world that demands binary categorisation isn't always pleasant or easy. But the older I get, the more sure I am that I wouldn't have it any other way. Would I sometimes enjoy the perks of having a comprehendible and straightforward identity, and undeniable belonging to a single community? Sure. But what I've learnt about belonging, self-expression and freedom by being bi in more ways than one, I wouldn't trade for the world.