Sad little vignette from Pride yesterday

I spent most of the day on the Biphoria stall, and found myself musing about how drastically the experience has improved: when I first started doing this, in maybe 2009 or something, you'd sit down just knowing that something unpleasant would happen. Maybe just a muttered comment and glares, maybe something the person didn't even know was biphobic (like the person who said "I run an LGBT group for older people but we never have any bisexuals" who then went on to spout enough biphobic stereotypes that we weren't surprised no one ever told her they were bi and/or didn't come back) to some of the outrageous examples of biphobia we still cite years later (although sadly one of those that I thought was historical, conflating bisexuality and bestiality, apparently happened three different times in various ways on Saturday!).

Some people did walk quickly past us once they'd read enough of the words on the banners around us to understand what we were representing. Some glared at us when we asked "would you like a sticker?" as if we were accusing them of something awful or trying to give them cooties. But for the most part, people were friendly and interested and if they didn't want a "bi & proud" sticker were likely to take one that said "I ♥ bis." I was cheered by the numbers of couples where one person would take a bi sticker and the other would take the bi-friendly sticker, or sometimes one would stick the other on their partner, either in a kind of "oh, this is you" or "you better ♥ bis, me at least!" kind of cute way that couples can sometimes be.

But then a man wandered over towards the stall and we said "would you like a sticker?" like we did to everyone who gave us a chance to. A woman with him pushed him along in a way she probably intended to seem playful. "Oh, no, you're not getting him," she said, or something to that effect. "He's been mine for twenty years!"

My fellow stall-volunteer and I exchanged a raised eyebrow and a few comments as they disappeared. Perhaps this is what led to her returning -- or maybe they'd been having their own conversation -- and telling us, "he says he's unsure now, so you might get him back!" I just sort of narrowed my eyes at her I think, and the woman I was sitting next to didn't say anything either. The woman laughed uproariously to indicate that she'd said something funny, but we still didn't react so she finally went away.

The two of us sort of marveled at this; I said I was married to a straight person but I'd never expect to be talked about that way and my friend said yeah, it's only when you see people acting like this that you sometimes remember this actually happens. I was angry at the woman at first -- did she think we were trying to recruit people? does she think bisexuality wears off after a while? (my friend said she's been married for 22 years and her bisexuality hasn't worn off yet, which made me laugh) -- but then I was just sad for that guy.

And I was sad for a woman I'd heard about from Saturday, when I wasn't at Pride. haggis, who was at the stall then, told me that she'd started to go for the "bi & proud" sticker but that her wife volunteered "she was bisexual until she married me" and she pulled away from the sticker and other resources for bis we had out on the table. (Funny how all these "oh they're not bi because they're with me!" things have been said to the married bisexuals among us!)

I know and talk a lot about how prevalent biphobia is in general, but seeing it so active in people's long-term relationships just made me sad for them.