When I was five years old, I wished I was a boy.
It wasn't because I wanted to be a boy, really. I just wanted to kiss the back of a girl's hand someday. Not have a boy kiss the back of my hand. I wanted to be the boy who bends down, kisses the back of a girl's hand, and straightens up to meet her sparkling eyes.
I didn't know homosexuality existed. I wanted to be a boy because only boys could kiss the back of girls' hands, and it felt like a club I'd always be left out of.
I felt that way for a long time. Even once I understood what a lesbian was, that was a shameful word, and besides, I knew I liked boys, so that couldn't be what I was.
There were a few awkward years during my adolescence, though, that were bizarre for me. I still knew I liked boys. I was straight. That's all I could be.
So why did I think girls were cute? Sexy, even, in my hormonal years? Was I confusing aesthetic appreciation for attraction? But no, I really, REALLY liked some of these girls. It wasn't normal. Was this a phase all straight girls go through?
And then when I was fifteen I had my first full-blown crush on a girl. I mean, sure, there were those couple years of wondering if I was just a defective straight girl. But then there was Rita. She had these coy brown eyes, a round, laughing face, and dark umber hair that fell all the way to the small of her back, so soft I wanted nothing more than to braid it.
I knew I must be crazy. Crazy, broken little straight girl.
So I did what any terrified teenager would do–I told my best friend. Asked her to please confirm nothing was wrong with me. Did she ever feel this way? Was it normal?
She said four words that changed my life: "Maybe you're just bi." You know, she explained upon my confusion, bisexual. You like guys AND girls. Lots of people are.
Really? That was it? Suddenly there was a word for it. There was a name for this, and it was a thing that lots of people felt, and I wasn't broken or abnormal. There might be a whole community out there that I belonged with. People who could teach me not to be ashamed or uncomfortable in my own attraction.
I'm not exaggerating when I say it changed my life. I have spent so many years as an adult wondering how different my life would be if, just once, I had heard the word "bisexual" as a child.
And no one wants to think about that. Because any sexual orientation but "straight" is considered deviant and inherently sexualized, we don't want children to know about those identities. But god, how many years I would have saved of being scared of myself if I'd heard that word.
And if I'd seen bisexual people represented after I discovered my own identity!
If I'd been able to watch TV and hear someone say the word "bisexual" instead of everyone being either straight or gay (or refusing to identify), so that I didn't feel like an outcast even within queer communities (which, by the way, are very, very largely bisexual.)
If liking more than one gender hadn't been treated like a dirty secret or something kinky and cheeky for most of the years I was aware of it. (Thanks, Katy Perry, for reminding me that "it's not what good girls do, not how they should behave.")
If I'd seen bisexuality normalized, a part of society rather than an anomaly in behavior.
If I'd seen bisexual people in more than just porn, where the idea that we are deviant and hypersexual is constantly reinforced.
There is an incredible power to positive representation. I think a lot of how different my life would be, how different my perception of myself would be, and how different my adolescence and early adulthood would have been if I could have had the kind of representation to help me know that I was not broken or wrong earlier.
Representation matters. Especially in marginalized communities. So next time someone complains about "Why do we have to have all these [minority] characters these days?" Well, I'm happy to help explain why.
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