I've heard bisexual people refer to the problem of "bi erasure" as just being the problem of a specific subgroup of LGBT+ people not feeling included in the community. It's not, and I am repeatedly surprised by the extent to which some bisexual people can minimise the dangers they face -- more to the point, that bisexual women face -- as a specific group.
Bisexual people make up the majority of LGBT+ people.
If you're bi and you feel out of place in the LGBT+ community, you feel like you're appropriating a struggle which is not your own. Remember that you are the very opposite of alone.
Important discussion of bi erasure - CW: sexual assault, stalking, abuse
As the Independent reported, "In several countries, including the UK, the US and Canada, studies have shown that bi women are the most vulnerable to rape, sexual assault, domestic violence and stalking."
They are more at risk than homosexual women, and in the UK "studies have found that bisexual women are five times more likely than heterosexual women to be abused by a partner."
LGBT+ communities have always been a constantly changing and rapidly evolving, multi-headed beast, because we have to respond to constantly changing modes of oppression.
To a great extent, I think that, because of institutions such as Pride, the current community is living in the shadow of a very different time. Not only are the conditions of LGBT+ people different from what they were in the 70's and 80's, most of these people aren't part of our community anymore, because they were murdered.
Our community has grown more atomised, in response to the recognition of the wide spectrum of our struggles. When we were the target of a full-scale genocide, which affected the majority of LGBT+ people, our alliance was at its most natural, because what we were fighting and how we were fighting it was the same.
Today, the difference in struggles between trans, nonbinary, lesbian, gay, bi (and more) people are more apparent because we don't have such an easily identifiable common enemy.
Nonetheless the experience of so often being the other of society does unify us. Because we are defined by our difference from an artificially constructed mainstream, we can and should recognise and cherish the differences among our own kind.
Bisexual people should not feel like they don't belong in the LGBT+ community because they are different. It is precisely because they are different that they belong there.
