Overcoming the Stigma
Ten years ago, when she was 17, Oorja Gonepavaram came out as a bisexual. After a few years of homeschooling, she travelled abroad, acquiring degrees from Mount Allison University and Oxford University, before returning home to Pune to work as a development professional. “Generally, all my friends are bi,” she states, arguing that more Gen Zs are expressing their sexuality even at the cost of incurring displeasure from the larger queer community, sections of whom tend to view bisexuals with a suspicious side eye. Gonepavaram knows the reasons only too well. As she sees it, bisexuality allows one to seek a relationship with the opposite sex in keeping with traditional gender norms, while also enjoying intimacy with the same sex. So, one doesn’t have to totally forgo societal expectations. After all, in a heteronormative world, especially for males, bisexuality is an easier proposition than being gay, as a gay man is perceived in homophobic societies as an outsider or as part of a marginalised community. For women, bisexuality is relatively tougher to live out in patriarchal communities. “But,” she hastens to add, “generalisations don’t work because there is no such thing as a monolithic queer community, which, across the world and especially in India, is divided along colour, class, caste, regions, and multiple other categories.”
Gonepavaram is clearly among a large number of people breaking barriers erected by not only straight people but also queers to explore intimacy towards more than one gender. In India, this sexual openness seems to have caught on, especially among young people less concerned about public judgement or outrage, and who want to engage in what is generally called polyamory, or consensual non-monogamy.
The worry about bisexuals among the queer community is perhaps justified, from their viewpoint. First, there is no commitment to a gender or a one-person relationship, which a section of queers insists on. Charges fly that bisexuals want the best of both worlds.
Arundhati Ghosh, Bengaluru-based social activist and author of All Our Loves: Journeys with Polyamory in India (2025), rues that bisexuality has till recently been a “taboo” topic within the queer community in India as well as in many parts of the world because bisexuals are considered “neither straight enough nor queer enough”. Her comments offer a peek into complaints from within a marginalised society which doesn’t enjoy many basic rights in India that are taken for granted in some other nations. Ghosh views the subject through the lens of gender, sexuality and romance. While your gender identity involves which gender you identify with, sexuality dwells on who you are attracted to, and romantic orientation is about the gender towards which a person experiences romantic attraction. Which is why Ghosh sees great sense in people exploring their identities to discover themselves rather than reinforcing the same old belief systems of the straight world among queers. “Even when you are defying expectations of the straight universe, you are setting boundaries for yourself by opposing such an exploration,” she says, emphasising that this is why many bisexuals had for far too long been hesitant to come out although they knew their orientations.
Many queers argue that bisexuality is a phase and in the process push ‘bi’s into the trap of double ostracism, first from straight people and then from queers themselves. Incidentally, bisexuality is sometimes also linked with pansexuality, which is attraction for all genders, including trans people. For Ghosh, the tyranny of monosexism isn’t acceptable but she sees historical reasons rooted in misconceptions as partial causes for it. When the AIDS epidemic created a global scare, bisexuals were portrayed as villains who spread the scourge among straight people—which was a false premise, at least in hindsight. She also attributes this hostility to lesbian separatism, which, like all movements, is a hardline faction within queers. They view bisexuality as a trend that defiles the lesbian way of life.
Which means that, although marginalised, the queer community tends to uphold “values” such as gatekeeping, and remains suspicious of bisexuals, defined as biphobia. In the case of countries like India, it acquires multiple dimensions because laws of the land tend to favour and offer privileges to someone who also has a heterosexual relationship in the absence of legal protection—even respect—for same-sex marriages and relationships.
To get some independent views on these kinds of sentiments and strong feelings, Open spoke to US-based behavioural economist Dan Ariely, who shared his thoughts. Whenever it comes to sexuality, we have a dramatic limit in our ability to empathise, he notes. “So think about empathy. Empathy is that you’re trying to put yourself in the shoes of somebody else. But if you’re a heterosexual male, for example, it is very hard to put yourself in the shoes of a homosexual and to say I can imagine myself being attracted to the male organs. It’s really hard to do. I can imagine somebody who likes green or pink. I can imagine being somebody who likes classical music or rap, but imagining a different sexual preference is really hard. So we have a limit to our empathy and we can’t truly understand those people. The second component is that I think that it’s possible that the bisexual community is threatening the homosexual community. That it is basically signalling something that they say, you know, you’re either A or B and now you’re saying it could be A and B. Which is like saying that everybody could be bisexual,” explains Ariely, an entrepreneur and professor of business administration at Duke University.
Along with more queer people coming out of the closet, more bisexuals and pansexuals are making their choice known, if not in public, at least among the queer groups they belong to—which are vastly split along socioeconomic categories, including religion, as well as political affiliations. For instance, a Delhi-based bisexual man tells Open that he was “monstrously” attracted to a person of the same sex and economic status but slowly “the passion for sex” was replaced by “divergence of views over politics.” He repeats, “That was a nightmare and I couldn’t sleep for weeks. I had to fall back on pills before I recovered. From now on I will make sure that I choose a person of my political beliefs.” He is bisexual, but prefers male company more of late, he confides.
Delhi-based mental health professional Rachna Khanna Singh, who has counselled people of various sexual orientations, including bisexuals, says that she is familiar with psychological problems faced by bisexual individuals from her studies as well as from her practice. Quoting research as well as real-life experiences of her patients, she says that bisexual individuals in general experience psychological difficulties not because of their sexual orientation itself but due to stigma, discrimination and minority stress. Yes, minority stress, she repeats.
In society, they may face rejection, stereotyping, invisibility and pressure to conceal their identity, Singh states: “Recent research showed that bisexual and other bi+ individuals experienced elevated risks of depression and anxiety in association with stressors that are specific to their sexual identity. Within LGBTQ+ communities, they may additionally encounter biphobia, invalidation and assumptions that bisexuality is merely a phase or a form of confusion. A 2021 report by Feinstein et al found that bi+ individuals reported discrimination from both heterosexual and gay/lesbian individuals, with particular forms of visibility and disclosure being associated with experiences of discrimination, depression and anxiety.” These experiences may contribute to isolation and internalised stigma, she says, adding that such perceived and anticipated bi+ stigma “can prospectively contribute to internalising symptoms, providing stronger evidence for minority-stress processes.”
Some of Singh’s clients have encountered biphobia from within the queer community. Which is why, after citing examples, she says, biphobia within LGBTQ+ communities can be a significant concern, although it should not be generalised to all gay or lesbian individuals. “Bisexual people may encounter assumptions that they are confused, ‘not gay enough’, or identifying as bisexual because it is perceived as socially fashionable. These attitudes reflect monosexism, the assumption that people should experience attraction to only one gender, and can invalidate bisexual identities and contribute to feelings of exclusion within LGBTQ+ spaces,” Singh notes, echoing the views of Ghosh.
She quotes a 2024 recent study by Velasco et al which found that 81.8 per cent of their 110 bisexual participants reported experiencing discrimination from lesbian/gay individuals, although discrimination from heterosexual people was more prevalent and was the form that significantly predicted depressive and anxiety symptoms. Singh adds that this finding supports recognising intra-community biphobia even though one should not assume that gay or lesbian people generally discriminate against bisexual people.
According to Singh, coming out can be particularly challenging for bisexual individuals because they may fear both rejection and disbelief. “They may be told that their sexuality is a phase or be perceived as heterosexual or homosexual depending on their current partner,” she says. In a recent study of 715 bi-positive individuals, it was found that nearly half of them intentionally concealed their sexual identity in everyday life, and concealment—particularly when motivated by concerns about discrimination or negative treatment—was associated with higher levels of depression and generalised anxiety. “Greater visibility, representation and LGBTQ+ awareness may be helping some individuals overcome these barriers; but stigma and concealment remain significant concerns. Research also suggests that invisibility remains a problem even when LGBTQ+ awareness is increasing. Another study found that most participants reported feeling visible only ‘rarely’ or ‘sometimes,’ both within heterosexual and queer communities,” she elaborates. Therefore, while increased visibility and LGBTQ+ awareness may reduce some barriers to coming out, visibility alone should not be equated with complete social acceptance or safety.
After all, bisexuals are called the silent majority within the queer community in the US, with survey after survey showing that a good chunk of them are bi. Among Gen Z, the trend is changing compared with Millennials, Gen X or Baby Boomers.
With more people boldly expressing their sexual preferences now than before even in India and experimenting with intimate relationships across genders, there is pushback from some quarters, and the term bi-erasure—or invalidating bisexuality—is also being bandied about in response to those who argue that a man or a woman courting persons of the opposite sex is straight and one who dates a person of the same sex is merely gay or lesbian. However, many practising bisexuals say there is nothing more “ridiculous” than to argue bisexuality is “a gateway to being fully gay or straight”. One adds, “If I do that, I am in self-denial.”
A Mumbai-based homemaker and mother of one, who “experimented” with same-sex partners before marrying a man, says it is only a matter of chance that her current spouse is male. “I think I would have equally been in love with a woman or any other gender had such a person come in my life,” she states. “Attraction, for me, is about the person, not the biology or gender identity.”
Jyotika Rawat, a 26-year-old fitness enthusiast and coach from Delhi who has several bisexual friends in her age group, observes, “I see bisexuality as a valid way of experiencing love. I have bisexual friends who are confident about who they are, although relationships with men and women can sometimes involve different emotional dynamics. Ultimately, I think it comes down to individual attraction, personal choice, and finding someone you genuinely connect with. We all have both feminine and masculine qualities, so perhaps bisexual people are more adaptable in the way they navigate relationships.”
For his part, Sudipto Pal, author of Unlove Story, a queer novel, regrets that in Indian literature there is greater attraction for gay and lesbian characters who often enjoy sympathy while bisexuals are often looked at with suspicion or are demonised. Pal, a statistician and data scientist, hopes that literature finds more positive bisexual characters. He also notes that it is important to document what Gen Z and Gen Alpha have to say about these topics. Meanwhile, Delhi-based lawyer Namrata Mukherjee, who works on LGBTQ+ rights, speaks about legal hurdles for same-sex couples as well as bisexuals. She puts the spotlight on the general plight of the community, where couples cannot have joint bank accounts if they are of the same sex besides not being able to avail of numerous other basic “partner” benefits. She also notes that apart from very few areas—for instance, the right of a partner in a queer relationship to take medical decisions during a health emergency—laws are loaded against the queer community. She is also worried about heightened surveillance of people, in which queer people end up bearing the brunt because of patriarchal notions about life. “We have to keep coming again and again to make ourselves heard and seen in this world,” the lawyer says.
That seems to be true of bisexuals perhaps more, given the suspicions they meet with from multiple directions. Even so, more individuals, especially Gen Z and younger—whether from privileged communities or not—are willing to break out of rigid gender and sexuality norms, challenging both social and legal systems, and unimaginative mindsets.