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“The stories we tell shape who gets seen and then who gets funded,” bi+ attorney and activist Christina Fialho told the Blade. “So when bi+ people only show up as villains, hypersexualized tropes, or not at all, decision makers start mistaking fiction for reality.”
Fialho has emerged as a leading changemaker for bi+ advocacy and advancement in Los Angeles. Near the end of 2023, she founded Rewrite the BiLine, an organization dedicated to countering biphobia and its proliferation in popular media with nuanced storytelling, local political advocacy, and cultural activations.
It all began with a report. Fialho was interested in studying the last three decades of U.S. news media and coverage on bi+ people, and found that from 2013 to 2023, only 6.67 percent of LGBTQ+ news coverage centered on bi+ communities, their stories, and their issues. The slate is blank — and this active erasure seeps into social conditioning and political rhetoric that make it difficult for bi+ people to thrive and advocate for their rights.
“I really believe that that invisibility isn’t accidental,” Fialho said. “It’s reinforced by legal, political, and philanthropic systems that still cling to a binary understanding of identity. And until that changes, bi+ communities are going to continue to be overlooked where it matters most in investment resources and power, and that has a direct effect on lived experience.
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Within the Black community, it felt like whenever there was mention of a Black man having sex with another man, it automatically made him gay. That compounded with the fact that Caribbean culture, my very own culture, is laden with homophobia, left me feeling like I only had two choices. I could either lead a life of “normal” heterosexuality or be condemned to live as a homosexual–a “batty man” in Caribbean slang.
I knew of the word “bisexual,’ but I hadn’t ever met anyone who identified as bi as a kid. The only portrayals I saw of bi men in media, whether it was Will & Grace, Sex and the City, or Nip/Tuck, depicted them as either confused, downright liars, or some mythic embodiment of the masculine ideal that somehow managed to perfectly balance this with their attraction to the same sex. These problematic bi+ characters also were almost always white men. Of course, I did not see myself in these characters in the slightest.
Hayden Winston (he/him) is a Black, bisexual, novelist, poet, and activist. He holds a BSc in Criminal Justice and a Master of Legal Studies. His work draws on his experiences growing up in Los Angeles as a QPOC and the child of West Indian immigrants. Hayden was part of Rewrite the BiLine's 2024 Narrative Change Cohort, and this article is part of the series.
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