So I will say it straight off that my girlfriend is heterosexual and I am bisexual, and she knows this, and knows I have dated men, but only had one boyfriend ever.
We have been together for about nine months, coming up on ten, and we don’t live together. Throughout this time she has made a few comments that I always just took as jokes, and she seemed to be joking when she said that. For example I sent her a reel on Instagram about a gay couple, and she replied “gays? ew.” Which I took as an obvious joke because she has one or two LGBT friends and is also dating me. She has made similar jokes but always in private, and she is openly supportive and serious when I discuss issues facing the LGBT community.
Outside of that here have been a few times where she has said some off putting stuff about LGBT people. We had a bit of a disagreement a month or two ago where she said that she thinks lesbians are “weird for trying to look like men.” I tried to explain the history of butch lesbians and the homophobia in society causing many gay couples to have one act masculine while the other acts feminine to fit in better, and it became a part of gay identity for many people, but she didn’t really seem to get it.
Anyways, this has come to a head for me a bit after some recent events, if that is the right phrase. Of course, being LGBT, I have a lot of LGBT friends. Even my best friend of nine years is a bi trans woman. One of my friends is a gay man I have known for a few years, who likes to on occasion wear feminine clothing and clothing made for women. My girlfriend has referred to him as a “fem boy”, even though this is not the term he would use, I have simply brushed it off as I know it’s a widely used word today especially in online culture. We can call him E.
Anyways, E and I have been hanging out a lot more than usual lately because we are both big Star Wars nerds and Fortnite players and the latest season of Fortnite is all Star Wars themed, and he has been coming over every week to binge watch the newest season of Andor, as they release three episodes a week. We also usually buy something to eat after at a fast food joint, just to talk over our thoughts from the episodes.
My girlfriend commented the other day that she doesn’t like me hanging out with E ‘so much’ because he is a ‘femboy, and gay.’ I was a little surprised by this so I asked why, and what the issue was. She told me that “to me, femboys are something sexual.” I was very shocked by this and told her that E doesn’t really consider himself a femboy anyways, but also that she is just talking from a bias, and there is nothing inherently sexual about clothing, and that I had never even considered him like that. She told me that from her point of view its weird to do, and that its sexual thing. I essentially just dropped it from there, as I didn’t really know what to say.
How can I convince her that what she is saying comes from a place of internalized homophobia, and that it is a bias, not a reflection of the real experiences people have every day?
TLDR; My girlfriend is straight, I am BI, and she makes some odd jokes about LGBT people, and has some biased opinions, how can I show her that she is biased?
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Sounds like you should leave her as your values don’t line up. Don’t try and force someone to change.
Are you sure this isn’t some sort of bi erasure going on here? She knows you’re bi, sure. But you’re also with her, a straight female. She might imagine that she can give you something that men cannot. As in, her femininity. There might be some part of her that feels jealously over and even threatened by your friend’s femininity. She may be labeling it as femboy, weird, and sexual as a way to dismiss the notion that men can be feminine too. Overall it seems like she’s an ally in theory, but not in reality.
Also, jokes are meant to be funny. “Gays, eww” is not funny at all.
Wow. “To me femboys are something sexual” is SO gross, it’s literally objectification. And implies that her opinion on the matter is more important than yours despite you having more familiarity and knowledge with the LGBT+ community (and YOUR friend who doesn’t even self-identify as such) which is disrespectful. I don’t know, man, it sounds like you’ve done a lot of trying to have conversations in which you explain the biases to her but she either isn’t really hearing it or doesn’t want to. I’m also bisexual and have had heterosexual partners who chose to ignore or flat out deny my sexuality and I’ve got a feeling that your girlfriend would also prefer to see no evidence of your own queerness unfortunately.
Sounds like some major value clashes. Mainly, you are open minded and she is much less so.
At least she is accepting of you being bi, because I have known many straight women who are not. However i think this fact is blinding you, and you’re not seeing that she’s made a pattern of not understanding others and not bothering to try to.
Not to mention controlling who you are friends with based off presentation and nothing else is a recipe for disaster. You cant hangout with a friend because they don’t dress the way she’d like? And the reason isn’t because your friend is wearing anything revealing or suggestive, but because it’s not gender conforming? Really?
And their self expression is inherently sexual? She’s literally a woman idk how she cant see the hypocrisy there, of people being viewed as sexual for no good reason.
I would be devastated if a homie dropped me because his girl said i dressed weird. That’s not an acceptable answer, and I have a feeling it’s not the real issue.
I think this warrants a further discussion. Your gf is not as accepting and open minded as you might think (from what youve said so far).
Hey, I’m really sorry but it’s not internalised homophobia if your girlfriend is straight. It’s just homophobia. If you think she is open to listening to you, by all means sit her down and have a conversation with her, say you’re concerned about the way she talks about people’s sexualities and gender expressions. But I think you may need to prepare yourself for the possibility that these views run pretty deep, she has very regressive views and she doesn’t fully accept you. If that’s the case, it’s not something you can change, and you the choice you have is live with it or break up. Her comments would be a huge dealbreaker for me (I’m 34F and bi but they would be even if I were straight).
Curiosity is a good way to address people’s bias.
My point of view is that your gf is a bigot. Good luck with that. I don’t think this is something you can talk her out of. It takes education and willingness to change something like this.
Dumping her will probably get your message across quite easily.