"Bi women are straight" and "bi men are gay"

[Bisexual765]

What are the reasons to these stereotypes? I know that they're pretty common in society. Why do so many people just automatically assume that bi women are straight-leaning and bi men are gay-leaning?

[Riderinthestorm]

It's all because of our long history of transitioning from a matriarchal or egalitarian society to a patriarchal society under Christianity.

That one change has created a binary sort of thought process where the least intelligent of us can only think in terms of "black or white" with no shades of grey at all.

[KDaddy23]

The things I've always heard are that bi women are really lesbians - and fake lesbians - and, yeah, bi men are really gay. We've always held true that people are either straight or gay and even before all this biphobia bullshit got started. It's the way we tend to think - it's either this or it's that - and while some of the things are, indeed, binary when they come out of our mouths, the thought processes themselves don't start out binary but end up that way because our minds are "designed" to simplify complex things, to narrow them down to the fewest possible choices. Then toss in one's belief... and you get this kind of nonsense being said over and over and over and over... even though the evidence that neither of those things are true is, today, right in everyone's face.

The thing about stereotypes is that they all have some basis in truth but we've always found it easier to apply them as a whole so, yep - bi women are really lesbians (or fake ones) but the one consistent thing is that all bi men are really gay and in abject denial of being gay. But there are lesbians and gays who don't like us... because we're not lesbians and gays but they, too, have their own set of stereotypes about bisexuals which, again, have some truth to them... but isn't the whole truth. Why bother with the whole truth when you can just believe whatever you wanna believe?

[Long Duck Dong]

the most common that I have heard is that most bisexual females are just attention seekers ( females kissing on a dance floor ) and trust me, I have heard that from LGBT people, that bisexual females are actually lesbians looking for a male to use for a baby and money..... etc..... and that bi guys are actually gay but they do not want to do their own housework and washing, or that they are in denial and use a female to hide their true gay nature.......

for me, its more a case of people want people to pick a side cos its easier to have only two sides, not diversity...diversity blurs the lines, it makes it harder to point fingers......

now for the longest time it was said that straight people were the nasty ones, the reality is that the LGBT can take nasty to levels that can make your eyes water and even now, a bisexual female can encounter a backlash from lesbians for enjoying sex with a male cos EWWWW who would want a cock in them.....

Growing up, I was not really aware of what the reality was like until I was 18 and worked in an LGBT bar, now you would think that people would get along but no the bar was unofficially divided into zones and if you crossed that zone, look out, and the females were the worse, a bi female was not allowed in the lesbian zone unless she refused all male contact but a bi male could sit with the gays or the bis.... and then there was the personal conflicts that flared up at times, with abuse flying all around the room....

I have known people that were bi and become gay and lesbian... it never worried me or affected me, as I simply view it as growing up, we are learning about ourselves and defining ourselves, and for some people it may be later in life that they find that its easier for them to just be gay or lesbian, while others become bi......but for other people that do not want to be accepting and tolerant, its an issue if people change sexually or are a sexuality that they do not agree with, and that can be part of the foundation for the statements you mention.....