The Disparities Facing Bisexual People and How to Remedy Them

Despite making up more than half of the lesbian, gay, and bisexual population, bisexual people are often overlooked and invisible. Bisexual people are frequently assumed to be gay, lesbian, or heterosexual based on the gender of their partner. Yet when bisexual people are open about their sexuality, they face increased levels of violence from intimate partners; rejection by community, family, and peers; and skepticism from the people and organizations whom they turn to for help, resources, and services.

Consider this: Only 20 percent of bisexual people say that there is social acceptance of lesbian, gay and bisexual people where they live, compared to 31 percent of lesbians and 39 percent of gay men. While these social acceptance numbers are too low across the board, bisexual people are rarely explicitly considered separately from lesbian and gay people. Rather, bisexual people are swept into the greater lesbian, gay, and bisexual population, their specific disparities made invisible within data about the population as a whole.

The Movement Advancement Project and a broad coalition of partners have released a groundbreaking report. Invisible Majority: The Disparities Facing Bisexual People and How to Remedy Them focuses on the “invisible majority” of the LGBT community, the nearly 5 million adults in the U.S. who identify as bisexual and the millions more who have sexual or romantic attraction to or contact with people of more than one gender. The report shows how bias, stigma, and invisibility lead to alarming rates of societal rejection, violence, discrimination, and poor physical and mental health.

Download the entire report here:
Invisible Majority: The Disparities Facing Bisexual People and How to Remedy Them