Bisexual Student's Experiences With Biphobia

Abstract

Research on biphobia is crucial, for it is difficult to fully understand the experiences of bisexuals due to most prior studies either excluding bisexuals completely or combining bisexuals with other sexual minorities. For this project, I conceptualized biphobia as the dislike of, discrimination, or prejudice against bisexuals. The goal of this study is to understand biphobia through the experiences of college students. This research utilized qualitative one-on-one interviews with six individuals, transcription of the interviews, and qualitative coding to substantiate the trends discovered through the interviews. Trends coded for include, but are not limited to, discrimination from the queer and straight communities, differences based on gender, and the invalidation of bisexuality. Through this research, descriptive data was compiled to better understand the manifestation of biphobia. The study found that the most common stereotypes were that bisexual is not a legitimate sexual orientation, that bisexuals have not chosen a side and eventually must choose, as well as that bisexuality may be considered an experimental or transitional phase. The most surprising stereotype found was that some consider bisexuals to be twice as likely to cheat; there was also notable differences in biphobic experiences based on the bisexual individual’s gender. There was also evidence that discrimination comes from both the straight and queer community.