By: Mage Hadley (she/her)
“So, who is the dad?“
It was a jarring question to be asked by a midwife as I sat waiting for a Caesarian section, body draped in a gown, cannula in my arm. Neither my wife nor I knew what to say. We exchanged a knowing glance.
“Our baby doesn’t have a dad; she has two mums,“ was what I managed in the end. Our baby who wouldn’t be born for another hour yet.
“Well, yes, I know you are lesbians but who is the dad? How did you get pregnant? How did it happen? Not the old-fashioned way, I assume,“ the midwife, who somehow still seemed well-meaning, said with a laugh.
We were not parents quite yet, and neither of us identify as a lesbian, yet my wife and I still learnt a cold lesson the morning of our daughter’s birth. Even in a medical setting, in a birthing unit that called itself a sanctuary, there is no escaping bigotry.
One of the greatest issues facing bisexual+ people at the moment is their lack of visibility in healthcare settings. LGBTQ+ people of all kinds will often find themselves uniquely at odds with the healthcare system, something we must all interact with at some point in our lives.
No matter our age, most LGBTQ+ people will be able to look over their life and name a moment, from awkward to negligent, where the healthcare system we interacted with did not give us what we needed. Nothing within the modern healthcare system is created from the ground up with LGBTQ+ people in mind.
Bisexual+ people, like myself, are specifically at an impasse when it comes to bisexuality being taken into consideration, not just attraction to the same gender. Bisexual+ people, although they make up the largest proportion of the LGBTQ+ community, are still considered anomalies in many societal places. Invisibility leads to erasure and in medical settings, we can see this has dire consequences. This erasure creates gaps that bi+ people fall into.
As noted in the “Bisexual Women’s Invisibility in Health Care” by Carly Smith and Daniel George, “bisexual (women) are frequently rendered invisible in health research and clinical practice due to binary frameworks that classify sexual orientation as either heterosexual or homosexual.”
There are the anecdotal moments like those that I have experienced myself, like the one I relayed at the beginning of this piece. There are also, however, the ones that lead to a broader alienation of bisexual+ people that in turn make them unable to access care that they need. This is where lack of healthcare circles back around to being a public health issue itself.
For bi+ people, this is incredibly common as the research shows us. A 2020 study by Dyar et al. for states “nonmonosexual individuals experience stressors distinct from those faced by monosexual minority groups“ and that “experiences of stigma, invalidation, and erasure contribute to poorer mental and physical health outcomes.“ Another 2024 study published in the Journal of Sex Research found that in England “bisexuals report poorer health outcomes across multiple indicators compared to heterosexual, gay and lesbians participants.“
Any quick reading into the (desperately lacking) research on bisexual experiences in healthcare will support the idea that bisexual+ people are ignored and maligned across the spectrum of medicine, and that this directly affects their wellbeing. And it is endemic, and it leads to worse life outcomes for a significantly large proportion of the LGBTQ+ community.
Bi+ people should care, the more general LGBTQ+ population should care, and so should society at a greater level. Especially when this lack of care is only made worse by your minority status within a caste system created in order to categorise some people as lesser. The more ‘minority’ you are seen as, the worse things will be for you when trying to access honest, compassionate and safe medical care. If you are a financially stable monosexual member of the LGBTQ+ community, you will, at least statistically, be shown more patience and understanding in healthcare settings than your bisexual neighbour.
And this can be seen with other intersecting minorities, too, such as gender and race. It also starts early in bisexual+ people’s lives, when they are children. As discussed in ‘Bisexual Invisibility and The Sexual Health Needs of Adolescent Girls’, Arbeit et al. finds “bisexuality is often overlooked in sexual health education and clinical conversations, leaving bisexual youth without relevant guidance or support,“ and that “assumptions that individuals are either heterosexual or gay can lead providers to miss important aspects of bisexual patients’ experiences and health risks.“
I truly believe this should be where activists within the LGBTQ+ community, and our allies, focus a lot of energy and attention. LGBTQ+ healthcare, and more specifically our access to it, must be a priority. And when bisexual+ people are suffering because of ignorance within healthcare, their voices must be highlighted.
This should be information found easily at pride marches and events, and amongst places of queer conversation. It should not be hidden in medical journals and articles, reported on by only a minority of bisexual+ people who stumbled across these statistics and now cannot shut up about them.
People such as myself who were so overwhelmed by the disparity when they realised it existed and now find themselves desperately pleading with fellow members of their community to notice its importance. And that is why Bisexual+ Health Awareness Month is important and why its reach must be amplified at every available opportunity. Our health is our own, and in order to live the full, joyous lives we deserve, we must advocate for it. We must protect it and we must demand that our friends and allies help us do so.
Learn more at bihealthmonth.org.
Mage Hadley is a writer living in north England with her wife and kid, who writes about bisexual lives and history, often under the alias ‘black and white thinking’.