Disclosing Bisexuality or Coming Out? Two Different Realities for Bisexual People in The Netherlands

Abstract

This study challenges the coming-out imperative and understands coming out as a normative practice in which people need to confess their nonheterosexuality toward others. Interviews with bisexual participants, 31 bisexual men and women who are living in The Netherlands, reveal that they prefer to disclose their sexual identity in mundane situations, spaces, and practices and only when they understand it as relevant. Instead of focusing on strategic and conscious decisions—the focus of most studies on (bisexual) coming out—the authorI proposes an approach to explore disclosures by analyzing people's doings and sayings to understand the emotions, moods, attitudes, stances, actions, and consciousness that are in play when people disclose, or not disclose, their bisexual identity and/or desire toward others. Finally, the author makes a case to differentiate between coming out and sexual identity disclosures as both occupy a different position in the social and sexual lives of participants as respectively a practice and as actions.