Bisexual People's Experiences

Around half of bisexual people experience “biphobia” in everyday life, according to research.

The UK-wide ‘Complicated?’ report is the first of its kind, and makes recommendations on how to make parts of society more inclusive towards them.

It surveyed 515 bisexual people, with a quarter of respondents also said they were discriminated while trying to access lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) services.

The report found nearly half had experienced biphobia while accessing mainstream services, 38% had experienced sexual harassment, often centred on negative stereotypes such as falsely labelling bisexual people as promiscuous or unfaithful.

Of those surveyed, 28 percent said they never felt comfortable telling their GP of their sexuality.

One respondent reported they had “heard lots of negative comments about bisexual people [within the LGBT community,] and dismissal of the need to include bisexual people.” Another respondent reported being told that “bisexuals are ‘confused’ and not as good as ‘real gays’.”  

The Equality Network report also highlights examples of good practice in service provision and proposes a roadmap to make services more inclusive for bisexual people. The respondents in the survey called for mainstream and LGBT services to involve bisexual people more in service development.

Tim Hopkins, Director of the Equality Network said:“Unfortunately, as the report findings show, bisexual people are often misunderstood and discriminated against by many services. This leaves them at high risk of not getting appropriate information and support.  We hope that this report will help services to better understand and assist bisexual people.”

Sam Rankin, Intersectional Equalities Coordinator and lead author of the report, said: “When explaining why bisexual equality is important and how people are discriminated against it is vital that we have robust data and real life examples to illustrate our points. Now that we have these we, and others, will be better able to take more effective steps in providing appropriate, inclusive services.”