It wasn’t long ago that embattled Arizona Senator Kirsten Sinema was hailed as a triumph for bisexual representation. After being sworn in in January 2019, Ott celebrated her first publicly bisexual senator as “Trump reprimanded, ‘putting the ‘shameless legislator’ in the face of gay opposition then Vice President Mike Pence.
It wasn’t long ago that embattled Arizona Senator Kirsten Sinema was hailed as a triumph for bisexual representation.
But after a few years of her tenure, Public opinion tense about cinema. Instead of being a vociferous bisexual icon willing and able to stand up to the far right, she is now seen as Unreliable medium, a Self-absorbed democratic apostate more Focus on getting attention And lining her pockets of raising the level of her community. No longer a binary code, it has now been taken as a cautionary tale about Representation limits.
As a bisexual woman — and a character, like Cinema, white and gender-compliant — I now panic every time the senator makes headlines. Whether it’s a fashion columnist Anatomy of her flashy personal styleCartoonists make fun of her, saying,A senator’s dream pixie maniaOr the seemingly endless analyzes of her obscurity, Sinema seems to embody many of the bad assumptions about bisexual women that I’ve worked my whole life to avoid.
Bisexual women are constantly told that we are untrustworthy, and that our attraction to multiple genders means that we are more likely to cheat. Greed to find more than one sex attractive, we are called “confusing” to like more than one sex and self-absorption because our brains are apparently unable to think beyond our sexual gratification. In the LGBTQ community, bisexuals can be viewed as members of temperate weather at best – likely to save the second we stop having fun. The media may not talk about cinema’s sexuality, but its political reputation as greedy, unreliable, and attention-seeking reflects many of the stereotypes my society has been grappling with for years.
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Is it bad for bisexuals? I find myself wondering almost daily. It is intolerable to place too much responsibility on one woman. However, since she is arguably the most prominent bisexual woman in the country, it’s only fair to wish she had put in more effort to become a bit less of the stereotype.
At the same time, I find myself wondering why cinema’s sexuality matters to me so much in the first place. What does “bisexual representation” actually mean in this case?
Bisexuals have a unique perspective that should ideally be useful when drafting legislation.
One obvious answer is that bisexuals have a unique perspective that should ideally be useful when drafting legislation. There is no doubt that bisexuals face challenges of our own when it comes to topics such as sexual health, mental health, abuse and abuse.
At the height of the HIV epidemic, Intersex people, especially intersex men, are often treated as carriers of disease; However, access and dual-quality education were poor. Research has shown that intersex people, especially intersex women, are at elevated risk for depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide; However, mental health resources for the bisexual community are rarely specifically targeted. Intersex women are more likely to be abused and abused2010 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than 60 percent of bisexual women reported having experienced rape, intimate partner violence, or stalking, compared to more than 43 percent of lesbians and 35 percent of straight women. Intersex women are highly vulnerable to poverty: A 2019 report showed that nearly 30 percent of society lives below the poverty line — a rate matched only by the percentage of transgender people of all sexual orientations living in poverty.
In theory, electing more bisexuals would lead to better legislation that more thoughtfully addresses the concerns of bisexuals, while making sure that bisexuals do not fall into the cracks of public health and anti-violence and anti-poverty initiatives. But in practice, it is clear that politicians from marginalized backgrounds do not always act in the interest of their community. Sinema itself is proof of this. Although there is Our history with povertyYou have worked to better understand the provisions of the social safety net included in the Reconstruction Act.
according to Gallup Poll Results Published in February, about 3 percent of Americans identify as bisexual — yet, in more than 200 years, only two members of Congress have been bisexual: Senema and Katie Hill, who quit less than a year in their state The first is after the previous period of operation. – The husband allegedly leaked private photos revealing the couple’s sexual involvement with one of the campaign staff. With Hill out of office, Senema is the only bisexual member of Congress among the 535 potential members to vote. (For comparison, there are currently seven gay men and three lesbians in Congress.)
This brings me back to my frustration with Sinema. Watching news outlets eat them alive, it’s hard not to feel that America has a rather bad first impression of what bisexuals bring to the table as legislators. Will voters turn away from other bisexual candidates out of fear that we’ll become as fickle as Cinema? Probably not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some would-be lawmakers find themselves less eager to publicly identify themselves as bisexual in the wake of Cinema’s first term in the Senate.
On the other hand, the opposite may be true. Perhaps Sinema will inspire a new wave of openly bisexual politicians, simply out of desperation to prove that Kyrsten Sinema is not an accurate representation of all bisexuality. If that happens, it will provide a satirical twist on Cinema’s story. It could be the best thing that ever happens to bisexuals in politics – just because it inspires so many of us to stand up and reject the example you set for the country.
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