What do I mean by that? Everyone has, I think, some kind of internal checklist, things that either evoke romantic and sexual attractions on the one hand, or which negate them on the other. For people who are gay, or straight, one of the things which is selected (for, or against, I don't know, I'm not gay or straight) is gender. For whatever reason, be it psychological or environmental or genetic or something else all together, gender is not on either of my lists. This is what seems to me to make bisexuals different from both straight people, and gay people. For both straight people and gay people, gender is on their lists. In fact, it appears to be one of the most important items on their lists. It is the one they appear to check before any other item, the one that they use to exclude one-half of all the potential partners in the entire world. It's and integral part of their selection process.

But to me, gender is irrelevant. It is not on my list, or if it is (a slight preference for women over men, for instance), it is so far down on the list that it does not exclude any of all the potential partners in the world. No human being is automatically excluded as an object of romantic or sexual desire. If you're not bisexual, stop for a moment and think about how completely, radically, utterly different that fact makes any bisexual person from all non-bisexual people in their approach to relationships.

For me, the fact that there is no selected gender this carries through every aspect of my life. Just because I may at one time be in a relationship with another woman, does not mean I'm in some 'lesbian' phase, and all of my reactions, responses, and thoughts about men disappear. And equally, just because I may at another time be in a relationship with a man, it does not mean I'm in some 'heterosexual' phase, that I have no reactions, responses, thoughts about women. I am always bisexual. My memories of being with, loving, lusting after both women and men are always a part of my psychosexual identity. No matter the gender of the person I may love or lust after today.

And, since I am bisexual, all the time, in all my relationships, it seems most strange and uncomfortable for me to use language that implies that I am either straight, or a lesbian. To me, it seems, at a personal level, untrue, a betrayal of myself. At a greater level, it implies that there is no such thing as bisexuality, only heterosexuality, in which people indulge in straight sex, and homosexuality, in which people indulge in gay or lesbian sex. And that as a bisexual, I flit back and forth between these two poles.

But I don't move between two poles. I remain where I have always been: neither heterosexual nor homosexual, neither straight nor gay.

There is a word that acknowledges me as an individual, and that word is bisexual. But what happens to the language when I enter into a relationship? If my partner is male, then the relationship itself is often called a "straight" or "heterosexual" relationship. If my partner is female, then the relationship itself is often called a "lesbian" or "homosexual" relationship. Where are the words that describe me now? If indeed my male partner is straight, then the words do not make him invisible. If my female partner is indeed a lesbian, then the words do not make her invisible. But I am invisible. Where am I, the bisexual, in these relationships that are either said to be lesbian or straight? This language does not take me into account. It excludes me. It marginalises me. It denies my existence.

It's my belief that in an ideal world, where no one is judged on matters such as their gender, or their colour, or their orientation, where everyone is accepted simply as a human being, and granted full and total participation in society, then no labels would be needed. Not for orientation, not for the kind of relationship one is in, not even for gender. Certain things would simply be, and be accepted, without comment. I could refer to my partner, simply by name, as the person I love, and no one would make assumptions about that person's gender, and what that might imply about both our orientations. In such an ideal world, perhaps that which is increasingly political could at last be allowed to be simply personal, because the politics surrounding it no longer matter to anyone.

But this is not that ideal world. Here, there are many people who, because of some characteristic or another do not have full participation in society. And it is important for such marginalised groups to make themselves known, to come out from closets and from under cover and say who and what they are, and make a place for themselves in society. And this is what bisexuals are doing, just as women, and lesbians and gays, and other groups have done before them, and will do after them. Because this is still a world where the personal is, must be, political as well. And the struggle to be present, to be named, is a political one.

Yet when such groups begin to make their presence and concerns known, it is common for the stated concerns of a marginalised group to be trivialised, even for their very existence or their need to make statements about their experience to be questioned and dismissed.

But this dismissiveness does not make the concerns go away, or remove the people in question. Nor does it end their need to reshape the face of society so that they too have a place at the table, no matter how fervently those who would pretend there are no issues to address would wish otherwise. It merely prolongs the struggle, as those who have gone this route before can attest.

Nor is it only those marginalised groups who speak of their concerns that are engaged in politics. The reaction of those who would maintain the status quo against such changes is equally political, an attempt to reassert the power of the existing worldview against the winds of change. To assert that what "everyone knows," what "has always been this way," is merely common sense, not politics, is an attempt to deny the fear of what might be lost by yielding to change. The reactionary is as much a political stance as is the revolutionary.

So when I say that the language of gay and straight makes me disappear, my concerns are set aside. I am making mountains out of molehills. Worse, I am playing politics, and diverting energy from real and important issues. What does it matter that the words that are used for one of the most vital parts of my life - my intimate sexual relationships with others - are so defined as to exclude the essence of my sexuality, the history of my intimacy? It matters a great deal to me.

So I do not listen when people tell me that bisexuality is not an orientation. I know it is. Nor do I listen when I am told that bisexuals do not experience discrimination from both the straight world, and the gay and lesbian communities. I am a bisexual, and I have experienced the discrimination of which I speak. I do not allow the negation of my experience, even if it is uncomfortable for others to face and acknowledge. And I do not meekly accept that what has been common usage of language for a period of time has somehow become immutable. Language has always changed with changes in society, and changes in language that reflect the existence and experience of bisexuals will happen concurrently with the increasing awareness that bisexuals have placed themselves at the table.

There is a difference, in talking about sexuality, between people and the acts they perform, and the relationships they enter. People have orientations, have sexual desire for persons of the same gender, or a different gender, or for either, or sometimes even neither gender. And the words that have been traditionally, or are now increasingly used to describe orientation are 'gay', 'lesbian', 'straight', 'heterosexual', 'homosexual', bisexual'.

But a relationship does not have an orientation. A sexual act does not have an orientation. A pattern of behaviour does not have an orientation. They are things that are entered into, or performed, or possessed by people, who have orientations.

Sexual relationships can occur between people of the same sex, or between people of different sexes. Sexual acts can take place between people of the same sex, or between people of different sexes. Sexual behaviours can involve thoughts and desires and actions focused on people of the same sex, or on people of different sexes. But just because in the past, thinking on sexual orientation has been overly dichotomous, tending to see only two choices, homosexual or heterosexual, this does not mean that these two choices are all that exist. It does not reflect reality to presume that a relationship between people of different sexes is a relationship of heterosexuals, or that a relationship between people of the same sex is a relationship of heterosexuals. To say that a relationship between a man and a woman is a straight relationship is to deny the potential for either the man or the woman, or both, to be something else. To say that a relationship between two women is a lesbian relationship is to deny the potential for either woman to be something else.

It makes no more sense to say that a sexual act between a man and a woman is a heterosexual act, because heterosexual people are among those people who perform it, than it does to say that making toast is a heterosexual act, because heterosexual people are among those people who make toast. The reality is that people of different sexual orientations make toast, just as people of different orientations have m/f sex.

It seems to me that the most accurate use of language, that which is the most reflective of an inclusive reality, would involve the separation of terms that specify orientation from terms that describe relationships, behaviours, acts. A person may be heterosexual, and in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex: different-sex relationship. A person may be homosexual, and in a with someone of the same sex: a same-sex relationship. Or a person may be bisexual, and the relationship in which that person participates may be either a different-sex relationship, or a same-sex relationship - to mention just a few of the possible combinations of orientation and gender-composition.

Thus, as a bisexual woman, I do not think of myself as engaging in heterosexual sex, or being in a bisexual relationship, or exhibiting lesbian behaviour. I am a bisexual in orientation, who may be in a relationship with a man or a woman, who may engage in same-sex or different-sex activity, or exhibit woman-directed and man-directed sexual behaviour. To say that I am in a heterosexual relationship because I am partnered with a man, or that I am in a lesbian relationship because I am partnered with a woman, is to ignore the fact that I am an integral part of that relationship, and that I am neither heterosexual nor lesbian, but bisexual.

To say that two women or two men making love must be having lesbian sex is to overlook the fact that straight people, as well as bisexuals, engage in same-sex sex. To say that a man and a woman making love must be having straight sex is to overlook the fact that gay people, as well as bisexuals, also engage in different-sex sex. Such labels not only tend to erase the individuality and orientation of the person engaging in the sex, who need not be straight or lesbian or gay or bisexual to have any particular kind of sex at all, but such labels are also blatantly inaccurate. Straight women have sex with other women, for any number of reasons, without becoming lesbians. Gay men have sex with women, for any number of reasons, without ceasing to be gay. Bisexual men and women have sex with straight men and women, gay men and lesbians, without becoming other than what they were: bisexual.

I am bisexual. I have always been a bisexual. I am not straight, nor am I gay. I do not want to disappear into presumed heterosexuality if I partner with a man, nor do I wish to be assumed to be lesbian if I partner with a women. So don't assign an orientation to my relationships - just describe them, and let me be seen for who I am.