Our JOYFM Interview: Celebrating Bi+ Visibility
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Nige: We have been discussing Bi+ Visibility as part of Bisexual+ Awareness Week, which was last week here on Joy Breakfast, and it can't be Bi Awareness without us chatting to the biggest bisexual we know.
Ubiquitous Steve Spencer and his co host Chad Barnier of the Give It To Me Bi podcast. Welcome to Joy Brekky, Steve and Chad! Hello! Are you awake over there?
Chad Barnier: Thank you so much for having us.
Nige: You're of course joining us on the line from Sydney. So thank you for coming interstate. Now, firstly, we'd love to hear about your respective journeys.
Firstly, Steve, tell us about your bi journey and how you've come to finally be comfortable with your sexuality.
Steve Spencer: For the listeners, I just had to run and grab my big bi flag because The pink, purple and blue flag because it just makes me so proud, especially during Bivisibility Month week, day. I like to say next year we're taking the whole quarter for Bivisibility.
Wonderful. But for me personally it started quite young. I've always known I was bisexual, but when I was younger, I was taken to a therapist and basically What the world tells us is that you can either be only gay or straight. And so when my other therapist said, Oh you're attracted to other boys.
That means that you're gay. And I thought, okay. Okay, fair enough. I guess my feelings for girls would go away, but they never, ever went away. And that just meant that I threw myself in a different form of closet and was basically on the down low in a different way in that I hid my attraction to women for many years.
Then in my mid twenties, I just decided I don't want to be living in life's waiting room, life is here to be lived. So I came out and of course I faced all the usual biphobia and bi erasure, but I I definitely wouldn't change a thing. I'll just do this in every lifetime because it's just the most, as all of us know, It's the most amazing feeling, being able to inhabit your whole, unique, authentic self.
And now I get to have the most amazing relationships and just live and thrive as a bi man, and it's the best feeling ever.
Tim: And Steve, can I ask do you know, has professional care improved when young people are seeing psychologists about their sexuality? Are you aware that it's improved and that psychologists and professionals are really looking at the individual more holistically now?
And and as such, not looking at binary options like gay or straight, but looking at the colour, the wonderful colours in between?
Steve Spencer: Totally. And we see the same thing with gender. We're now acknowledging that gender exists on a spectrum, and we, bisexuality has always existed. Nom. But I think we are definitely seeing a change in that bisexuality is being treated as real.
And it sounds a bit silly that we're still having this conversation about is bisexuality real or not. And that's why bisexuality is important. But I think it is. Yeah. And in fact we'll have a chat a little bit later about some numbers, but bisexuality perception is not only changing, but bisexuality in itself is changing.
It's growing. It's incredible.
Nige: Fantastic. Now, Chad, of course, everyone's journey is different, but I understand your journey has been vastly different to Steve's. Tell us about that.
Chad Barnier: Yeah, so same with Steve. I always knew I was bisexual and I always experienced attraction to multiple genders. But it wasn't until I was given the language by none other than Green Day's Billy Joe Armstrong who said in an interview That they were bisexual and I said wait a second I like that's a word that describes me that I've never heard before perhaps.
This is something to do with me and So I was out for a very long time. I was a little emo kid So a lot of my friends were also bi and were bisexual Young teenagers figuring out what sexuality means and but many years that I found myself in a Pentecostal church and in different relationships with different people.
And really recognizing that perhaps I wasn't as open as I used to be or as open as I thought I was in my head and that in those spaces, not turning up as my full self, I'm no longer in the church, but those relationships still exist. That not turning up as my full self was letting not only myself down, but my friendships and partnerships down as well.
And that if I couldn't be wholly myself, how can I expect someone to support myself support me through that and in turn up for them as well.
Tim: Great. And what does Bi+ mean and how is that term different to bisexual?
Chad Barnier: Bi+ is a great term. More contemporary term that we use to encompass a whole wide range of labels in the wonderful rainbow community.
It, so that spans bisexuality, pansexuality, fluid, curious, a whole bunch of different things. And essentially is describing a multi gender attraction. And so it's a bit of a catch all. It's a nice way to gather a few different communities that experience similar life experiences, not the same, but and help.
Kind of organise them together and so we can have a shared language. Yeah, it's it's that community
Steve Spencer: terms. Like I'm bisexual, but I'm part of the Bi+ community.
Tim: Wonderful. And Steve, you were talking about some statistics there before, but how large is the Bi+ community?
Steve Spencer: Yeah, it's quite incredible because one way to describe the black community historically has been that we're a minority within a minority, we've been that awkward cousin in the queer community we're treated we feel like we're being treated.
Tim: It's true, isn't it? That language has been used and adopted for some time. It has. But I'm
Steve Spencer: You know we're the awkward cousins because we actually make up most of the Christmas table when the queer family comes together. We make up 60% of the LGBTIQ+ community currently.
Wow. Fantastic. Love
Tim: that. That's so great. Yeah. That dispels that myth straight away, doesn't it? Consider it dispelled.
Steve Spencer: Exactly. And these are the people that are out. Now we know that most bi people are not out. So that number will increase. So we don't actually know the true number, but we have a, we can get a sense of it by looking at data from the U. S. For Gen Z, 15% of all Gen Z are bisexual compared to just 5% being homosexual. Now, so that's, there are three times as many bisexuals as there are homosexuals. In Generation Z, and that number of bi people triples per generation. If we keep seeing that trend happening, as we see bisexuality de stigmatised, we'll actually find out how many of us there are, and there are many more than we think.
Tim: That is astonishing. It really is. Can I ask, Based on research, is that because younger generations don't become more conservative as they get older? Our generation will be the last generation which gets more conservative as we grow older. Is the opposite said to be true then for younger generations, they're more open to exploring their sexuality?
Chad Barnier: That's a great question. It's a mixed bag of reasons it's not solely one reason, that, that is definitely a contributing factor for sure. We're seeing that, especially with the rise of social media, and also, we've just gone through this. crazy pandemic that there's been a few different opportunities for people to connect with themselves a little more.
And through through the pandemic, we actually saw a really big lift in all queer identifications globally. And that is definitely true and holds true for bisexuality as well.
Nige: Fantastic. Now we'll get to the podcast soon, but what is Bi+ Visibility and why is it so important?
Chad Barnier: Yeah, fantastic.
So Bi visibility week is an initiative that all aim to be as visible as possible. So we talked previously about Bi erasure. This is the idea that we make up 60% of the wider rainbow community. However, we not viewed as the larger portion of that community. Quite often, and so trying to make people's lived experiences a little bit more to the forefront.
So people get to see us and who we are as real human beings. Now, I see visibility as a pretty powerful political act, especially when powers and systems trying to keep us hidden. But visibility, at least for me, isn't the end goal. I see it as A means to an end Bi+ people face significant discrimination and really alarming health disparities when it comes to mental health, sexual health, substance use, homelessness and through visibility, we can educate, we can inform and really importantly seek resources and then hopefully we can begin to heal some of those challenges and then the goal after that is that people can just get on with their lives. Let's tick the list and then get on with it. But for the meantime we've a few things on our wishlist to try and help.
Nige: That would be great. Now you mentioned before stigma and birasia. Have you both had any experiences in these areas as well? I assume so. What have they been like?
Steve Spencer: Yeah, lots. And especially being bi men. I'm not going to say it's certainly not easier being a bi woman, but we do know that.
And speaking in binary terms here , obviously there are more than two genders. But there are twice as many out bi women than there are bi men. And so we know that bi men are really way more likely to be in the closet. And that's often due to the perception that there's that that stigma or stereotype that bi men are just secretly gay.
And that really affects us personally. It affects us. We're not seen by the world how we see ourselves. It affects our relationships. I I've had female partners and I've had people like, tell them behind my back Oh, aren't you worried that he's actually just gay and that sort of thing is really.
And it's I could be with the most confident Bi affirming person on the planet, but then when you've got so many, when you've got society telling us like you are not meant to be, it's that's really challenging. So that's the sort of stuff that I encounter. But then also like things like on Grindr.
Can I talk about it a little bit? Just really quickly, a really stupid grinder interaction I had. Yeah, sure. Please do. Alright I had an amazing hookup then six months ago, and then six months later, and I've got bi on my profile, my bi man, I'm looking for MMF as well, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I won't tell the listeners what that is, because this is breakfast. Yes. But but and then six months later, it's oh, hey, man, like, how's it going? And he's oh, yeah, good. Oh, could you send through some photos and there was a photo of me with a with a woman and he's Oh, you're actually bi and I'm like, it's in my profile.
He's Oh, I thought you were making it up. I don't sleep with bi guys. And I'm like, wow, you already have. And he's if I knew I wouldn't have. And I was like, Oh, how does that affect your sex together? Doesn't No idea, and it didn't, and it's actually just that mindset, and it's really quite pervasive, people genuinely have this it's bizarre, I don't
Tim: know.
It almost feels like this hangover from that period of time not so long ago where we were saying stupid stuff like, being bi is a hop, skip and jump to being gay, and yeah. Please erase that from your language, if you even think it anymore. Please. Yeah, I think the
Chad Barnier: hangover is from things like sex in the city, carry on Sex and the City, saying "Bi now, gay later" there is this assumption, and it's slightly different for men and women.
But it has the same root cause that if you're a woman and bi you're secretly straight and doing it for attention. And if you're a man and bi, you're secretly gay. And it sounds bizarre, but really it's this patriarchal centering men as the object of effect of affection. And it's bizarre that different parts of the community obviously experienced different forms of discrimination and prejudice.
Yeah, not really helpful,
Nige: is it? Yeah
Brett: Let's get to the podcast. You have mentioned that you have started your very own podcast called Give It To Me Bi. Do you both want to tell me how that came about? It came
Steve Spencer: about from us me and Chad, we've known each other for years. And really, we want, we wanted a podcast.
We wanted the podcast that we always wanted our entire lives by people. Speaking really openly, proudly we, we throw facts and statistics, but then fun stories and fun guests and incredible people and just making our voices heard. This is all part of bi visibility. I never had someone to look up to.
I never really had a bi role model. I never had because I was from the queer community and we don't really hear a lot from bi people in the queer community. Yes. And so I've had to tread my own path and so Chad and I through this podcast where we're making a superhighway and then we're from that we want more and more Bi people to really feel their place.
Chad Barnier: Yeah. Even I met doing grassroots advocacy, activism work and working on different health campaigns and things like that. And we got a real kick out of. Let's do something that can make a difference and make some change. And we've really witnessed the power that one person can have.
And what if we gave a lot of people permission to step into that power? And we've seen that we're only four or five episodes deep and we're already seeing people wanting to put their hand up and make some change. And that's a big part of it is how can we rally a community around themselves?
Brett: Yeah. Love it. Sounds it sounds like the response already has been great. Where can people go to find more about it, about the podcast?
Chad Barnier: Yeah. So we're on all places you find podcasts, except for YouTube music have actually discovered and all kinds of social platforms face on the Facebook group.
We've got a private community there for people that want extra support. We have Instagram, we're on Tik TOK and we have a newsletter as well. Give us a listen and if you're a bi or an ally, it's for you. And learn a little bit more about the BI
Steve Spencer: experience and that's all at, Give It To Me Bi, it's on all social media and we're not on YouTube music, but we are on YouTube.
So you can have a watch of our silly faces.
Chad Barnier: You can Steve's these gorgeous biceps on YouTube.
Brett: Oh, fantastic.
Nige: Don't tempt me with a good time. ,
Nige: Steve and Chad from, they Give It To Me Bi podcast. Thank you so much for chatting to us here on Joy Brekkie.
What a ride!
Earlier this week, we had the absolute pleasure of joining Brett, Tim, and Nige on JOYFM Breakfast to celebrate Bi+ Visibility Week. As you know, visibility is something we’re super passionate about—so getting the chance to dive deep into what it means to be Bi+ in 2024 was an unforgettable experience for both of us.
We shared our personal journeys, talked about the unique challenges Bi+ people face (both within and outside the LGBTQIA+ community), and highlighted why Bi+ Visibility Week matters so much. Plus, we had a good laugh with the JOYFM crew and shared some honest, heartfelt moments that we hope resonate with you as much as they did with us.
If you missed the live show, don’t worry—you can listen to the full interview or read the transcript right here. We’d love for you to check it out and let us know your thoughts!
