Let’s Talk about Sexuality: My diverse identities
Me as a child. ©Candy    
Editor’s note: The “Let’s Talk about Sexuality” series, which is intended to create a new, feminist sexual discourse, is funded by the Korea Foundation for Women’s Gender Equal Social Development Project.
 
This article is a story about me—a fat bisexual with an illness.
 
When did I start being fat?
 
The first time I tried to lose weight was when I was admitted to university. First, I tried going to a health club, and then I got lipolysis injections and took diet pills. Later, wondering when my fatness had started, I had the following conversation with my mom and aunt:
 
Me: When did I start being fat?
Mom: You weren’t fat before you moved to Seoul (after graduating from university)!! Just a little chubby. You were always a little chubby as a kid, but not fat.
Me: So then why did you give me pills?
Aunt: She’s right that you were chubby, but compared to other university students, you seemed fat. They say that university students should have about a 24-inch waist, but yours was 28 inches.
Mom: When I was in university, my thighs were fat, but my waist was 24 inches.
Me: Huh.
 
According to my mom, I wasn’t fat but “chubby” as a child, but when I got into university, she wanted her short daughter to at least look thin and pretty, so she paid for injections and pills for me.
 
This was my mom’s viewpoint, but I think that seeing her reactions at that time made me more unpleasantly aware of being fat. And it seems like that was when I started to be more concerned about other people’s opinions of my clothes. It’s also when I joined a university club, where I was told by interfering older students who were “looking out for me” that I shouldn’t wear what I was wearing.
 
Despite this oppression and self-censorship, the tenor of my university years changed when I went abroad for language study. I met people who told me I looked nice even if I wore a skirt, or clothes that were low-cut or tight. I found out that people fatter than me wore tank-tops and miniskirts, and best of all, many stores sold clothing in my size. That was when I realized, “I could be okay in my body.”
Me a few years ago. ©Candy    
 
But that was only temporary. When I graduated from university and came to Seoul, my health fell apart. A few years ago, I was diagnosed with diabetes. I could affirm myself as a fat person, but now that this fatness was posing a serious threat to my health, I had to lose weight. As someone who was making efforts to affirm herself, the fact that I had to recreate myself as not-fat felt like a situation in which I had to go back to denouncing myself, and I didn’t want to accept that situation.
 
What was more, if a fat person says she also has diabetes, some people are too quick to think that it’s because “you didn’t take care of yourself”. Sometimes they would bombard me with nagging comments that masqueraded as advice on how to live.
 
Existing as a bisexual
 
Now let’s turn to the story of my bisexuality.
 
I began identifying this way in high school. It was easy for me to accept myself as someone who liked both boys and girls. But that doesn’t mean that I also identified as a “sexual minority” or was aware of the prejudices against bisexual people. It was a long time before I saw myself as a member of the LGBTQ community.
 
When I first came to Seoul and set foot in the LGBTQ community, many of the people I met there were lesbians. I was embarrassed that I dated men, and so annoyed at the fact that I was bisexual that I didn’t know what to do. When the people I knew would talk about “us lesbians”, I would sit quietly and pretend to be a lesbian, thinking, “I’d better not mention my experiences with men.”
 
It had been easy to begin identifying as bisexual, but it wasn’t easy to affirm that identify and form honest relationships with others. This is because from when the L Community (websites that provide online communities for lesbians) first appeared until now, there has been continued biphobia in it.
 
The boards are crowded with biphobic comments from, “I’m okay with bi people, but I wouldn’t want to date one,” to, “Bi women are always going to end up with men,” and, “Can’t you guys just make your own site for bi people?”
 
These are people who rage with me against hateful comments about sexual minorities made by anti-LGBTQ forces or in everyday life. Watching them turn around and talk about bi people that way is not just hurtful, it’s bizarre. Their refusal to acknowledge their comments as biphobic strikes me as not very different from people saying, “We don’t discriminate against homosexuals, but we don’t acknowledge homosexuality.”
 
My sexuality is disparaged from both sides
The stickers I sold at Seoul Pride 2017.    
 
One day I had this thought: “Do I really deserve to receive all this hatred for my identities?”
 
Should I get so much criticism for being fat? Does it mean I have to constantly be picked at by other people? I’m going along feeling positive about the way I look, and if I’m okay with it, then why, by what right, do you guys look at me with hate in your eyes while talking about normal body types or whatever?
 
And what’s wrong with my being bisexual? Is who I’ve dated and who I want to date a matter for others to criticize?
 
Does the fact that I got diabetes at a young age mean that people should constantly tell me that I didn’t take good care of myself? Do I need to perform self-reflection for others?
 
After having these thoughts, I also started to think that my identity as a fat person and my identity as bisexual are, in some ways, not very different from each other.
 
Human rights are based on the premise that no one should be discriminated against based on their identity. And each individual has different, diverse simultaneously. There are sexual minorities with disabilities, transgender refugees, and HIV-positive lesbians. But we sometimes emphasize or focus only on discrimination against people with disabilities, discrimination against sexual minorities, or discrimination against women, without recognizing that diverse identities intersect. 
 
So in order to make my experience a little more visible, for last year’s Pride I made stickers reading “Fat & Bisexual Pride”. It was for no other reason than that I wanted to reveal myself as a fat bisexual taking part in Pride and share with other people my affirmation of myself as I am.
 
Some people asked me, “Why fat and bi pride, not just bi pride?” Others said they had been waiting for such stickers, empathized with me, and bought them joyfully.
 
Seeking a way to affirm my sexuality
 
My multiple identities used to give me a sense of inferiority. 
The bisexual flag. ©Candy    
 
In university, I regretted that I wasn’t a man; as an adult, I was ashamed to be short and fat; when I was involved in the trans rights movement, my cisgender status made me unsure of what to do; and during my first years in the LGBTQ community, I was sorry that I wasn’t a lesbian. But would it have been much different if I was a tall, thin, trans lesbian? What needs to change is not me but society’s views.
 
If gender discrimination and androcentrism didn’t exist, if there were no prejudice about people’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, and if there were a culture of respect for and communication with people’s inner selves instead of one of judging their outer appearance, maybe I would have felt less – or even no - inferiority during my life.
 
Now that time has passed, all of the issues in these stories have been healed or fixed, or I became able to refute them. Feminism enabled me to somewhat positively accept myself as a woman and a short, fat person, and the LGBTQ movement has taught me that we can be each other’s allies and given me the foundation on which to build pride in myself as a bisexual.
 
While enduring the last few decades, I’ve learned how to affirm myself more. And I’ve learned how to respect others as they are, and how to speak up from my position. But even though I think I’ve grown a lot, there are still times when I feel ashamed of my body, and in LGBTQ activities, every time I speak up as a member of the relevant group or as an ally, I’m beset by countless worries. And new worries always seem to find me.
 
I think that my affirming myself, a fat bisexual with an illness, can become the first step toward making a world in which someone with even more diverse, intersecting identities can affirm themselves. And it will be a way of raising my voice in support and encouragement of us and our intersecting identities.
 
I hope to see more diverse representations of bisexuals at Seoul Pride 2018. And I want it to be a place where everyone, not just bisexuals, wildly and proudly show off their diverse identities.
[Published Jul. 6, 2018. Translated by Marilyn Hook]
 
*Original article: http://ildaro.com/8251 
 
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