I just came across a meme that was something like: "I'm bi girl! / So you date boys? / Yeah! / And you date girls? / Well no because I'm scared because they're so beautiful and dazzling and I'm afraid of making mistakes and..." I've been familiar with them for a long time, and they're funny because so many people identify with them...

I'm aware that what's behind this feeling/behavior is plain learned sexism, how we learn gender and gender roles and that it's not the person's fault but internalized sexism and queerphobia that hurts this person the first. I'm also aware of the biphobia of some lesbians.

But at the same time, this meme (NOT the feelings it portrays!) felt annoying and unfair. Annoying for me (as a lesbian) and I felt annoyed for men too! And I guess that for the bi girls for whom dating men and women is the same and for bi girls who want to date women but never do so out of fear.

If it's about acting like that and not about just feeling like that... It felt disrespectful about men, like it says it's okay to consider men as "less-valuable" for dating when faced with women, because they don't feel dazzling and beautiful. It felt lonely to seemingly be be the "dating in hard-mode final boss", like I'm a rare type of women who's already conquered the fear of dating women (spoiler: I haven't, and no one has, that's why I don't want you to expect that from me either!). I don't want to be idealized, neither personally nor as a woman! Women are unperfect, make mistakes, and are so perfectly capable of acting like jerks or being manipulative and abusive.

I know there's a long way between what you say and how you act, and I don't think all the people liking that meme and feeling like that actually act always like that. Although I had friends who did, so it's something some people do, and it's not funny in real life even for the lesbian observer friend. I would really like for people not idealize all women, and let's not devalue men as people, which is precisely what the patriarchy does - dehumanize women in a way, dehumanize men in just a different way.

I think this is humor can be conforting when you are facing this problem and want to change it, but also infantilizing and dehumanizing when you don't care about its implications 😅

Honestly I'm not sure this is unfair of me. Am I taking this out of proportion? Do any of you feel something similar about this stereotype or these type of memes?