In 1995, Newsweek announced: “Bisexuality is the hidden wild card of our erotic culture.” By the time I started college 15 years later, there was nothing hidden about it. While men who claimed to be bi were still met with suspicion, the vast majority of the females I knew had at least “experimented” with other girls. Indeed, it seemed a rarity to meet a girl who had never, like Katy Perry, tried kissing another girl.
“It seemed a rarity to meet a girl who had never, like Katy Perry, tried kissing another girl.”
Women adopted the bi label for various reasons. Some—especially wealthy white girls—felt the pressure to claim minority status for social currency. Others were likely going through a phase or responding to disappointing experiences with men. Above all, the impulse to publicly identify as bisexual speaks to the prevalence of the attitude that sexuality is mainly a form of self-expression: Identifying as something other than straight is a way to distinguish yourself from the rest of the crowd.
Yet after peaking in 2023, woke identity labels have begun fading from fashion. The new wave of anti-woke backlash has shifted the tides once again. The rainbow flag is out; right-coded things like power-lifting and tradwives are in. But this seeming swing to the right doesn’t necessarily mean a retreat from progressive sexual identities. Take the emergence of the “bi tradwives,” several of whom spoke to Compact about their seemingly oxymoronic lifestyle.