In the part of the U.S. where I was, at the time when I realized I was bisexual (Seattle, WA), there was a huge amount of sexuality policing (this was during the 1980s, when the reality of AIDS was becoming stark and horrendous)--and specifically 'lesbians' and 'gay men' in the rhetoric of the culture of the time/place excluded bisexuals from being homosexual--the rhetoric very much made it impossible to be both.
I was denied membership to a lesbian group because I identified as bisexual, but my friend who identified as lesbian (despite being married to a man and having sex with him) was not. A woman who had more sex with women in her past than I have done in my whole life said that she wasn't bisexual because she'd had more sex with men, and it took a 50/50 split....so, the two might not be mututally exclusive, but I've never met anyone who identified as both, and I've not seen much out there in what I've read that allows for it. So I'm interested in those constructions -- but I think we're at the heart of the ongoing problem--the idea of who defines identities. My experiences in the activist groups in Seattle during the 1980s burned me out so much I've refused to get involved with any group focusing solely on sexuality--I left the whole scene in disgust when the gay men who ran the Sexual Minorities Center denied a bisexual support group I was in a meeting room because bisexuals weren't sexual minorities....so, yeah, it's complicated and immensely context bound.
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I was denied membership to a lesbian group because I identified as bisexual, but my friend who identified as lesbian (despite being married to a man and having sex with him) was not. A woman who had more sex with women in her past than I have done in my whole life said that she wasn't bisexual because she'd had more sex with men, and it took a 50/50 split....so, the two might not be mututally exclusive, but I've never met anyone who identified as both, and I've not seen much out there in what I've read that allows for it. So I'm interested in those constructions -- but I think we're at the heart of the ongoing problem--the idea of who defines identities. My experiences in the activist groups in Seattle during the 1980s burned me out so much I've refused to get involved with any group focusing solely on sexuality--I left the whole scene in disgust when the gay men who ran the Sexual Minorities Center denied a bisexual support group I was in a meeting room because bisexuals weren't sexual minorities....so, yeah, it's complicated and immensely context bound.