These 11 Celebs Want You To Know They’re Proud To Be Bisexual.

Happy Bisexual Awareness Week!

As much as the world is slowly becoming more accepting of LGBT sexualities and gender identities, it can still be pretty difficult for those who identify as bisexual to fit in. If you’re female and bi, you’re sometimes told that you’re doing it for attention or that you’ve been brainwashed by the patriarchy into being attracted to women; if you’re male, you’re told that you’re just a confused gay guy who isn’t ready to fully come out yet. And regardless of what gender you are, most bi people are treated as if they’re selfish or inherently non-monogamous for not being able to “choose a side.”

That’s why Bisexual Awareness week, which started on Monday (September 21) as a lead up to the official Celebrate Bisexuality Day on September 23, is such an important concept — because it gives us the chance to dispel all these myths and normalize being bisexual by talking about it. Bisexual men and women report a higher rate of depression, anxiety, and attempts at suicide or self harm, and bisexual women in particular are far more likely to experience domestic or sexual violence than any other group. And in a culture that still has a hard time admitting that bisexuality is even a thing — despite how many characters in “Orange Is The New Black” appear to be bi, for example, nobody’s ever actually said the word “bisexual” in three whole seasons — it can be a lot harder for bisexual people to get the support they need.
While you shouldn’t expect or force anyone to be open about their sexuality — after all, it’s such a private and personal aspect of life for many people — it’s always super encouraging to see celebrities and other public personas (like YouTube stars!) talk about their own experiences with bisexuality. Here are some things our favorite actors, artsts and musicians said about being bisexual that made us want to pump our fists in the air.

Evan Rachel Wood

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The “Into The Forest” star first opened up about her sexuality in 2011 during an Esquire interview, and since then has regularly spoken out about it both to educate and to de-stigmatize. A few days ago, in preparatation for bi awareness week, she opened up in a heartfelt series of tweets telling her followers that it’s okay to be bisexual and not to give into erasure or shame.
Lady Gaga

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Gaga first admitted her bisexual feelings to Barbara Walters back in 2009, and later confirmed that her song “Poker Face” is about wishing she could be having sex with women while being with a man. Despite this, she’s still had to defend herself to critics, and told a Berlin Fan club in 2013 that “It’s not a lie that I am bisexual and I like women, and anyone that wants to twist this into ’she says she’s bisexual for marketing,’ this is a f–king lie. This is who I am and who I have always been.” Her character in the upcoming season of “American Horror Story: Hotel” will also identify as bisexual, according to showrunner Ryan Murphy.
Andy Mientus

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Mientus plays the openly-gay villain Pied Pieper on “The Flash,” but while he’s engaged to a fellow male Broadway star in real life, he identifies less as gay and more as bisexual. “It’s a very unique topic because no one talks about it, but I don’t think it’s as rare as one might think. I believe in a spectrum, absolutely, and that people are comfortable falling somewhere on that,” he said in an interview with Paul Wontorek of Broadway.com. “I never want any of my ex-girlfriends to think they they were being used or that I was confused and not really into it. So it’s important to me for that reason… I can’t tell you how much I hear from kids at the stage door and in their letters, that it’s teaching them that there is more out there than one or the other and if they’re somewhere between, that’s cool and that’s fine.”
Anna Paquin

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Paquin came out during a PSA for equality in 2010, and recently clarified how bisexuality doesn’t go away when you find yourself in a heteronormative relationship, as she has with “True-Blood” co-star Stephen Moyer. “I don’t think it’s a past tense thing,” she told Larry King. “Are you still straight if you are with somebody?… If you were to break up with them or if they were to die, it doesn’t prevent your sexuality from existing. It doesn’t really work like that.”
Cara Delevingne

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Delevingne first came out in 2014 as part as National Coming Out Day, but later clarified her feelings about her sexuality during a Vogue cover story in June. When the interview seemed to suggest that her bisexuality might be a phase, she publicly called them out in the New York Times, saying, “My sexuality is not a phase.”
Azaelia Banks

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While she doesn’t like to be labeled as “the bisexual rapper,” Banks has no problem being upfront about her sexual preferences, as well as her insistence that people of different sexualities and genders shouldn’t be treated any differently. “I’m bisexual, so it makes sense,” she told Rolling Stone. “But I don’t want to be that girl who says all gays necessarily hang out together, of course! I have people say to me, ’Oh wow, my friend is gay, too,’ and I’m like, ’Yeah, so?'”
Alan Cumming

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Yup, the villain from “Spy Kids” identifies as bisexual, as he sees “a worrying trend among LGBT people, that if you identify yourself in just one way, you close yourself off to other experiences,” he said to The Advocate. “My sexuality has never been black and white; it’s always been gray. I’m with a man, but I haven’t closed myself off to the fact that I’m still sexually attracted to women.”
Megan Fox

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The “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” star has been open about her bisexuality since as early as 2009, telling Esquire, “I think people are born bisexual and then make subconscious choices based on the pressures of society. I have no question in my mind about being bisexual.”
Billie Joe Armstrong

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In 1995, Green Day’s frontman told The Advocate, “I think I’ve always been bisexual. I mean, it’s something that I’ve always been interested in. I think people are born bisexual, and it’s just that our parents and society kind of veer us off into this feeling of ’Oh, I can’t.’ They say it’s taboo. It’s ingrained in our heads that it’s bad, when it’s not bad at all. It’s a very beautiful thing.”
Miley Cyrus

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Technically Miley Cyrus uses the term “pansexual,” which some people prefer to make clearer that they are attracted to people of all gender identifications (for the record, bisexual doesn’t have to promote a gender binary — many use it to mean that they are attracted to their same gender and to other genders, rather than just to men and women). In her recent Elle UK cover story, she said, “‘I’m very open about it — I’m pansexual I’m 22, I’m going on dates, but I change my style every two weeks, let alone who I’m with.” She also reportedly came out as biexual to her mother at the age of fourteen, according to an interview she gave to Paper (warning, NSFW!) earlier this year.
Amber Rose

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Speaking to Curve Magazine in 2011, Rose perfectly demonstrated why bi-erasure is such a problem for younger people who don’t know how to define their own sexuality. “I’ve always been attracted to girls ever since I was little, and I like boys too. But as I got older in my teenage years a lot of the, you know, ’freaky girls’ who were doing all kind of nasty stuff would say they were bisexual so I never wanted to, because I wasn’t into those things,” she said. “It was a weird moment in my life when I didn’t know how to like explain to myself I wasn’t gay, but I wasn’t straight and I just wasn’t like some freak — that you know was just having threesomes all day. For me, if I was in a relationship with a woman then I was just with her and vice versa.”