Selina Kyle (Catwoman) is bisexual and that's just keen

I haven't read a Catwoman comic in...well, ever, but the news that the current writer of the Catwoman comic, Genevieve Valentine, has confirmed that Selina Kyle is bisexual is fantastic. As you can see above, the most recent issue shows Selina smooching the new Catwoman, Eiko Hasigawa (according to the Buzzfeed article, Kyle is a mob boss now).


The reason I think this is awesome is two-fold: First, there's not nearly enough bisexual characters in fiction period. It seems like a lot of writers treat non-heterosexual characters as either gay or lesbian with no in-between or spectrum. Second, there's a tendency in both fiction and real life for something called bisexual erasure. What this means basically is that if a bisexual person is in a relationship with or only dates a particular gender over the others, then they're "not really" bisexual. So if, for example, a bi woman dates other women, then she's not really bisexual, she's a lesbian regardless of whether or not she's also attracted to men. It also works vice versa if said woman primarily dates men, but is still attracted to women, then she's straight. Same thing if she were a man.

Here's the thing about bisexual erasure, it's just as bad as homophobia or any other discrimination based on sexual orientation because you're denying a person's sexuality just as you would a gay or lesbian person by telling them "Oh you're not gay, you're just going through a phase" or "You're too young to know what you're orientation is". Bisexuals can be harassed and go through the same trials and ordeals that any other LGBTQIA person goes through and honestly things like Catwoman being bisexual can be just as big of a deal with some celebrity or fictional character coming out as gay, asexual or trans.