Mainstream newspaper in reasonable discussion of bisexual women and lesbians shocker:
“The author of a recent thesis exploring bisexuality, 32-year-old McLean interviewed 60 Australians (men and women) who identified themselves as bisexual. Bisexuality she defines as “a potential to be in a relationship with either a man or a woman”. But for many Australians, it is dismissed as “just a phase”.
People who think of themselves as bisexual are often told that they “should make up their minds’,” McLean says. The effect of that thinking is a community that is more closeted than the homosexual population.
“There is a perception that you should be one or the other,” says McLean. “One of the things that concerns me is that it’s presented as a temporary phase, just a flirtation. The media hardly ever deal with it in a serious light. It can make bisexual people have low self-esteem about themselves.”

Society’s general acceptance of homosexuality has lessened the drama of coming out, she says, but some older women, in particular, wrestle for years in silence. “I get the occasional call from women in their 60s and even 70s,” Steller says. “It just becomes overwhelming for them and they get miserable and depressed.”

While the rise of “pink TV” … has helped introduce mainstream society to the world of gay men, it has done little to contradict the idea that a lesbian experience for a woman who used to be (apparently) straight is anything but a fling. “Women-to-women sex seems to be treated more regularly as a dalliance,” says Steller. “It’s acceptable because, after the woman kisses her friend, she is still straight. That impacts on how women feel about coming out, I think.”” Age