Rosario Dawson's "Coming Out" Matters to Bisexual Community

Rosario Dawson's "coming out" in 2018 was quite subtle but it has opened discussions on what the term "bisexuality" encompasses, according to an article by BeLatina. One thing, however, is for sure: the Puerto Rican and Cuban-American actress, mother, and activist remains a force to be reckoned with.

Dawson appeared in television and film with roles in Clerks 2, Jane the Virgin, Daredevil, Jessica Jones and The Defenders, among others. She also played in the theater adaptation of the musical Rent.

During an interview with Bustle, Dawson talked about her career, the people who have accompanied her along the way, and her recent arrival to the political spotlight with her current partner, New Jersey Senator and former presidential candidate Cory Booker.

"It's the first time I felt like I had to be responsible about my choice of love, which is a challenging thing to do," she says. "If you fall in love, you fall in love. But there's another aspect I had to consider: what this meant in [putting] a microscope on my family and particularly on my daughter." In 2014, Dawson adopted her daughter Isabella, now 17. "But in each other I think we found our person," she adds.

But Dawson's involvement in the country's politics long precedes her relationship with Booker.

In 2004, Dawson was arrested at a protest against President George W. Bush. In 2012, she supported the candidacy of Barack Obama and that of Bernie Sanders in 2016. She is also the co-founder of the organization Voto Latino which seeks to mobilize the vote of the Hispanic community in the country. She is also devoted to the Lower East Side Girls Club, which helps break the New York neighborhood's cycle of poverty.

On top of her advocacies, it was her Instagram post during the Pride Month celebration in 2018 that sparked discussions in the LGBTQ+ community.

"Happy pride month! Sending love to my fellow lgbtq+ homies. Keep being strong in the face of adversity. Loud & proud," she wrote.

In her interview with Bustle, Dawson noted, "People kept saying that I [came out]... I didn't do that. I mean, it's not inaccurate, but I never did come out come out. I mean, I guess I am now."

"I've never had a relationship in that space, so it's never felt like an authentic calling to me," she added.

Rosario Dawson's coming out give rise to the question of the necessity of having a same sex partner to be called "bisexual."

The struggle for the visibility of the bisexual community is widely debated, among those who believe that the absence of absolutism in taste is equivalent to the lack of a solid and consolidated identity.

Since the 1990s, the structuring of bisexual theory, as well as bisexual politics, has emphasized that bisexuality is greatly oversighted by the queer community and its academic branch.

Anthropologist April S. Callis noted that "although queer theory is dedicated to the deconstruction of the naturalized binary of heterosexual and homosexual, bisexuality, which seems to aid this deconstruction by its very existence, is rarely a topic of interest or inquiry for queer theorists."

She added that this is due, in part, to the need for queer theory, for example, to be built on absolute rejection and to distance itself from any point "in between."

Callis in her article Playing with Butler and Foucault: Bisexuality and Queer Theory wrote, "Groups like Queer Nation practiced a 'politics of provocation, one in which the limits of liberal tolerance [were] constantly pushed.'"

The first large-scale government survey on sexual orientation and identity in the United States in 2014, the NHIS found that only 0.7% of Americans identify themselves as bisexual.

Two years later, bisexuality was "on the rise" in the country, with 5.5% of women and 2% of men identifying themselves as bisexual, according to a survey cited by CNN.

The BeLatina article emphasized that the rise, is not a "surge" of cases or a cultural contagion syndrome, but rather about visibility, education, and understanding of the broad spectrum of sexuality, away from extremisms on both sides.

This is the reason why Rosario Dawson's coming out is fundamental to understanding the LGBTQ+, especially the bisexual community.