“I am unapologetically hot and bisexual,” proclaims a pinned post from @bi_astrology, composed of bubbly text against a Lisa Frank-inspired background. Another pinned reel, captioned “Bi Affirmations,” features creator Charmee Taylor beaming to her audience. “You are not difficult to love if you’re bisexual,” she encourages. “It doesn’t matter who you’re dating or who you’re not dating.”
Taylor is a Black, bisexual creative who shares her passions widely from her Los Angeles home. An actress, writer, and self-described “astrology enthusiast,” Taylor contributes to the online bisexual community in a variety of ways.
Her Instagram is advertised as “A place where #bisexuals can talk about astrology, TV, film”—an online community space. “Sometimes, if you don’t see the things you want, you have to create them,” she says.
Look to the Stars
“Astrology more than anything is a language that binds the queer community together in a way that is so interesting,” Taylor says. In her quest to decenter romantic and sexual relationships and focus on building a community, she found that “astrology was that bridge.”
“I first got into astrology when I thought I was straight. Now, having an audience that understands the experiences I’m having has shifted my own thoughts about my queerness, and how I process them,” Taylor says.
As Scorpio season kicks off, Taylor—a Scorpio sun—reflects on how she interacts with the signs. “I get along with people who are self-aware,” she states. “The thing that you don’t like about a sign is probably something you don’t like about yourself.”
Building Intersectional Community
For Taylor, her queerness and her Blackness are “fused together,” and are part of her motivation to speak publicly about her experiences. “Blossoming into my queerness in LA, I’d go to events with white friends, but it was cold towards me. It was deeply exhausting, deeply heartbreaking, and I felt as though I didn’t fit in. So, I posted about it online.”
Taylor’s experience speaks to a larger trend, even in queer-friendly cities, of exclusivity in sapphic spaces that uphold racial discrimination. “I realized that I was experiencing something that a lot of queer, Black femmes experience in their journey—this isolation,” Taylor reflects. “I find a lot of community online, but it was hard to find in real life.”
In one reel, she opens a dialogue for Black queer women who have struggled with dating white people and the emotional labor that came with those experiences. “It was absolutely devastating,” she tells her followers. “I had this feeling that I was always the educator.”
This racial inequality carries over into the algorithms that curate what we see on social media. “I see white content creators post similar things that I’ve already posted on TikTok,” she says.
Connecting Beyond of Social Media
Taylor describes more of her own experiences in her first book, Confessions of a Bisexual: An Interactive Memoir for Baby Gays, published in 2021. “I wrote my book at a time when I was going through so many internal heartbreaks and understanding a lot about myself. I realized that my queerness isn’t about other people, or pop culture—sure, they’re fun to talk about—but centering your queerness around other things is harmful. In writing my book, I came to those beginning steps of understanding my queerness.” A one-woman show based on her book is now in the works.
Taylor continues to initiate conversations that shape her community through her podcast, Hot Bi Summer, and her blog, as she continues to pursue her calling on the stage.
In November, she will be a panelist on Bi-Alogue, a recurring platform hosted by the LA Bi Task Force. “My voice is powerful. Our collective queer, Black voices are powerful and meaningful.”
In all she does, she celebrates the joy of bisexuality and the shared culture among the community. “Bi culture is so nutritious and wealthy,” she says. “Of course, there are stereotypes, but my favorite thing is [when] bi community that happens by surprise. Like when it unfolds in a Trader Joe’s, and there’s this unspoken language between two people picking up the Fall Favorites.”
