Anthony Lekkas, 43
Relationship Counsellor, Social Worker and Activist
Cis male, Bisexual
He/him
After a series of extraordinary events involving love and sexual affairs with cis-women, gay men and a trans-woman, Anthony finally embraced his bisexuality in 2005.
“I considered myself a straight man for a while and then started exploring queer sexuality and enjoyed it thoroughly. I seriously thought it was a phase and was confused. An amazing gay therapist I began to see then offered me the word “bisexual” to see if that felt comfortable. And it was quite powerful for me to have that permission to be bisexual from a gay man because in my escapades within the gay community, I had tried talking about being bi and it didn’t have a positive response. I was often dismissed for it,” Anthony recalls.
Despite coming to terms with his bisexuality, Anthony still felt that he wasn’t taken seriously by both the straight and queer community, including himself.
“When I came out to my family, there was suddenly very little interest in my social life when they had in the past, and I took that as a form of homophobia. The height of it came during the Marriage Equality plebiscite. I was at a family gathering and nearly half of relatives there had no trouble letting me know that they had voted “No” and I was furious and just left,” Anthony recalls.
“That’s when I started to get tattooed up and had phrases like “Queer as Fuck” and the bisexual flag tattooed on me. My favourite is the one of Freddy Mercury because he was actually bisexual… he’s one of my heroes! I felt it was the only way to maintain my dignity, to code myself as queer in a visible way without having to remind or tell people constantly. I am actually going to get the word “Bisexual” tattooed on next because not everyone gets the flag or the other symbolisms. And if they don’t get it, well there’s nothing else I can put on my body that says I’m bisexual!” Anthony concludes, laughing.