"Everyone's a Little Bi!"

It's probably the phrase I dread most from well-meaning-but-ultimately-very-ignorant straight allies, tied with the notion that all or most homophobic people are 'secretly gay'.

"Everyone's a little bi!"  Used as an innocuous statement to reflect on the fluidity of sexuality, but ultimately harmful to pretty much everyone except for straight people.

See, not everyone is bisexual or biromantic.  There is most certainly fluidity in sexuality, and yes, some people who may identify as some form of monosexual might experience some attraction to some people of genders outside of their usual preference, but what straight people don't seem to realize is that labels and identity are so important for people in the MOGAI community.

The 'everyone is a little bi' or EIALB is usually used against gay people, particularly lesbians.  Because of social norms In No Way Relating To Sexism(TM), society tends to try to convince queer women that they are actually straight all along and like men because that is what they are supposed to do.  That's why bisexual girls are often ridiculed for 'just experimenting' and are often dismissed as straight girls just kissing other girls for their boyfriend or whatever.  Similarly, a lot of lesbophobic people tend to try to convince real life lesbians that they're actually bisexual, and dig up a lot of evidence to support their claim: they dated men before and didn't obviously hate it, they mentioned a guy was attractive, once they looked at a man, etc.  Of course, if they can succeed in convincing a lesbian she's bi, then she can be put in the same hellhole bisexual women get, and then to society, she has officially Become Straight.  EIALB is constantly used to invalidate gay sexuality, and you never see anyone using that to try to convince a straight person that they're actually bi or gay.

Secondly, EIALB hurts actual bisexual people.  By straight allies acting like everyone is a little bi, actual bisexual people's experiences are trivialized.  Biphobia becomes dismiss-able because, hey, everyone experiences that, too.  Or we're just making a big fuss about our sexuality.  And most insidiously, it sends the subtle message "just choose a side because everyone else did", which then forces us (usually) back into the closet or (less usually) identifying as gay when we don't feel it fits.

And then let's not even talk about asexual people who get their identities invalidated, or pansexual people who already deal with tons of people trying to police their identity and call them bi instead of pan.

"Everyone's a little bi!" hurts the majority of the MOGAI community.  Straight allies, if they really mean well, should never use this phrase to try to make people feel better.  Instead, acknowledge the fluidity of sexuality, that sometimes sexuality can change over the years, and that the most important thing to sexuality is that particular person's sexual identity.  Whether you think they might be wrong or not doesn't matter; respect what people have to say about themselves, as they tend to know themselves better than an outsider.