BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Head Shop >

something we can all agree on finally, those pesky fence-sitters.

  
  

Page: 12(3)4

 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:48 / 29.06.04
I think Flyboy's right about better representation but I think for starters it needs more.

I actually agree with you on this too. It is very easy to be cynical about the motivations for portraying bisexuality in pop culture, and I often think that too much second-guessing is counter-productive. Not to mention overly pessimistic, in that it fails to allow for the possibility that even if the primary purpose of a given instance of bisexuality in pop culture is titillation (or whatever), it may have other readings imposed on it. In other words, it's very easy to get cross about the presumed motivations behind the Madonna/Britney/XTina incident and in doing so ignore the possibility that it might be providing positive messages about the acceptability of queer female sexuality - even if this is a 'mis'-reading imposed upon it - and that such messages might still be much-needed.

Above all, I'd assert that we should never fall into the trap of puritanism. "Don't worry about getting the bad queer sex off the telly, get more of it on the telly and some of it is bound to be good" - it sounds hopelessly optimistic but I honestly think it's preferable to the alternative.
 
 
alas
19:53 / 29.06.04
First, I just so enjoyed re-reading this thread; it was up when I first joined the board so it was like looking at old photographs, smelling the perfume of an old girlfriend. Oh! Yes! This is why I like this place!

I have to agree that too much emphasis gets put on the mediated images of sexual lives--maybe it does make some difference that there's Queer Eye on TV (in the US) or whatever, but . . . how much, really?

I'm in a long term straight relationship but I've never ever felt straight in my life and I fall in love with women, deeply seriously. I tend not to have any sex outside my primary relationship, but passionate friendships, yes. With both genders.

So I sometimes use bi to indicate my slightly queer relation to the mainstream culture, but I do get a lot of perks from this straight relationship, I know. I have considered a political divorce just to indicate my disdain for marital privilege, but you know things are pretty complicated and I'm pretty cowardly.

Not that that matters, but if I can be open about who I am to at least some of the people I come into contact with in my life, that's going to be more powerful than the Britney kiss certainly, right? But does the Britney kiss make it easier for me to open up to people? Maybe in some small way?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:15 / 29.06.04
I'm in a long term straight relationship but I've never ever felt straight in my life and I fall in love with women, deeply seriously. I tend not to have any sex outside my primary relationship, but passionate friendships, yes. With both genders.

I don't know... I'm all for self-identity, but that strikes me as being a *person*. Isn't it? I don't see that one has to define oneself as bisexual or indeed queer because one has passionate friendships with the same gender... I think we're in one of those difficult moments where the idea of passion becomes terribly important. Does it entail sexual desire, or merely passionate friendship of the Darrell Rivers kind? Can the two be separated?

The following question would probably be that, since we already have an idea that identifying as heterosexual, and more specifically behaving as heterosexual, give one culture points, what's the advantage of identifying as bisexual? Is it a conscious attempt to balance the identity scales, or reconcile one's ideology with one's actual living conditions? That is, can one get "heterosexual guilt", as an experience comparable to homosexual panic?
 
 
alas
02:54 / 30.06.04
Does it entail sexual desire, or merely passionate friendship of the Darrell Rivers kind?

For me, sexual?, yes. Yes. Not to be too Molly Bloom about it, but yes, I said, yes.
 
 
alas
03:36 / 30.06.04
Still, is it just het guilt? I'm willing to consider the possibility. I had to pretend to like boys in elementary school--at slumber parties with girl friends, when all I wanted was to sleep with the girls. A few years ago, I nearly left everything, everything, for a woman I loved. (She said no, finally, and the world turned back from Oz to black and white.) Two years of therapy later.... I'm raising an out lesbian daughter. But then, a few weeks ago, bam, a young man walks into my life again and . . . What does all that mean? Is that just "being a person" or? Is it possible to be a different sexuality than the one you play on TV?

Was there some research suggesting that (some? many?) women have a tendency to shift their sexualities over time? I.e., that women's sexuality tends to be more fluid than male sexuality (is typically allowed to be) in Western cultures? Or is that reference really out of date--and I do realize it sounds terribly essentialist even to my ears and not very theorybitchie at all. Help?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:29 / 30.06.04
For me, sexual?, yes. Yes. Not to be too Molly Bloom about it, but yes, I said, yes.

Ah. OK... talking this over last night, I was very politely slapped down for not accepting that actually, whether or not sexual attraction is involved, bisexuality can nonetheless be expressed perfectly validly - that is, that privileging either who you have sex with or who you *want* to have sex with cuts out all sorts of possibilities for expresing other forms of love and desire that do not fit the heterosexual model. However, in this case we *are* talking about sexual desire, so it's a moot point. More generally, I'd like to go back to it later...

On heterosexual guilt - that could cover all sorts of things (especially since I'm not actually sure it exists), but I guess I was usng it as a crude term to express a profound ambivalence about having accrued the cultural capital earned by marriage and/or heteronormative living conditions, and thus of seeking to escape from that model, to reject gifts which are undeserved, or more precisely which are seen as deserved by everybody or nobody. I think marriage is a big thing here - being married and bisexual is a pretty easy mindleap, I think, but to be married and egalitarian is trickier, *as marriage is currently conceived in the laws of the nations we occupy. So, the assertion of one's bisexuality becomes a matter not just of self-expression but also one of resistance...
 
 
Ex
09:00 / 30.06.04
On sexual fluidity - I have Paul Robinson here:

In male autobiographies, homosexual desire anounces itself early and unambiguously; the compulsion is first felt at adolescence or before, and, with rare exceptions... it stays fixed. In the female autobiographies, by contrast, attraction to other women often begins later and it doesn’t necessarily put an end to the author’s heterosexual life. (Gay Lives xx)

I've just used that for a thing on women's coming out stories, in which I theorybitched that some modern models of lesbian and bisexual identity have made it easier (in terms of their own sense of self) for women to self-identify as lesbian/bisexual later in life. They don't rely so much on the "Since birth I have felt wrong/different/fabulous" model, and use other narratives - "Well, I liked having sex with blokes OK, but then I realised that I'd always felt emotionally close to women and then I went to a reproductive rights rally and got pissed and..." The second kind of narrative leaves more doors open to late-comers.

Anyway, Haus:

I think we're in one of those difficult moments where the idea of passion becomes terribly important. Does it entail sexual desire, or merely passionate friendship of the Darrell Rivers kind? Can the two be separated?

Well, some argue that dividing sexual from other emotional, interralational and political bits and bobs is gettign off to a wrong start. I read alas’ “passionate friendship” (possibly wrongly) as a direct nod to Lilian Faderman’s stuff about women’s friendships before about 1870 - and in that she argues that it’s not terribly important whether they were shagging or not. It was the fact that they were primarily devoted and supportive to each other that was noteworthy.
That gets echoed by a lot of lesbian feminist stuff in the 1970s/80s, and although most of it is so bi-phobic it makes steam come out of my ears, I like the basic idea: that sticking sex in a box is a division that doesn’t come naturally to many people’s identities.

The problems are similar to the problems of lesbian feminism - if you say “well, bisexuality isn’t just about who you fancy” you risk pissing off a lot of people for whom it is precisely that. (“I’ve spent all weekend bumping uglies with all imaginable genders - and you’re identifying as bi because you had tea with your sister last week?”) Loads of people felt that Faderman and her offspring/comrades de-sexed lesbian identity.

But I think it comes back to that point up-thread about bisexuality being whatever is outside the identified positions. If you want to be able to say “I have relationships which are as important to me as my primary romantic one, and that is a central part of my identity” in a way that makes people
a) take you seriously and
b) possibly question whether heteronormative monogamous relationships are the be-all and end-all

...how many words/identities/phrases do you have? I know someone in a similar situation who opts for ‘polyamorous’ even though there isn’t sex involved, just so people don’t underestimate the weight of their other relationships.

Forgive me if I’m wildly off-mark, alas; I’m mainly thinking aloud.

And the 'being a person' thing - why should one not have a fairly standard, widely distributed set of characteristics and then identify as bi? This doesn't seem suprising or problematic to me. The question implies that identifying as bi is something you do when you have something that can't be explained any other way - like 'straight' is the default setting and it takes a major anomaly to be bi. I think mainstream culture allows 'straight' to include a medium degree of same-sex attraction/experience/desire - as long as it isn't disturbing, overwhelming, lifechanging or problematic - but at the same time it obscures or denies that same-sex element. Which throws up problems, for me.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
11:35 / 30.06.04
Omigod omigod, could the resurrection of this thread lead in turn to the triumphant revival of Queterosexual Rising From The Ashes? ZE WILL RISE AGAIN. Can I get a "hell yeah!"?
 
 
alas
13:41 / 30.06.04
thank you, Ex. Not widely off the mark, at all. I was just thinking about the fairly well-trod ground of how one of the central critiques of heterosexuality has been that it is a cage, and that marriage as an institution is an even cagier cage. And worse, in the US, especially, so many adult necessities (health care for self and/ or child(ren) being especially primary, but also old-age benefits) are still tied so directly to marital status that the whole thing becomes well & completely fucked. Can you even separate your sexuality from your need to be able to receive medical attention if you get cancer?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:48 / 30.06.04
The question implies that identifying as bi is something you do when you have something that can't be explained any other way - like 'straight' is the default setting and it takes a major anomaly to be bi.

This comes down, I think, to how you want to see bisexual. Thta is, is it something which, as you say, you arrive at through not being straight or gay, is it a state as definable as straight or gay and definable in the same terms, or if everybody has to make their own private peace with bisexuality - define their own terms in a space for self-definition, if you get what I mean. I think maybe all three of these approaches can be adopted, or mixed and matched - perhaps the "bisexual" (queterosexual, polysexual, polyamorous) space can be recreated as a default, conceptually at least, or an equal but different partner. Of course, this assumes that straight and gay can be autoclassified, which I suspect is incorrect but incorrect in a somewhat different way... Which is to say, if you have three options, each not completely defined, and each of equal weight, nothing can be said to be default, or indeed be said to contain within itself a definition that covers everybody inside it (maybe)... Or you can see bisexual (polysexual, polyamorous, queterosexual) as an unformed but "natural" position from which other positions grow outwards, but that's a bit of a conceptual leap...
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:13 / 30.06.04
at the same time it obscures or denies that same-sex element. Which throws up problems, for me.

As it does for many of us and neatly leads me to answer this point, it's very easy to get cross about the presumed motivations behind the Madonna/Britney/XTina incident and in doing so ignore the possibility that it might be providing positive messages about the acceptability of queer female sexuality.

See the problem is that it doesn't give a positive message about queer female sexuality because it only brings us back to the point that the aceeptable face of female bisexuality is that of a straight woman who likes to kiss girls. Ideologically that's not a good prominent notion, it's fine to identify your sexuality in that way but culturally it's not fine to identify all female bisexuality in that way. The threeway MTV staged kiss allows one form of identification but it's the only form that's positively accepted atm.

So this might be absolutely correct, if you have three options, each not completely defined, and each of equal weight, nothing can be said to be default but when you take it culturally and ask, is that how we perceive bisexuality here? Well, the answer is probably going to be no.
 
 
HCE
23:07 / 30.06.04
What's 'queterosexual'? Link please?
 
 
Tom Coates
06:44 / 01.07.04
A while ago I read a book - I think it was called Straight Science - which was IIRC not the greatest read and not totally persuasive, but had some interesting ideas in it. I remember that it quoted some revised Kinseyish work on sexuality and percentages and it was really interesting on bisexuality - essentially it presented two graphs of the old traditional type - one end being exclusive heterosexual desire and the other being exclusive homosexual desire and mapped on gender.

I found the results really interesting - to an extent they mirrored my experience of the people that I knew - which is to say that for men the majority of people were straight with a significant number of exclusively gay people represented, but very little in between - ie. it wasn't a spectrum as much as a graph with a peak at both ends. With women, there was a smaller number of exclusively homosexual people but the graph was considerably shallower - ie. many more people were evidencing what we term bisexual desires.

Now I can't remember the criteria that they were using off hand (the book's at my parent's home in Norfolk) so I have no reason to ask you to believe that the criteria for this particular piece of research were any better than the numerous others that have been done over the years. You could argue quite easily that the pressure on women to not be gay is enormously stronger than for men, and that it's biologically "easier" for women to 'pass' as straight - both for other people and perhaps for themselves (although god knows the emotional cost). You could argue a whole range of things, in fact that cast doubt on this survey having any relationship to biology. What is interesting, however, is how closely it seems to match my personal experience.

I've seen female friends move from gay relationship to straight relationship on a number of occasions and then back to gay relationships. I've seen a larger number of these people end up in straight relationships in the end, obviously because they're in love with the person concerned (and potentially because they want children or a societally acceptable child-rearing friendly structure). I've hardly ever seen this with men. In my experience men who profess bisexuality do seem to more often than not end up professing exclusive homosexuality or heterosexuality a couple of years later. I have no evidence as to whether this is because of a genuine tendency towards exclusive sexual preference in men, or whether it's because of the pressures put on bisexual people, but there does appear to be a gender differential in play.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
12:32 / 02.07.04
First, I just so enjoyed re-reading this thread; it was up when I first joined the board so it was like looking at old photographs, smelling the perfume of an old girlfriend.

Hee, me too. Though I have a horrible 'brain drain' feeling looking at my old posts.

Sorry, more productivity later. But I'd like to chuck in the coverage of Rebecca Loos, as an example of how female biseuxality is more visible but the representations are complicated and not neccessarily constructive.
 
 
Ganesh
09:40 / 07.07.04
The following question would probably be that, since we already have an idea that identifying as heterosexual, and more specifically behaving as heterosexual, give one culture points, what's the advantage of identifying as bisexual?

Well, commonly-held (and frequently resentful) stereotyping among gay people includes the sentiment that men who identify as bisexual are using the descriptor as a means of 'easing into' a homosexual identity, whereas those women who identify as bisexual are fundamentally heterosexual, but attempting to make themselves appear more interesting, exotic, titillating - not infrequently within the context of dialogue with heterosexual males.

Returned to this nostalgic old thread following a related discussion in the 'Big Brother' thread in which it was suggested that the four or five individuals on that show who self-identified as bisexual (a particularly anaemic bunch, to my mind, who exemplify both of the above stereotypes) were straight people 'zhoozhing up' their sexual CVs for the benefit of Big Brother's producers - and that such a gambit was a quite legitimate, essentially harmless way for heterosexuals to behave, given the circumstances.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I disagree, but it did seem as if the growth of celebrity culture - particularly reality TV/makeover (Change Is Good!) culture - provides a fertile niche within which professed bisexuality is just another form of self-promotion, another quirky 'look at me' accoutrement which need never be 'proven' or even called into question. Certainly, one might speculate how many purported bisexuals one might have to airdrop into the Big Brother house before one would express open desire, or even spontaneous flirtation, with the same sex (Jason aside). As stated earlier, in this particular circumstance, it seems very much an exotic 'add-on'.

One of my colleagues is involved in research on those who consciously describe themselves as 'bisexual', attempting to identify whether their use of the label is reflected in their behaviour. So far, he's finding that this is not the case. Intuitively, I guess I've always thought of it as an inverted bell curve (the graph with a peak at both ends, mentioned by Tom): while we're all technically on the same continuum, the numbers in the centre ('true' equally-attracted-to-men-and-women bisexuals) are relatively small.

Apologies for covering old ground, but I think the Brett Anderson Question is still apposite: should a distinction be drawn between bisexual orientation (sexual attraction to both males and females) and bisexual behaviour (having sex with males and females) - and should someone who claims to be "bisexual" be expected to qualify their statement?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
11:00 / 07.07.04
Isn't there a danger, though, that in asking people to "prove" their sexuality we slide into essentialism?
 
 
Ganesh
11:14 / 07.07.04
Isn't there a danger, though, that in asking people to "prove" their sexuality we slide into essentialism?

Of course there is. Should someone who claims bisexuality be expected to qualify themselves, however, in terms of orientation, behaviour, sexual partners, etc., etc., etc. or will the label always be The Love That Need Only Speak Its Name? Ultimately, is it reducible to an empty gameshow gambit?
 
 
Ex
13:25 / 07.07.04
Should someone who claims bisexuality be expected to qualify themselves, however, in terms of orientation, behaviour, sexual partners, etc., etc., etc. or will the label always be The Love That Need Only Speak Its Name?

One question, several answers. Sorry if it goes on a bit.

Firstly, the Joanne Russ suggestion that 'there are no real lesbians' - that to form an idea of a 'real' mionrity sexual identity is just a way of doing dominant culture's dirty work for it. When a person comes out as gay or lesbian they traditionally get interrogated: "Are you sure? Have you tried doing it differently? What makes you think that?" Is there any part of that we would want to extend?
I understand the anger that comes from people identifying as bisexual for apparently flimsy or attetnion-seeking reasons, but I think I have more sympathy for the opposing effect, when people identify as straight out of homo/biphobia or because they haven't really thought of doing anything else. So for me, any attempt to impress upon people that claiming bisexual identity should have any component (political, physical, emotional) to qualify as 'proper' is not constructive, because it will turn people back to gay and straight identity in droves. While that might be a useful thing for numbers in the gay community, it's hardly ideal. In terms of people returning to an unquestioning and apolitical heterosexual identity, because another barrier has gone up between themselves and their perception of bisexuals, it's a bit of a fiasco.

On the other hand, yes, I'm always interested in how people identify and what sexual identity means to them. I get the willies because the sentence construction you're using evacuates any sense of who is asking, what authority they are claiming in order to ask - the idea of "being expected to qualify" an identity claim has taken away the person with the expectations (straight society? gay society? man in pub?) and thus leaves the question of power relations completely blank. I know it isn't intended to be sinister - I'm just on edge about the issue.
Identity and the motivations of identity are not brute facts which can be extracted without there being power at work in the exchange. If you could find out what compnents make up someone's sexual identification by pushing a button on their arm (without them noticing) I'd do it all the time. But as you can't: Who is asking? Why are they asking? What do they represent? In what tone of voice? In what setting?

This may seem like hollow flim-flam, but the difference between scenarios is huge. One bisexual woman might ask a potential girlf on a first date what precisely she means by bisexual. Door staff at a club they visit might later ask the same woman what she means by bisexual. Gleeful at her new relationship, the woman might come out to her mother, and the mother might say "But what on earth makes you think you're bisexual?" All these have different goals, the interrogator has different relationships with heterocentricism. The straight press asking Brett if he'd actually got round to sex with a chap would be different, to my mind, than the gay press doing the same.

And can I also throw in the fact that we're considering asking for qualifications on what is meant by bisexuality, but not what is meant by heterosexuality or homosexuality? That does rather leave them as big, untouched and taken-for-granted identities - interrogating the unstable but leaving the moderately stable where they are. I mean, how straight are straights? How much do many straight women like men? Do they enjoy sex with men? How often? Do they have primary emotional ties with men? I think there could be a questionnaire of some kind.

Apologies if that was a little rambling. I get the point, and the question intrigues me - but I don't think there's any easy route round the maze of multiple motives for identification that doesn't reify some really nasty things.
So we are indeed either stuck with a frustrating vagueness around bisexuality as an identity label, or given the gift of a lovely liminal loophole.
 
 
Cat Chant
14:23 / 07.07.04
In the thread on Buffy the Vampire Slayer that's already been linked to, I said (in this post) that

dropping people in the bisexual bucket is often more to do with policing the purity of "lesbian" and "straight" identity than anything else... Or, more homophobically, as my gf pointed out, because "lesbians hate men" (therefore if you've ever enjoyed boy-sex, you don't count as gay).

Then last week I got a copy of Leanne Franson's new Liliane book (yayy!), Don't be a Crotte (which I thoroughly recommend, btw, along with her earlier books. Get them from Libertas!, and you can support the lesbian and bisexual bookshop owned by the trans woman who delivered a righteous slapdown to Julie Bindel over the article discussed in this thread).

Ahem. Anyway, Liliane (Franson's comix persona) is a Canadian "bi-dyke" (she came out as lesbian at 20 and as bi at 26, reversing the traditional gay-male pattern Ganesh refers to) who writes brilliant and very queer autobio comics. Two of the stories in the new book deal with occasions on which gay people have made it very clear to her that they would be much happier if she identified as lesbian even if she continued to have sex with men - in fact, she was told she couldn't be an 'intervenant' in a program to get gay men & women to visit schools because she identified as bisexual (by contrast, a self-identified "polyamorous lesbian" with one male and two female lovers was allowed to volunteer).

So I'm starting to think that maybe I'm unwittingly playing into a particular (and maybe growing?) form of biphobia. I'd be interested to know about other people's experiences/ideas on this - is it more acceptable in the gay/queer community to identify as gay/lesbian than as bi even if you continue to have and/or act on opposite-sex attractions?
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
14:44 / 07.07.04
Nesh asked:

Should someone who claims bisexuality be expected to qualify themselves, however, in terms of orientation, behaviour, sexual partners, etc., etc., etc. or will the label always be The Love That Need Only Speak Its Name?

And Ex responded:

And can I also throw in the fact that we're considering asking for qualifications on what is meant by bisexuality, but not what is meant by heterosexuality or homosexuality? That does rather leave them as big, untouched and taken-for-granted identities

To me, this is key to 'understanding' bisexuality. Earlier in this thread, Deva suggested that bisexuality as a category might be 'that which queers' the sexuality-based identity categories.

And whether or not one is a card-carrying member of the Queer Nation, I think it's this queering/destabilising quality that's at the heart of alot of the anxiety about bisexuality.

And thus the impetus to push bisexuality into easily identifiable/'locked-down' categories. To make it subservient to dominant notions of sexual identy for example, as regards stability/importance of gender in desire. Notions which are common to both homo- and heterosexuality.

I'd responsd to yr questions, 'nesh, by asking what kind of 'proofs' would allow someone to qualify as bisexual? Are we talking relationship/sexual history with a gender spectrum of partners? Membership of a community? Self-identification? Cultural/personal characteristics?

I find I'm extremely ambivalent on this question/the publicity garnered for 'bisexuality' by BB. I'm extremely dubious of authenticity-based hierarchies, but, I can't help finding the glut of media-friendly women seemingly 'adding spice' with a soupcon of bisexuality that in no way seems reflected in behaviour pretty ick-making. Which would be me identifying as a 'proper' bisexual.

What it does do, very effectively, is popularise an extremely narrow image for bisexuality/tie it down... Which is certainly at odds with my own experience, which is that 'bisexual' is an umbrella term at best, and a constantly troubled one.

(oh, and I hug whoever it was came with with the thread summary.)
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
15:07 / 07.07.04
Ooh, interesting...

Two of the stories in the new book deal with occasions on which gay people have made it very clear to her that they would be much happier if she identified as lesbian even if she continued to have sex with men - in fact, she was told she couldn't be an 'intervenant' in a program to get gay men & women to visit schools because she identified as bisexual (by contrast, a self-identified "polyamorous lesbian" with one male and two female lovers was allowed to volunteer).

My hunch is that this is probably very common. And why I appreciate it when I see, for example women's groups/publications that make explict that they are 'for gay and bisexual women' (eg G3 have started doing this recently)

I think there is a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy on bisexuality in many gay/lesbian environments. Do we think it's reflected in het space?

Another eg: I rang a L&G switchboard to volunteer, phone 'interview'/chat was going swimmingly, until I asked why it was an L&G rather than an LGBT switchboard, and identified myself as bi.

At which point the interview shut down, the contact informed me that they didn't use bisexuals, and we had a rather pointless conversation where I tried to get an idea of the policy reasoning and she stonewalled. (ho ho)

My impression was very much that if I hadn't explictly identified myself as bi, there wouldn't have been a 'problem'.

In a workshop I was in last weekend, a woman spoke about id'ing as a queerdyke, and id'd one the reasons as being that she had had relationships with men in her past, and while she didn't envisgae having one in her future, she did not wish to erase/pretend that these hadn't existed.
 
 
Ganesh
20:21 / 07.07.04
I get the willies because the sentence construction you're using evacuates any sense of who is asking, what authority they are claiming in order to ask - the idea of "being expected to qualify" an identity claim has taken away the person with the expectations (straight society? gay society? man in pub?) and thus leaves the question of power relations completely blank. I know it isn't intended to be sinister - I'm just on edge about the issue.

Sure, and your on-edgeness is perfectly valid. I'd been intentionally vague because I think I meant the question in an extremely general sense (y'know, like 'interrogating whiteness' doesn't specifically mean whipping Caucasions with a rubber hose - much as the image appeals to me...) and I therefore neglected context. You're right, though; power dynamics are, naturally, relevant.

I suppose I meant, should the descriptor of 'bisexual' necessarily encourage further questioning/detail, or should it be taken at face value? When I identify as 'gay' (or, more usually - and this may well be an additional confounder - identify my partner as male), it usually evokes a different mode of conversation/behaviour toward me than if I went with 'default'. Some people become friendlier (even confiding), some more distant. Enquiries, typically polite ones, are made about my 'partner' (as opposed to 'wife' or 'girlfriend' - and no-one asks after 'children'). This being London, assumptions, albeit gentle ones (and not necessarily incorrect assumptions), are made about my knowledge of the club scene, designer labels, gyms, music, etc., etc., etc.

(As a doctor, this stuff can be a help or a hindrance - but that's a different subject for a different forum...)

If someone identifies as 'bisexual', there's no easy raft of supplementary assumptions into which someone can slot. This is, perhaps, what makes bisexuality That Which Disrupts - and also That Which Is Distrusted. This is kinda what makes me want to advance a tentative (if annoyingly categorical) line of questioning in order to place the shade of bisexuality in my own mind: do they have a partner, wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, fuckbuddy, after whom I should enquire?; are they stabilised toward males or females at present?; do they prefer straight, gay, mixed nightlife?

I'm sure this all seems like an irritating attempt, on my part, to pin bisexuals down to an artificial 'locked-down' dichotomy. I think it's more a reflection of my wish to find areas of commonality - which, more often than not, mean those areas of same-sex queerness. It's an attempt on my part to engage.

And thus the impetus to push bisexuality into easily identifiable/'locked-down' categories. To make it subservient to dominant notions of sexual identy for example, as regards stability/importance of gender in desire. Notions which are common to both homo- and heterosexuality.

I think that's true - but, as I've said, the price that bisexuality pays for not being part of "easily identifiable" systems is being seen as 'flighty', shifty, unreliable, exploitative (in the Big Brother exoticism sense), inconsistent, inauthentic, etc., etc. And, as I say, the current Warholesque vogue for 'reality TV' sees the exploitative potential of the descriptor pushed to its limit.

I'd responsd to yr questions, 'nesh, by asking what kind of 'proofs' would allow someone to qualify as bisexual? Are we talking relationship/sexual history with a gender spectrum of partners? Membership of a community? Self-identification? Cultural/personal characteristics?

Well, as I've said, I'm aware that seeking 'proofs' is a dead end. To reframe: I suppose I'm asking, should one take 'bisexuality' at face value, or is it legitimate to ask "what sort of bisexuality?" I'm not suggesting essentialist questions; I'm asking, is it okay to ask questions?
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
21:22 / 07.07.04
Hmm, I'd say it is legitimate, and potentially incredibly constructive, to maybe ask 'what sorts of bisexuality?'.

And you know that the way that this is recieved will depend, to an extent on how the question is asked(topical huh?) and as Ex, has pointed out, the consequences of the questioning and the potential consequences of answers.

Eg on the usefulness of perhaps asking 'what sorts', I've been thinking about to what extent bisexuality maps onto queer.

Is it neccessary and sufficent to identify as bi to be queer? I'd incline to say no, and that it's much more about how one's own bisexuality might then connect one to a queer community/sensibility/identiy via common concerns/issues, eg on 'queering' as strategy, perhaps in terms of a specific political/academic source etc.

Also, the 'interrogation'* could potentially highlight categories of bisexual which are pushed to the background. For example, the monogamous bisexual. And each clarification raises new questions. As, if someone is monogamous, bi and with a life partner, are they still 'allowed' to id as bi? Does relationship, which to 'outsiders' will present as either a homo or hetero one, disqualify them?

This is a question, in terms of id'ing/presenting as bi, that comes up over and over in disucission in/outside bi spaces.





*(though the comparison to the whiteness thread is a slightly questionable one, there we're talking about a category which is unqueried due to ubiquity/power/transparency, which isn't the case here. which is to say, that the interrogation is useful, but consdirably more is at stake/people are more likely to get defensive.)
 
 
Ex
08:51 / 08.07.04
Thanks, Ganesh, much to think on.
I spent yesterday, post-posting, trying to think of ways in which the question could be opened up without simulatensouly closing things down. I'd be keen on anything - venue, virtual space, set of relations - that encouraged people to talk about what component and contributory parts make up their identifications.

I think that the odd-one-out category is always going to be seen as unstable and 'flighty' because it's a conceptual dumping ground where a lot of contradictory norms collide. Possibly, historically, 'homosexual' used to be the dumping ground and has recently been firmed up a bit, no longer meaning 'untrustworthy chainsmoking double-agent commies in underground bars'. That place has been taken up by (among others) bisexuality. So although it would probably be easier for an individual identity label to claw one's way out of that position, I feel it would be more profitable (if impossible) to try to destabilise what the other identity labels mean.

On the other hand, I also like the fact that bi as a label has no fixed attachments. And therefore if people want to know about the set-up of my life, they'll have to ask some more explicit questions, and I'll get a chance to hold forth on who is important to me and how I view sex, life, stuff. Of course, most of the time they don't ask, which is where it falls down slightly.

I know that a lot of people would prefer a firmer definition for those reasons - recognition without further explanation, and not having to be bloody interrogated all the time. But heck, I'm young, I'm energetic, I have a pretty nose...
 
 
Jackie Susann
04:32 / 12.07.04
I dunno, though - surely no matter what sexuality someone identifies as having, you have to ask a whole lot of questions to find out what that actually means. I think what Ganesh is talking about is more like a set of cultural conventions on what questions its appropriate/expected to ask X kind of person. I mean, the fact that a guy's straight hardly rules out the possibility he fucks a lot of men - it just rules out (more or less) bringing that up in social interaction. And same for gay men, it may or may not mean they sleep exclusively with men - but you won't ask about women they've slept with. Ditto lesbians, heterosexual women, etc.

I think the hostility, or whatever, towards bisexuality may have to do with it being a kind of public secret. We are all supposed to know not to know that sexuality is slippery, that object choice is never final, that being straight or gay is a practice that has to be kept up rather than a fixed identity. Bisexual people seem not to have learnt that. (Cf. Butler on gender identity as based on mourning for a lost object choice - if sexual identity is based on this kind of painful, repressed introjection then it makes sense it would be hostile towards those who seem not to share its pain?)
 
 
Jester
17:25 / 12.07.04
I think the hostility, or whatever, towards bisexuality may have to do with it being a kind of public secret. We are all supposed to know not to know that sexuality is slippery, that object choice is never final, that being straight or gay is a practice that has to be kept up rather than a fixed identity. Bisexual people seem not to have learnt that.

Maybe there is something in that. I always find the idea that my sexuality is 'slipperier' somehow kind of weird. I don't know that there is much difference, to be honest. Human sexuality of all types is surely like that?
 
 
Jester
17:28 / 12.07.04
Of course, it just occured to me that I am wildly extrapolating from my own position, and maybe 'completely' straight/gay/lesbian people might disagree?
 
 
alas
17:19 / 13.07.04
So what I'm hearing in all this is two separate negative resonances in the "bi" label: one is the "flighty"/"untrustworthy" label--the unstable, unpin-downable stereotype, which most of us here would probably feel a little guilty about holding against someone. The other, however, which Ganesh has stated most clearly is the idea of "really" het women (pinned-down women?), in particular, "using" the label as a turn-on technique for attracting men. Because "bi" in women plays into heterosexuality in ways that it doesn't for men vis a vis heterosexuality. There's no percentage in being bi for men, but there is (a little? a lot? how much?) for (some) women (in certain circumances).

(Who mainly benefits from this game? Who is mainly punished?)

Because something about the way that plays into old old stereotypes about women--if you were forced at some point to read Edmund Spenser, you know, the Una and Duessa characters?--is troubling to me. But at the same time, I know that the dynamic Ganesh is laying out is a real one. But I also know that while there are perks to a public sexual identity, even to heterosexuality, there are prices to be paid.

(What did Audre Lorde mean by there being "no hierarchy of oppression"? That sounds like a rhetorical question, but actually it's a real one, to me. Is the "no hierarchy" stance too easy or too hard?)

So there may be perks to claiming a bi identity, but there is a weird price that one pays for that perk. And somehow for me, that price is entangled with what I see as a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland view that I see as typical of our society regarding women's sexuality--and arguably also I suppose all alternative sexual identifications. Eat me/Drink me: I become impossibly small and trivializable or something uncontrollable, huge, monstrous.

We are all supposed to know not to know that sexuality is slippery, that object choice is never final, that being straight or gay is a practice that has to be kept up rather than a fixed identity. Bisexual people seem not to have learnt that. (Cf. Butler on gender identity as based on mourning for a lost object choice - if sexual identity is based on this kind of painful, repressed introjection then it makes sense it would be hostile towards those who seem not to share its pain?)

I'm interested in the sadism implied in this final question--to what degree is hazing a part of this dynamic and why?
 
 
Jester
17:40 / 13.07.04
The other, however, which Ganesh has stated most clearly is the idea of "really" het women (pinned-down women?), in particular, "using" the label as a turn-on technique for attracting men. Because "bi" in women plays into heterosexuality in ways that it doesn't for men vis a vis heterosexuality.

Well, there is another side to that, which is random men finding it a bit *too* interesting when they find out about your sexuality. That particular stereotype has got to be at least *partly* to do with the male heterosexual tendancy to concieve of bisexual women as somehow performing basically for them, like, in, well, a lot of pornography.
 
 
gravitybitch
18:07 / 13.07.04
That raises a few problems as well - my ex-husb basically denied my bisexuality because the only exposure* he had to the concept was through really raunchy stag films, and his wife certainly wasn't one of those nasty perverted women...


*excluding the images of David Bowie in all his glam glory, which, for the vat-dyed frat-boy I married, were a whole 'nother kettle of ..umm.. problems raised by the slipperiness of both desire and identity.
 
 
Ganesh
20:33 / 13.07.04
So what I'm hearing in all this is two separate negative resonances in the "bi" label

At the risk of being Mr Negativity, a third negative resonance (or at least negative-ish, depending how one looks at it) is the common viewpoint among gay men (and possible other people) that male bisexuality is, more often than not, a sort of too-chicken-to-go-the-whole-hog halfway house on the coming-out route, the station before HomoTown...
 
 
No star here laces
02:21 / 14.07.04

Me, I never post to these threads, because although I have sex with persons of both gender, I would never publicly identify as anything other than "straight" because I can't envisage myself ever having anything other than a one-night stand with someone of the same gender.

It occurs to me that it is exactly this "public" line that is the key one. Humans are essentially hardwired to dislike deception - its very dangerous to us socially. And there is an innate sense of deception around bisexuals - are they just pretending? do they really mean it? We can't tell...

With "out" homosexuals, there is a public declaration and a price paid for that declaration, making them trustworthy.

With straights,the rules are also felt to be clear and simple (because the majority always is).

None of us like having our sexual feelings exploited, and in a certain sense that's exactly what the bisexual represents. Either someone who "leads you on" but won't deliver; or someone who might take advantage of you without your consent. Either way, definitely untrustworthy.

If "bisexuality" equalled being in a stable tripartite mixed-gender relationship, its status would be completely different, I suspect.
 
 
Ex
08:30 / 14.07.04
I hope that was a survey of concepts and attitudes rather than a straightforward explanation of why bisexuality is untrustworthy. If the former, then probably correct, although clearly full of holes. If the latter, then full of holes.
For kick-off, it's interesting that problem is seen as 'deception' - I'd agree that it's seen that way, but think this is a result of the sex/gender system being set up in a way that denies workable identities to a lot of people. And thus sticks them in the 'deceiving' box, regardless of their actual behaviour/intent.
Also interesting that one can be 'out' as bi but still be perceived to be hiding something, because of the lack of clarity round its meaning.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
10:10 / 14.07.04
Which all seems to lead to the depressing conclusion that unless I go around with a gun and force people to become fully liberated, bisexual star children then bisexual is always going to be seen as 'dirty', 'dishonest' or whatever you want to call it, when compared to homo or heterosexuality.
 
 
*
14:09 / 16.07.04
How then can bi/pansexuals lay things out in advance so that we are not seen as untrustworthy? Do we need to wear t-shirts with our mating history on it, with the percentage of males, females, and others we have been intimate with? If you've had sex with anyone who has a ? in the gender box on their inner me form, what's the most honest way to define yourself and your sexuality? Is it leading on to admit to being bisexual, and then say "Well actually I'm not interested in you"? why is it we don't (unless we are raging assholes) assume that straight women are lying about their sexuality if they're not attracted to a particular man? If a bisexual is not attracted to everyone in the world, they are just saying they are bisexual to be trendy?

Perhaps this is the popular conception, but there must surely be a way to counter this, either for individuals or for bi/pansexuals as a loose collective, a way that doesn't necessarily rely on badges with clever slogans or labels on our foreheads. ("43.4% gay, 56.6% straight, 100% bisexual! Smileyface!" comes to mind. Painfully, with a brick.)

On the other hand, people don't feel compelled to demand that straight people define their sexual identity in intimate detail before they decide if they are "trustworthy" or not. Why should bi/pansexuals?

....

And why on EARTH are bisexuals seen as more likely to "take advantage of you without your consent"? This is a new stereotype for me. At least, if by this you mean rape, sexual assault, or harassment.
 
  

Page: 12(3)4

 
  
Add Your Reply