Excerpts From Bisexual Books

View From Another Closet, Janet Bode

Bisexuality: A Study, Charlotte Wolff

Bisexual Lives, Off Pink Collective

Bi Any Other Name, Loraine Hutchins and Lani Ka’ahumanu

Closer to Home, Elizabeth Reba Weise

Women and Bisexuality, Sue George

Dual Attraction, Martin S Weinberg, Colin J Williams, and Douglas W Pryor

Plural Desires, The Bisexual Anthology Collective

Bisexual Theories, Queries, and Visions, Naomi Tucker

Vice Versa, Marjorie Garber

Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics, Paula Rust

Bisexual Horizons, The Off Pink Collective

Bisexuality, Beth Firestein

The Bisexual Imaginary, Bi Academic Intervention

Bi Lives, Katya Orndorff

A History of Bisexuality, Steven Angelides

The Bisexual’s Guide to the Universe, Michael Szymanski and Nicole Kristal

Look Both Ways, Jennifer Baumgardner

Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution, Shiri Eisner

Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Robyn Ochs and Sarah Rowley

Purple Prose, Kate Harrad

Go The Way Your Blood Beats, Michael Amherst

The Bi-Ble and The Bi-Ble New Testimonials, Lauren Nickodemus and Ellen Desmond

Greedy, Jen Winston

Bi: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality, Julia Shaw

It Ain’t Over Til The Bisexual Speaks, Vareet Mehta and Lois Shearing

Lesbians' spontaneous comments about bisexuality reveal that more than one in ten lesbians perceive bisexuals as confused or undecided, and similar proportions perceive them as transitional lesbians and/or closeted lesbians. In addition, one in seven holds other unflattering beliefs about bisexual women, for example that they are sexually promiscuous or unable to commit themselves to a relationship, whereas less than one in twenty holds a positive image of bisexuality as natural or healthy…

Lesbians' responses to closed questions reveal that these negative attitudes toward bisexuality are even more widespread than spontaneous comments suggest. Whereas only 8.7% of lesbians spontaneously characterized bisexuality as transitional, in response to closed-ended questions 79% of lesbians described bisexual identity as more likely to be transitional than lesbian identity. Whereas only 8.1% of lesbians spontaneously characterized bisexuals as closeted lesbians, in response to closed-ended questions 50% indicated a belief that bisexual identity was more likely than lesbian identity to be fraudulent. Whereas only 2.5% spontaneously described bisexuals as unable to commit to a relationship, in response to closed-ended questions 61% stated that bisexuals are less committed to other women than lesbians and 53% stated that bisexuals are less trustworthy than lesbians. Eighty-three percent believe that it is easier for bisexuals to pass as heterosexual, 65% believe that bisexuals are more likely to want to pass, 79% believe that bisexuals experience less prejudice, and 81% believe they experience less discrimination.

Apparently, the minority of lesbians who made these comments about bisexual women spontaneously were speaking for the majority of lesbians, most of whom simply did not express their opinions on these issues until specifically asked to do so.

Lesbians very rarely generalize these negative images to all bisexual women; most lesbians stopped short of saying, for example, that all bisexual women are confused or in transition to lesbian identity. Most lesbians also agreed that some lesbians share the traits that are so common among bisexuals; for example, some lesbians are also confused or in transition...

But the fact that most lesbians do not generalize their images of bisexuality to all bisexuals does not imply that these images do not affect bisexuals generally. Even when exceptions are allowed, images of bisexuality function to implicate all bisexuals. This is particularly true of existentially invalidating images. Because there are no clear markers to distinguish the few "true" bisexuals from the greater number whose claims to bisexual identity are illegitimate, existentially invalidating images cast suspicion on any woman who claims to be bisexual and thereby invalidate bisexual identity generally. The lesbian who believes that bisexual identity is more likely to be fraudulent than lesbian identity, for example, is likely to be suspicious of all claims to bisexual identity, even though she believes that some of these claims to bisexual identity will eventually prove to be authentic. Thus, every bisexual is aftected by her belief that some bisexuals are inauthentic.”

In comparison to the number of lesbians who expressed these beliefs about bisexual women, the number who rejected them is minuscule. But the import of their comments lies not in their number.

The fact that some lesbian respondents expressed negative images demonstrates that they exist at least in the minds of some lesbians, but the fact that other women felt the need to refute them demonstrates something even more significant from a sociological point of view.

That is, that these images exist as ideas to be reckoned with in lesbian culture. Even if only a few lesbians actually ascribe to a given negative image of bisexual women, the fact that other lesbians found it necessary to refute that image is evidence that the image enjoys a lively existence in the symbolic world of the lesbian community.”

From the "best of both worlds" perspective, bisexuals are - whether intentionally or not - apolitical opportunists who enjoy privilege, avoid oppression, and abdicate their political responsibilities in favor of personal comfort. They are fence-sitters who refuse to cast their lot with either interest group, hedging all bets by "playing it both ways."

From the "worst of both worlds" perspective, bisexuals are political victims who suffer from not only heterosexism, but also homosexism. They are caught in the middle, unable to belong to either world and rejected by both.

Both perspectives rest on a conceptualization of sexuality as dichotomous and a conceptualization of bisexuality as a hybrid form of sexuality. In the "best of both worlds," bisexuals combine the advantages of homosexuality and heterosexuality and, in the "worst of both worlds," they combine the disadvantages. But closer analysis shows that the concepts of hybrid bisexuality underlying these different political beliefs are different.

The "best of both worlds" view is grounded in a concept of bisexuality as a hybrid combination of heterosexuality and lesbianism. Bisexuals can live a heterosexual lifestyle, feel comfortable in heterosexual society, and appear to be one hundred percent heterosexual. Or, they can live a lesbian lifestyle, feel comfortable in the lesbian community, and appear to be one hundred percent lesbian.

Like a chameleon, at any given moment the hybrid bisexual appears to be either heterosexual or lesbian, depending on how she presents herself, whom she is dating, or whether she is among heterosexuals or lesbians. Since she is at all times both heterosexual and lesbian, she can move freely back and forth between these two lifestyles and societies. It is this ability to move freely back and forth between heterosexuality and lesbianism, and to appear to belong in all situations, that allows bisexuals to reap the benefits of both heterosexuality and lesbianism while avoiding the costs of both.

The "worst of both worlds" view of the political status of bisexuality is based on a concept of bisexuality as a hybrid mixture of heterosexuality and lesbianism. This type of hybrid bisexual is analogous to a biracial person whose features combine the characteristics of her two biological parents. Among people of her mother's race, she cannot hide the features she inherited from her father, and among people of her father's race, she cannot hide the features she inherited from her mother. Instead of appearing to belong completely to both communities, she appears out of place in both and might not be fully accepted by either.

Likewise, the bisexual woman is bisexual at all times; she is bisexual in heterosexual situations and she is bisexual in lesbian situations. She is, therefore, rejected by heterosexuals for her bisexuality or perhaps for her lesbian side, and she is rejected by lesbians for her bisexuality or perhaps for her heterosexual side.

Both forms of the hybrid conceptualization of bisexuality lead to a depoliticized view of bisexuality. As combinations or mixtures of heterosexuality and lesbianism, bisexuals have no political interests of their own as bisexuals. Their interests consist of a combination or mixture of the interests of heterosexuals and lesbians. Seen as combination hybrids, they have the ability to pick and choose their interests and so, of course, they choose the best of both worlds. Seen as mixture hybrids, they are excluded from the advantages of both and cannot escape the disadvantages of both. They are to be resented to the extent that they share all the advantages of both groups, or pitied to the extent that they share all the disadvantages of both groups. Either way, they have political interests only insofar as they share the interests of the two authentic interest groups, heterosexuals and lesbians; they have no unique political interests of their own.”

Making generalizations about the objects in our environments, including other people, is a natural and necessary human skill. Generalization involves overlooking individual differences in the effort to find similarities. Without this skill, we would be unable to learn from our experiences, unable to plan future activity, largely unable to communicate with each other, and unable to empathize with the experiences of other people. So when does this natural and necessary capacity for generalization become objectionable? It becomes problematic when the objects we generalize are other human beings, and when our capacity to perceive similarities impedes our ability to perceive individual difterences as well. At that point, we begin to see other people as no more than group representatives and we begin to treat them as members of categories instead of individuals. We then look at Black people and see nothing but black; we look at White people and see nothing but white. Instead of facilitating social interaction, our ability to generalize becomes an obstacle to social interaction that robs others of their individuality by replacing it with stereotypes.

Failure to perceive the individual differences among members of other social groups is only one side of the coin of stereotypy. The other side is failure to recognize the similarities between members of other groups and members of one's own group, including oneself. It is difficult to identify or empathize with someone who bears no similarity to one-self; those who appear entirely foreign to us often appear subhuman because we are unable to recognize their human qualities. In short, we objectify them; by denying their similarity to ourselves, we deny their humanity.“

For example, Doris explained, "I think many women think in terms of bisexuality when they are initially coming out—a transitional period —when I first fell in love with a womyn my internalized homophobia was so great I couldn't comprehend me being a lesbian."

Like Doris, Rhonda identified herself as bisexual before she came out as lesbian, but in hindsight she interprets her experience in a very different way:

When I first entered the lesbian community I thought of myself as bisexual — and referred to myself as such. A very large group of women (friends) that identified themselves as "lesbian" said I was confused. Within six months of coming out, I started referring to myself as "lesbian." Found a much stronger sense of acceptance in the gay community ... bisexual people are not accepted and have a harder time than gay men and women. (Rhonda)

Rhonda believes that lesbians' suspicions about bisexual identity pressure bisexual women into identifying as lesbian. If she were to meet Doris, she might disagree with her that her period of bisexual identification was a transitional phase. Rhonda might argue that Doris is not a lesbian at all, but a bisexual woman who was pressured into identifying as a lesbian and who, in order to authenticate her current lesbian identity, now perceives her bisexual identity as inauthentic in hindsight.

Such a process would tend to be self-reproducing; each generation of women who are convinced to identify themselves as lesbians learns to inauthenticate their own previous bisexual identities by explaining them as transitional phases. These women, like Doris, then assume that other women who identify themselves as bisexual are likewise "going through a phase"; they expect these women to eventually come out as lesbians just as they themselves did.

Bisexual-identified women become aware of lesbians' expectations, and this awareness creates the pressure to identify as lesbian that Rhonda described. Those who are convinced by this pressure to identify as lesbians become invested in authenticating their own lesbian identities by inauthenticating their own and others' bisexual identities, and the cycle continues.”

Now, though, I am trying very hard to understand bisexuality. I feel that it must be a very difficult lifestyle ... an emotional and sexual see-saw. (Kelly)

or juggling simultaneous homosexual and heterosexual relationships:

I think that it would be a very hard way of life for me. I could not juggle the two. (Gina)

or indiscriminate sexual activity with anything that moves:

(Bisexuality is a way) for highly sexed people who go either way to double their chances for sex. (Arlene)

Any of these three lifestyles would make a committed monogamous relationship difficult to maintain, if not impossible. Conceptualized in terms of coexistent homosexual and heterosexual needs or as the result of an overly active sex drive, bisexuality becomes incompatible with committed monogamy,

If a person is settled with this identity I think it's great. I also believe that this lifestyle could present problems in needing both preferences met at same time-makes for a difficult monogamous relationship. (Ruth)

especially when homosexual and heterosexual needs are perceived as antithetical to each other:

One who is attracted and enjoys a sexual relationship with both men and women. Sad that the inner conflict prevents the person to experience a complete commitment to one person in order to build a lasting relationship. (Cori)”

Sometimes the distinction between bisexuality and lesbianism is clear; a woman whose lovers have all been women and whose romantic and sexual feelings are exclusively same-sex is a lesbian, and a woman who has had equal numbers of female and male partners and feels equally attracted to women and men is a bisexual. But few of us fit either of these ideal images.

Most of us have had some combination of female and male sexual partners, and many of us have some degree of sexual attraction toward men. Where, then, do we draw the line between lesbianism and bisexuality? How do we decide who is the real lesbian— indeed, whether we ourselves are real lesbians —and who is bisexual?”

Among these lesbians, references to a continuum of sexuality or to "degrees" of sexuality/bisexuality were frequent. For example, June feels that "most people, women and men, are to a certain extent bisexual - but this constitutes a continuous scale, not clear distinctions between straight, bisexual, or gay."

Although there are differences of opinion over whether and where to draw the lines that distinguish bisexuality from lesbianism and heterosexuality on this continuum, many of these women see bisexuality as overlapping lesbianism and heterosexuality.

These respondents typically argued that although most or all people are "bisexual to a degree," most lean toward one direction or the other and are therefore "really" lesbian or heterosexual and should identify themselves as such.

Apparently, on the sexual scale conceived by these lesbians, bisexuality encompasses the entire continuum with the presumed exception of the extreme endpoints, whereas lesbianism and heterosexuality encompass the entire continuum with the exception of the area immediately surrounding the midpoint.

This conception of sexuality allowed these women to state that most or all people are bisexual while also asserting that women who call themselves bisexual are sometimes or frequently denying their own lesbianism…

Thus, the concept of a sexual continuum, like the concepts of an ideal society or an unrealized sexual "potential," enables lesbians to reconcile beliefs about the universality of bisexuality with beliefs about the political undesirability of bisexuality or the suspicious quality of those who call themselves bisexual in this society.”

In social and political discourse, we have become so used to referring to people as lesbians, gays, or heterosexuals, that we no longer question whether or not there might be another way to understand our sexual diversity. Many historians argue, however, that the concept of types of people who are defined by their sexual desires or behaviors is recent.

The word "homosexual" was coined in 1869 by Benkert. Prior to the late 1800s, there were people who had sex with members of their own sex and people who were attracted to and fell in love with members of their own sex, but historians tell us that these people were not placed in a category and viewed as a certain type of person because of these behaviors or feelings. They were simply engaging in some of the many forms of sexual behavior that are possible for humans, just as people today might have sex with brown-eyed or blue-eyed people, and might even have a preference for one eye color or the other, without being placed in categories and assumed to be particular types of people based on the eye colors of their sexual partners.

In other words, historical sexologists argue that the categories "lesbian/gay" and "heterosexual" are socially constructed. We have created these categories, and we place ourselves and each other in them on the basis of our behaviors and feelings. This does not mean that our desires are artificial or that we made them up; it means that we interpret our desires using the concepts and possibilities made available by our culture, and that we perceive our desires as indications of the types of people we are.

It also does not mean that lesbian, gay, and heterosexual people do not exist. We certainly do exist, but we exist because we have come to understand ourselves this way. A house is no less real for the fact that it was built; we need shelter, and building a house is a fine way to give ourselves shelter. The longer we live in the house and the more comfortable we become in it, the more difficult it is to remember a time when the house did not exist.

Essentialists, on the other hand, believe that sexual orientation or sexual desire is a characteristic that exists within a person. An "essence" is real in an absolute sense; it exists even in the absence of cultural interpretation. Essence is the thing that we would see if we could remove all our biases and cultural blinders.

When we speak of "discovering" our sexualities, we are thinking in essentialist terms because we are assuming that there was something that existed within us even before we knew about it. When we say that we are lesbian/gay or heterosexual, we imply that we have a lesbian/gay or heterosexual essence, that is, that we are a particular type of person who has a particular type of sexual essence.

In doing so, we create a bond between ourselves and other people who have the same essence because we put ourselves in a category together. At the same time, we emphasize our differences from people who have different essences by naming ourselves differently and putting them in another category.”

As a society, we are quickly finding out the hard way that this sterile image of science is false. Values shape the questions we ask and biases shape the way we ask them. The problems that are solved are often the problems of the most powerful in society, because the least powerful do not have the funding, training, or voice to put their problems on the agenda.”

As lesbians, we have fought long and hard for our lesbian identities and communities, and bisexuality constitutes a psychological, social, and political threat to these hard-won victories. It forces us to confront our own differences of opinion over what lesbianism is and what its political implications are; that is, who we are and what we stand for.

In the early 1970s, we debated these issues openly as we laid the groundwork for the lesbian movement. Since then, the "who" and "what" debates have faded into the background, but the issues were never resolved. We still disagree about who we are and what we stand for.

The topic of bisexuality uncovers these dormant issues and brings our differences to the surface. The energy with which we debate bisexuality today is none other than the energy with which we struggled to define ourselves two decades ago.”

Lesbians are lesbians because they have chosen to live lesbian lives and identify as lesbians; most women who live heterosexual lives never chose to be heterosexual. The argument has interesting implications for bisexuals.

The authors rejected the concept of bisexuality as a sexual/ affectional preference. They argued that when a bisexual is with a man, she is heterosexual because she enjoys heterosexual privileges. But when she is with a woman, she is not lesbian because heterosexual privilege remains an option for her.

She is, in fact, the only woman who consciously chooses heterosexuality because she is the only woman who ever lives a heterosexual life with full knowledge of the other option; the bisexual woman is, therefore, the only true "heterosexual."