Bisexuality

Identities, Politics, and Theories

Surya Monro

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137007308
• eBook ISBN: 9781137007315
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Education General
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides an accessible introduction to bisexuality studies, set within the context of contemporary social theory and research. Drawing on interviews conducted in the UK and Colombia, it maps out the territory, providing a means of understanding sexualities that are neither gay, nor lesbian, nor heterosexual.

1

Introduction

Recent years have seen increased support for the equality of same-sex couples in a range of Western countries. There has been a push to include bisexuals together with lesbians and gay men by activists and by state and civil society actors. However, the patterns of stigmatisation and erasure concerning bisexuality also exist. These patterns contrast with the processes of normalisation that have taken place concerning lesbians and gay men in equalities-positive countries such as the UK (see Richardson and Monro, 2012).

The pro-equalities shift that has taken place in some Western nations also contrasts with the huge international challenges concerning basic rights for people who wish to express themselves sexually with others of the same sex. Homosexuality is illegal in 78 countries and is punishable by death in Mauritania, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and parts of Nigeria and Somalia (Itaborahy and Zhu, 2014). In countries where state-sponsored persecution of people who engage in same-sex sexual acts takes place, it is the same-sex expression that is the key issue, not the individual’s identification as bisexual, gay, or lesbian. Same-sex sexualities may be termed ‘homosexual’ in these countries, but they can be engaged in by people who are only attracted to those of the same sex, or by those who are attracted to people of different sexes. However, it is same-sex sexualities that engender punitive sanctions, not an individual having both same-sex and opposite-sex desires or behaviours, so that focusing only on ‘bisexuals’ or ‘bisexuality’ in an international context is a flawed approach. At the same time, internationally, bisexuals are affected by punitive laws against homosexuality, and so the term ‘bisexual’ has some purchase.

Within an international context, there is another analytical trajectory that requires exploration. Overall, the categories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) can be seen as limited in scope and imagination, erasing as they do the many and varied forms of sexual and gender identities that have existed – and do exist – internationally. As Evelyn Blackwood argues:

From a Western viewpoint, sexuality constitutes an essential or core attribute of identity; individuals are said to have fixed sexual identities or orientations. Sexuality as it is understood in the United States and Europe, however, often bears little resemblance to sexual relationships and practices across cultures.

(2000, p.223)

Building on Blackwood’s ideas, it can be argued that a Western attachment to ‘fixing and naming’ sexual orientations and identities can marginalise or erase other ways of doing things. Marking and claiming behaviours as constituting particular sexual identities can be problematic; it may render indigenous sexualities visible and open to interrogation, sanctions, and persecution. At the same time, the Western-originated categories of ‘LGBT’ form a common parlance, the importance of which cannot be denied when it comes to effecting political and social change and tackling human rights abuses against people whose desires are not limited to people of the opposite sex. The book therefore begins with the premise that the term ‘bisexuality’, like ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’, ‘transgender’, and ‘heterosexual’, may be useful at this particular time in anglophone countries, and perhaps in others as well, depending on the politics of those particular countries. Some actors in Southern countries both engage with and develop notions of bisexuality and discourses (sets of ideas) of bisexual rights (see, for example, the Colombian situation (Serrano, 2003, 2010)). This trend will be explored further in the chapters on intersectionality (Chapter 3) and on activism, democracy, and the state (Chapter 7).

This book takes bisexuality as its focus because of the academic marginalisation of bisexuality (see below), which has created a substantial gap in contemporary sexualities literature. The book is needed because bisexuality plays out differently to lesbian and gay identities in relation to a number of key processes. These concern, for instance, the relationship between hegemonic heterosexualities and non-heterosexualities, sexuality-related prejudices and their material impacts, and the interfaces between individuals and state institutions. Bisexuality raises important issues concerning identity construction and its social and political ramifications. This is partly due to the complex and fluid nature of bisexual identities, which are different from the more bounded and static identities assumed by lesbians, gay men and heterosexuals, and partly because of the fragmented and partially submerged nature of the bisexual population.

This book develops theory regarding bisexuality, grounded in analysis of key aspects of bisexual peoples’ lives, such as identity construction, relationships and community, experience of workplace organisations, and political activism. In its engagement with key bodies of theory associated with sociology and political science, it will begin to map out territory which is largely uncharted. The text does not attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis of any areas; it summarises progress to date, develops theory using empirical research data, and indicates trajectories which may be of interest for future scholarly activities. In so doing, it attempts also to foreground the lived experiences of people who are bisexual, and those who identify as other than heterosexual, lesbian or gay. The book is largely situated within the trajectory of critical bisexuality studies, encouraging readers to ‘interrogate the concept of bisexuality: to think critically about where it has come from and how its origins continue to shape it in contemporary debates’ (Storr, 1999, p.1). I build on the work of authors such as Michael Du Plessis (1996), Clare Hemmings (2007), Merl Storr (1999a), and Stephen Angelides (2001), and I contribute to debates raised by contemporary critical bisexuality scholars, such as Shiri Eisner (2014).

There are some areas of possible conceptual development of the field of bisexuality studies (and indeed sexuality and gender studies more broadly) that I wish to flag up in this Introduction because they might prove important for future research. The first of these concerns temporality as discussed by social scientists such as Pierre Bourdieu (cited in Jenkins, 1992):

Temporality, the inexorable passage of time, is an axiomatic feature of practice: time is both a constraint and a resource for social interaction … Time, and the sense of it, is, of course, socially constructed; it is, however, socially constructed out of natural cycles – days and nights.

(Jenkins, 1992, p.69)

Temporality is important for understanding bisexuality, because if the entire lifecycle of an individual is considered, rather than a particular point in that lifecycle, then the likelihood of behavioural bisexuality (sexual desires or behaviours towards other people of more than one gender) is much greater. If a temporal approach to theorising sexuality is taken, it could be that heterosexual, lesbian, and gay identifications become understood as ‘phases’ for many people, in a larger pattern of behavioural bisexuality across the life span.

The notion of temporal sexualities can be taken further by using the notion of reincarnation drawn from Buddhism and Hinduism (see, for example, Peter Bishop, 1993). In an approach to bisexuality that seeks to avoid Western-centrism, it is arguably important to consider approaches that look at reincarnation philosophies and other ways of conceptualising subjectivity and consciousness. In Monro (2010a), I mention reincarnation in relation to Indian genders and sexualities and indicate some of the parallels between early Indian philosophies and post-structural approaches, as discussed by, for example, Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai (2001). If reincarnation was to be ‘real’, then temporalised identities would extend not over the course of one lifetime but many. The ‘soul’ that incarnates could have different gender identities, physical sexes, and sexual identities, shaped by the social context into which it was born as well as internal predilections.

If an ontological position that reflects the ideas of temporality and reincarnation was taken, then varied gendered/sexual identities might become seen as the usual pattern across lifetimes, even if an individual experiences themselves as having a very fixed gender and sexual identity in a particular incarnation. There could therefore be another axis for understanding gender and sexual identities: fixed or essentialised identities on the one hand (for example, people experiencing themselves as having essentialised gay identities, set within a particular socio-material context) and fluid, mutable, and sometimes liminal (beyond categories) identities on the other. In such a context, conflicts between different identity-based groups (as discussed later in the book) could be interpreted as primarily about access to material resources distributed according to particular socio-political structures (based around, for example, heterosexual couplehood), rather than the ‘validity’ of any particular identities over others.

A materialist critique of the systems of categorisation that have emerged concerning gender and sexuality is certainly pertinent to understanding bisexuality, and unlike the two themes noted above (temporality and reincarnation), this will be pursued later in the book. Victorian society played a major role in the construction of contemporary, internationally used systems of gender and sexual categorisation. Colonialism and imperialism lent weight, internationally, to the European systems of gender and sexual categorisation which underpin the modern heterosexual/homosexual/bisexual forms of categorisation (see MacDowell, 2009). This had a material basis in colonial efforts to secure and maintain hierarchical systems and access to material privileges – those of white, European, heterosexual people. Thus, there has been a materialist demarcation and essentialisation of sexual identities, which has arguably cramped potentials for fluidity and liminality.

The structure of this chapter

The chapter begins by outlining the methods used for the research that is presented in this book. It then provides a brief historical and cross-cultural contextualisation of non-heterosexual sexualities, charts the development of the notion of ‘bisexuality’, and situates the text within bisexuality studies and gender/sexuality scholarship more broadly. Definitions of bisexuality and key related terms are discussed. The chapter then looks at prejudice against bisexuality. An outline of the subsequent chapters is then provided. The chapter uses, perhaps unusually, some empirical material in its sections on definitions of bisexuality and biphobia. This is because the evolution of these terms is ongoing, and I wish to highlight their complex and contingent nature at the beginning of the book.

Methods

This book uses research materials that stem from four countries: India, USA, Colombia, and the UK. The choice of countries was made in order to represent both the global South and the global North/West. The majority of the empirical material comes from the UK, and it would be useful for further research to address bisexualities and non-heterosexualities in other countries – especially Southern and Eastern countries – in more depth, given the historical dominance of anglophone scholarship in this area.

The book draws on 40 semi-structured interviews with individuals in the UK and Colombia. The core interviews were conducted with a range of people who identify as bisexual, queer, or non-heterosexual, in the UK (24 interviewees) and Colombia (six interviewees). A further ten interviews were conducted with people involved in the UK fetish and bondage, domination, submission, and masochism (BDSM) communities in 2006 (more details about these projects are provided below). This book also used analysis of web material and research literature, specifically from India, the USA, and the UK. The UK and Colombian empirical research was conducted in 2012, as was the web analysis of Indian sexualities. It should be noted that the UK-based qualitative interviews were supplemented by my participant observation, as a bisexual person, in the UK bisexual communities in the 1998–2014 period; this is drawn on mostly in Chapter 7 and I have made it clear where it is used.

For the UK research, qualitative interviews were conducted with 22 individuals, and a further two individuals filled in the extensive semi-structured interview schedule (due to their personal preferences to contribute in written form). Snowball or purposive sampling was conducted using the following criteria: age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic heritage, ability/disability, class background and current identification, links with alternative communities (other than bisexuality-related), and location in the UK. Using snowball approaches and existing networks, the sampling strategy enabled recruitment of people who were somewhat representative across these different criteria. Both monosexual and non-monosexual people were included in the study. In addition, efforts were made to include people who were not part of the organised bisexual communities, as well as those who were, and parents, as well as non-parents. The sampling strategy was broadly successful, but there is over-representation of some groups, notably people from Northern England, 30–50-year-olds, and those involved in the organised bisexual communities. The term ‘organised bisexual communities’ is used in the book to mean those networks and groupings of people who identify as bisexual and who have established groups, events, and organisations. It is recognised that the term is problematic; not everyone linked to these communities is bisexual, and other groupings of people who are bisexual may exist outside of these ‘organised bisexual communities’.

It is not possible to identify each participant by their social characteristics in the analysis of findings provided in the book, as this could lead to the identification of individuals. However, a table is provided in order to demonstrate the key characteristics (Table 1.1).

Findings were anonymised, or if preferred the individual’s first name only was used, with the following exceptions who wished to be fully named: Meg John Barker, Lawrence Brewer, Grant Denkinson, and Christian Klesse.

The UK bisexuality research took an a priori approach (see Gibbs, 2007), in which research themes were identified in advance. The key themes around which the questions were developed were as follows: bisexual identities and their construction; bisexual and other communities; biphobia; intersectionality; sexuality, kinship, and relationships; employment; the commodification of bisexuality; activism; and democracy and the state. The interview data and the data from the two semi-structured interviews that were completed in written form were then analysed using a thematic approach (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

Table 1.1 Characteristics of the UK participants

Age	21–30 (2), 31–40 (13), 41–50 (6), 51–60 (2), not answered (1)
Gender identity	Female (11), male (7), male/genderqueer (1), transman (1), genderqueer (2), questioning/unsure (diagnosis of intersex condition at puberty) (1), not answered (1)
Ethnic heritage	British Asian (1), mixed heritage (3), white English/British (10), white/Caucasian (1), white European (2), black British (1), Chinese (2), white other (3), non-white European (1)
Sexual orientation	Bisexual (18), queer/bisexual (2), queer (2), undecided – probably bisexual (1), not answered (1)
Disabled	Yes (7), No (16), not answered (1)
Class background	Working class (6), mixed working class/middle class (2), lower middle class (1), middle class (4), upper middle class (2), mixed working class and upper class (1), don’t know (2), not answered (5), don’t identify with class (1)
Current class identification	Working class (5), lower middle class (1), middle class (11), mixed working class/middle class (1), middle class with some working class experience (1), don’t know (2), don’t identify with class (1), not answered (1)
Active links with bisexual communities/networks	Yes (16), no (8)
Links with alternative communities (e.g. kink, swingers, goths)	Yes (16: queer, LGBT, trans, black/BME/people of colour, kink, BDSM, sexual freedom, anti-censorship, civil libertarians, secularists, humanist, vegetarians, vegans, fannish/fandom, folk, indie and goth/rock music scenes, boating community, deaf community, cross dressing, swinger, poly, asexuality, outsider art/music, mad pride, ex squatter, anarchist); no (4); not answered (4)
Location	Southern England (3), Midlands (3), Northern England (17), Scotland (1)

Table 1.2 Characteristics of the Colombian participants

...

Age	21–30 (2), 31–40 (2); 41–50 (2)
Gender identity	Female (2), male (2), transgender male (1), transgender female (1)
Sexual orientation	Bisexual (1), not given (5)
Current class position (inferred from occupation)	Working class (2), middle class (3), unclear (1)
Active links with bisexual communities/networks

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Bisexuality and Social Theory
• 3. Intersectionality
• 4. Sex, Relationships, Kinship, and Community
• 5. Bisexuality, Organisations, and Capitalism
• 6. Bisexuality and Citizenship
• 7. Bisexuality, Activism, Democracy, and the State
• Bibliography
• Index