Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics

Sex, Loyalty, and Revolution

Paula C Rust

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1995
• Print ISBN: 9780814774458
• eBook ISBN: 9780814776728
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: LGBT Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The subject of bisexuality continues to divide the lesbian and gay community. At pride marches, in films such as Go Fish, at academic conferences, the role and status of bisexuals is hotly contested.
Within lesbian communities, formed to support lesbians in a patriarchal and heterosexist society, bisexual women are often perceived as a threat or as a political weakness. Bisexual women feel that they are regarded with suspicion and distrust, if not openly scorned. Drawing on her research with over 400 bisexual and lesbian women, surveying the treatment of bisexuality in the lesbian and gay press, and examining the recent growth of a self-consciously political bisexual movement, Paula Rust addresses a range of questions pertaining to the political and social relationships between lesbians and bisexual women.
By tracing the roots of the controversy over bisexuality among lesbians back to the early lesbian feminist debates of the 1970s, Rust argues that those debates created the circumstances in which bisexuality became an inevitable challenge to lesbian politics. She also traces it forward, predicting the future of sexual politics.

1
DEBATE IN THE LESBIAN PRESS: INTRODUCING THE ISSUES

What does The Lesbian Community think about bisexuality? Before we can answer that question, we have to determine who The Lesbian Community is, and who speaks for It. The truth is that there is no single, monolithic Lesbian Community. At the very least, there are many different lesbian communities. Lesbian communities exist in many towns and cities. Even within a single town or city, there are often several lesbian communities. There might be communities of African-American lesbians, Euro-American lesbians, Asian-American lesbians, and Latina lesbians. Younger and older lesbians, lesbians who are politically active and lesbians who are closeted, working class, middle class, and upper class lesbians, temporarily able-bodied and physically challenged lesbians, softball players, lesbians in 12-step programs, and computer jocks might have separate communities of their own. Within our communities, each one of us experiences community differently, and many of us belong to more than one lesbian community. If you asked two of your lesbian friends to draw pictures of the lesbian community you share, they would probably draw pictures that were very different from each other and different from the picture you would draw. We are all individuals. We have different needs, and we have different ideas about what lesbian community should be and what it is.

The Lesbian Community as a monolithic entity does not exist. But even if we recognize It as a fiction, most of us probably have a concept of The Lesbian Community and an image of what this Community is like. Intellectually, we know that lesbians have a variety of different opinions and experiences, but we still find ourselves saying, “the lesbian community thinks . . .” or “the lesbian community is. . . .” Intellectually, we know that there is no Lesbian Goddess of Political Correctness, but we still find ourselves engaged in a struggle over the rules She has set down. Intellectually, we know that lesbians who live in different parts of the country or whose skins are different colors might have different experiences as lesbians, but many of us feel a kinship across these differences because we are all lesbians. None of us can know every lesbian personally, and yet when we travel to a city we have never visited before, we feel at home. The women at the Center and the women at the bar look familiar, and we know how to talk to them.

Where do our images of The Lesbian Community come from? For most of us, our actual experience of lesbian community consists of our experiences within our local lesbian communities, which might be more or less homogeneous with regard to race, age, and class. But we don’t need to have personal contact with other lesbians to know something about them. We read about them in lesbian and gay newsletters, newspapers, and magazines. The Lesbian and Gay Press tells us what lesbians in other places are doing and thinking, what is happening to them, and what their concerns are. This information has a profound effect on our images of The Lesbian Community, especially for those of us who live in rural areas or towns where there are few other lesbians and little local lesbian community. The Lesbian and Gay Press is our means of communication with each other.

The printed word also defines and creates reality. If an event is reported in lesbian and gay publications, then it is an important event and we can all find out about it. If it is not reported, then as far as The Lesbian Community is concerned, it might as well not have happened. If a lesbian publication runs an article about a particular issue, it sparks discussion among us. It might not have been more important than another issue that was not covered, but it soon becomes more important because it is the issue that “everyone is talking about.” Soon, because we have been talking about this issue, we form opinions about it. Then we discover that we have different opinions. Then we discover that it is an issue because we are disagreeing with each other. We might even think to ourselves that before we read about it in our favorite lesbian magazine, we did not realize what a controversial issue it was. The Lesbian and Gay Press does not merely inform us about our Lesbian Community, it also plays an important role in creating our image of that Community, and in creating the Community itself.

But The Lesbian and Gay Press is not a monolithic entity any more than The Lesbian Community is a monolithic entity. We have a variety of different publications, each produced by a different group of people who have their own visions of The Lesbian Community. Each publication reaches a different audience, and each gives its audience the vision of its producers. If you were a rural lesbian whose only access to knowledge was a subscription to The Advocate, what would your impression of The Lesbian Community’s attitude toward bisexuality be? Would you even think it was an issue at all? What if the nearest lesbian, ten miles away, subscribed to Lesbian Contradiction instead of The Advocate? How would her impression of The Lesbian Community’s attitude toward bisexuality differ from yours?

To find out how The Lesbian Community is represented in The Lesbian and Gay Press on the issue of bisexuality, I selected a variety of different lesbian and gay publications. Because I wanted to find out how The Lesbian Community is portrayed in publications that reach a large number of lesbians and that appear to speak for all lesbians rather than for particular locales or constituencies, I favored national magazines but included a few newspapers and newsletters with large circulations. I chose to concentrate my attention on The Advocate, Out/Look, 10 Percent, and Lesbian Contradiction.¹ But before we examine the ways in which each of these publications portrays The Lesbian Community’s opinions about bisexuality, we have to know something about the population each publication appears or claims to represent. Who reads each publication, and whose view of The Lesbian Community is portrayed by each publication?

THE PUBLICATIONS

The Advocate, Out/Look, 10 Percent, and Lesbian Contradiction claim national readerships. But each of these publications represents a particular segment of the lesbian and gay community and fulfills particular needs for its readers.

The cover of The Advocate proclaims the magazine to be “The National Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine.” “The” implies that The Advocate not only represents the gay and lesbian community, but that it is the only newsmagazine that does so. In short, it proclaims itself the quintessential representation of newsworthy happenings in the national gay and lesbian community. It is, in fact, a magazine with 58,000 paid subscribers², which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in October 1992. The word “Lesbian” is a recent addition to the cover of The Advocate, which said “The National Gay Newsmagazine” until September 1990. As a Gay Newsmagazine, The Advocate’s focus was primarily gay male. Since 1990, coverage of lesbian issues has increased, and by the end of 1993, the editorial staff was one-third female, up from one-fifth a year earlier. To a large extent, the magazine fulfills its promise to represent both gay men and lesbians by focusing on news stories that are of interest to both sexes because they pertain to lesbian and gay rights in heterosexual society, and by including cover and feature stories on prominent lesbians and lesbian issues. Nevertheless, gay men and gay male issues still receive greater coverage. In 1994, seventy percent of the regular columnists and contributing writers were male. The magazine has a slick, supermarket checkout stand look; it is printed in color on glossy paper with photos or artwork on every two-page spread and commercial advertisements covering one-third of the page space.

The banner on the cover of Out/Look described the magazine as a “National Lesbian & Gay Quarterly.” The first issue of the magazine was published in Spring 1988. In Spring 1992, Managing Editor Robin Stevens announced that the magazine was in financial trouble and needed contributions. In the following issue, Stevens announced that contributions had exceeded the amount necessary to bring the magazine back to financial health and that it was no longer in danger of folding. It was the last issue of Out/Look ever published. Out/Look focused on lesbian and gay male culture and ran cover and feature stories about political and cultural issues that arose within the lesbian and gay communities rather than news about our gains and losses vis-à-vis heterosexual society. The fact that Out/Look called itself a “Lesbian and Gay” magazine, whereas The Advocate calls itself a “Gay and Lesbian” magazine is symbolic; Out/Look achieved a greater balance in its coverage of lesbian and gay male topics. Gender balance had been a goal of the magazine since its inception, and this goal was reflected in the magazine’s editorial staff, which ranged from forty to sixty percent female.³ With a circulation of 17,000, Out/Look was not as glitzy as The Advocate. The front and back covers displayed color artwork, but the inside pages were printed in black and white on non-glossy paper and had far fewer commercial advertisements than The Advocate.

When Out/Look folded, subscribers received issues of the new magazine 10 Percent. The masthead of the first anniversary issue described the magazine as “The magazine of people, arts, and culture for lesbians and gay men.” The magazine is less narrowly focused on gayness than some other “lesbian and gay” magazines; although most articles concern specifically gay-related topics, others take gayness for granted as they focus primarily on topics of more “general” interest. For example, some articles in the “Environments” department would fit well in Homes magazine except for the respective genders of the people who own the gorgeous homes pictured in the large, full-color photographs. 10 Percent caters to the reader who can afford to take ski vacations⁴ and start small businesses.⁵ It provides some political information, but 10 Percent is most accurately described as overtly apolitical with a subtle leaning toward the conservative end of the gay spectrum. While other lesbian and gay magazines reported on the March on Washington, 10 Percent gave readers tips about which gay historical sites to visit after the March.⁶

Lesbian Contradiction boldly proclaims itself “A Journal of Irreverent Feminism.” The name says it all. Whereas 10 Percent avoids controversy, Lesbian Contradiction has rushed headlong toward controversy since the very first issue, dated Winter 1982/83. Whereas Out/Look attempted to balance representation of women and men, Lesbian Contradiction is exclusively for women. Whereas The Advocate represents the gay mainstream, Lesbian Contradiction takes lesbian feminism as thesis and antithesis. Lesbian Contradiction is a forum for the debate of the “issues” that are so plentiful in lesbian feminism. Published on newsprint four times a year, Lesbian Contradiction does not accept commercial advertising and reports 1,000 paying subscribers.

COVERAGE OF BISEXUALITY IN THE LESBIAN AND GAY PRESS

The treatment of bisexuality in The Lesbian and Gay Press in the 1980s and 1990s shows several patterns. The most dramatic pattern is a historical one. In the 1980s, the issue was constructed in terms of lesbians or gay men having heterosex. Not until the late 1980s or early 1990s did bisexuality per se emerge as an issue. Some lesbian and gay publications made this transition earlier than others. Publications also differed from each other in the degree to which they presented the issue as important or controversial. Some portrayed bisexuality as an issue with important implications for lesbian and gay politics in general, devoting a great deal of space to articles about bisexuality and subsequent letters from readers. Other publications gave bisexuality little more than passing mention or treated it as an uncontroversial news item. Finally, once bisexuality per se became an issue, different publications identified the source of controversy differently and gave voice to different interest groups.

With its long publishing history, The Advocate provides a rare opportunity to observe the construction of bisexuality as an issue through the 1980s and early 1990s. In the 1980s, The Advocate published articles bearing titles like “Gay Men, Lesbians and Sex” by Pat Califia (July, 1983), “Yes, I’m Still a Lesbian—Even Though I Love a Man” by Harriet Laine (July, 1986), and “Unresolved Harmonies: The Ups and Downs of Not Quite Coming Out” by Mark Chaim Evans (November, 1989). None of these authors felt that the term “bisexual” described their experiences, although the theme of each article was the fact that the author had sexual desire or actual sex with members of both sexes. Califia acknowledged the possibility that her behavior might appear bisexual to others and explained why she could not identify herself as bisexual. In the same article, she offered an analysis of the social construction of sexuality and identity politics that placed bisexual identity on a par with other sexual identities. Laine did not mention bisexuality once. On the contrary, Laine considered herself no less a lesbian because she was having sex with a man and would “like to think that the definition of lesbian is not so constrained” that it excludes sex with men. Likewise, Evans referred to bisexuality only once, commenting that “I find it hard to believe in bisexuality.”

The articles by Califia, Laine, and Evans represent the opinions of Califia, Laine, and Evans, but the letters to the editor that followed these articles represent the opinions of The Advocate’s readers. These letters indicate that, to the extent that The Advocate’s readers felt there was an issue at all in the 1980s, they accepted the authors’ construction of the issue as one of heterosex among lesbians and gays; none reconstructed the issue in terms of bisexuality.

For example, subsequent to Califia’s article, The Advocate printed one brief letter to the editor in which a male⁷ reader expressed his appreciation of Califia’s ability to “share bodies with other-gender partners without suffering identity crisis.”⁸ The letter did not use the term bisexual, but implicitly applauded Califia’s ability to resist such a classification. Three years later, Laine’s article generated a more lively response. Two male readers applauded Laine for her humanity and humanism and chastised those who would demand that she conform to narrow sexual scripts, and one female reader reproached Laine for presuming to call herself a lesbian and expending her energy on a man instead of using it to support womyn and the lesbian community⁹—exactly the attitude the male readers had condemned. None of these readers used the word “bisexual;” the male readers complimented Laine’s “humanity,” and the female reader informed Laine that she was “at least during the act, a heterosexual. Not a lesbian.” Evans’s article generated no controversy, possibly because as a man, Evans was not subject to lesbian identity rules and because, unlike Laine, he did not seek to defend his choices as informed and intentional. Instead, Evans invited readers to understand his story as an unfinished process of coming out, a familiar and politically unthreatening construction of his experience. Regardless of what accounts for the differences in the vigor of readers’ responses to these three articles, one thing is clear: the issue for all three authors and their readers was not bisexuality; the issue was people who identify as lesbian/gay having sex with members of the other sex.

But some of The Advocate’s readers were beginning to think about bisexuality as an issue and to communicate this view to the magazine. In 1985, two letters to the editor criticized the magazine’s previous year-in-review issue for missing opportunities to refer respectfully to bisexuality. One female reader asked why the word bisexual was put in quotation marks in a paragraph about Elton John and asked the magazine’s gay readers not to trivialize bisexuality.¹⁰ In a similar vein, a male reader pointed out that an article on Jacob Holdt referred to him as heterosexual and then quoted him talking about the experience of sex with a man. This reader challenged the magazine to tell the truth, which, in his opinion, is that Holdt must therefore be bisexual.¹¹ In 1989, Brian Miller wrote an article that bore a title similar to those published earlier in the decade, “Women Who Marry Gay Men.”¹² Two issues later, a letter from reader William Wedin, Executive Director of the Bisexual Information and Counseling Service in New York City, criticized Miller for failing to acknowledge bisexuality as an authentic orientation. Wedin explained why this particular criticism came in 1989 but no earlier by commenting that Miller’s “bi bashing” had come “at a time when bisexuals and their partners are just beginning to find a measure of self-respect.” Miller defended himself by pointing out that the men he had interviewed were self-identified as gay, not bisexual. But apparently Wedin was not ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Karla Jay
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Debate in the Lesbian Press: Introducing the Issues The Publications
• 2. “Experts’ “ Voices: Lesbianism, Bisexuality, and the Social Sciences
• 3. Behind the Scenes: How the Study Was Done and Who Participated in It
• 4. Lesbians’ Voices: What Do Lesbians Think about Bisexuality and Its Role in Sexual Politics?
• 5. Who Believes What? The Impact of Lesbians’ Personal Politics and Experiences on Their Attitudes toward Bisexuality
• 6. The Pink and Blue Herring: The Issue Is Lesbianism, Not Bisexuality
• 7. Bisexual Women’s Voices: What Do Bisexual Women Think about Bisexuality and the Role of Bisexuals in Sexual Politics?
• 8. Another Revolution on the Political Wheel: The Politicization of Bisexuality
• Appendix A: Figures
• Appendix B: Tables
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Author Index