Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics. Paula C Rust
of 1993, bisexuals marched in the National March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Rights and Liberation; and in June of 1994, the Third International Conference Celebrating Bisexuality was held in New York City. Lesbian and gay organizations at colleges and universities are changing their names to include the word Bisexual. Newly established newsletters provide a forum for political bisexual voices, and books by and for bisexuals, including Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out and Closer to Home: Bisexuality & Feminism, have begun to appear.
This movement is still in the initial stages of building an ideological and organizational foundation. It will remain invisible to the general heterosexual population for quite some time, but the rumblings are already heard within the political lesbian community. As these rumblings grow louder, the debate over bisexuality in the lesbian community intensifies. The question of whether the lesbian movement is approaching a “crisis” is a matter of semantics that is best left to propagandists. Of much greater interest is the question of why bisexuality is such a focal point of attention among lesbians. What are the issues raised by bisexuality, and why are these issues of concern to lesbians? What does the lesbian debate over bisexuality reveal about the political and cultural ideology of lesbianism and the structure of the lesbian movement?
In order to understand the issues, it is necessary to listen to lesbian voices. Some of these voices are found in the newsletters and magazines produced by the lesbian movement, whereas others are not. The former are more likely to be the voices of politically active lesbians with extreme views and time to spend writing political statements. Are these voices representative of lesbians in general, or are they merely the voices of the few vocal lesbians who have opinions and the resources to express them? Can the rank-and-file lesbian who conceals her identity for fear of losing her child and her job be bothered about the issue of bisexuality, and if so, does she share the opinions that are expressed in the newsletter that arrives at her post office box in a plain brown envelope?
It is also useful to listen to the voices of social scientists, not as “experts” but as social commentators whose opinions and analyses carry the weight of authority. These voices are of particular consequence because they are considered the voices of reason, objectivity, and truth. As such, they define the neutral position from which other positions will be judged as partisan, self-interested, or uninformed. Social scientists are, however, as much products of their social environment as the people they study. Their opinions serve as a particular kind of mirror for social issues, a mirror that dissects and detects but that ultimately reflects light produced by other sources.
You, the reader of this book, will hear these voices through another voice. That voice is mine. Throughout the book, I defer whenever possible to the original voices of the women who wrote articles in the lesbian press and the women who participated in my study. However, short of publishing in raw form the approximately 15,000 pages of questionnaire responses and interview transcripts that form the basis of this study, I cannot help but superimpose my voice on theirs. Simply by choosing which quotes to include and then by organizing this material, I place my stamp upon it. You should, therefore, know who I am.
I am a white, able-bodied, lesbian-identified feminist sociologist. Allow me to elaborate. Lesbian feminist culture has been my “home” culture since I attended my first Daughters of Bilitis meeting in 1977 at the age of 18. That doesn’t mean that I consider lesbian feminism above criticism or that I agree with everything that has ever been said in the name of lesbian feminism. On the contrary, because it is my culture I claim the moral right and obligation to criticize it as an outsider cannot. I was out and politically active as a lesbian in both college and graduate school. Now, as an associate professor, I am out to those who care to know as well as many who don’t, but my political energy has been diverted toward the task of managing my career. I console myself by thinking that simply being out as a lesbian professor is a political act.
I have been studying lesbian cultures and communities since 1982, when I interviewed about two dozen lesbians ranging in age from their teens to their seventies. I talked to these women about several issues, and bisexuality was one of them. In the mid 1980s, I decided to do something I thought I would never do again—I became involved with a man for the first time in several years. I continued to identify as a lesbian, a fact that was known to all parties involved and eventually led to the end of the relationship a few months later. In the meantime, however, I became more deeply aware of my own attitudes toward bisexuality as well as the attitudes of the great monolithic Lesbian Community—you know, the one that sets the standards for political correctness and the one that nobody I know will admit belonging to.
That experience helped shape my next research project, which was a study of lesbian and bisexual women’s attitudes toward, among other things, bisexuality. Over four hundred women took part in the study, which forms the basis of this book and is described in greater detail in chapter 3. As a result of this work I became fascinated by the concept of bisexuality. It would appear that I have done so at an opportune moment in history, because the beginning and growth of the bisexual movement is causing bisexuality to become a politically hot topic. By the same token, however, I have become interested in bisexuality at a very sensitive historical moment as well.
When I announce to my friends that I am studying bisexuality, I receive a variety of reactions, including expressions of all of the attitudes that I describe in this book. I am frequently asked “Are you bisexual?” or, more pointedly, “You’re not bisexual, are you?” This is a very difficult question to answer. First, since I no longer conceptualize sexuality as essential, I don’t see myself “as” anything. Second, the question of whether I am bisexual (or whether anyone else is) depends on how one defines bisexuality. Each definition makes internal sense; pick one and I’ll answer the question. Finally, the answer depends on which of my many selves is being asked the question. My political self? My sexual self? My emotional self? My sociologist self? By the time I finish explaining why I find it difficult to answer the question, my inquirer has usually answered the question to her own satisfaction as you, the reader, also may have done by now. As I said above, I am a white, able-bodied, lesbian-identified feminist sociologist.
Having introduced myself, I will lay down my personal pen (or computer keyboard, as it were) and pick up my (ahem) objective social scientist’s pen. This pen usually writes in the third person, as if I were not a lesbian myself and as if I did not share and sympathize with the feelings of the women who participated in my study, and it occasionally transforms inanimate objects and abstract ideas into the subjects of sentences, but it writes with my accent.
The first chapter looks at the debate on bisexuality as it appears in lesbian newsletters and magazines. What issues are raised and what opinions are expressed in this forum? Who is speaking and who is listening? How is the issue of bisexuality constructed by those who are speaking and for those who are listening? Chapter 2 examines the recent writings of social scientists on the subjects of sexuality, lesbianism, and bisexuality. What have researchers discovered about lesbians and the lesbian community? What have they discovered about bisexuals? How do social scientists conceptualize sexuality, and where do lesbianism and bisexuality fit into these models of sexuality?
Chapter 3 introduces the study of lesbian and bisexual women that forms the basis of most of the book. It describes the methods used and the sample obtained. The uninterested reader can easily skip this chapter, or read only the segment entitled “The Women Who Responded” for a description of the race, class, age, sexual, and other demographic characteristics of the women who took part in the study. Chapter 4 describes the attitudes of self-identified lesbian respondents toward sexuality in general and bisexuality in particular. Are the issues raised by these women similar to those raised in the lesbian press? How do these women feel about the issues? How do they think about sexuality, what does bisexuality mean to them, and how do they feel about bisexual women? Chapter 5 looks at whether lesbians of different races, ages, and so forth have different opinions about bisexuality, and whether or not lesbians’ opinions depend