Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics. Paula C Rust

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