Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics. Paula C Rust
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 the only reader who perceived the men in Miller’s article as unacknowledged bisexuals. In the next issue, a female reader offered her marriage to a bisexual man as an example that, contrary to the message given by Miller’s article, such marriages can work.
Pat Califia was the first regular contributor to The Advocate to identify bisexuality as an issue and focus an article on it. In November 1990, she published a letter in her “Advisor” column from a reader married to a bisexual man, and although bisexuality was not the central issue in the letter, Califia took the opportunity to assert that there is such a thing as bisexuality. She gently dismissed the narrow definition of a bisexual as someone who “is always equally attracted to men and women and has exactly equal numbers of male and female sex partners” in favor of a broader definition of bisexuals as “men and women who have strong sexual or romantic feelings about members of both genders, who are capable of having sex or relationships with either men or women.” 13
Thereafter, bisexuality per se made infrequent appearances in The Advocate. In June 1991, the magazine printed a one-page article written by bisexual activists Lani Kaahumanu and Loraine Hutchins entitled “Do bisexuals have a place in the gay movement?”14 Kaahumanu and Hutchins, who had just published the anthology Bi Any Other Name, argued that bisexuals had always been involved in the “gay rights movement.” They demanded the recognition of bisexual existence and the end of intolerance on the part of gays and lesbians in the movement. In July 1992, Lily Braindrop documented the growth of the bisexual movement and community and the push for explicit bisexual inclusion in the lesbian and gay movement, and challenged lesbian and gay attitudes about bisexuality in “Bi and Beyond.” The Advocate’s letters to the editor column gave no indication that readers noticed the striking contrast between these articles’ intentionally political approach to bisexuality and the approach that marked the 1980s, nor that readers had much of a reaction to the articles at all.
Meanwhile, The Advocate continued to publish articles about people who had sex with both sexes that referred tangentially if at all to bisexuality. For example, in 1990, Sandra Bernhard discussed her relationship with a straight man; the word “bisexual” did not appear in the article.15 In 1992, Chunovic quoted Dack Rambo as saying, “I think a lot of people don’t believe in a thing called bisexuality,” implying that he believes that it exists but he doesn’t apply that term—or any term—to himself.16 In the next issue, Nona Hendryx’s interviewer used the word “bisexual,” and Hendryx did not reject the word but said, “I try to think of myself as asexual.”17 None of these articles gave any hint that bisexuality per se might be an issue in the lesbian and gay community, an impression that was reinforced by the lack of letters to the editor about these articles in subsequent issues of The Advocate.18
In the Lesbian and Gay Community represented by The Advocate, bisexuality is only one issue among many, and it is not a particularly controversial one at that. The issue of bisexuality did not supplant the issue of lesbians and gays having heterosex; instead, it simply joined an ongoing lesbian and gay discourse that was otherwise left unchanged. To the extent that bisexuality is an issue at all in The Advocate, the issue is whether bisexuals should be included in the lesbian and gay movement, and the weight of public opinion is in favor of inclusion. Lesbian feminists who object to bisexuality on political grounds are rarely heard from and marginalized as narrow-minded political extremists, whereas bisexuals themselves are applauded for their humanism and liberated thinking.
In contrast, Out/Look presented bisexuality as a controversial issue with important implications for lesbian and gay discourse. During its brief life, Out/Look published two articles relevant to the issue of bisexuality. In 1990, the cover announced an article by Jan Clausen entitled “My Interesting Condition” with the caption “When Lesbians Fall for Men” and a drawing of Cupid aiming an arrow into the breast of a woman wearing double women’s symbol and “DYKE” buttons.19 In Spring 1992, the cover of Out/Look asked “What do bisexuals want?” The headline graced a drawing of a woman in a short tight skirt holding the arm of a man and looking over her shoulder at a butch lesbian. She looked startled, and the thought bubble above her head was filled with exclamation points and question marks.
Similar to the approach used by 1980s Advocate articles, the issue in the autobiographical article “My Interesting Condition” was a lesbian-identified woman who became involved with a man, not bisexuality. But unlike the authors of The Advocate articles, Clausen dealt directly with the question of bisexuality. She explained that she did not identify as bisexual because she was reluctant to become invested in a new identity and because she did “not know what ‘bisexual’ desire would be, since my desire is always for a specifically sexed and gendered individual.” Clausen characterized lesbian feminism as a way of life that is “very hard on women,” and asked lesbian feminists to be more gentle with each other by relaxing their demands that the personal conform to narrow political prescripts.
Clausen’s article was like a footstep in a minefield. The Spring issue included four letters from readers about Clausen’s article. Two thanked Clausen for the article, one threatened to cancel her subscription to Out/Look, and the fourth blasted Clausen for claiming to be a lesbian.20 All four letters were from women. But this was not the end of the furor. Reader response increased with the next issue of Out/Look, which included no less than seven letters: four applauding, three condemning. The four positive letters were from a bisexual activist woman, two men, and an anonymous reader, whereas the three negative letters were from two women and an anonymous reader.21 The debate continued through the next two issues. In Fall 1990 and Winter 1991—a full year after the publication of the Clausen article—two female readers defended Clausen against the critical letters published the previous Spring and Summer.
The flurry of letters following Clausen’s article clearly presented bisexuality as a controversial issue, particularly among women. But what was the issue, as reflected in these letters? On the positive side, Clausen was applauded for encouraging the acceptance of difference within the lesbian community, for speaking on behalf of those who feel alienated from the lesbian community because of their attractions to or relationships with men, for her courage in bucking the lesbian feminist paradigm, for her intelligence and freedom, and for writing honestly about a very human situation. On the negative side, she was criticized for writing about the wonders of heterosexual fucking in a magazine whose readers were looking for affirmation of their lesbianism and gayness, for using patriarchal arguments to attempt to excuse her “failures as a woman-identified-woman,” for not having realized yet that only another woman can offer her true freedom, and for reaping “the benefits of the heterosexual world while homosexual women continue to struggle for legal and social advancement.” She