This book is a book version of an issue of the Journal of Bisexuality that came out concurrently in 2002. As seems typical for this journal, the authors are mostly in the social sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology, counseling), while others are community activists not affiliated with universities or in women’s and gender studies. There is one contributor from an English department.
Reading this book was frustrating for two reasons, neither of which are the book’s fault. First, as I felt when reading Vice Versa, it seems like not much has changed in the last 20 years since this book came out. Most of the well-cited books about bisexuality came out in the 90s (or, in the case of this one, shortly after the 90s), and most of the issues and debates they discuss are still happening now. The main difference I see between then and now is now, since 2008, pansexuality has taken off as a similar identity, so people argue about the differences between the two terms. The second frustration was entirely personal— it made me have a miniature crisis about whether I ought to just be in the social sciences, and the difficulties of interdisciplinary interests and work.
One chapter/article, by Laura-Zoe Humphreys, is what I would call a counterstory, written as a dialogue (one of the examples of counterstory genres that Martinez explores). Another, by Carol Queen, is a memoir about the author’s experience pretending to be a lesbian to fit into the community when she was really bisexual. So, this book unexpectedly crossed over with all 3 of my reading lists!
Quotes/Passages/Ideas I Marked
p.4- that bisexual women activism grew directly out of lesbian-feminism, as a reaction against sexism and biphobia within that movement
p.11- standpoint theory (citations included), idea that “individuals located outside of dominant ways of being and knowing are often best able to reveal unacknowledged assumptions operating within such regimes”
p.18- discussion of how “the continuum narrative” (idea that almost everyone is bisexual, and very few people are totally gay or totally straight) does elide important differences between self-identified bisexuals and people who are “technically bisexual in thought or action but identify as gay or straight,” but it also “enlarges and normalizes” the bisexual category while relegating heterosexuality to “just as weird and abnormal as homosexuality” (in terms of % of the population)
p.29- note about method and interview schedule/script, refer back to this later. 22 participants. notes about recruitment tactics and use of snowball sampling
p.41- participants in this study almost all agree that prejudice from lesbians is worse than prejudice from straight people, but they still try to organize with lesbian communities politically and socially
p.76- this article is a literature review of research on bisexual women adolescents, and they identify 4 primary methodological barriers to research in this area- 1) tendency to label all bisexual girls as gay, 2) viewing bisexuality as a transitional phase, 3) “the continued theoretical dominance of the tripartite categorization gay, lesbian, and bisexual despite the rapidly changing social milieu of sexual minority youth” and 4) the marginalization of queer theory. Later in the chapter, they clarify that #3 is mainly about how lots of young people are beginning to identify as queer instead.
p.81- same article as above, this page talks about some of the problems with using self-identification as the single measurement of bisexuality. I understand the limits of this measurement, but I feel like it’s equally scientifically irresponsible to say “well even though you say you’re straight, you have fantasies sometimes so you’re REALLY bisexual.” Since the question of “why do people identify as X when their behavior might make an outsider think they are Y” is interesting and important!
p.111- couple epigraphs about how sexual identity is not just about sex and romance, it comes with cultures too
p.113- talking about cyborg theory, Harroway says cyborgs are post-gender and post-sexual dualisms, and thus have no ideological origins in Western culture, but author of this piece argues that cyborgs and bisexuals (as legible identity categories) are only possible because of the original binaries put in place.
p.115 “It’s useful to be queer when you want to suspend certainty to pose interesting questions, but when you want to relate to others, it may become strategically necessary to act as though your desires consistently match up with a recognized identity label (1997,p.97)
p.116- question of how to “perform bisexuality” or “become bisexual” in the Butlerian sense. Author gives some examples of how she tries to do it but how those tactics also always fail
p.123- examples of words people use “to avoid the b word,” examples of biphobic things lesbians have said to the author and her research participants
p.125- “The freedom to be bisexual can make alternatives to compulsory heterosexuality less the avant garde phenomenon or radical choice and more something which the average woman (person) feels comfortable taking for granted” (Elliot, p.327)
Sources I’ve Marked
p.12- “active interviewing strategy” (Holstein & Gubrium, 1997)
p. 30- “thematic decomposition analysis” (Stenner 1993, Woollett, Marshall, and Stenner, 1998) My understanding is that thematic analysis looks at what topics are discussed, and discourse analysis (in the sense used here, which I think is different from how it’s used in other fields?) means engagement in broader “discourses” (social norms/trends/webs)