Angelides described this book as talking about something like “the history of instances of bisexuality” rather than bisexuality as a concept (his aim), and now that I’ve read it, I understand what he means. Each chapter takes on a different theme relating to bisexuals, bisexuality, and discourse around it, and examines different examples of that theme and how they function in their respective times/places.
For example, some subjects include bisexual celebrities, bisexual vampires, bisexual bohemians, different sexologists’ takes on bisexuality, bisexuality in movies, jealousy, love triangles, and threesomes. This book was a little slow going for me because I didn’t want to skim! Even the sections on stuff I already know about (like the discussion of Portrait of a Marriage, which I read a few months ago), I wanted to read them!
Things I Marked
p.21 - Susie Bright, an example of someone self-identifying as a “bisexual lesbian” (people on Twitter argue about whether or not this is a valid thing, so I want to refer back to this 30-year old example next time I see it come up). This is also on p.58- bi-dyke, bi-lesbian, lesbian-identified bisexual, bi-affectional, lesbian, and formally-lesbian bisexual. Also “hasbians” (but this is negative and not a self-identity)
p.22- things “being read bisexually” — people criticized a Calvin Klein campaign because it was making men uncomfortable by making them attracted to the models, and they blamed the company for making an upsetting ad
p.25 - description of man taken for bisexual (noting this so I can later compare it to modern ways people write themselves/read others as bisexual)
p.28 - themes- nonmonogamy/inability to commit, maturity/immaturity, trendiness, hetero/passing privilege
p.30 - list of kinds of bisexuality- Defense Bisexuality, Latin Bisexuality, Ritual Bisexuality, Married Bisexuality, Secondary Homosexuality, True Bisexuality, Experimental Bisexuality, Technical Bisexuality
p.45 - premise of “L.U.G.” - lesbian until graduation
p.57- note about bisexuals and puns (I can’t believe this was already a thing in the 90s hahaha)
p.67- student responses to “Would coming out as bisexual be easy or hard?”
p.81- some discussion around a Gay Pride March taking “bisexual” out of the march’s name, which had been added the year before. One woman asked “Why can’t you just be gay for a day?”
p.84- a political argument for dismissing bisexuals as victims of the patriarchy/betrayers
p.88- June Jordan comparing being bisexual to being biracial
p.93-99- discussion of AIDS as one big factor in stigma against bi men and of lesbian stigma against bisexual women (they touch sperm and so might infect them), and vampires as metaphor for bisexuals as deadly AIDS spreaders
p.105- list of some ways bisexual behavior is described as anything but that. “invisibility is produced as a startling by-product of omnipresence”
p.252- suggestion that “we have made virtually no progress since [1948] in understanding bisexuality’s place in sexual and cultural life”
p.253-254- some data from the Kinsey report
p.323— on “rewriting, encoding, and editing the ‘classics’ in order that they should tell an orderly tale, which is to say, most often a tale with a heterosexual ending”
p.323- idea that a book can have a bisexual plot without having a bisexual character
p.327- “the three of us can’t live together”
p.342- having a crush on a teacher is transference, like a therapist, and a crush can be a crush without being a “crush” (i.e., you can be drawn to a teacher via transference without actually wanting to be romantically or sexually involved with them)
p.390- how in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, it’s framed as Brick must be either straight or gay, there is some lie happening, he cannot possibly both love his wife and his best friend
Things To Look Up
The International Directory of Bisexual Groups
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers- Lillian Faderman