Dimensional sexuality: exploring new frameworks for bisexual desires

Abstract

Drawing upon post-structuralist theories of how knowledge frameworks make possible the recognition of another, this article introduces dimensional sexuality as a new framework for the recognition and understanding of bisexual and other non-normative sexual desires. It discusses how the framework of heterosexuality and homosexuality erases bisexuality from view and argues that it is possible to reconfigure such binary frameworks in order to expand the domains of the knowable and to make bisexual lives more recognizable in Western knowledge production. The article presents the principles that underlie dimensional sexuality and demonstrates how the framework renders sexual multiplicity visible along several dimensional axes. It argues that a more complex recognition and understanding of multisexual lives may necessitate a corresponding epistemic shift from sexual “knowing” that is singular, oppositional, exclusive, and static to that which is multiple, indeterminate, relational, and temporal. Dimensional sexuality offers a means of facilitating this shift by providing useful theoretical and methodological tools to aid social science research and humanities scholarship.