Bisexual Politics Research Articles

Preserving the Footprints of Transgender Activism: The Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria

People who would today be known as trans* have always been present in lesbian and gay social communities and political activism. However, their presence and contributions have not always been fully acknowledged or appreciated. This may be because lesbian and gay social justice movements have been largely based on shared collective identities, most often framed as inborn. Furthermore, because lesbian and gay identities have been most easily understood in terms of conventional understandings of people as men and women, the recognition of trans*, queer, genderqueer, and bisexual people can destabilize the categories of lesbian and gay. Thus, there has been some tension over how to integrate trans*, queer, and bisexual politics into gay and lesbian political movements. As activist organizations have wrestled with these questions, so, too, have those who have sought to record and preserve the history of their work and struggles. Similar boundary issues have daunted attempts to define homosexuality since the concept of homosexual identity was first developed at the turn of the last century. Early sexologists propagated the idea that homosexuality was epitomized by females who wanted to be men, and by males who wanted to be women. For example, a 1920 article in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, which described the transformation of Lucille Hart into Dr. Alan Hart, was titled Homosexuality and Its Treatment. Likewise, Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 book about a female who yearned to be a man, The Well of Loneliness, almost single-handedly

Love, Rage and the Occupation: Bisexual Politics in Israel/Palestine

This text narrates the writer's story as a bisexual activist and, through it, also the story of the bisexual movement in Israel so far. In addition, the text endeavors to highlight the strands of militarism, violence and racism in Israeli culture, with a focus on the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Palestinian people. This is meant to achieve two things: first, to deconstruct the false separation between the two fields of ‘LGBT rights’ and antiwar activism; and second, to promote the principles of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, encouraging solidarity with the Palestinian people and nonviolent struggle against the Israeli occupation.

With Reps Like These: Bisexuality and Celebrity Status

The increase in chatter about bisexuality in Western, predominantly American popular culture might at first appear to be a promising development for the future of bisexual politics. Unfortunately, the actions of the celebrities who spurred discussion by openly admitting to being bisexuals ultimately reinforce stereotypes commonly associated with bisexuals. Furthermore, these stereotypes are deliberately promoted by media and news outlets that report en masse the actions and follies of these celebrities. A possible approach for bisexuals to counteract this widespread conflation is to then use these celebrities as foil for differentiating between “brands” of bisexuality.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Building Boxes and Policing Boundaries: (De)Constructing Intersexuality, Transgender and Bisexuality

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Building Boxes and Policing Boundaries: (De)Constructing Intersexuality, Transgender and Bisexuality

Look both ways: bisexual politics

Look both ways: bisexual politics

Resisting the binary: Discourses of identity and diversity in bisexual politics 1988–1996

In this article, post-structural discourse analysis is used to examine discourses of identity in the political literature of the UK bisexual movement during the period 1988-1996. Two competing discursive strategies are identified, both of which draw on academic discourses of essentialism and constructionism to articulate resistance to dominant binary categories of sexuality. The first of these strategies seeks to establish bisexuality as essential and authentic, dismissing homosexuality and heterosexuality as socially constructed. The second presents bisexuality as unifying and liberating, compared to divisive and restrictive binary categories.

Bisexuality

This reading list brings together a wide range of nonfiction books, journal articles, book chapters, theses, and dissertations that will be helpful to readers with an interest in the theoretical, research, clinical and community perspectives that have developed on bisexuality in the last twenty years. During this time, the illness model of homosexuality has been replaced by a more affirmative approach to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, and questioning people, and the dichotomous model of sexual orientation has been replaced by a multidimensional approach to sexual orientation that has supported the recognition of bisexuality as a valid and distinct sexual orientation and identity. The work cited here represents the efforts of those researchers, clinicians, academicians, and community activists whose contributions to the literature offer a more comprehensive understanding of bisexuality and bisexual people. References are included in the following areas: multidimensional approaches to sexual orientation: bisexual identity, attractions and behavior; bisexual relationships and families; bisexuality and polyamory; bisexual youth and elders, bisexuality and transgender people; bisexuality and ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity; bisexuality and HIV/AIDS; affirmative mental health services for bisexual people; bisexuality and feminism; bisexuality and spirituality; bisexuality and queer theory; prejudice, discrimination, heterosexism, and biphobia; and bisexual politics and community.

Equality at Last? Homosexuality, Heterosexuality and the Age of Consent in the United Kingdom

The so-called ‘gay age of consent’ was the most high-profile issue in UK lesbian, gay and bisexual politics during the 1990s. Campaigning for an equal age of consent provoked a series of extended public and parliamentary debates, concluding with the passage of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act (2000).This article analyses these debates to reveal emerging social relationships between heterosexuality and homosexuality. It is argued that age of consent debates witnessed the ascendance of a new ‘hegemony’ supporting ‘equality at 16’, constituted through the interweaving of knowledge-claims generated within the mainstream epistemologies of biomedicine, law, criminology and child welfare.The analysis integrates critical sociological perspectives on these various forms of knowledge, with reference to epistemological transformations occurring in late modernity. Particular attention focuses on claims concerning the age at which the fixity of sexual identities is established. It is argued that the debate’s structure enabled ‘equality at 16’ to be endorsed alongside the persistent operation of rationales of containment in the political mainstream, and hence that legal equality does not imply recognition of the equal value of homosexuality and heterosexuality. The implications are examined for ongoing struggles over sex offences, Section 28, and the social status of same-sex sexualities.

The Empirical Study of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Politics: Assessing the First Wave of Research

The Empirical Study of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Politics: Assessing the First Wave of Research

Bisexual politics

Abstract In this article, I shall examine the ideas and practices of the bisexual movement that has developed in the Western world in the last decade. I shall offer a lesbian feminist critique. Bisexual theorists and activists have formulated critiques of lesbian feminism at their conferences and in anthologies of their writings. Lesbian feminists have been described as “gender fascists,” as monosexists, and as biphobic for their failure to embrace bisexuals in theory or in person, but little has been published from a lesbian feminist perspective on these developments. I argue that bisexual politics, rather than forming a superior form of feminism, tends toward a belief in the naturalness of desire, a revaluing of the heterosexual imperative that women should love men, and an undermining of the power and resistance involved in the lesbian feminist decision to choose for women and not men.

“The Many Faces of Bisexuality”: The 4th International Bisexual Symposium

The importance of “diversity” to bisexual politics is discussed. Given the constituency of bisexual communities, the notion of diversity includes not only those social markers of difference, but also the different ways in which bisexuality is experienced and expressed. An encapsulation of the 4th International Bisexual Symposium (IBIS) suggests how, and to what extent, the diversity among bisexuals is addressed.

Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries & Visions. Edited by Naomi Tucker with Liz Highleyman and Rebecca Kaplan. New York: Haworth, 1995; 358 pp

Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries & Visions. Edited by Naomi Tucker with Liz Highleyman and Rebecca Kaplan. New York: Haworth, 1995; 358 pp