Is bisexuality invisible? A review of sexualities scholarship 1970–2015

Abstract

This paper provides a review of sexualities scholarship within the social sciences between 1970 and 2015. It takes an innovative approach by focussing on the way in which bisexuality is addressed in this body of literature. The paper reveals the marginalisation, underrepresentation, and invisibility of bisexuality within and across the social sciences in relation to both bisexual experience and identity. Reasons for this varied across the different eras, including the heterosexist nature of the literature, the impact of gay and lesbian-focused identity politics, and queer deconstructionism. In addition, patterns of bisexual erasure and invisibility were uneven, with some scholarship taking inclusive approaches or criticising prejudice against bisexuality. The initial findings of the review were enriched by critical commentary from key relevant sociologists and political scientists. The paper concludes that future sexualities scholarship could be enhanced by greater consideration of bisexuality.

Learning from the Religious Experiences of Bi+ Trans People

“…Although there is no way to know right now, we wonder what studies of religion and nonreligion (and more broadly) might look like if they included systematic analyses of the entirety of sexual and gender populations. As emerging bi+ (Monro, Hines, and Osborne 2017) and trans (Schilt and Lagos 2017) inclusive scholarship in other fields suggests, the answers may be beyond anything we can effectively hypothesize at present. As such, here we have argued for and demonstrated the importance of expanding our existing methods, theories, and assumptions to explore what intersections of religion, nonreligion, gender, and sexualities might become with greater focus upon the bi+ and trans populations so far left out of our mostly cisgender and monosexual based understandings individuals and society.…”

“…Across the social sciences, emerging lines of research are directing attention to the experiences of and variations within bi+ (i.e., genital‐and/or‐gender‐non‐specific sexualities) and trans (i.e., people who do not conform to the sex/gender assigned to them by society) populations (e.g., Monro, Hines, and Osborne ; Schilt and Lagos ). While bi+ and trans (see Table for terms and definitions) populations have been part of society throughout recorded history (Eisner ; Stryker ), they have received much less methodological, theoretical, and empirical consideration than most other sexual and gender populations.…”

Queer geographies of spatial media

“…Kuper, Nussbaum, and Mustanski (2012) attributed "new" genderqueer and pansexual identities to expanding commercial content, what Maliepaard (2017) argues is revealing of a "faux bisexuality" among women which restricts bisexual expression to casual sex rather than community, love, or politics. This narrative fuels assumptions that men cannot be bisexual at a time when women are deemed "naturally" bisexual (George, 2011;Monro, Hines, & Osbourne, 2017). Siebler (2012) posits a similar obliteration of queer potentialities for diversely positioned trans people caused by an economy of beauty products, undergarments, and surgical options frequently found in digital spaces, contending that these can trap people "in the gender web, trying to create a body that matches a presumed authentically male/female and masculine/feminine" (p. 95).…”

Foreclosing Fluidity at the Intersection of Gender and Sexual Normativities

“…This is because gender fluid people are more likely to also be sexually fluid (Hemmings ), and because systematic patterns of hetero‐ and homonormativity rely heavily upon both cisnormative assumptions about the fixity of gender, and mononormative assumptions that desires are always informed by binary conceptions of others' gender as only man or woman (Yoshino ). Before lesbian/gay life became more normalized, bi+ people faced similar outcomes to gays and lesbians, but today, for example, sexually fluid people (throughout the bi+ and queer spectrums of identities [Eisner ]) currently lag far behind lesbian/gay people in health (Jeffries ), income and wealth (Badgett, Durso, and Schneebaum ), scientific and media representation (Monro, Hines, and Osborne ), social acceptance (Cragun and Sumerau ), and familial and relationship acceptance (Moss ). Further, sexually fluid people are more likely to experience violence and mental health issues (Worthen ) and less likely to be out of the closet (Scherrer, Kazyak, and Schmitz ).…”