What's in a Name? Bisexuality, Transnational Sexuality Studies and Western Colonial Legacies

Kinsey and the Politics of Bisexual Authenticity

“…This discursive turn resonates with a sense of imperialism because bisexuality is cast as a primitive vehicle through which gendered and sexual identities come to materialize in the "civilized" individual (Angelides, 2001, pp. 112-113;Hemmings, 2007). As a potentiality, bisexuality is easily precluded from Queer's embrace.…”

“…But while Queerdom has embraced transgenderism for example in recent times, the same cannot be said of bisexuality. Again this is the result of particular definitions of bisexuality being privileged and others elided (Angelides, 2001;Hemmings, 2007;Rodriguez Rust, 2000a).…”

“…Bisexuals are commonly considered a menace, whether as "vectors of disease," polluters of an imagined "pure" lesbian community, or as double-crossing double agents (Esterberg, 2007;Hemmings, 1993). In slightly more benign terms they are variously seen as confused, fence-sitting, amoral, promiscuous, hedonistic, self-deluding individuals who want to have their cake-iced with heterosexual privilege-and eat it too (Angelides, 2001;Eadie, 1993;Germon & Hird, 1999;Hemmings, 1995Hemmings, , 2007Weiss, 2003). Although the technologies used to manage disorderly sexualities differ in degree and in kind from those used to manage disorderly bodies, it is clear that each has the effect of banishing: casting bisexuals and the intersexed from the here and now.…”

“…The above quotation is typical of that oftheard refrain. The persistent refusal of bisexuality as a sexual identity can be read as an effect of institutionalized norms that function to reproduce homosexuality and heterosexuality as two mutually exclusive categories (Angelides, 2001;Hemmings, 2007). Such refusal is a prime example of the "epistemic violence" of the binary logic of identity that affords some things intelligibility while everything else is either marginal or meaningless (Angelides, 2001, p. 197).…”

“…People are rarely deemed "really bisexual" (Ault, 1996;Eadie, 1993;Esterberg, 2007;Hemmings, 1993Hemmings, , 2002. As a result, bisexuality becomes an abstract theoretical concept that does not, and cannot, exist in the here and now (Angelides, 2001;Esterberg, 2007;Hemmings, 1993Hemmings, , 1995Hemmings, , 2007Rust, 2000a). Cast out of the present, an abstracted bisexuality simply reinforces the supposed naturalness of monosexuality and its privileged categories.…”