Is Slate's Take on Bisexuality a Useless Fiction? Yes.

Slate has been on a bit of a bisexuality kick, riding on the coat tails of a ridiculous New York Times piece.  One of the Slate pieces featured a writer acknowledging his bisexuality, vice the gay identity he's been using since he prefers to date men, but isn't physically repulsed by women.  

The real gem is Slate's insultingly titled, "Is Bisexuality A Useful Fiction?".  The question asked by the title is conveniently answered in the article's URL:  www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/03/21/the_bisexual_movement_makes_bisexuality_seem_like_a_useful_fiction.html.  

With that auspicious start, the writer, Mark Joseph Stern, goes on to explain that the bisexuality as an identity has problems, but ultimately it comes down to the fact that there is no bisexual culture as bisexuality is only defined by sexual interaction, unlike the gay community, that has Nathan Lane and Bravo TV.  

Stern ends the piece by flipping the script and informing us that, while sans culture and lacking identity beyond sex, it's the fault of the bisexual movement for failing to come up with a platform.  So if the "bisexual movement" had a platform, such as Free Silver and ending grain tariffs, it could win his approval and maybe get a first round draft pick for sassy spokesperson.  

The entire tone and message of the piece can be summed up with this sentence from the last graf: "If bi activists continue to define bisexuality as nothing more than a more imaginative set of erotic and romantic urges, they'll further forestall the development of a mature bi culture - giving us no more than the completely sex-oriented definition we started out with."  Biphobic, slut-shaming, and ignorant.  

Only two weeks before, Stern wrote a column criticizing an article in a Christian magazine for denying gay identity and reducing to being a matter of the sexual act.  Yes, it's ugly to reduce homosexuality to sodomy.  It's just as shitty to reduce bisexuality to weekend sodomy.

The writer is blessed to be of an age where the gay rights movement was already formed and active by the time he became aware of it.  There was a time, not so long ago, when it was politically powerless and with few achievements to call upon.  He needs to spend the time reading the histories of the movements and the people involved so that maybe he can one day see it as more than a crass marketing exercise.  The effort was put in before he got there and made its way without his help.  In the mean time, he really needs to shut the fuck up about bisexuality.

More Savage Assholery on Bisexuality

We've chronicled extensively former advice-columnist-turned-one-man-media-machine Dan Savage's assholery, particularly on the subject of bisexuality (see tags). Or rather male bisexuality, since Dan generally doesn't seem to have an issue with the bi ladies, aside from their general flakiness and habit for breaking the heart of lesbians.


Dan's former issue with bisexual men could be generally summed up as: they don't exist.  They are either gay and in denial, as he was when he briefly identified as bi (and how shocking that a self-absorbed jerk like Dan would take the tiny realm of his personal experience and project it onto something as complex and varied as male sexual orientation) or they're basically straight, because bi men end up in relationships with women.


He's whistling a slightly different tune now, blissfully unaware that this new technology known as "the Internet" has recorded years of him denying the existence of bisexual men, but he's now insisting that the problems bisexual men face aren't entrenched societal homophobia and biphobia but their own cowardice because bi men just won't come out.


Now he's probably right in that it's likely that the majority of bisexual people are likely to marry or have long-lasting relationships with opposite-sex partners.  Part of it just a numbers game.  There are vastly more people interested in the opposite-sex than the same.  There's also the trope that bi people are only into same-sex people for casual flings, but want to settle down in a more traditional manner.  It's a bit of a stereotype, but it does seem that to many bisexual people are sexually attracted to the same sex but not particularly interested in more.   That doesn't mean they're "not really bi" or that "bi people don't exist" - it just means that bisexuality/pansexuality is really an umbrella term that covers a huge range of sexual and romantic orientation styles.  And the fact that we live in a virulently homophobic society with huge social pressures to conform, well, it's not surprising that if you are romantically and sexually attracted to the opposite sex that your life might end up taking the path of least resistance.  This doesn't make a bisexual identity invalid.


And I think with that I might be hitting on one of the main issues I see in gay resistance to, or disdain of bisexuals.  In this lovely little piece, Dan claims he never said bi men don't exist (he just implied it over and for years and years) he opines that bisexual men need to stop whining and come out of the closet already.  I agree about the closet.  All it takes is a little life experience (or a brief glance at the Craigslist M4M section) to realize that clearly a decent chunk of the straight-identified male populace has significant bisexual desire.  But man, it's fucking irritating for Dan Savage, of all people, to be wagging his finger at the craven bisexual men for not coming out yet, when it was exactly attitudes like the ones he's espoused for years that make the option of coming out for bisexual men not a particularly attractive one.


I mean, what does a bisexual guy stand to gain from coming out?  The vast majority of women - even bisexual women - don't want to date a bi guy, the fear being that he's actually gay and in denial.  A viewpoint that Dan still proudly champions, by the way.  According to the bi men I've talked to, gay men aren't too thrilled to date them either, because it's assumed the bi guy is just lookin' for some cock and will end up breaking their heart for a woman.  Well, at least there's the well-established, supportive community for bisexual men...wait.  Nope.  If your friends or family are homophobic, well, you're not "less queer" in their eyes because you like pussy, but there's a decent chance you're seen that way by plenty of your gay brothers.


Now as Dan rightfully points out, if coming out was easy no one - gay, lesbian, or bi - would be in the closet. Yet he totally misses the fact that in addition to serious risks and repercussions, coming out as gay or lesbian does provide a couple of worthwhile benefits - a dating pool and a chance at the kind of relationship you want being a pretty big one! - that is a lot harder to access in the closet.  Bisexual men actually lose the majority of their potential partners when coming out specifically as bi (as opposed to identifying as gay for the sake of dating men, or letting yourself be assumed hetero when dating women).  


This is not to say at all that bisexual men are more oppressed than gay men, or that gay men are capable of oppressing bisexual men by not wanting to date them or not giving them a big ol' "Welcome to the queer club!" hug when they come out.  Gay people, if they want to be partnered and live a "normal" life with a picture of the spouse on the cubicle desk have to come out to achieve that.  Bisexual people don't, necessarily (although let's not forget the largely invisible population of bisexuals in same-sex partnerships that everyone assumes are gay).  So to people like Dan, bisexual men don't have it as tough as gay men do.  And it's true that many bisexual people do possess what people in the sociology world refer to as "passing privilege" or what the social justice set calls "invisibility".  But it's both a perk and a curse.  Sure, you're far less likely to be beat up by a homophobe when you've got a wedding ring and a picture of your wife in your wallet.  That is a powerful privilege that some bisexual people possess.  


But there's a downside: lack of community, isolation, no support network, the feeling that you're projecting a lie - even if you're out - because unless you're walking around with a bi pride button on, opposite-sex-partnered bisexuals will be assumed to be straight.  Opposite-sex-partnered bisexuals do not get to out themselves by placing aforementioned picture of partner on cubicle desk, or walking hand-in-hand with their partner down the street.  They generally will have to specifically raise the issue, because they are assumed straight.  Or maybe Dan just thinks they should wear the buttons?  Maybe a cloth badge of some sort.  After all, they "owe it" to themselves, as Dan suggests, to awkwardly bring up their sexual orientation when no one has asked the question.  Imagine those water cooler discussions:


"What did you do this weekend, Bob?"
"You know, the usual.  Watched the game, went on a hike with the wife.  And just so you know, Jen's great, but I happen to be bisexual."
"...." 


Obviously there are times when a bisexual person can out themselves in a more relevant manner, such as when a co-worker makes a homophobic remark or what have you. But generally, outing yourself as a bi person in a opposite-sex relationship does not function in the same way it would if you were gay.  


Dan also lives in some crazy bizzaro world - perhaps a function of his advanced age, since he was a teenager in the '70s and I'm told male bisexuality was "cool" then - where gay men identify as bi "because it makes them feel superior and/or more masculine".  To be fair, I'm not a gay man, so maybe some gay men do think bisexual guys are more butch, i'm skeptical, but willing to entertain the notion.  I can tell you in the straight world, bisexual guy = gay guy, but creepier, and certainly not more masculine.  A lot of straights who have no problem with gay dudes have a visceral disgust and hatred of bi guys, because they're the insidious, treacherous disease spreaders, and their orientation makes no sense. It's so common for a sort of liberal-ish straight dude proclaim their sympathy for gay men, with the understanding, "Well bro, I mean, I love pussy, but I was born straight.  If I was born gay then I'd like cock as much as I like pussy now, so gay, yeah, I totally get it."  Bi men don't fit into this picture, because what kind of sick fuck would go for cock when he totally likes pussy, too?  Even as our society becomes more accepting of homosexality - as long as you're just born that way - attitudes about sexual flexibility remain retrograde and threatening.  Unless you're a chick, because that's hot.


So bi guys - geez, why won't you just come out already?* 


On a related personal note, my brother visited me this summer.  After too many beers, he came out to me as bisexual.  And this is one of the many reasons my hatred for Savage on this issue is not just snark.  My bro is an introverted, slightly awkward 25 year-old who hasn't exactly had a lot of relationship experience with any gender.  He trends towards the gayer side of the Kinsey scale. He knows I'm queerish.  He knows my husband is a bisexual man.  And yet it still took him this long to come out to me, someone he knew would be supportive.  He said he has no intention of coming out to anyone but his closest friends because all he hears from the straight and gay world alike is hostility towards people like him.  Good job, Dan.  Making life easier for queer youth, all the time.  I'd love to have him look my brother in the eye and tell him how he's making things better for him.


*I do think that bisexual men should come out when it is safe for them to do so.  I just think Dan saying it is a real dick move.

The Low-Down Dirty Truth

ColorLines reports on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researcher Greg Millet's White House statement on Black men and HIV transmission.  Turns out that according to the data, the myth about Black men "on the down-low" (i.e. men who identify as straight but have sex with men secretly) spreading HIV to Black women is largely untrue.  Black bisexual men are more likely to have protected sex with male and female partners and less likely to test positive for HIV, which explodes the myth of bisexual men as disease vectors.  Also interesting is the finding that most gay and bisexual Black men identify as gay or bisexual and are not closeted as the cultural myth seems to suggest.

There's a lot going on here in the intersection of race and sexual identity, of course largely filtered through White social constructs of Black masculinity (and white fear of Black masculinity). White people "hear" that Black people are homophobic without learning anything about Black GLTBQ culture, and the myth of the down-low as a widespread phenomenon in the media further stigmatizes queer Black men as disease carriers and Black culture as homophobic.  The findings of these studies are important, so kudos for ColorLines for its great reporting on this issue.

Weekly Savaging: Goodbye, Dan

Dear Dan Savage,

It would not be hyperbole to say that you are one of the most influential figures I've had in my life.  I discovered you as a teenager, when I'd snag copies of SF Weekly paper on excursions to the glamorous, gay city from the Central Valley cow town where I grew up.  I'd immediately flip to the back of the paper to find your advice column, nestled between escort ads.  Hilarious and scandalous, yet practical and strangely heartfelt, your writing deeply affected my understanding of my own sexuality and how I approached relationships.

I became more of a fangirl as I entered my 20's.  Testament to this is that I own a copy of every book you've written, including one signed by you at reading you gave in the Haight (I was that stammering girl with her gay friend who embarrassed you by going on a bit too long about how awesome you are - I'm sure you remember me clearly).  I still recommend "The Kid" to anyone who will listen.  You were my Gay Best Friend when I was stuck in conservative small towns and flyover states.  Plus, I had an not-entirely platonic crush on you.

During the years, as I've become more politically aware, being a fan of yours has cause some problems.  Quite a few people in the circles I run in, both online and off, have a problem with you.  The first complaint I heard was that you're a misogynist.  This was easily brushed aside for me - sure, you might have compared female genitalia to a canned ham being dropped from a tall building, but so what?  You're a gay man, and your vulvaphobia wasn't a problem for me, particularly since you were also so quick to call out straight boys on theirs, as well as to tell them that they don't deserve to be in sexual relationships if they weren't willing to give women the orgasms they deserve.  To me, the benefit you did as an advocate of female sexual pleasure far outweighed some crass humor. 

But the problems didn't stop there.  Your take on fat people has consistently been simplistic, hurtful, and unnecessary.  Comparing people with race-based sexual preferences to preferring one hair color over another ignores ingrained societal racism.  After Prop. 8 passed here in California, you had a horrible blog post blaming Black Californians for the end of gay marriage in California, while whining that Obama couldn't have been elected if not for gay people, which conveniently erased the existence of Black queer people.   And as anyone who has paid attention to you, like, ever knows, you have consistently said fucked-up shit about bisexual men and women, as well as about trans people.

For starters, you're one of the biggest advocates of the obnoxious "female sexuality is fluid (so male sexuality must not be)" meme, which helps negate womens' queer identities in one sense (we're not really ever straight or queer, just "fluid") and completely makes bisexual men invisible, which isn't surprising because you basically don't really believe they exist.  You've also stated that there are no male-to-female transgendered people who ever perceived themselves as gay men, and make jokes about how every butch lesbian will eventually transition to male, both of which display a ginormous lack of understanding about trans experiences.  Oh, and is this an appropriate time to bring up your pro-war stance in Iraq?  No?  Too bad.

But to top all this shit off, you go and pull shit like this, in which you make a "joke" claiming a bigoted cis male politician is actually a female-to-male transsexual.  Then you get an employee of yours to publish a ridiculous defense of a blatantly transphobic act (and not mention, bafflingly unfunny "joke") which is almost as stupid as the original offending post.

I'm sorry, but this whole, "It's funny to say that bigoted figures are really what they hate," is an old, boring, and pointless meme.  Yes, some homophobic politicians have in fact been outed as queer (unlike you, I hesitate to assume that men who have sex with men but have been married to women are automatically gay).  Most homophobic politicians are still just plain ol' bigoted straight folks, and frankly, I care less about their orientation than I do about the actual harm they are doing to GTLBQ people. Then you take that one step further and make a running joke about Rob McKenna being a trans man - presumably, because you think he "looks" like one.  Setting aside the problematic idea that trans men look a certain way, he doesn't even fit the stereotype of what trans guys are supposed to look like!  What he does have is delicate facial features, so I guess that makes him "feminized" in your eyes - so he must be a trans man, i.e. not a REAL man, right, Dan?  I see no other way of interpreting this. 

But now, you're claiming can't be transphobic because you've raised money for trans causes.  Is that kind of like how fundamentalist Christian Zionists must not be anti-Semitic because they support Israel (as far as it relates to their own ends)?  And unable to resist pouring salt on a gaping wound, Queerty (don't read the comments - never read the comments) reports you saying this in your "defense":


"I am not biphobic or transphobic. One my best friends is trans. People accuse me of being biphobic when all I am doing is articulating that a lot of bisexuality has certain issues and problems. Many people did identify as bisexual when they were coming out and it was a lie. That is just true. It is not crazy when you meet a bi person to wonder if they are really bi. It isn't disrespectful. It is rational. Many bi people end up in an opposite-sex relationship so they are not in the same boat with us as gays and lesbians. … I joke about trans stuff. We are not allowed to say tranny anymore. There's the T word and the F word, there is every letter of the alphabet word. … I still use the word "faggot" all the time in my column. Every time that I am on chat shows on cable I make a point of using fag in reference to myself because I don't think it is a dirty word. I don't think we should be stupid about it."

While your wit is well-known, you've never been accused of a being a particularly deep thinker, Dan, as this quote makes clear.  Are you really so self-focused that you cannot conceive of how it's a little bit different for you, as a gay man, to reclaim "faggot" than it is for as a cis person to insist that "tranny" is OK?  Would you really be comfortable being called a "faggot" by someone you know to be an anti-gay bigot?  If words didn't have power, you wouldn't have tried to reclaim and de-legitimize "faggot" as a slur, and you do not get to decide what is or is not a slur for groups you are not a part of.  I mean seriously, sit the fuck down and think on this a while.  Do white people get to use racial slurs if they "have *insert ethnicity here* friends?"  And are you seriously not aware of how incredibly fucking stupid it is to use "I have *insert whatever here* friends as an excuse for any sort of bullshit?

As far as your biphobia goes, for fuck's sake dude, this isn't 1992.  Male bisexual chic has fallen far since the time you were coming out, whereas hey, guess what?  Being a gay dude has become far more accepted.  While yes, every single gay man on earth has a story about a guy who used to call himself bi and is now gay, this idea that men are actively taking on the stigma of male bisexuality in droves as a temporary measure to avoid the stigma of male homosexuality is kind of ludicrous.

And while it's true, based on the simple numbers game, that most bisexual people will "find themselves in an opposite-sex relationship" - what you mean here, obviously, is "will settle down with an opposite sex person."  What you did here is basically declaring a bisexual identity not relevant to queer politics because of a bisexual person's relationships.  An out bisexual person, Dan, can still be on the receiving end of homophobia simply by virtue of being honest about who they are, regardless of who they're dating.  They can still lose their jobs, custody of their kids, or get kicked out of the military.  I know it seems scary, but I promise you that acknowledging that bisexual people face oppression similar to what gays and lesbians face does not actually reduce your claim to the oppression you suffer as a gay man.  This isn't a zero sum game.

Here's the thing.  Unlike, it seems sometimes, a lot of rhetoric that gets thrown around in anti-oppression circles, I get that in the real world, most of us are not generally interacting amongst people who say, know what "cisgender" means or is terribly invested in radical queer critique or anti-racist analysis.  And especially for someone who came of age in a much different gay culture that a lot of this talk you deride as "alphabet soup" and such can seem like politically-correct  women's-study-majors buzzkill bullshit.  And if you were just some random gay guy who had some less-than-cool opinions about what words you are supposed to say or what you think about bisexuals, I wouldn't give a shit.

But you're not some anonymous, increasingly irrelevant negative queen with no power.You're a public figure.  Not just any public figure, but one of the U.S.'s most famous advice columnists.  The "Savage Lovecast" is one of the top 10 most popular podcasts on the entire Internet.  Like it or not - and I suspect you rather like it- you are in a position of authority, particularly to queer youth, but also for straights and how they perceive queerness.  For fuck's sake, Dan, you are Stephen Colbert's "Spokesgay"!  You are a representative for sex, liberty, and gayness to the rest of this fucked-up country. So you have a real responsibility as someone who claims to care about young freaks everywhere  to not be a huge fucking dick about people you don't like or understand.  Because it affects people.

It would be great if you bothered to educate yourself and learn why your views on appropriate language and transgendered people and bisexual people are ignorant and wrong.  Or if you can't be bothered to do that, to at least learn to shut the fuck up about your bigotry in the public sphere. But we both know that isn't going to happen.  So you can continue to increasingly sound like a throwback to some regretful primeval era of gay politics, the "glory days" before you had to worry about the "T" or the "B", because we're breaking up.  It's been a long time coming, but I'm fresh out of excuses for you, and you're embarrassing us all.

Biphobia: Real and Relevant

"...For homo and hetero define themselves as opposites, however social science instruments like the Kinsey scale and the Klein grid keep demonstrating that purity is a cultural artifact.  And identity politics as well as science has an interest in keeping them opposite.  To add "bisexuality" as a third category here is not in fact to refine the terms of analysis but instead to expose the radical limitations of rights-based arguments when linked to a concept of fixed identity." - Marjorie Garber, "Bisexuality: The Eroticism of Everyday Life"

There was a recent discussion in a friend's blog in which a lot of people understandably lambasted bisexual activist Kyle Schickner's "report" (I use this term loosely) about the lack of bi visibility at the 2010 GLAAAD awards in Los Angeles.  The article, in addition to being poorly written, had some problems, notably his description of trans folk as having "leapfrogged from the bottom rung of the queer community past bisexuals by developing a community and iconic celebrities."  The mainstream LGTBQ movement is at best dismissive of, and at worst, actively hostile and transphobic to trans people, and to set up this false dichotomy of trans versus bi (ignoring the many bi people who are trans).  This can best be described as playing the "oppression olympics," and unfortunately colored what otherwise was a very fair point: that bi visibility has been significantly reduced since the 1990s, and that this is due to many factors, the most significant of which is a lack of a cohesive, political bisexual community within the LGTBQ movement. 

But as the comments over Schickner's piece raged on, it became clear that many people who are queer or queer allies were incredibly dismissive over whether biphobia even exists, or whether bi activism is necessary or valid.  The reasoning being that if one is visibly bisexual then the only  oppression one experiences is homophobia And if one is not visibly bisexual (the assumption being that someone in a "heterosexual" pairing cannot be visibly bisexual, which is problematic in and of itself) then that person receives straight privilege, thus invalidating the concept of biphobia.

The argument goes that gay and lesbians, being part of an oppressed group, cannot have any institutional power over a privileged group - bisexuals being assumed to generally fall into the latter.  And yet when you have examples like a self-described LGTBQ sports organization actively discriminating against bi people for "not being gay enough," it makes me wonder if the traditional model of privilege becomes too simplistic when talking about issues within queer communities.  It seems that this is an area where a model based on intersectionality would be a more functional way of analyzing these issues as opposed to a black and white view of "real queer people" (i.e. queer people who are not partnered to other-sex people) versus bi people, seen as people who automatically benefit from an uncomplicated straight privilege due to the assumption that they are or will end up in opposite-sex partnerships and have no other visible markers of queerness.

Part of the problem is that I think most of us, within queer and queer ally spaces, do buy into a particular stereotype of the "typical bisexual" - a cisgendered young white woman who is partnered to a man, and either had some sexual interactions with women when she was single, or occasionally has threesomes with her man and another woman.  I admit, one of the reasons I am still wary of describing myself as bisexual despite knowing, intrinsically, that my sexual desires are very queer, is because I fit into that stereotype.  I know I have experienced very little homophobia in my life (although it would be incorrect to say I haven't experienced any) and don't anticipate facing much in the future, so taking on an oppressed identity felt like appropriating.  But how bizarre is it to define an orientation by the amount of oppression one faces as opposed to who you are?  The underlying sentiment that I see behind the stereotype of the typical bi person and the reaction to Schickner's piece is that bi people are sexual tourists, privileged people who get to flirt with a queer identity in an appropriative fashion who always have the ability to retreat into straight privilege.

This way of viewing bi identity is typical of the main issue bi people face that is actually separate from homophobia: invisibility.  Bi people who are non-gender conforming, who date primarily same-sex partners or are in a same-sex relationship often do not get read as bi at all.  So their existence as bisexuals is invalidated and shoved into the tent of "real queerness" and we're left with the most privileged bi people as the unofficial representatives for everything bi.

I recognize the problems with drawing comparisons between different kinds of oppressions and I will attempt to resist doing that here.  But "passing" is a word that is used in various communities to define how much a person is able, intentionally or unintentionally, to "hide" a socially undesirable identity from mainstream culture.  In most discussions about "passing" (and I acknowledge the word is inherently problematic for multiple reasons) the idea is that any privilege one receives from passing is a double-edged sword.  Someone can pass as something they are not and receive privileges for it, but that doesn't negate their core identity and forces them into a constant cycle of having to chose whether to continually out themselves or not.  The very stress that has to go along with having to constantly make that choice, day in and day out, is largely ignored in the context of most discussions I see about bisexuality.

This factors in with the current accepted narrative that claims that homosexuality is inherently an inborn trait, as is straightness.  What would follow from conclusion, which is simplistic but may be based in some degree of fact, is that bisexuality is similarly an inborn trait, but it isn't treated as such.  It often seems to me that the notion behind a biological root of homosexuality is the idea that no one would choose gayness if they were able to.  Bisexuals fuck up that narrative by having the ability to "choose" to live either a gay or straight lifestyle yet by the very act of acknowledging themselves as bisexual they refute and refuse the binary.  This is obviously threatening, primarily to straight people who don't want to confront the issue of sexual behavior as a choice, but also to the modern mainstream gay rights movement which depends on the idea that gay people really just can't help it - they're born that way.

How does this relate to biphobia?  One of the main reactions to someone coming out as bisexual is a "yawn" or "why does this matter?"  Those reactions are telling.  Because bis have the ability to choose, their queerness is invalided, both by straights, and yes, sometimes by gay people as well.  It's a "yawn," as in, "Why would you tell me this?  Your sexual behavior doesn't concern me.  You're really straight and looking for attention."  Or it's "Why does this matter?  What you do with your sex life is of no concern to me."  While gay people get these reactions as well, from what I've seen it's more pronounced with regards to bi folk, because their sexual orientation is conflated with their sex lives.  There was a time when gayness was reduced to same-sex acts, but mainstream gay rights organizations have gone a very good job of presenting gay people as a"just like straights" - married, picked fences, and so on.  And this works, because if we "heteroize" gay behavior to be "Just like straight people, - biological, inborn, but with the same sex instead of the opposite sex," then it's less threatening to straight people as they don't have to really question their own potential queerness.  This has been defined as "homonormativity" by Lisa Duggan.  From Wikipedia:

"According to Penny Griffin, Politics and International Relations lecturer at the University of New South Wales, homonormativity upholds neoliberalism rather than critiquing monogamy, procreation, and binary gender roles as heterosexist and racist.^[30] Duggan asserts that homonormativity fragments LGBTQ communities into hierarchies of worthiness. LGBTQ people that come the closest to mimicking heteronormative standards of gender identity are deemed most worthy of receiving rights. LGBTQ individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy (transsexuals, transvestites, intersex, bisexuals, non-gender identified) are seen as an impediment to this elite class of homonormative individuals receiving their rights.^[31] "

You'd think it would be a big "duh" to say that defining a queer person primarily through how they have sex is horrible, but this is the common way that bi people are spoken of on mainstream gay blogs and communities, even though this is exactly the same line of thinking that has dehumanized and sexualized gay people within straight society.  Bisexual behavior is far to often treated as a kink, or a sideline sexual interest, as opposed to being part of someone's identity.  Mainstream gay rights organizations may have been somewhat successful in desexualizing gays, but this has never happened for bis, and won't be able to happen until we move past the simplistic narrative of being "born gay" or "born straight."  The inherent radicalness of bisexuality forces everyone to confront the full spectrum of human sexuality, and for that reason it's threatening.  Bisexuality, as something that is not just a biological imperative but an active choice, resexualizes the narrative of queerness. 

As I've said before, I am not anti-identity politics.  It has been an incredibly valuable way to inspire individual and community pride, as well as an essential organizing tool for achieving tangible political gain.  But when speaking in a holistic sense about "sexual orientation" or "sexual identity" identity politics does not provide the tools to speak about someone's full experience.  A cisgendered bisexual person in a heterosexual relationship may often pass as straight, and in that sense they absolutely have privilege over many other queer people.  Yet that passing is fraught.  Bisexual people are constantly judged on the basis of their sexual and relational choices, not just by a homophobic straight society, but by the queer community that demands they prove their queerness as the price of admission.  Bisexuals are the "other" in both worlds.  Straights wonder why bisexual people would choose to be out as bisexual, when they could easily pass - as in, "Why are you wasting the straight privilege you could have?"  It seems like no one cares how bis actually experience privilege.  Tomorrowshorizion wrote about this experience on Feministing: "My experience is that being initially granted straight privilege often just makes the backlash more vehement than if we'd just be read as queer in the first place. We're not just seen as weirdos, but also as traitors once they figure it out."
 
Meanwhile, there is real emotional pain and frustration associated with the difficulty of not being accepted in the queer community while being rejected by the straight world that is ignored in the larger discussion about privilege and power.

I'm not saying we shouldn't call out bis in queer spaces when they engage in homophobia or act in privileged ways.  Of course we should, and bis, particularly those of us who benefit from striaght privilege, have a responsibility to own that and know when our voices are oppressive to other queer people.  That said, the way I see things framed in current discussions about privilege ignores the complexities of bi identity and lives. Identity politics have been very helpful, but what happens when it bumps up against individualism and shitty Internet behavior?  We get a narcissistic version of the oppression olympics in which the less privilege you have, the more you "win" - win at what, I haven't quite figured out yet.  It seems obvious that oppression isn't a zero sum game, but in many queer and feminist spaces online and in the real world, it's certainly treated as such.  Thus someone is who is bi and out becomes a target, because being bisexual, they are admitting to having access to straight privilege, and thus their experience of queerness is made irrelevant.  If that's not biphobia, what is?

More Biphobia News!

This has not been a good week for the bis.  Gregg Kravtiz is a young bi man in Philadelphia who is challenging incumbent Babette Josephs in a primary race for a state legislature seat.  It's not every day you see out bi people running for any kind of office, but apparently Kravtiz's sexual identity hadn't been an issue in the campaign for the 182nd district until his opponent made it one.

Josephs, who is straight but considered to be a strong supporter of LGBT rights and enjoys the endorsement of the mainstream gay organizations in her district, was caught on audiotape at a fundraiser claiming that Kravitz was actually straight, and was lying about his sexuality to get votes.

"I outed him as a straight person," Josephs said on the recording..."and now he goes around telling people, quote, 'I swing both ways.' That's quite a respectful way to talk about sexuality. This guy's a gem."

“There will be cheating if he can get away with it, because he already has tried to lie to people about a whole bunch of stuff, including his sexuality."

 Oh, those treacherous, traitorous, slippery bis!  How did Josephs know he's straight?  Apparently he has been dating a woman since January.  So once again, a bi person's identity is judged only by who they are currently sleeping with, and nothing else.


Kravtiz sent the audiotape to local newspaper The Philadelphia Inquirer.  Of Joseph's comments, he said, “That’s completely inappropriate.  The way in which my opponent mocked me is very damaging to members of the LGBT community questioning whether to come out. It sends the message that you are subjecting yourself to ridicule, even from allies.”

While the straightwashing of Kravtiz is infuriating, the response by some publications reporting on the story are downright annoying.

"We've hit a new high point when candidates are accused of pretending to be gay to win a seat," said Mark Segal, publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News and a pioneering civil rights advocate. "I've been doing this for 40 years, and I never have heard of this kind of charge in any race in the nation," he said. "I take that as flattery. It shows how far we've come."

It may be a new high point for gay and lesbian identity politics, but having gay leaders refer to Kravitz' identity being policed as "flattery" or even "humorous" is a low point for biphobia.  Other publications reporting on the story have managed to out their own ignorance, with headlines like: "PA Congressional Candidate Outed For Pretending to be Gay," and LGTB blog Qweerty closing the story with more musings about how great this inappropriate and offensive treatment of Kravitz is for "the movement":

"It would be most interesting if Kravitz were actually straight, and using a bi identity to pull in votes. But what a statement about acceptance of LGBTs that, by itself, would be making."

What a statement Qweerty is making in refusing to accept Kravtiz's identity at face value.  Comments on all articles are as predictable as they were with the Gay Softball League discrimination story, with claims that bisexuality doesn't exist, that Kravtiz is the person who made sexuality an issue here, and that it's just too "convenient" that he is currently dating a woman.   All this in a week where longtime bi activist Kyle Schniker, complaining about lack of bi visibility in an (poorly written, trans-othering) article he wrote about the recent GLADD awards, was met with hostile comments by other queers about how "bisexuality is a useless identity," and "biphobia does not exist."

Clearly, the suspended players of D2 and Kravtiz might be hard-pressed to agree at this time.

Calling Two Strikes On Gay Sports Organization

 For the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance, a softball league that defines itself as an "organization that promotes amateur sports competition, particularly softball, for all persons regardless of age, sexual orientation or preference, with special emphasis on the participation of members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community," one's on base percentage matters less than the side from which one bats. During the 2008 Gay Softball World Series in Seattle, WA, San Francisco-based team D2 had its eligibility challenged by another team. Subsequently, five members of the team were subjected to interrogation by the league and three of the five were found to not be gay enough to play ball. The men were asked intimate details about their sex lives in front of a panel of 25 people, most of whom were strangers.  Quoting from the National Center for Lesbian Right's press release:

"The players were forced to answer whether they were “predominantly attracted to men” or “predominantly attracted to women,” without the option of answering that they were attracted to both. After each player was interrogated, a panel voted on whether he was “gay” or “non-gay.” NAGAAA’s committee refused to entertain the idea that the players could be bisexual. In response to a player’s statement that he was attracted to both men and women, a NAGAAA member responded, “This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series.”

Ultimately, the predominantly-white committee voted that Charles, Russ, and Apilado, all men of color, were not gay. The committee voted multiple times on at least one player. The committee also declared that the other two players, both white—one of whom had given precisely the same answers as Russ—were gay. The committee recommended disciplinary measures against Apilado, Charles, and Russ their team, and the San Francisco Gay Softball League, including forcing their team, D2, to retroactively forfeit their second-place World Series win."

There are two major issues at the core of this fight. Policing bisexual identity is deeply problematic. Is being attracted to some men enough, or should we let a cadre of gay male sports fans dictate who is or is not bisexual enough to be in their company?  The way sexual identity in this case is reduced to "gay" and "not-gay" is a clear erasure of bisexuality.  Bisexuals/pansexuals/queers are not "not-gay" but are actively queer people deserving of a voice and presence in queer spaces.  In addition, there is the problem of racial typing in regard to sexuality.  This is obviously problematic with regards to how queer men (and people) of color are marginalized and made invisible for not conforming to the mainstream (i.e. white) notion of queerness.

Can this really be a serious stand as we enter the second decade of the 21^st century? That this occurred is troubling. That 25 adults sat in a room and participated in this tribunal is staggering.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights has taken this on as a legal case, but if you are still angry, feel free to e-mail each and every one of the board members to eloquently voice your disgust.

(This has been a tag-team post by the Girl and Boy)

My Problems With Pansexual

The term "pansexual" is cropping up more and more, both online and off.  I've gotten in some pretty heated discussions about the term.  For those unfamiliar, the idea behind pansexual is that it defines an identity in which a person has the capacity to be attracted to all genders, or any form of gender expression.  Hey, cool.  The problem is that when questioned about it, 9 times out of 10, it seems a pansexual-identified person will define it in opposition to bisexuality, and it goes a little something like this:

"Bisexual means you're only attracted to men or women, but pansexual means you're attracted to transgendered, genderqueer, androgynous, and intersex people."

Cliche record scratch time!

There are two glaring problems with this definition of pansexuality.  The first is that it "third-genders" or "other genders" all trans people, by defining them as not men or not women, but something else - a nebulous third category.  While there are plenty of people who identify as trans who also identify as genderqueer or outside a gender binary, there are also many, many trans people who find this other-gendering to be extremely invalidating and offensive.   I've been told I'm "reading this into" pansexuality but if you do a quick Google search on pansexual definitions, defining trans people as automatically outside "man" or "woman" comes up over and over and over again.  Not cool.

The other problem is that it incorrectly defines the attractions of people who consider themselves bisexual.  For a long time, and for many to this day, "bisexual" is a sort of catch-all term that encompasses anything inbetween "straight" or "gay". It was a term created in a time where notions of genderqueerness didn't really exist, nor did people spend a lot of time differentiating between the biological concept of "sex" versus the social idea of "gender."  However, the term stuck, and became useful as both a personal and political identity.

This does not mean that all or even most people who identify as "bisexual" are invested or only believe in a gender binary or that they are only attracted to cisgendered people, and it is actually pretty fucking offensive to suggest otherwise.  Most people would agree that an acceptable modern definition of "bisexual" means "attracted to more than one gender." 

"But 'bi' is in the title!  It must mean two!" 

That's just facile, overly-literal interpretation that serves little purpose.  For the most part, the definitions of "bisexual" and "pansexual" can and are the same.  Some people choose "bisexual" because it's the word the heard first, because it's more commonly accepted than "pansexual", because they feel it already has a political or social movement behind it.  Some people choose pansexual because they feel it's more inclusive, or it better describes them, or because they want to emphasize being especially attracted to people who fall outside a gender binary.  And that's all cool.  It's not cool to pit the terms against each other in an attempt to define other people's orientation.  I'd say the same applies to "omni" or "ambi" (both less common than pansexual, but both also used). 

Identity is complicated enough without drawing artificial boundaries around "bi" because you're stuck in a binary way of thinking yourself.  Identification markers serve as shorthand and aren't always going to be able to fully encompass the complexities of a person's attractions and behavior in a single word, so why try?  Aside from the terminology, as bi/pan/omni/flexible/whatever people we have bigger fish to fry - like the assholes who say we don't exist in the first place - to spend time shitting on people who are in the same boat you are.

Paquin Steps Out; Internet Responds

Anna Paquin outs herself as bisexual and people across Internet out themselves as assholes. She took part in an anti-hate PSA wherein she said that she is bisexual. According to people at the taping, they had no idea that she was going to say that. Todd Wright of Technorati wrote this:

"It defies credulity to suggest that such women are the object of discrimination. Based on an abundance of movies, sitcoms, men's magazines, women's magazines, teen magazine's, talk shows, websites, porn sites, and idle male conversation, civilizations from other galaxies have long since decided that such women rule our world."

That paragraph made me throw up in my mouth a bit. Yes, because being objectified in men's magazines, pornography and male bullshiting sessions means one cannot be the object of discrimination. So if Anna Paquin wanted to marry a woman, she can because she's wank material for readers of Maxim. Take that, Prop 8!

Wright goes on to say, "The danger here is not in discrimination but in the creation of an identity out of this now rather commonplace behavior. This is Paquin's ego telling her, 'I am not enough.' She's bisexual because she feels she's lacking."

Wow. Luckily, he didn't stop there. "This is true of all sexual identities: straight, gay, bi, transgender. We are not categories." So straight people are also straight identified because they're lacking. Now I'm at a loss.

The comments section of virtually every site featuring the news of Paquin's bisexuality are infuriating, but that's the Internet for you. What really stings is when people who should know better prove they can be bigoted assholes too.


Luckily, Todd Wright isn't the only asshat on the web this week. We also have long-time defender of the bisexuals, Dan Savage. In his blog for The Stranger, Dan said, "Paquin is engaged to be married to her "True Blood" co-star Stephen Moyer. Which pretty much proves that she's bisexual." This echoes his usual sentiments about bisexual people. He makes a biphobic comment, then gets angry e-mails, claims he doesn't have an issue with them, and the cycle repeats. He's consistent if not honest.

It's worth noting that Spike TV's celebrity blog was far less obnoxious. Go figure.

Just A Chat Post

 I've started to real blog entries but then got sidetracked talking to the BoyAboutOaktown instead.  So instead of a real post, you just get a tedious chat transcript.  Hopefully we'll get some more real content on here soon.  Enjoy my lack of punctuation and grammar!

me: i was reading these bi blogs linked to a bunch of articles from a few years ago about mcgreevy and such, and women in relationships with bi and/or gay men who are closeted. and these articles, they use bi and gay INTERCHANGABLY. it's not surprising but it's still so bizarre

it's just further proof that people see bi male as just a transitory identity on the way to full on gayness

although it was interesting that two of the blogs these bi men blogs linked to were men who had come out as bi in marrigaes and then ended up coming out as gay. it's so weird that it gets used that way

i think it has a lot to do with how we construct identity in general though.

these men behaved in what we'd term a bisexual manner for 20, 30 years in some cases

i'm not saying they can't adopt a gay identity now, but we conflate identity with orientation

if you have had a successful loving and sexual relationship with a woman for many years your orientation is probably not 100% homosexual as we think of it

 boyaboutoaktown:  True.  I think there's also a lot of pressure societally

 No, but a coming out is a coming out.  Now you're ghey.  Once you've tasted the peen.

 me:  plus there's nothing like a relationship gone sour to make you want to swear off the sex of the person you were with

 boyaboutoaktown:  Yeah, I can see the guys having an affair with some guy who's totally not their wives, and listens to their shit, and they think, "Hey, this is far better than my marriage.  I must be gay"

 me:  if your experience with women for the last 30 years was an experience with one woman that left you feeling trapped and resentful, i could see the appeal of  "YEP GAY NOW"

 boyaboutoaktown:  Wait, gays get lots of head from someone who worships my cock in the two hours each week we're together instead of reminding me about taking the kids to school.

me: plus if these marriages were sexually stiffling and these men are basically having like, a second adolesence sexually by fully embracing the sexuality thy've repressed for 30 years. it's easy to see again why that identity would be adopted. i just don't buy that these men were "secretly gay" all along. some of them maybe, but not all.

 boyaboutoaktown:  Of course I was gay, I was miserable with that woman for the last two decades.

me: i find it interesting that so many of these bi married guys end up in relationships with very sexually conservative women. did you notice that on shybiguys?

it seems to be a recurring theme. the freudian in me wonders if they were subconciously seeking out sexually conservative women to avoid having to confront their own sexual desires

 boyaboutoaktown:  Interesting.  I've never thought about it, but it does dovetail nicely with their own self-loathing. Why not get someone who resents that as much as you claim to.

 me:  yeah, idk, i may be pulling it out of my ass.

i mean there's the small subset of happily married bi men in open relationships with sexually liberal female partners who are usually bi themselves, but on the whole married bi guys seem to be in relationships in which the sex wasn't great to begin with

and quite a few of the closeted ones seem to be prone to cheating on their wives with men and women, too

 boyaboutoaktown:  I think you may be on to something.  Then again, quite a few of them describe relationships in which their partners were much more queer-friendly and then took a decidedly "no-homo" turn after kids et al

 me:  yeah that's true, a lot of women get more conservative re: sex post-marriage and kids

 boyaboutoaktown:  Does it say something that women who are more sexually liberal would go for a man who is so repressed about his identity?

 me:  quite possibly, maybe that they are attracted to an aspect of his queerness yet afraid to fully embrace that. after all what does that say about THEM. in my experience most women partnered with men, regardless of their liberalism or queer friendliness, tend to have a strong distaste for any non-gender-conforming behavior in their male partner, even while being attracted to aspects of it.

if your man has feminine traits, it's like it throws your femininity into question. and then there's the perennial fear of being a beard, which relates to percieved sexual undesirability

 boyaboutoaktown:  Though isn't there something gender-conforming, oddly, in wanting to see your man fuck and dominate another man?

 me:  i think so, a guy who is a top is still maintaining some degree of a masculine gender role

but then again, how many bi men in het relationships are tops? have we ever come across any?

 boyaboutoaktown:  Right.  He's dominating another man in the most extreme way possible

 me:  it seems like the majority of bi men in serious relationships with women are bottoms or maybe vers with a tend towards bottoming.  well we've talked before about how maybe so many 'straight-ish' bi men tend towards submission b/c in their heterosexual lives they are expected to be dominant by default.  men don't get to express submissive desires much because it's seen as feminine

 boyaboutoaktown:  True.  I think that comes up again and again on shy bi guys.

 me:  to the point where maybe some of these straight identified guys engaging in bi sex might really be more straight than bi, but just really submissive, and in our culture women dominanting men isn't taken seriously

because only a man can truly dominate, y'know?

 boyaboutoaktown:  These guys feel freed by the fantasy of being submissive. Hence much of the cock worship.  They want to be taken. Being submissive to a woman is verboten, but being sub to a man, well, you've already crossed the homo line.

 me:  i think it's deeper than that, like, a domme woman is almost a form of drag. it's not taken seriously, it's just a costume, almost a joke.  there isn't a real threat.

 boyaboutoaktown:  I think it is play acting to an extent

 me:  right, whereas when a man in dominant it can be play but there's an undercurrent of reality

 boyaboutoaktown:  But I think it's also about being able to express tenderness and vulnerability in a way that society frowns upon.

Cookware and Ambidexerity

First off, it didn't turn out to be a twink I spent the night with. The twink and self-described former fratboy stood me up. Instead I ended up with a guy, who while sweet and a good lay, spoke exactly like Wallace Shawn. Luckily, he didn't speak during sex. Otherwise, I couldn't have helped myself from blurting, “Anybody want a penis?”

Back to the point, as I assure you I have one. Bisexuality was gaining ground in the 1970s, 80s and 90s as a real identity. Somewhere along the line, people looked at the flawed label and pointed out that it really didn't encompass the spectrum of human desire, as if that failing was unique to the bisexual label. Thus we got self-described pansexuals, ambisexuals, pomosexuals, polysexuals, sapiosexuals, etc. The most often cited reason was that these people could love and date people who were transgendered, intersex, or in some way gender queer.

While I don't want to shit on inclusiveness, I find the reasoning to contain an element of exclusiveness and othering, in addition to a dose of third-gendering. Yes, the prefix bi does mean two. That's a language issue, not an issue residing with the people taking the label. When one says, “I'm pan because I'd sleep with/date/love a transgendered person, one is implying that other, non-pansexual people would never get involved. It's also making transfolk to be some weird other. Many transfolks identify as having a specific gender identity. If you're a person assigned male gender at birth and now live and thrive as a woman, then why should you feel flattered by having someone effectively say, “I could love you, not because I am attracted to women, but because I can see past what other people of your desired gender cannot”?

Finally, there's an element of terribly misplaced elitism in these labels. Lord knows, many bisexuals have been guilty of sitting on the “I see people, not genders” horse. That trope needs to be retired. So do labels such as sapiosexual. So you only screw the thinking? How deep you are. You'd pass on a hot piece of (non-gender specific) ass if the person doesn't share you're nuanced understanding of Heinlein's science fiction? Geek, please. Ambisexual is just as useless. It implies the same duality as bisexual, but also sounds like you can do your one-handed typing with either hand. And pansexual. Whenever I hear it, I think of my unhealthy obsession with Creuset cookware. It's also the most othering of the lot, if only by virtue of being the most popular.

As my old drill instructor used to say, “Suck it up, snowflake!”

And with that, I'm off to go watch a “My Dinner With Andre” and “Princess Bride” double feature.

Identity: What Is It Good For? Something, Maybe?

I guess it's fitting that I start this blog off with a navel-gazing look at identity - both my own, and the concept.  I'm not trying to write a thesis here (besides, others have done a far better job examining what, exactly, sexual orientation and gender identity entails than I ever could) but rather to provide a general introduction to who we are, why we decided to start this blog, and other useless nonsense.

In my previous life, when I played for the little leagues (i.e. LiveJournal, home primarily to angsty 17 year-olds and bored stay-at-home-moms taking a break from playing WoW) I frequently got into arguments about things that interested and mattered to me, regarding GLTBQ rights, feminism, polyamory, and identity.  The problem was that while doing so I identified myself as being a straight, cisgendered woman in a monogamous relationship with a guy.  What's the problem with that?  In a LiveJournal identity politics debate, plenty, but the main problem for me was that it wasn't entirely true.  But, lacking the vocabulary (or perhaps, the courage) to speak honestly about the very excruciatingly personal issues that lead me to self-identify as the tripple-whammy of straight, cisgendered, and monogamous in the rough-and-tumble world of a semi-notorious LiveJournal D-lister in which statements of sincerity are the fastest way to lose the game, that identity served its function for a time.

Let's break it down, then, with a serious commitment to honesty and pretending that anybody cares about my narcissism.  Straight?  In terms of who I've actually had sex with so far, absolutely.  If we're going to define orientation based on behavior.  Fact is, I used to identify as bisexual (and for a brief moment, pansexual, before I developed a distaste for the term) but gave it up, because I'd never gone past second base with a girl, and felt like I was one of the legion of young women appropriating a queer identity without ever having faced any sort of oppression as a result of my queerness.  I felt like I was claiming a label without having "done the time" as it were.  So despite my confused and complicated sexual yearnings, I made the decision about five years ago or so to just identify myself as straight.  After all, I was in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship that I intended to be in for the rest of my life, so since I didn't see any future opportunities to prove my queerness to myself or anyone else, I decided to take the political high road: I'd identify myself as a breeder, and take one for the team. None of that trendy bisexuality stuff for me, thanks!  I'd have to be satisfied with my attempts to be a queer uber-ally, because if I present as straight and normative, that's what I am, right?

What I didn't realize at the time was that I'd just basically put myself in some sort of weird, mixed-up identity-politics/radical theory closet out of guilt regarding my own privilege.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I suffered for my own mislabeling,far from it.  But I wasn't being entirely honest with others and in the long run, with myself, either.

This would be the point at which it would be appropriate, perhaps, to have my co-author and fiancé weigh in with his own clumsy paragraph about his identity.  Which he would, except he's out having what I can only imagine is incredibly amazing sex with some cute twink while I'm stuck at home with a terrible head cold, getting a nice buzz on from this mimosa.  Hey, vitamin C is very necessary when overcoming illness!  Anyway, I suspect that answers at least a couple basic questions regarding his identity and our current monogamous status.

Anyway, the point of this isn't to be all, "Blah blah I'm confused about what makes me hot despite being 30 and how pathetic is that, but validate me regardess," but just to give a context for how I personally relate to the identity issue, which overall I think is the most misunderstood and radically changing aspect of sexual politics today.

Outside of the magical Internet anti-kriyarchy blogowhatsnot most people automatically identify themselves as straight or heterosexual, when they bother to think of it, and the majority of everyone else identifies as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.  What we fail to realize is that the very notion of an identity based on sexual orientation is entirely a modern one, and how we identify ourselves and others with regards to orientation and gender has been in a constant state of flux ever since.  Pandora's box is wide open, as evidenced by a lot of the lesser-known orientations flying around as well: not just asexual, but say, panromantic asexual.  Sapiosexual. (Look that one up.  Please.) And so forth. 

Fine, so there's a lot of wacky terms to describe something complex like orientational identity, no need to stop the presses, right?  But the thing with identity is that once you start to think about it, you can't have a conversation about sexual politics without dozens of unsaid assumptions about what identity is and what it means coming into play.

In the conversation that lead to the start of this blog, my co-author and I were talking over tasty burgers and beer at Barney's on Piedmont.  He was raging on about the relatively new concept gaining significant pop culture momentum of women having inherently fluid sexual orientation, with the mostly unspoken corollary that men have inherently static sexual orientation, as exemplified in Lisa M. Diamond's "Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Desires."  In laymen's terms, women are inherently bisexual, and we shift throughout our lives through periods of being, whereas men are born straight, or gay, with little inbetween, save for those annoying bisexual men who persistently refuse to have their identity invalidated. 

Of course, one can't even start to have a basic conversation about whether or not womens' sexual orientation is fluid and mens' static without engaging with the very concept of what identity is and how it is defined.  Diamond seems to be, despite some claims to the contrary, an essentialist - a loaded term if there ever was one.  Essentalism refers to different things in different contexts, but with regards to sexual orientation, it does refer to the belief in some sort of inborn, inherent preference with regards to sex partners.  This is, essentially the mainstream view: people are "born" gay or straight.  We like to pretend this view is rooted in science, but it's far more political, borne out of anti-gay movements that claimed that gay identity was a chosen behavior, and thus could be stopped, usually through a liberal dash of Jesus and prayer.  The early LGTBQ (back then, just "gay") rights movement was based in a purely reactionary stance: if they say we can choose to be gay, we will say you can't! Sexual orientation is inherent.  We're born this way, so you have to accept us.  The problem is, in the real world, we all have anecdotal and perhaps even personal evidence that sexual identity, if not orientation, can be fluid.  Hence Diamond and her thesis.  Part of the problem, for Diamond, myself, and many people out there, I suspect, is conflating "orientation" with "identity" to begin with.

In his brilliant post "Respecting Sexual Identities" (linked twice now, it's that awesome), Pepomint writes:
"Identity functions as a kind of personal strategy. This is most obvious in the social arena, where a person considers their position and weighs how to describe themselves. Identities tend not to match perfectly, so expressing a sexual identity often is an exercise in compromises. For example, say a man only falls in love with men, but has good sex with women on occasion. Should he identify as gay, bisexual, or queer? If he identifies as queer, will everyone just assume he is gay? If he identifies as gay, will women assume he does not want to have sex with them? If he identifies as bisexual, will everyone assume that he is mostly straight but does men on the side occasionally?"

He goes on to talk about how identity is personal, political, and full of strategery.  So is it really surprising that something this complex could be ever-shifting?  At this point, I see identity politics primarily valuable as an organizational tool, and a way to frame a conversation.  In terms of describing what burns in a person's hearts, or loins for that matter, it tends to be woefully insufficient, regardless of how many new terms we make up.

Between mouthfuls of sweet potato fries and gulps of Sierra Nevada Ale, I suggested that because we have frustratingly common conversations like this on a daily basis that we do what any good egotistic Americans should and commit said thoughts and discussions to the public realm vis-a-vis this much-touted blogosphere.  Plus, I really just wanted to get away from LiveJournal.  So here we are.