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Excerpt from BI ANY OTHER NAME: BISEXUAL PEOPLE SPEAK OUT
Alyson Publications, 1991
co-edited by Loraine Hutchins & Lani Kaahumanu
Overview I.
"Bisexuals' lives provide new psychological and social understandings of sexuality and closeness, highlighting the mechanics of sexual decision-making as potentially self-determined action. Research is needed about all areas of the bisexual experience, including studies of common qualities of bisexuals, therapeutic case studies, and longitudinal studies of bisexuals' relationships. The bisexual experience calls into question traditional definitions of the nature of sexual identity development. Fluid, ambiguous, subversive, multifarious, bisexuality can no longer be denied."
-Rebecca Shuster
DEFINING BISEXUALITY
As Kate Millett once said, "Homosexuality was invented by a straight
world dealing with its own bisexuality." So it is not surprising that looking
up the word "bisexual" in the dictionary is like blinking into the distorted
mirror of Western society's ambivalence over sexuality.
The prefix, "bi" means two, or dual. Therefore the word "bisexual" is
used to refer to things involving both sexes. However this can mean an individual
who possesses physical organs of both sexes, or it can mean some event or
setting that involves both sexes at once. It can also refer to individuals
of either sex, who are attracted to both. It is this last meaning
that we use in this book. But our common frame of reference is loaded with
the combination of all of these definitions together and how they affect
our understanding of what is meant when one says "bisexual." Our ability
to discuss the subject clearly is limited by these multiple and contradictory
meanings. For instance, someone who possesses both male and female qualities,
either psychologically -- as in being "androgynous", and/or physically --
as in being an hermaphrodite, is not necessarily attracted to both male
and female people, themselves. To further complicate matters, the definitions
of androgynous, bisexual, hermaphrodite and homosexual all overlap in many
dictionaries and reference books. For instance, the first definition of bisexual
in Webster's Collegiate Dictionary is "hermaphrodite", not someone of either
sex who's attracted to both. Yet the same dictionary defines the actual word
"hermaphrodite" as "
1. . . . b. homosexual.2. something that is a combination of diverse elements."
Are homosexuals physical hermaphrodites? Not usually. Are they bisexual? Not necessarily. So, what "diverse elements" are combined? My. My. ...
(for the rest of this piece .... read the book!)