who gave five or six hours of their lives to help make this project happen. Special thanks go to the six women who assisted me by conducting the early phase interviews, giving me feedback on the questionnaire, and finally distributing questionnaires to several hundred women: Beth Masck, Beverly Santiago, Debbie Hillebrand, Elizabeth S., Lorna Rodriguez Rust, and Susan Gold.
I would also like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, who supported me in the research on which this book is based. When I decided to do research on lesbians’ attitudes about issues that are important within the lesbian community instead of research on a “safe” topic with a “broader” appeal, I thought I was risking my career. Who would take me seriously, and how would I ever find a job? Mary Jackman, Mayer Zald, Beth Reed, and Mark Chesler enthusiastically supported me throughout the project. My most sincere thanks go to Mary Jackman, who spent many, many hours straining her eyes over the initial draft of my dissertation, patiently wading through pages of detailed digressions and writing over and over again the comment “cut drastically.” The support I received from the University of Michigan extended beyond the efforts of individual faculty; the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies gave me the grant that made the research possible.
I am also grateful to those people who have supported me since, including the members of my department at Hamilton College who are my friends as well as my colleagues, Doug Raybeck who gave me the nudge I needed to start publishing the findings of my research, Niko Pfund of New York University Press who was interested enough in my work to inquire about it, Karla Jay who accepted it as part of her series “The Cutting Edge,” all the editors and anonymous reviewers along the way who taught me the writing skills I thought I had, my mother Mildred Rust who eagerly reads everything I write, and both my parents for giving me a solid start in life and a love of knowledge. In addition, several undergraduate student assistants helped with various stages of data preparation and coding. My thanks to each of them, especially Jacqueline Vargas and Danielle LaGrange for doing the most tedious kinds of work carefully and cheerfully at all hours of the day and night. The book you hold in your hands is not a revised dissertation; it is a book written from the ground up with the help and support of many people.
Finally, my deepest gratitude and love go to my most enthusiastic supporter, Lorna Rodríguez Rust, who has been with me through everything for the last eleven years. I saw her through her board exams, and now she has seen me through the birth of my first book.
INTRODUCTION
—I feel people who think they are bisexual are confused about it, or in transition.
—It does not exist.
—Everyone is inherently bisexual.
—Bisexuals are indiscriminate—they just sleep with anybody.
—People who love people regardless of sex.
—In a more egalitarian society, I’d be much more supportive of women who choose to sleep with men, but now, I’d prefer them to unite with lesbian women and build the strength of our community and movement.
Bisexuality touches very sensitive personal and political nerves among lesbians. The very idea sparks heated debate. Does bisexuality really exist, or is it a phase one goes through while coming out as lesbian? Are bisexuals women who have succeeded in casting off the repressive strictures of our sex-phobic society in order to express the full range of their sexuality, or are they lesbians suffering from an internalized homophobia that prevents them from recognizing their true sexual nature? Is bisexuality a sign of political cowardice among those who are unwilling to give up heterosexual privilege, or is it the next step in sexual liberation?
Bisexuals are beginning to organize politically. Local bisexual organizations that began as support groups have become increasingly political and begun to network with each other. In June of 1990, the North American Multicultural Bisexual Network1 was founded at the BiPOL conference in San Francisco; in October of 1991, the First International Bisexual Conference was held in Amsterdam; in April of 1993, bisexuals marched in the National March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Rights and Liberation; and in June of 1994, the Third International Conference Celebrating Bisexuality was held in New York City. Lesbian and gay organizations at colleges and universities are changing their names to include the word Bisexual. Newly established newsletters provide a forum for political bisexual voices, and books by and for bisexuals, including Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out and Closer to Home: Bisexuality & Feminism, have begun to appear.
This movement is still in the initial stages of building an ideological and organizational foundation. It will remain invisible to the general heterosexual population for quite some time, but the rumblings are already heard within the political lesbian community. As these rumblings grow louder, the debate over bisexuality in the lesbian community intensifies. The question of whether the lesbian movement is approaching a “crisis” is a matter of semantics that is best left to propagandists. Of much greater interest is the question of why bisexuality is such a focal point of attention among lesbians. What are the issues raised by bisexuality, and why are these issues of concern to lesbians? What does the lesbian debate over bisexuality reveal about the political and cultural ideology of lesbianism and the structure of the lesbian movement?
In order to understand the issues, it is necessary to listen to lesbian voices. Some of these voices are found in the newsletters and magazines produced by the lesbian movement, whereas others are not. The former are more likely to be the voices of politically active lesbians with extreme views and time to spend writing political statements. Are these voices representative of lesbians in general, or are they merely the voices of the few vocal lesbians who have opinions and the resources to express them? Can the rank-and-file lesbian who conceals her identity for fear of losing her child and her job be bothered about the issue of bisexuality, and if so, does she share the opinions that are expressed in the newsletter that arrives at her post office box in a plain brown envelope?
It is also useful to listen to the voices of social scientists, not as “experts” but as social commentators whose opinions and analyses carry the weight of authority. These voices are of particular consequence because they are considered the voices of reason, objectivity, and truth. As such, they define the neutral position from which other positions will be judged as partisan, self-interested, or uninformed. Social scientists are, however, as much products of their social environment as the people they study. Their opinions serve as a particular kind of mirror for social issues, a mirror that dissects and detects but that ultimately reflects light produced by other sources.
You, the reader of this book, will hear these voices through another voice. That voice is mine. Throughout the book, I defer whenever possible to the original voices of the women who wrote articles in the lesbian press and the women who participated in my study. However, short of publishing in raw form the approximately 15,000 pages of questionnaire responses and interview transcripts that form the basis of this study, I cannot help but superimpose my voice on theirs. Simply by choosing which quotes to include and then by organizing this material, I place my stamp upon it. You should, therefore, know who I am.
I am a white, able-bodied, lesbian-identified feminist sociologist. Allow me to elaborate. Lesbian feminist culture has been my “home” culture since I attended my first Daughters of Bilitis meeting in 1977 at the age of 18. That doesn’t mean that I consider lesbian feminism above criticism or that I agree with everything that has ever been said in the name of lesbian feminism. On the contrary, because it is my culture I claim the moral right and obligation to criticize it as an outsider cannot. I was out and politically active as a lesbian in both college and graduate school. Now, as an associate professor, I am out to those who care to know as well as many who don’t, but my political energy has been diverted toward the task of managing my
