simply being out as a lesbian professor is a political act.
I have been studying lesbian cultures and communities since 1982, when I interviewed about two dozen lesbians ranging in age from their teens to their seventies. I talked to these women about several issues, and bisexuality was one of them. In the mid 1980s, I decided to do something I thought I would never do again—I became involved with a man for the first time in several years. I continued to identify as a lesbian, a fact that was known to all parties involved and eventually led to the end of the relationship a few months later. In the meantime, however, I became more deeply aware of my own attitudes toward bisexuality as well as the attitudes of the great monolithic Lesbian Community—you know, the one that sets the standards for political correctness and the one that nobody I know will admit belonging to.
That experience helped shape my next research project, which was a study of lesbian and bisexual women’s attitudes toward, among other things, bisexuality. Over four hundred women took part in the study, which forms the basis of this book and is described in greater detail in chapter 3. As a result of this work I became fascinated by the concept of bisexuality. It would appear that I have done so at an opportune moment in history, because the beginning and growth of the bisexual movement is causing bisexuality to become a politically hot topic. By the same token, however, I have become interested in bisexuality at a very sensitive historical moment as well.
When I announce to my friends that I am studying bisexuality, I receive a variety of reactions, including expressions of all of the attitudes that I describe in this book. I am frequently asked “Are you bisexual?” or, more pointedly, “You’re not bisexual, are you?” This is a very difficult question to answer. First, since I no longer conceptualize sexuality as essential, I don’t see myself “as” anything. Second, the question of whether I am bisexual (or whether anyone else is) depends on how one defines bisexuality. Each definition makes internal sense; pick one and I’ll answer the question. Finally, the answer depends on which of my many selves is being asked the question. My political self? My sexual self? My emotional self? My sociologist self? By the time I finish explaining why I find it difficult to answer the question, my inquirer has usually answered the question to her own satisfaction as you, the reader, also may have done by now. As I said above, I am a white, able-bodied, lesbian-identified feminist sociologist.
Having introduced myself, I will lay down my personal pen (or computer keyboard, as it were) and pick up my (ahem) objective social scientist’s pen. This pen usually writes in the third person, as if I were not a lesbian myself and as if I did not share and sympathize with the feelings of the women who participated in my study, and it occasionally transforms inanimate objects and abstract ideas into the subjects of sentences, but it writes with my accent.
The first chapter looks at the debate on bisexuality as it appears in lesbian newsletters and magazines. What issues are raised and what opinions are expressed in this forum? Who is speaking and who is listening? How is the issue of bisexuality constructed by those who are speaking and for those who are listening? Chapter 2 examines the recent writings of social scientists on the subjects of sexuality, lesbianism, and bisexuality. What have researchers discovered about lesbians and the lesbian community? What have they discovered about bisexuals? How do social scientists conceptualize sexuality, and where do lesbianism and bisexuality fit into these models of sexuality?
Chapter 3 introduces the study of lesbian and bisexual women that forms the basis of most of the book. It describes the methods used and the sample obtained. The uninterested reader can easily skip this chapter, or read only the segment entitled “The Women Who Responded” for a description of the race, class, age, sexual, and other demographic characteristics of the women who took part in the study. Chapter 4 describes the attitudes of self-identified lesbian respondents toward sexuality in general and bisexuality in particular. Are the issues raised by these women similar to those raised in the lesbian press? How do these women feel about the issues? How do they think about sexuality, what does bisexuality mean to them, and how do they feel about bisexual women? Chapter 5 looks at whether lesbians of different races, ages, and so forth have different opinions about bisexuality, and whether or not lesbians’ opinions depend on their own political orientations or personal experiences with sexuality. Chapter 6 analyzes the development of lesbian identity as a political identity through the turbulent feminist debates of the 1970s. In this chapter, I argue that bisexuality is a controversial issue for lesbians today because it touches sensitive nerves and uncovers disagreements that arose from these formative debates and were never resolved. The issue that excites us is not really bisexuality; the real issue is lesbianism. The so-called bisexual debate is really a debate over who we are and what we stand for as lesbians. In the last two chapters of the book, I turn my attention to bisexual women. In chapter 7, I describe their thoughts and feelings about bisexuality and sexuality in general, and in chapter 8, I take a brief look at the burgeoning literature written by and for bisexuals to see how bisexuals are beginning to develop an identity and a politics of their own. The development of a bisexual politic has the potential to radically alter sexual identity politics, and in this last chapter I examine the profound challenge it poses to the future of lesbian identity and lesbian politics.
1 DEBATE IN THE LESBIAN PRESS: INTRODUCING THE ISSUES
What does The Lesbian Community think about bisexuality? Before we can answer that question, we have to determine who The Lesbian Community is, and who speaks for It. The truth is that there is no single, monolithic Lesbian Community. At the very least, there are many different lesbian communities. Lesbian communities exist in many towns and cities. Even within a single town or city, there are often several lesbian communities. There might be communities of African-American lesbians, Euro-American lesbians, Asian-American lesbians, and Latina lesbians. Younger and older lesbians, lesbians who are politically active and lesbians who are closeted, working class, middle class, and upper class lesbians, temporarily able-bodied and physically challenged lesbians, softball players, lesbians in 12-step programs, and computer jocks might have separate communities of their own. Within our communities, each one of us experiences community differently, and many of us belong to more than one lesbian community. If you asked two of your lesbian friends to draw pictures of the lesbian community you share, they would probably draw pictures that were very different from each other and different from the picture you would draw. We are all individuals. We have different needs, and we have different ideas about what lesbian community should be and what it is.
The Lesbian Community as a monolithic entity does not exist. But even if we recognize It as a fiction, most of us probably have a concept of The Lesbian Community and an image of what this Community is like. Intellectually, we know that lesbians have a variety of different opinions and experiences, but we still find ourselves saying, “the lesbian community thinks . . .” or “the lesbian community is. . . .” Intellectually, we know that there is no Lesbian Goddess of Political Correctness, but we still find ourselves engaged in a struggle over the rules She has set down. Intellectually, we know that lesbians who live in different parts of the country or whose skins are different colors might have different experiences as lesbians, but many of us feel a kinship across these differences because we are all lesbians. None of us can know every lesbian personally, and yet when we travel to a city we have never visited before, we feel at home. The women at the Center and the women at the bar look familiar, and we know how to talk to them.
Where do our images of The Lesbian Community come from? For most of us, our actual experience of lesbian community consists of our experiences within our local
