Bi-furious. Is Bisexuality A Journey Or A Destination?

Support, By jimjazz, 29th March, 2007

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Bisexuality. Nietzsche described it as the third persona. David Bowie, Madonna, Marlon Brando and Ren and Stimpy have all subscribed to the ambiguity that comes from attraction to both sexes. But is bisexuality some kind of strange anomaly in our sexual proclivities or does it just go to show that sexual desire can be fluid, and that it’s us who imposed controls humans on ourselves in an effort to feel normal? And why are bisexuals so upset? The answer, it seems, is clear. And the gay and lesbian community are just as complicit as the straight community.

Luciana Callaghan is a 36 year old bisexual woman. Despite the fact that she went to school formals with guys who later turned out to be gay and picked up copies of her Dad’s Penthouse and Playboy magazines, she didn’t have any real inkling of her interest in the same gender till a night at the infamous Bobby McGee’s in Kings Cross when she called out at a bunch of cheerleaders, “Check out her tits!” When a group of guys turned around and looked at her strangely, she told them that they loved it and they laughed it off.

“But”, she says, “it was the beginning of a real interest in women, while still being attracted to guys. It also was the beginning of the discrimination.”

Gay and lesbian people are used to the old chestnuts, “You just haven’t met the right man/woman yet.” What about, “He’s really gay, he just can’t decide which way to jump yet.” Or what about, “How can they be monogamous? They just want to have it each way”

As Callaghan points out, “When I am with someone, I am with them; committed. The idea that just because I like both genders, I will run off with the first person I see of the other gender is as ridiculous as assumptions made by straight men that every gay man they meet will automatically want to jump them.”

It would seem that there is a sea of bisexual activity taking place and much of it is closeted. The straight world doesn’t accept it because they don’t get it and, more disturbingly, the gay and lesbian community don’t accept it either because it doesn’t fit into their cultural identity. Oh, and they don’t get it either.

In fact, in my efforts to interview bisexuals for this story, five people declined to be interviewed which struck me as a stinging indictment on bisexuality as an open state. I even witnessed a gay colleague of mine openly lampoon bisexuals in a meeting.

Dr Stephen Tomsen is a sociologist at the University of Newcastle. A recent paper entitled: Homophobic Violence, Cultural Essentialism and Shifting Sexual Identities examines the problem of identity and sexuality.

Tomsen puts notions of sexual behaviour and cultural identity under the microscope, breaking down the idea that “essentially” you are opposite sex attracted or same sex attracted but you can’t be both. This has been the basis for the use of the “homosexual panic defence” in courtrooms, where perpetrators have long been portrayed as victims of the predatory behaviour of gay men, receiving reduced sentences.

“The anxiety of perpetrators and courtroom confusion in dealing with the meanings of same-sex activity was very evident in cases that involved killers who (like many other men) did not identify as homosexual but found pleasure in covert homosexual encounters.”

Nowhere in any of the major legal cases across the last decade has the notion that the perpetrator’s interest in being at the site of an attack included their possible sexual ambiguity. Much of this, Tomsen points out, is due to cultural adherence to sexual practice and that while we maintain this essential view of sexual behaviour, gay or straight we continue to manifest the chasm that exists between these cultures.

We have a long way to go in understanding and accepting the sexual behaviour of our own species. Perhaps the research going on will give bisexuals everywhere the impetus to burst out of their sexual closet and declare their sexual diversity without fear of judgement or retribution.

Peter Boeckman is the academic advisor for Against Nature’s Order? an exhibition currently at the University of Oslo where 1500 species that demonstrate sexual activity with both genders, are on display.

“One fundamental premise in social debates has been that homosexuality is unnatural. This premise is wrong. Homosexuality is both common and highly essential in the lives of a number of species.” Says Boeckman.

The best known is the dwarf chimpanzee which is a very close relative to humans. The entire species is bisexual and it would seem that the homosexual behaviour plays a vital function in solving conflict.

Boeckman laments though that there is still not enough research.

That may be changing with the work being undertaken by Joan Roughgarden, a professor of biology at Stanford University who has written a book called Evolution’s Rainbow.

Roughgarden, a transgender woman, has lived in the shadow of Darwin’s long accepted theories on sexual selection along with most of her biological comrades who have always seen homosexual activity as some sort of anomaly.

“I was at a Gay Pride parade and I was just stunned by the sheer magnitude of the LGBT population. Because I’m a biologist, I started asking myself some difficult questions. My discipline teaches that homosexuality is some sort of anomaly. But if the purpose of sexual contact is just reproduction, as Darwin believed, then why do all those gay people exist?”

Her battle was to overcome a 19th century approach to sexual theory and in so doing has discovered that the more complex vertebrate species become, the more diverse sexual activity they engage in. Imagining that evolution might have thrown gay activity to the dust bin for not propagating the species, the opposite has indeed happened and it would seem for a very good reason: social bonding.

It would do the gay and lesbian community a great service to explore this idea. Apart from removing discrimination from their own cultural thinking, the advance on social reforms as the world comprehended collectively true sexual diversity would be without doubt.

And the last word to Callaghan: “I am proud of and content with my sexuality, but other people make judgements. When I tell my friends that I have met someone, they ask me: is it a boy or a girl? That makes me feel understood and accepted.”

Hmmm, isn’t that what we all want?

Wanna know more? Check out bi events in your part of the world online.

Agree? Disagree? Got something to get off your chest? Head to the support forums and throw in your two cents.

Pic: Famous bisexuals – Drew Barrymore, David Bowie, Sandra Bernhard.