Philosophy:Bisexual theory

Short description: Field of critical theory

Bisexual theory is a field of critical theory, inspired by queer theory and bisexual politics, that foregrounds bisexuality as both a theoretical focus and as an epistemological lens. Bisexual theory emerged most prominently in the 1990s, in response to the burgeoning field of queer theory, and queer studies more broadly, frequently employing similar post-structuralist approaches but redressing queer theory's tendency towards bisexual erasure.

In their critique of the frequent elision of bisexuality in queer theory, Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio and Jonathan Alexander write, "a queer theory that misses bisexuality's querying of normative sexualities is itself too mastered by the very normative and normalizing binaries it seeks to unsettle".

Scholars who have been discussed in relation to bisexual theory include Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajajé, Steven Angelides, Elisabeth Däumer, Jo Eadie, Shiri Eisner, Marjorie Garber, Donald E. Hall, Clare Hemmings, Michael du Plessis, Maria Pramaggiore, Merl Storr, and Kenji Yoshino.

Definition of Bisexual, Bisexuality is known as attraction to various genders. Individuals who identify as bisexual are attracted to both their gender and the other sex, whether romantically or sexually. Although this is a basic description, there are many different types of bisexuals. Regarding their sexual orientation, each person views things differently.

The difficulty of Bisexual Individuals and the way to help (MHS)

Bisexual people constitute the largest sexual minority group in North America and experience significant mental health disparities in comparison to heterosexuals, gays, and lesbians. Specifically, research has reported that compared with both heterosexual and gay/lesbian people, bisexuals experience higher rates of anxiety, depression, suicidality, substance use, and self-harming behaviors

Even though LGB folks, especially bisexuals, deal with similar issues as everyone else, there are additional challenges for minority individuals. This psychologist, Meyer, came up with a model in 2003 to explain how these extra challenges, like stigma and discrimination, can create stressful situations for LGB people and affect their mental health. For bisexuals, it's not just about facing heterosexism and homophobia; they also have to deal with monoecism and biphobia. Monoecism is when people think being either completely gay or straight is better than other sexual orientations. Biphobia is the discrimination and prejudice specifically aimed at bisexuals. This kind of bias not only makes it harder for bisexuals to get support but is also present in social systems, including mental health services, which can keep these harmful attitudes going. Bisexuals often face more bias from mental health providers compared to gay and lesbian individuals, and they're more likely to say their mental health needs aren't being met. We don't know much about how bisexuals use mental health services, but in one study, almost half of the participants found these services(MHS) helpful. People had a good experience when their mental health provider acknowledged and understood bisexuality, saw it as normal, and knew a lot about it. But when their needs weren't met, the care felt wrong, or they faced prejudice, they stopped using the services.

Stereotypes and Challenges Faced by Bisexual Individuals Based on Gender

Stereotypes and obstacles specific to bisexual men and women differ. Bisexual women are frequently seen by others as being in an experimental phase or as seeking male attention. Words like "bisexual" and "lesbian until graduation" are reflections of these attitudes. The media frequently fetishizes female sexual conduct, and straight women may experience pressure to act bisexual in order to satisfy men's desires. Nonetheless, males are under pressure to conceal or minimize their same-sex attraction since male same-sex desire is frequently depicted negatively. Many believe that bisexual guys are hiding their actual gay inclination. Bisexual people, particularly males, are generally seen to be dishonest about their actual attraction, which feeds into discrimination within the LGBTQ+ community.

Biases and Misunderstandings about Bisexuality

Bisexuality may be ignored or dismissed by people due to prejudices, however, these theories haven't been well studied in much research. Monoecism, the idea that being attracted to just the same sex or the opposing sex is legitimate, is one possible source of this prejudice. This stems from a mindset that sees gender identity as permanent and unchangeable. Since bisexuality blurs these lines, some people may wish to eradicate it. However, bisexual men and women may be seen differently for reasons other than monoecism. Another contributing aspect can be androcentric, a prejudice that prioritizes males and masculinity. The idea that bisexual males are more drawn to fellow bisexual men and bisexual women are more drawn to men may result from this prejudice. In essence, individuals may presume that everyone feels the same way and is consequently more attracted to males if they place a higher value on men and masculinity than on women and femininity.

History

Bisexual theory emerged in the 1990s, inspired by and responding to the emergence of queer theory. Elisabeth Däumer's 1992 article, "Queer Ethics; or, the Challenge of Bisexuality to Lesbian Ethics", was the first major publication to theories bisexuality in relation to queer and feminist theory.

In 1993, at the 11th National Bisexual Conference in the UK, a group of bisexual scholars formed Bi Academic Intervention. The same group published a volume of bisexual theory in 1997, entitled The Bisexual Imaginary: Representation, Identity and Desire. In 1995, Marjorie Garber released Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life, a monograph that aimed to reveal a 'bi-erotics' observable across disparate cultural locations, which however draw criticism due to its a historicism. In 1996, Maria Pramaggiore and Donald E. Hall edited the collection RePresenting Bisexualities: Subjects and Cultures of Fluid Desire, which turned a bisexual theoretical lens to questions of representation. Chapters of bisexual theory also appeared in Activating Theory: Lesbian, Gay Bisexual Politics (1993) and Queer Studies: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Anthology (1996).

The Journal of Bisexuality was first published in 2000 by the Taylor & Francis Group under the Routledge imprint, and its editors-in-chief have included Fritz Klein, Jonathan Alexander, Brian Zamboni, James D. Weinrich, and M. Paz Galupo.

In 2000, law scholar Kenji Yoshino published the influential article "The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure", which argues that "Straights and gays have an investment in stabilizing sexual orientation categories. The shared aspect of this investment is the security that all individuals draw from rigid social orderings." In 2001, Steven Angelides published A History of Bisexuality, in which he argues that bisexuality has operated historically as a structural other to sexual identity itself. In 2002, Clare Hemmings published Bisexual Spaces: A Geography of Sexuality and Gender in which she explores bisexuality's functions in geographical, political, theoretical, and cultural spaces.

In 2004, Jonathan Alexander and Karen Yescavage co-edited Bisexuality and Transgenderism: Intersex ions of the Others, which considers the intersections of bisexual and transgender identities.

Shiri Eisner's Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution was released in 2013. This radical manifesto combines feminist, transgender, queer, and bisexual activism with theoretical work to establish a blueprint for bisexual revolution.

Challenges Faced by Bisexual Individuals in Research

Bisexuals deal with a lot of discrimination and pressure from both the straight and homosexual communities. Sadly, they receive less research than homosexuals and lesbians, and even when they do, their experiences are frequently combined with those of other people. Because bisexual persons have distinct experiences, this might result in erroneous inferences. For instance, compared to lesbian, gay, or straight persons, bisexuals had higher rates of anxiety and depression in an Australian survey. They also had greater identity confusion, were less supported by friends and family, and received less support from the community. To learn more about how bisexual persons manage these extra difficulties, more study is required.

Epistemologies

One of the ways in which bisexual theorists have deployed bisexuality critically has been the formulation of bisexual epistemologies that ask how bisexuality generates or is given meaning.

Elisabeth Däumer suggests that bisexuality can be "an epistemological as well as ethical vantage point from which we can examine and deconstruct the bipolar framework of gender and sexuality."

Authors like Maria Pramaggiore and Jo Eadie repurposed the idea of bisexual people being "on the fence" in order to theorise an "epistemology of the fence":

a place of in-betweenness and indecision. Often precariously placed atop a structure that divides and demarcates, bisexual epistemologies have the capacity to reframe regimes and regions of desire by defaming and/or reframing in porous, nonexclusive ways... Bisexual epistemologies—ways of apprehending, organizing, and intervening in the world that refuse one-to-one correspondences between sex acts and identity, between erotic objects and sexualities, between identification and desire—acknowledge fluid desires and their continual construction and deconstruction of the desiring subject.

Clare Hemmings outlines three forms that bisexual epistemological approaches have tended to take:

The first locates bisexuality as outside conventional categories of sexuality and gender; the second locates it as critically inside those same categories; and the third focuses on the importance of bisexuality in the discursive formation of "other" identities.

Critiques

In his 1996 article, Jonathan Dollimore observes a trend he terms ‘wishful theory’ in bisexual theoretical work. Dollimore critiques bisexual theory's fabrication of eclectic theoretical narratives with little attention to how they relate to social reality, and its assumption of a subversive position that resists a consideration of how bisexual identity itself might be subverted. Dollimore contends that bisexual theory is "passing, if not closeted, as post-modern theory, safely fashioning itself as a suave doxa."

In her 1999 article, Merl Storr suggests that contemporary bisexual identity, community, organization, and politics are rooted in early postmodernity. By identifying this relation, Storr observes the postmodern themes of indeterminacy, instability, fragmentation, and flux that characterize bisexual theory and parses how these concepts might be reflected upon critically.

One of the problems Clare Hemmings identifies with bisexual epistemological approaches is that bisexuality becomes metaphorized to the point that it is unrecognizable to bisexual people, a critique that has also been made in transgender studies to the allegorization of trans feminine realities.

Further reading

• Anderlini-D'Onofrio, Serena; Alexander, Jonathan (2011). Bisexuality and Queer Theory: Intersections, Connections and Challenges. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN:978-0415686716.
• Alexander, Jonathan; Yescavage, Karen (2003). Bisexuality and Transgenderism: Intersex ions of the Others. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN:978-1560232872.
• Bi Academic Intervention (1997). The Bisexual Imaginary: Representation, Identity and Desire. London and Washington, Cassel. ISBN:978-0304337453.
• Däumer, Elisabeth D. (1992). "Queer Ethics; or, The Challenge of Bisexuality to Lesbian Ethics". Hypatia 7 (4): 91–105. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.1992.tb00720.x. 
• Eisner, Shiri (2013). Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press. ISBN:978-1580054744.
• George, Sue (1993). Women and Bisexuality. London: Scarlett Press. ISBN:9781857270716.
• Hall, Donald E.; Pramaggiore, Maria (1996). Representing Bisexualities: Subjects and Cultures of Fluid Desire. New York, NY and London: New York University Press. ISBN:978-0814766347.
• Hemmings, Clare (2002). Bisexual Spaces: A Geography of Sexuality and Gender. New York, NY and London: Routledge. ISBN:978-0415930833.
• Ronan, Joseph Anthony (2014). 'Sometimes I fear that the whole world is queer': What bisexual theories, identities and representations can still offer queer studies. Doctoral thesis, University of Sussex.
• Storr, Merl (1999). Bisexuality: A Critical Reader. London and New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN:978-0415166607.
• Tucker, Naomi; Highleyman, Liz; Kaplan, Rebecca (1995). Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries & Visions. Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press. ISBN:9781560238690.
• Yoshino, Kenji (2000). "The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure". Stanford Law Review 52 (2): 353–461. doi:10.2307/1229482. https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5389&context=fss_papers.