Are You Seeing Anyone?

A Genealogy of Bisexuality

The original draft of this paper was written in 2002 by Margaret Robinson as part of her course work toward a Ph.D. in theology. The course was SES 1912HF, Foucault and Research in Education: Discourse, Power and the Subject, taught by Professor Kari Dehli, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Please feel free to quote or cite this document, provided the appropriate citation is provided. Ex: Margaret Robinson, "Are You Seeing Anyone? A Genealogy of Bisexual Visibility," (course paper, University of Toronto, 2002). When citing material online you may wish to add the URL, and the last date you accessed the page.

1. Introduction: Why bisexual visibility? Why Foucault? Why Genealogy?
2. In the Garden: Bisexuality as Mythic Symbol
3. Under the Microscope: Bisexuality in the Discourse of Medicine
4. Off the Couches and Into the Streets: Bisexuality in Sexual Subculture
5. To Market, To Market: Bisexual Visibility as a Technology of the Self
6. I See England, I see France: Surveillance and Normalization
7. Notes

Introduction:
Why Bisexual Visibility? Why Foucault? Why Genealogy?

According to Newsweek, Bisexuality emerged in 1995.1 Although this discovery wasn't exactly new, the fact that bisexuality continually emerged, submerged and re-emerged, is itself reason for study. In this paper I will trace a genealogy of bisexual visibility, identifying four sites of emergence:

1. mythic symbolism,
2. the discourse of medicine,
3. sexual subculture, and
4. identity politics.

Finally, I shall depict visibility in terms of power relations. That is, what effects does bisexual visibility have? Does it bring us greater freedom? Does it enable a greater intensity of surveillance and domination? I will argue that the desirability of bisexual visibility emerges from a liberal view of sexual citizenship as participation.

Why bisexuality visibility? My interest in writing about bisexuality is primarily personal, since I identify as bisexual, and I have an investment in the bisexual community as a writer and activist. My interest in bisexual visibility stems from the general bisexual movement, whose primary aim has tended to be achieving, promoting and supporting visibility, often without expressing the purpose or benefits of such visibility.

Why Foucault? Three reasons come immediately to mind. First, like Foucault and his work, bisexuality has gone through recurring phases: ubiquitous chic, hailed by some as the solution to all problems relating to sexuality, but also revision, being dismissed as misrepresentation, ineptitude, or superficiality. Second, Foucault and the bisexual movement are historical contemporaries, coming of age in the same world, and under the same media spotlight. Third, Foucault is, in a certain sense, "one of us." While not claiming bisexual identity for himself, Foucault's refusal to endorse gay identity while engaging in same-sex behaviour, can be seen to be advocating a fluid, or mutable sexuality, which many bisexuals see themselves as claiming precisely by naming themselves as bisexuals. He is expected (as are all queers with celebrity status) to have something to say about who we are.

Why genealogy? There are several attractive elements which draw me to genealogy. First, a genealogy is a hermeneutics of suspicion. A genealogical study is not intended to identify an (or "the") origin of bisexuality, nor to isolate a cause for the bisexual movement to which we can constantly refer and measure ourselves. Rather, genealogy operates from the awareness that bisexuality is without a beginning. A history of cause and effect is replaced by a history of incident, accident, false-starts, dead-ends, disappearances and re-emergences. Such a study is more une histoire (in the sense of a story) than a history. Since bisexuality is generally least tolerated where categories of gender and sexuality are rigid, an approach which challenges the form, content and cohesion of categories would be seen to be welcoming to a sexuality which is often described (sometimes positively, sometimes derisively) as fluid, indefinite, or unfinished. Since bisexuals tend to be the objects, rather than the authors of writings about bisexuality, genealogy is a useful strategy. With its suspicious examination of power relations active in producing knowledge, genealogy can be useful for uncovering the ways bisexual subjects are produced and controlled.

Secondly, genealogy is focussed on the body. It is a study not of ideas or abstract forms, but of historical processes which shape bodies. In as much as this writing is a genealogy then, my central question is not, how did bisexuality emerge? But rather, how did people come to experience themselves as bisexuals? Finally, genealogy does not carry the assumption that the object of study is in any sense a finished product. It is not a posthumous biography, but a memoir, written from within a time line which stretches forth in all directions.

In the Garden:
Bisexuality as Mythic Symbol

Bisexuality is posited as a physical reality with social symbolism.
Its efficacy as symbol relies on its hiddenness.

Although credit for having "discovered" bisexuality tends to centre on the intellectual exchanges between Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Fleiss, a Foucaudian genealogy reveals the ways in which this is not so much a discovering as an uncovering of some elements of sexuality and a covering of others in order that bisexuality might be named as a distinct thing. As bisexuality emerges, gender is upheld as central to Western sexuality (over class, culture, or act). Indeed, in some instances gender became an all-consuming category, being used to describe everything from skin tone to political views.

Before the discovery of bisexuality, people were what we might anachronistically name as behaviourally bisexual. Bisexual behaviour in men was recognized by most cultures throughout the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Greek and Roman writers acknowledged a type of mental bisexuality, taking it as an assumed truth that most normal men would be affected by the charms of both women and boys.

The primary distinction for Greek and Roman sexual topography was not the sex of one's sexual partner, but rather the sexual role which one fulfilled, in whatever pairing. Active males and passive females were naturally gendered and their behaviour required no special explanation. Passive men and active women were something of a mystery, requiring expert explanation, such as that of a physiognomist, astrologer or doctor. This explanation frequently included speculations on a mixing of male and female natures, either as an imbalance of humours, as an astrological effect, or as the result of a physical abnormality. Active women were generally thought (like "normal" men) to be interested in pursuing both women and men. In either case they were expected to take the active, penetrating role that went with their masculine taste in pursuit. Sometimes it was thought that they possessed an enlarged clitoris with which they might penetrate a partner. 2

Although such physical or mental bisexuality might result in bisexual acts, its primary significance was not found in its sexual expression but in its political and social meaning. Dreams, for example, might include a variety of sexual acts with either sex. Their meaning, as deciphered by an interpreter, was primarily political and predictive.3 Likewise, Greek men who engaged in passive sexual acts might find themselves liable to lose citizenship, not because of their sexuality, but because of their assumed gender deformity and its political associations with weakness in civil, military and financial matters. 4

Early sexual categories employed mixed gender as a way to identify the monstrous and the perverse. The kinaidoi (sexually passive men), were defined as containing both masculinity and femininity, but in a way which deformed each gender and rendered the subject monstrous. Although at first glance thought to be men, the kinaidoi were identifiable by a professional. Signs such as knock-knees, loose wrists and a distinctive walk told the tale of their hidden femininity.5 The kinaidos was not merely a natural gender variation, but a perversion of a natural gender. The kinaidoi had done this to themselves by being sexually receptive.

Under the Microscope:
Bisexuality in the Discourse of Medicine

Medicine separates the bisexual from the hermaphrodite.
Why didn't medicine invent bisexuals when it invented bisexuality?

Jennifer Terry has observed that the medical viewpoint was in essence the white, educated, urban European viewpoint.6 In many ways the medical beliefs about homosexuality reflect middle-class male fears about the effects of urbanization, and reveal their uneasiness about the changing roles of women and the loss of class distinctions as a result of industrialism. Medical authority became a new form of power with which to reinforce traditional categories of sex and gender. David F. Greenberg calls them "a kind of secular clergy."7

Medicine separated the concept of bisexuality from that of the hermaphrodite, defining hermaphrodism as a physical reality and bisexuality as a psychic reality. Both Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis initially named bisexual attraction "psychosexual hermaphrodism." By the time Ellis had published his third edition of Studies In the Psychology of Sex, in 1915, he had abandoned use of "psychosexual hermaphrodism" in favour of "bisexual," which he noted to be in wider use at that time.8 Although Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Fleiss believed the fetus was physically bisexual in the early stages of development, the importance of this for them lay in its psychological, rather than physical implications.9 Psychiatrists placed the double-sexed individual within a developmental model, and defined maturity as the movement away from physical and psychic bisexuality, to the achievement of a properly sexed body, an appropriately gendered identity and its accompanying sexual expression.

The distinction between physical and psychic bisexuality enabled doctors to place same-sex attraction within a heterosexual framework, as psychic inversion. Attraction was defined as possible only between opposites, and sexuality could function only as a binary system of interaction. Even when the partners were of the same sex, the "submissive" partner was always construed as feminine.10 Bisexual as a thing one might be did not exist. Rather, what we might today call bisexuality was subsumed under "homosexuality" or "inversion." Exclusive same-sex attraction was considered simply the most extreme case of the homosexual problem. In general, those persons labelled homosexuals were expected to have some attraction to the opposite sex, and many physicians believed the invert could foster this attraction with expert assistance.

The significant distinction for psychiatry was not orientation, but rather gender conformity and inversion.11 Properly gendered men and women who engaged in same-sex acts or reported same-sex attraction were deemed to be tainted by "unfavourable conditions" (such as prison, unavailability of opposite-sex partners or seduction by an invert). These patients were thought able to renounce their homosexual behaviour with treatment. Medical practice suggests that gender inversion may have been considered more problematic than sexual object choice. Simon LeVay notes that men sentenced to electroshock therapy for homosexuality were given shock treatments until homosexual response was cured, but that treatment continued until any feminine characteristics were eliminated.12

Off of the Couches and into the Streets:
Bisexuality in Sexual Subculture

Feminism, lesbian separatism, sexual liberation, swinging, BDSM, AIDS and other ne'er-do-wells conspire to birth The Bisexual.

Several people decide they are one and they make a movement.

I have chosen to focus on four sites of bisexual emergence: swinging, BDSM (an acronym generally referring to bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, and masochism), lesbian feminism and AIDS medical/activist /reactionary discourse. These sites have, in my view, had a regulating effect on bisexual identity.

Swinging

Swinging was an important site of emergence for women's bisexuality as a practice. The phenomenon of "swinging" surfaced in the United States among heterosexual couples in the U.S. Air Force during the 1940s. The practice spread, initially off base to suburbs housing military personnel and their wives, and then into the civilian population. Female bisexuality may have been a practice for swingers from the beginning, since the death rate of fighter pilots ensured a "surplus" of women in the air force swinging community. One of the reasons that swinging has significance for bisexual emergence is that swingers have generally been assimilated into the mainstream of North American life, rather than perceiving themselves as a minority culture. For this reason, their activities and views on sex have tended to reflect and form the left or "liberal" wing of "mainstream" culture. Particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, swinging was perceived as the marginal activity of otherwise normal people, rather than the normal activity of marginal people. For this reason, swinging was an important element in normalizing and making visible female bisexuality in a heterosexuality-aligned, non-threatening form.

Swinging welcomed single women, but not single men. Female bisexuality was not conflated with lesbianism. Rather, it was seen as a "natural" activity for women, secondary in importance to sex with men. A 1984 study indicated that more than 68% of women involved in swinging identify as bisexual. Significantly, these women reported that they did not have an interest in sexual activity with other women prior to swinging. The power for determining what constitutes "normal" and acceptable sexual behaviour in swinging is concentrated in the husbands. Women reported initiating same-sex activities at the request of their male partners, although they tended to identify as bisexual after such experiences.13

Feminism and Lesbian Separatism

Feminism encouraged many women to question the assumption their sexual and romantic relationships must be with men. Many feminist women came to rename their feelings and experiences as sexual (and specifically, as lesbian) as a result of feminist conscientization. With the advent of lesbian separatism the definition of "lesbian" shifted, becoming more exclusive. Where formerly lesbianism had been understood as prioritizing relationships with women, (such as Adrienne Rich's "lesbian continuum") it was now defined as rejecting relationships with men ("penis-pure and proud").14 Bisexual activist and historian Liz Highleyman notes that bisexuality was "often cast in terms of 'male-identification' and 'consorting with the enemy,' leaving many bisexual women feeling caught between warring factions."15 This redefinition of boundaries created a category of women whose experience, desires, and sense of self had once been considered lesbian but was now excluded as other-than-lesbian. Two studies done in 1993 came up with similar findings: those who identify themselves as bisexual had previously identified as gay or lesbian.16 Bisexual women's support and social groups began to emerge as an attempt to respond to what was seen as expulsion from the lesbian community.17

These new bi women's communities were self-consciously feminist and, in many cases, lesbian-aligned. Highleyman writes that for many women, "bisexuality was an integral part of their feminist politics and they wanted their groups to reflect this emphasis. The Boston Bisexual Women's Network (formed in 1983) and the Seattle Bisexual Women's Network (founded in 1986) are based on these principles." Bisexual groups proliferated in the U.S. and Europe throughout the 1980s. Many splintered into new groups, dissolved and re-emerged. Most groups within the U.S. eventually aligned themselves with BiNet USA, a national group aimed at supporting bisexual visibility.18

Around the same time that separatism was drawing a distinction between lesbian and heterosexual women, debates about politically appropriate sexual activities, (known as the "sex wars") were creating a second schism which overlapped the first. Lesbian feminism divided into "anti-pornography" and "pro-sex" camps. Ironically, both groups considered the issue to be one of political assimilation. At one end were the lesbians who rejected sexual relationships which they felt imitated heteropatriarchial pornography. At the other end were the lesbians whose sexual interests were viewed as abnormal by mainstream culture: butch/femme couples, women into BDSM, fetish wear or kink. They viewed the anti-porn movement as assimilation to heterosexual ideals of sexual normalization. Bisexuals, considered by many lesbians to be promiscuous, male-identified and politically unreliable, found themselves excluded from political lesbianism, and tentatively, sometimes reluctantly welcomed by sexual radicals.

During the feminist debate on bisexuality, those who were imbued with the authority to speak on the nature and meaning of bisexuality were generally lesbians. Lesbian activists were considered to have proven themselves by their lifestyle, which denounced the benefits of patriarchy by forming relationships solely with other women. Heterosexual feminists tended to view lesbians as being on the "front lines" of the sexism war. Bisexual women were, in the parlance of the time, suffering from a "false consciousness" created by patriarchy as a tool to destroy lesbianism. Gender also played a role in determining authority. Early on, butch women were ascribed greater authority than feminine women. Later, both butch and femme identity and expression were considered patriarchal, and an androgynous appearance became the hallmark of lesbian authenticity and political profundity. Bisexual women, almost universally assumed to be "femmes," were denigrated as male-identified. The methodology by which authority was maintained included community expulsion through shunning and exclusion, the shift from "women-only spaces" to "lesbian-only spaces," and the use of cultural capital such as the lesbian press to denounce bisexuality as anti-lesbian.

BDSM

Similar "sex wars" had taken place within the BDSM/leather/fetish community. The gay male BDSM culture has a long-standing history. The scene was dominated by the "Old Guard," which modelled itself on military relationships of domination and submission.19 Relationships occurred between sadistic tops and masochistic bottoms, and individuals were discouraged from switching from one role to another. These "switches" were considered indecisive and unreliable partners, thought to be unskilled either in giving or receiving.20 Status within these communities was maintained through a complex system of etiquette and formality. Rules were unspoken, yet strictly followed. These systems of signification, such as stance, movements, and complex codes of hankies, key placement and attire served not only to distinguish outsiders from insiders, but also formed a hierarchy within the group according to gradations of awareness and mastery of the code system. In addition, one of the rules was that one did not discuss or teach the rules to others, except indirectly, or by example.

Gradually more new arrivals (many of them women) found themselves unfamiliar with the military references and rigid sense of protocol, and more attracted to a BDSM organized around a spontaneous sense of animalistic sexuality. This so-called "New Guard" had always been part of the BDSM scene, originally emerging from a "buddy sexuality" modelled on biker gangs rather than military units. Military enthusiasts felt the New Guard reflected a general societal breakdown and disregard for tradition. The New Guard viewed the militaristic style as a left-over of conservative sexual relationships, and saw the emphasis on hierarchy and tradition as stifling to creativity. It was within this "New Guard" that bisexuality began to emerge.

Some came to see the difference between BDSM and "Vanilla" (non-BDSMers) as more fundamental to their sexuality than the gender of their partner. Some identified as bisexual to reflect their sense of sexuality as activity-centred (i.e., kink) rather than gender-centred.21 In addition, the stigma around switching roles began to be challenged. As fear of being accused of indecision around switching roles lessened, similar attitudes around switching partners were reduced as well. Many who identified as switch also came out as bisexual. Cecilia Tan has called this the "Bi switch revolution."22

AIDS

Another factor in the emergence of bisexuality as an epistemological reality was the discovery of AIDS. The disease, first known as GRID (gay-related immune disorder), first shifted to being associated with the 4-Hs (Haitians, hemophiliacs, heroin users, and homosexuals). As it began to appear in the "normal" population of white, middle-class heterosexual women, it became known as AIDS.23 The arrival of AIDS within the psychic and physical sphere of female heterosexuality seems to have been the catalyst for a the emergence of bisexuality within the public mainstream. Time writer Christine Gorman notes that "from 1991 to 1992 the number of new cases among women jumped 10%, compared with 2.5% for men."24 Here male bisexuality performed the function of "explaining" the transmission of the disease from communities considered "tainted", such as gay men and drug users, to those considered "innocent," particularly white heterosexual women and their children. Amber Ault notes that "the bisexual body that appears in medical and popular discourses on AIDS is nearly universally a male body...."25 Here masculinity is considered a sign of guilt.

Male bisexuality began to be discussed as a threat that heterosexual women needed to educate themselves to avoid. Aileen H. Atwood's book on bisexual male partners, Husbands Who Love Men, carried the unambiguous subtitle of Deceit, Disease, Despair.26 Bisexual men were considered a hidden menace, because unlike gay men, they were not believed to exhibit obviously inverted gender signs. They looked like "regular men," and were distinguished only by a secret life of sexual duplicity and promiscuity. In response to the publicity and fear surrounding the hidden menace of bisexual men, the female condom, marketed under the name "Reality," was introduced in 1993.27

In a parallel development, bisexual women became seen as the conduit by which lesbians were exposed to AIDS. Amber Ault writes that "medical and popular discourses on AIDS... exacerbated the virulence of both right wing and lesbian hostility toward the bisexual category and those who populate it."28 Liz Highleyman, remarks that the increased visibility of bisexuals "in the pathologizing discourses around AIDS" propelled bisexual women " to re-claim the label, in order to destigmatize it in both dominant and nondominant social spaces."29

This increased visibility is reflected in publications of the Christian right, which had generally viewed homosexuality as a behavioural problem rather than a sexual orientation.30 In 1992, the Colorado constitution was amended. Although the press generally referred to the amendment as "anti-gay" the document was actually more comprehensive:

"Neither the State of Colorado, through any of its branches or departments, nor any of its agencies, political subdivisions, municipalities or school districts, shall enact, adopt or enforce any statute, regulation, ordinance or policy whereby homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships shall constitute or otherwise be the basis of, or entitle any person or class of persons to have or claim of discrimination. This Section of the Constitituion shall be in all respects self-executing."31

This was a significant moment for bisexuals, because for the first time bisexuality was recognized as a distinct orientation, and bisexuality was identified as a grounds for discrimination. The traditional Values Coalition, a conservative group based in California, issues a statement which called bisexuality the "ultimate perversion."32

The Bisexual Movement

As bisexuality stepped into the mainstream the authority to speak on issues of bisexuality gradually changed. Initially, doctors and sex researchers were the only people assumed to have the authority to speak knowledgeably of such a phenomenon. The average non-medical person was not expected to have any familiarity with such people, who were believed to be rare cases of psychological maladjustment. As gay and lesbian political movements became more numerous particular activists were ascribed with the power to speak on behalf of sexual minorities, about bisexuality as a issue, and about bisexuals. Their superior political credentials and the strength of their movement outweighed the voice of self-identified bisexuals. Gradually however, bisexuals began to be brought forth, first as case studies, often with a supervising doctor or psychiatrist, and then later as self-authenticating "experts" as television gave them a platform and an authority which had previously been denied to them. Bisexuals appeared on daytime talk shows (particularly in 1995), invested with authority by the hosts, Maury Povich, Leeza Gibbons, Phil Donohue, or Geraldo Rivera. Bisexuality, with its now obligatory symbolism of two men and a woman, appeared on the cover of Newsweek for July 17, 1995. The title proclaimed, "A New Sexual Identity Emerges."33 This would have been old news to bisexual activists, who had been creating social and support groups since the 1970s.

To Market, to Market:
Bisexual Visibility as a Technology of the Self

Identity without selfhood, performativity,
and other ways to get a date.

Bisexuality emerged fully formed, as it were, by an already existing category: sexual orientation. Bisexuality, as many activists presented it, was a third, parallel category to gay/lesbian and straight. Others disagreed, arguing that bisexuality was a point on a continuum of sexuality, several points on the continuum, or even the continuum itself. It was posited as our mutual origin, (we're all bisexual) and our mutual telos (In the future/ideal world we'll all be bisexual). Whatever one felt bisexuality was, the rule of the day was that one must express this thought to others. Bisexuality was an issue to be discussed (even if it was a supposedly forbidden issue), and everyone was expected to weigh in with their opinion.

"Coming out" as bisexual, like other acts of confession, was defined as a necessary part of healthy psychology. Yet what was being communicated? Certainly not information about one's sexual activities, for one did not have to have a resume of sexual conquests before declaring an orientation. Coming out as bisexual was not an announcement of a state of being. Rather, it was the discovery of a discovery. One somehow realized what one had always known (or was expected to have been able to know, had the opportunity presented itself earlier). This discovery was not of a fully formed reality, but of a condition that must be cultivated. It was necessary, having discovered one's bisexuality, to seek out "the community" and learn how to be bisexual. The community saw its role as supporting identity development, and promoting visibility. It was this visibility (which one could learn to do, as a skill), which would affirm ones status as a bisexual "expert," and enable others to discover their bisexuality as well.

Foucault has written of the necessity of confession in the development of the West's concept of sexuality.34 There is a "truth" to tell and telling it will set us free. We must confess to the more powerful. In the case of bisexuals, the more powerful included gays, lesbians and straights. Visibility, the supposed point for confession, was intended to bring sexuality from the private sphere, where acts were hidden (and therefore assumed to generate shame) into the public sphere. In the public sphere, visibility enables political participation. Committees can be formed, governments lobbied, laws endorsed or opposed. The "problems" visibility aims to fix culminate in achieving equality with straights. Apparently, it is only by revealing our differences in large numbers that we can become the same as the majority.

Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow write that disciplinary power is especially important to the policing of sexual confession, and is intimately connected with capitalism.35 This can be seen in the way that visibility is defined. Speech, which is free, is no longer sufficient. Visibility is shaped by a queer marketing sector which offers an array of symbols designed to make us visible (sometimes only to one another) conveniently packaged as t-shirts, hankies, key-chains, jewellery, flags, and other marketable goods. Similarly, by making our community visible as a market force we are supposed to be able to participate in the capitalist political economy. The logic here is that our visibility will reveal our demand and the market will supply us with the same services and products as it does for heterosexuals, thus helping us to achieve equality. This model begins by assuming that the role of queers rests in being consumers, rather than producers; eventually of our own "culture" packaged and marketed back to us by a straight capitalism.

Dreyfus and Rabinow claim that the "goal of disciplinary power is to produce a person who is docile."36 By making ourselves visible, and entering as participants in the political and economic marketplaces, we become increasingly susceptible to physical and psychological discipline. The public domesticates queer sexuality into identity, a commodity which can be bought and sold. This docility is the opposite of the effect which bisexual activists claimed to be seeking to achieve.

I See England, I See France:
Surveillance and Normalization

I argue that visibility probably isn't really very good for us and will just result in making our sexuality easier to dominate and control.

One of the effects of entering the public sphere through visibility is that we are now shaped by public gaze, as well as by the internalization of this gaze. Actions which before were only relevant to the individual now reflect upon "the community." This is particularly true for bisexuals. Whereas Eve Sedgewick used "the closet" to describe gay and lesbian invisibility and speech to represent empowerment, Maria Pramaggiore uses "the fence" to describe both bisexual visibility and liberation.37 A fence restricts movement, rather than vision, suggesting that the danger perceived in bisexuality lies not in our essence and its visibility, but in our ability to shift positions. The use of the image of our sexuality as fluid recalls bodily fluids and the dangers of disease. All of the metaphors around bisexuality reveal a fear of movement, shape-shifting and mutability, rather than visibility. We are perceived to be most dangerous as a hidden menace.

In the acts of coming out/being out, which must take place in each moment as an element of performativity, bisexuals make themselves more docile, in the very act of making themselves. The activities, speech, dress and daily life of bisexual (and other queer) subjects-indeed, the very ways in which we understand ourselves to be queer subjects-is intimately related to the public gaze and our internalized voice of surveillance. "What would they think? Does this look ok [to them]? Is this playing into/against a stereotype [they might have]?" Bisexuals discipline ourselves to fit the spoken, unspoken or symbolic expectations of gays, lesbians and straights. To be visible, eligible for, and deserving of, public participation as bisexuals we are expected to be "good." To reveal our own normality we must normalize our sexuality for public consumption. The good bisexual registers their organizations, gets permits for their protest (or better yet, Pride) marches, and cooperates with society by disciplining the dangerous elements within their community before they become visible to the public. This governmentality is facilitated by the gay and lesbian community, which acts in a pastoral capacity, offering itself as a mentor to bisexual (and trans) communities.

I would suggest that bisexual visibility, as a form of identity performance, rather than sexual act, history, or physicality, represents a packaging of attempts to solidify and contain that which threatens to shift, change or spill over. The threat of bisexuality lays in its mutability and its hiddenness. To make it visible, and to package it as a marketable identity is to remove that which made it unique and imbued it with its effectiveness as an act of resistance. Rather than undermining oppressive binary systems of gender and sex, bisexual visibility has signalled the commencement of an over-mining of bisexual identity by the industry of sexuality itself.

Rather than challenging gender's centrality to sexuality, bisexual visibility has had the opposite effect, by affirming that it is indeed the gender of our partner (or partners) which defines us as sexual beings. As I have argued, far from allowing us greater freedom, visibility has simply enabled bi subjectivity to be surveyed and altered, through the technology of market forces, from something fluid and potentially revolutionary into a third option by which we might participate as sexual subjects in the social-political economy.

Notes

1. "Not gay, not straight: A new sexuality emerges." Newsweek, (July 17, 1995), cover, 44-50.
2. Bernadette Brooten, Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 49-50; Craig Williams, Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity (New York: University of Oxford Press, 1999), 160, 211.
3. Brooten, Love Between Women, 175-186.
4. John J. Winkler, "Laying Down The Law: The Oversight of Men's Sexual Behaviour in Classical Athens," in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin, ed (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 194. The way in which sexually passive youth were protected from the accusation of effeminacy has been examined throughly in K.J. Dover's Greek Homosexuality (New York: MJF Books, 1978).
5. Winkler, "Laying Down The Law," 200; Maud W. Gleason, "The Semiotics of Gender: Physiognomy and Self-Fashioning in the Second Century," in Before Sexuality, 391-397.
6. Jennifer Terry, An American Obsession: Science, Medicine and Homosexuality in Modern Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 42.
7. David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1988), 403.
8. Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume II: Sexual Inversion (1915). Excerpts in Merl Storr, Bisexuality: A Critical Reader (London: Routledge, 1999), 15-16, 18-19.
9. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality, 423-424; Marjorie Garber, Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 182.
10. As Maria Ramas notes, "Ultimately and always, a woman is being degraded." Maria Ramas, "Freud's Dora, Dora's Hysteria," in In Dora's Case: Freud, Hysteria, Feminism, eds. Charles Bernheimer and Clare Kahane (London: Virage Press, 1985), 157.
11. "Gender" included not only appearance but also interests and sexual role. Neil Miller, Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present (New York: First Vintage Books, 1995), 20; Simon LeVay, Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996), 73-74; Terry, An American Obsession, 67.
12. LeVay, Queer Science, 5, 97. See also, Terry, An American Obsession, 48; Miller, Out of the Past, 120.
13. SHS, "Community profile: Swinging," Citing Joan K. Dixon, `"The commencement of bisexual activity in swinging married women over age thirty,"' The Journal of Sex Research 20, no. 1 (1984): 71-90.
14. Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5 (Summer 1980): 631-60.
15. Liz Highleyman, "Identity and ideas: Strategies for Bisexuals," in Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries & Visions, Naomi Tucker, Liz Highleyman and Rebecca Kaplan, ed. (New York, Haworth Press, 1995), 82.
16. Ronald Fox's study of 90 bisexuals found that 35% had previously claimed a lesbian or gay identity. Paula Rust's study of lesbian and bisexual women found that 27% of the bisexual women she studied had first come out as lesbian. Ronald Fox figures taken from Highleyman, "Identity and ideas," 77; Rust's figures taken from Paula C. Rust, "'Coming Out' in the age of social constructionism: Sexual identity formation among lesbian and bisexual women." In Classics in Lesbian Studies. Esther D. Rothblum, ed. (New York: Haworth Press, 1997), 35.
17. Lano, Kevin. "Bisexual history: Fighting Invisibility." In Bisexual Horizons: Politics, Histories, Lives, Sharon Rose, Chris Stevens, ed. (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1996), 219-226.
18. This unity came at the price of earlier emphasis on anti-racism and multiculturalism. See Laura M. Perez, "Go ahead: Make my movement," in Bisexual Politics, 109-114.
19. Guy Baldwin, Ties That Bind: The SM/Leather/Fetish Erotic Style, Issues, Commentaries and Advice," San Francisco: Daedalus Publishing, 1993, 107; Gayle Rubin, "Old Guard, New Guard," Cuir Underground 4.2 (Summer, 1998). Online at http://www.black-rose.com/cuiru/archive/4-2/oldguard.html . MSDB Webmistress, "What is the 'Old Guard'?" FAQ Part 1: Basic Stuff, 2001. Online at http://msdb-mn.org/Home/Articles/faq_part_1.html
20. Baldwin, Ties That Bind, 59; Cecilia Tan, "Bisexuality and S/M: The bi switch revolution," in Bisexual Politics,168-170.
21. Highleyman, "Identity and ideas," 79.
22. Tan, "Bisexuality and S/M," 167.
23. Amber Ault, "Ambiguous Identity in an Unambiguous Sex/Gender Structure: The case of Bisexual Women," Sociology Quarterly 37, no.3 (1996): 449-463. Reprinted in Bisexuality: A Critical Reader, Mel Storr ed. New York, Routledge, 1999, 171. References are to the reprint edition.
24. Christine Gorman, "When AIDS Strikes Parents," Time Magazine, November 1, 1993. Online at http://www.aidskids.org/time.html
25. Ault, "Ambiguous identity in an unambiguous sex/gender structure," 171-172.
26. Aileen H. Atwood, Husbands Who Love Men: Deceit, Disease, Despair (Boca Raton: AMI Publishers, 1999).
27. "Reality Female Condom Press Clippings." Online at http://www.safersex.org/barriers/femalecondomclip.html#2
28. Ault, "Ambiguous identity in an unambiguous sex/gender structure,"171-172.
29. Liz Highleyman, "History of the Bisexual Movement," Concise Encyclopedia of Homosexuality. Online at http://binetbc.bi.org/primer.html.
30. National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuals, "The three Myths About Homosexuality," (Encino, CA: NARTH, May, 1999). Online at http://www.narth.com/menus/myths.html; Idem, "Lesbian Sexuality Said to be 'Fluid,'" (Encino, California: NARTH, August, 2000). Online at http://www.narth.com/docs/fluid.html.
31. Amendment to Colorado Constitutional Amendment, Section 30. Online at http://www.ala.org/alcts/publications/an2/an2v4/AN2v4/AN2.V4_NO14.html.
32. Ault, "Ambiguous identity in an unambiguous sex/gender structure," 171.
33. Cited by Maria Pramaggiore, in "Epistemologies of the Fence," extracts, in Bisexuality: A Critical Reader, Mel Storr ed. New York, Routledge, 1999, 144-145; Highleyman, "History of the Bisexual Movement."
34. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction (New York: Random House, 1978), 58-65.
35. Hubert L. Dreyfus, & Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 141.
36. Ibid., 134-135
37. Pramaggiore, "Epistemologies of the Fence," 144-145.

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