Bi: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality

by Julia Shaw

Yet, even in the twenty-first century most of us still assume that people are straight until proven otherwise. We center heterosexuality as the sun of our sexual solar system, blinding our exploration of other sexualities. I don’t think that everybody is bi, as is so often half-jokingly stated, rather I believe that it is time to queer our worldview by destabilizing our assumptions about sex and sexuality.

Have you ever taken a sexuality quiz online?

Hasnt everyone

Kinsey flipped around sexual norms; instead of heterosexuality being the default, he thought that bisexuality was.

“Queer theory” is an academic term which, as queer theorist Annamarie Jagose has explained, is committed to “demonstrating the impossibility of any natural sexuality.” In other words, it challenges the idea that any sexuality, but most notably heterosexuality, is somehow better or more natural than any other. Beyond that, the only definition of queer theory that people can agree on seems to be that it cannot be defined. As Jagose writes, “Part of its political efficacy, depends on its resistance to definition.”4 The main thing that queer theory does is to help us queer things, to estrange them, and to look at issues like power and social dynamics that underlie our assumptions about the world.

Ellis was outspokenly opposed to forced sterilization, but he did have the view that people who were poor, or who were psychologically or physically ill or fragile, shouldn’t reproduce. He himself lived in line with these beliefs. In his autobiography he writes that, on the advice of a doctor, he and his wife were voluntarily childless so as not to pass on his wife’s psychological fragility.

the Netherlands. Homosexuality was decriminalized there in 1811, and it was the first country in the world to legalize gay marriage.

Dang

Until I came across this research I spent a lifetime thinking that I was an outlier, probably a genetic or evolutionary anomaly. Now I’m not so sure. Supporting this idea is research on creatures that, according to Monk and colleagues, “have traits that likely resemble the ancestral organisms in which sexual behaviors evolved.”16 These creatures are echinoderms, a family of marine animals that includes starfish. These starfish are behaviorally bisexual. As a side note, I feel like starfish should be the mascots for queerness. They engage in homosexual and heterosexual behavior, they can reproduce asexually, and while most starfish are either male or female some species can switch their sex. Perhaps instead of bisexual behavior being a fluke, it is the baseline. Instead of searching for evolutionary reasons to justify the existence of homosexual behavior, we should be looking to justify the existence of exclusively heterosexual behavior.

In fact, there is only one species in which it has been shown to occur with any regularity, and that is the domestic sheep. About 8 percent of rams, when given the choice of rams or ewes as sex partners, mate preferentially with rams.”18

only bisexuals grapple with how living day-to-day in a monogamous relationship might be interpreted as deceitful unless they disclose their bisexuality to others.” Bisexual people need to regularly decide whether or not to come out, knowing that if they don’t, they will probably be mislabeled as straight or gay. And what should people do if they have been mislabeled because of who they are currently dating or married to? Do they correct the person or let it slide? If they don’t correct someone’s assumption does that mean they are lying about their sexuality? If they do correct the person, are they really prepared for that conversation? Such questions add a particularly tricky dimension to coming out as bisexual. This is amplified in settings where talk about sexuality is already taboo. Including at work.

higher levels of sexual identity concealment are associated with lower overall psychological well-being and more depressive symptoms.

On social media you see accounts with clear bi-visual styles: the telltale pink-purple-blue color combinations, either in the form of the bi flag, bi moons, or bi triangles; cartoon animals with bi flags, blushing Japanese manga-style characters, and the odd stuffed panda, presumably a mascot by virtue of being both black and white, a nod to bisexual people being seen as a combination of hetero- and homosexual, and because it references pansexuals. The best way I can describe the visual style of the bi community is “cute.” I can’t help but think that this may be a deliberate desire to steer away from the stereotype of the hypersexual bisexual.

For example, a literature review of studies on how school influences adolescents’ identity development found that “messages may unintentionally be communicated to adolescents concerning who they should or can be through differentiation and selection, teaching strategies, teacher expectations, and peer norms.”59 This means that it is the school ecosystem that sets the tone about sexuality. It’s how teachers talk about sexuality in the hallway, whether they include or exclude LGBT+ history and people from the curriculum, and the kinds of play between students that they facilitate or prevent. It’s in the between moments where kids learn what sexualities are acceptable; between lessons and lectures, between direct conversations with teachers and parents, between moments with peers. The whole educational ecosystem makes it clear what sexual identities are available, included, and valued. It’s when sex-ed allows schools and teachers to intentionally support the identity development of sexual minorities, where explorative learning is facilitated, that such inclusion can make a tremendous difference to adolescent identity. When situated in a supportive classroom environment, teachers can help students explore new identities, help them refine their identities, and come to understand their identities better.

People often seem to expect, or hope, that women are at least a bit sexually flexible. Not, the totally queer kind, but the kind that is alluring for heterosexual men.