Monday, November 19, 2012
Bisexuality and Binaries Revisited
Posted by -julia at 11:49 AM

http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2012/11/bisexuality-and-binaries-revisited.html

In October, 2010, my essay, "Bisexuality does not reinforce the gender binary," first appeared on the internet. The main reason why I wrote the piece was to illustrate how the reinforcing trope (i.e., the notion that certain genders, sexualities or identities "reinforce" the gender binary, or heteronormativity, or the patriarchy, or the hegemonic-gender-system-of-your-choice) is selectively doled out in queer and feminist communities in order to police their borders. Since queer communities are dominated by non-feminine, cisgender, and exclusively gay and lesbian folks, these individuals are almost never accused of "reinforcing the gender binary." In contrast, more marginalized identities (e.g., bisexual, transgender, femme) are routinely subjected to the reinforcing trope. While my "reinforcing" essay received many positive responses, it also garnered some harsh criticism, particularly from within certain segments of transgender and gender variant communities. All of the critiques that I heard or read pretty much ignored my primary point—namely, the underlying forms of sexism that determine who gets accused of "reinforcing" ->-bleeped-<- and who does not—and instead focused solely on the rote assertion that the word "bisexual" (and, by association, anyone who identifies as bisexual) really does "reinforce the gender binary."

Since then, I have been considering writing a follow up piece to discuss the numerous problems with such claims (aside from the obvious fact that they single out bisexuals for being attracted to "two" sexes, but not the overwhelming majority of gays and lesbians who view themselves as attracted to the "same" sex, but not to the "opposite" sex—a notion that appears to be just as binary). In addition, since my piece was published, I became aware of an excellent blog-post by Shiri Eisner called, 'Words, binary and biphobia, or: why "bi" is binary but "FTM" is not.' Eisner's post made a number of points similar to my own, but also forwarded new arguments that had not occurred to me before, and which led me to think about this debate in new ways. For all of these reasons, I felt that it would be worthwhile to pen a new essay (this very one here!) to revisit this subject.