Bisexuality does not reinforce the gender binary

http://www.thescavenger.net/glb/bisexuality-does-not-reinforce-the-gender-binary-39675.html

Bisexuals have been unfairly accused of reinforcing the notion that there are only two genders and thereby oppressing trans people. But those who make such criticisms of bisexuality are actually the ones doing the marginalizing, writes Julia Serano.

10 October 2010

Increasingly these days, I come across people who are ostensibly bisexual—in that they partner with both women and men—but who refuse to identify with that term.

Now this, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, as words (and especially identity labels) evolve over time and invariably go in and out of fashion.

What does bother me, however, is the explanation that is often given for this lack of identification: That the word bisexual supposedly "reinforces the gender binary," or "reinforces the notion that there are only two genders."