BISEXUALITY ; A GUIDE.
Made by Dante ; butch bisexual, he/she.
This rentry contains use of "queer" as a reclaimed slur.
Links may include use of other reclaimed slurs, so please click with caution if this may be triggering or upsetting.
What is bisexuality?
" sexually or romantically attracted to both men and women, or to more than one sex or gender. "
Oxford Languages.
"a person who acknowledges in themselves the potential to be attracted–romantically, emotionally and/or sexually–to people of more than one gender, not necessarily at the same time, in the same way, or to the same degree. "
pflag.
"Bisexuality is a whole, fluid identity. Do not assume that bisexuality is binary or dougamous in nature; that we must have "two" sides or that we MUST be involved simultaneously with both genders to be fulfilled human beings. In fact, don't assume that there are only two genders. Do not mistake our fluidity for confusion, irresponsibility, or an inability to commit. Do not equate promiscuity, infidelity, or unsafe sexual behavior with bisexuality. Those are human traits that cross ALL sexual orientations. Nothing should be assumed about anyone's sexuality—including your own."
The Bisexual Manifesto, 1990.
What counts as bisexuality?
Attraction to the same, opposite or more genders.
This can include any number of variations ; not all bisexual people experience 50/50 attraction to men and women. Some bisexuals are only interested in men & nonbinary people, or women & multigendered people. It's a deeply personal label that depends entirely on the person experiencing it.
You can be 40/60, 20/80, 10/90 or any other form of bisexuality. It's all valid, at the end of the day!
Bisexuality is not "50% gay, 50% straight" ; many bisexuals have a complex view of their identity that stems from their relationship to being queer & links into their gender identity and gender nonconformity. Bisexuality is not simply "gay in a straight way" or "hetero-presenting queerness", but its own rich identity that exists outside the binary of heterosexuality and homosexuality. Bisexuality is a whole, fluid identity.
The only requirement is attraction to those who have similar and opposing identities to your own.
Whatever this means for you is deeply personal - your relationship with your sexuality is your own, no matter if you are bisexual, gay, heterosexual, asexual or any other identity.
Is bisexuality trans-exclusionary? NO, and it never has been. Bisexuality has, from its earliest years, always included trans & nonbinary people. In fact, many bisexuals reject the gender binary and heterosexual gender norms entirely, and have always embraced gender-nonconformity.
A 2020 study by G. Rieger found that, from pooled data, "men and women with bisexual orientations appeared neither like heterosexual nor homosexual individuals, at least with respect to their gender-related traits." In the 1983 Boston Bisexual Women's Network Newsletter, Karin Baker and Helen Harrison wrote that "bisexuality works to subvert the gender system and everything it upholds because it is not based on gender".
As far back as 1986, bisexual activists like Ruth Hubbard have been saying things like "gender need not to be a significant category, though for some of us it may be. The Bisexual Manifesto, sometimes known as the Bi Bible, from 1990, makes the trans inclusion ambundantly clear when it states "Do not assume that bisexuality is binary or dougamous in nature; that we must have "two" sides or that we MUST be involved simultaneously with both genders to be fulfilled human beings. In fact, don't assume that there are only two genders."
Much of this misconception stems from the fact that the suffix of bi refers to two, which some use as a reason to view bisexuality as only inclusive of binary men & women. In truth, the origin of bisexuality was first defined in Psychopathia Sexualis, an 1886 book by Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing. In this, bisexuality was defined as such due to it being a combination of homosexual & heterosexual desires; borrowing from botany, Krafft-Ebing used the term bisexual [originally meaning a plant that had separate male and female cones or flowers on the same plant] to refer to those with both heterosexual & homosexual attraction & desires. Psychopathia Sexualis is deeply controversial for many reasons, but is notable for being one of the earliest works on homosexuality and its inclusion of the term.
Bisexuality has always loved & embraced trans people, and trans people have always been bisexual.
Isn't bisexual a new term? Bisexual as a term has existed since around the 1970s. After the separatist lesbianism movement, many women who once identified as once the more general lesbian moved to defining themself as bisexual instead, as more bisexual-specific community groups were created. The archived website for BiNetUSA gives us a timeline from 1966 to 2006 of bisexual history & activism. "1972 - Don Fass founds the National Bisexual Liberation group in New York City. The group’s goal is social and consciousness-raising. It publishes a pamphlet, “Bi-Sexual Expression.” It continues to cite other groups. "1974 - Dr. Fritz Klein and bi activist Chuck, co-found Bi Forum in New York City." & "1975 - Jeff Davidson founds the Bisexual Group in Philadelphia, Pa." These are the earliest recorded bisexual-specific groups I could find, but I'm sure there were more grassroots movements that may not have been recorded.
According to Stonewall.org.uk, "The UK’s first bi group, London Bisexual Group, was formed in 1981, followed by other groups in Edinburgh (1984), Brighton (1985), Manchester (1986) and Glasgow (1988), as well as a London-based Bisexual Women’s Group. A magazine, Bi-Monthly, was founded, as well as two bi helplines in London and Edinburgh, and the UK’s longest continually-running LGBTQ+ community event, the annual BiCon."
People have been bisexual for as long as we've been attracted to each other. There are entire websites dedicated to famous bisexuals, including some whose behavior or attraction align with our modern views of bisexuality - however, it is important to remember that we can only speculate on how they may have identified, and that not all people may have assigned themselves the label had it existed. What we can do is study their writings, behavior & history, which paint a picture that aligns with our modern view of bisexuality.
Can bisexuals be butch, futch or femme? Yes, of course! Bisexuals have existed in butch & femme spaces since the terms gained prominence, and were used by both queer men & women at different points in time. For as long as there have been communities for queer women, there have been bisexuals who have identified with the structured roles & identities between them.
Early communities used the term "tribade", a term defined as "a woman who engages in sexual activity with another woman". According to Bonnie Zimmerman's Encyclopedia of Lesbian Histories and Cultures, "By the close of the nineteenth century, “tribade” had been supplanted by the terms “sapphist,” “lesbian,” “invert,” and “homosexual.”". Zimmerman also states that the term lesbian had been used to describe love between women in 1870, and by 1945 it was used to refer to the female equivalent of sodomy. For a very long time, being a lesbian referred more towards what you did with other women, as opposed to exclusive attraction. At the time, a lesbian could have been what we would now call bisexual - all it meant was that one was a woman attracted to other women.
Lesbian bar culture of the 1940s and 1950s is where "butch" and "fem" first start seeing common use among sapphic communities. Natasha Kraus' article Desire Work, Performativity, and the Structuring of a Community: Butch/Fem Relations of the 1940s and 1950s describes butch & fem dynamics as complex social dynamics, both self-defined & community-defined; in many ways, butch & fem described the way we might use the term top & bottom or fem & masc now, expressing both how someone might present themself as well as their role in a sexual partnership. While butch was a term used before then, in bar culture it became an identity of itself - Kraus quotes Judith Butler, who says "by performing an identity, the individual displaces that identity and must continually reperform it in order to sustain it, and yet ironically once again displace it". Being butch or fem was a performance of identity, a marker of ones sexual position, gender, presentation and a lifestyle all at once.
It is important to note, however, that bisexuals - just like today! - were also in the same bars as lesbians at this time. A bisexual woman who wanted to go after other women would have no other option, in an era where same-sex relationships were illegal & there were few places for women to persue each other. Bar culture was just that - the culture of being in these bars & these communities, of being a woman who loved other women. In an era before bisexual women had their own spaces or a specific label to discern their type of attraction, lesbian spaces & bisexual spaces were one in the same.
As discussed earlier, bisexuals split from lesbians in the 1970s, pushed primarily by the rise in radical feminism, political lesbianism & lesbian separatism. Separatism was defined by a withdrawal from working, personal or casual relationships with men, choosing to replace any relationship they had with a man with a woman instead. The originators of the movement, The Furies: Lesbian/Feminist Monthly (v. 1) stated that "as long as women still benefit from heterosexuality, receive its privileges and security, they will at some point have to betray their sisters, especially Lesbian sisters who do not receive those benefits." Yamissette Westerband critiqued this point of view in Lesbians in the Twentieth Century, where she wrote "In essence, lesbian feminists tried to untie lesbianism from sex, so heterosexual feminists were more comfortable [...] One way they were able to do so was by disentangling lesbian sexuality from heterosexuality and re-conceptualizing heterosexual sex as consorting with “the enemy”." The lesbian identity moved from an interest in women to an exclusion of men, not just in terms of sex but in terms of all relationships, platonic or otherwise. To consort with men was to consort with the enemy, to be an accessory to misogyny & female - lesbian - oppression.
This, of course, put bisexuals in a difficult position. Lesbian became more than just a label for an interest in women, but a political identity, something they had to be part of & could only do so by rejecting men. Despite sharing a rich history with the lesbian community, the influence bisexual women had was degraded & seen as less important; they were traitors to the cause, obsessed with men and not willing to give up the privilige that associating with men gave them. In Bisexual Women and the "Threat" to Lesbian Space: Or What If All the Lesbians Leave?, Sharon Dale Stone references a quote from Marilyn Murphy in Thinking About Bisexuality, where she claims "because they freely choose to sleep with men, bisexual women are the only true heterosexuals." Stone continues to discuss her experience as a separationist, "In 1979, we wondered why anyone would choose to be bisexual. By 1981, we were being told that regardless of what we thought, bisexuals weren't going to go away. It seems, though, that that was too frightening a thought to contemplate. We remained a "like-minded crew," proud of our ability to rise above contention." She goes on to later say, "They were, I assumed, women who wanted to take all the goodies that lesbians had to offer but were unwilling to pay the price of giving up heterosexual privilege and make a total commitment to women." In Breaking Silence About the 'B-Word': Bisexual Identity and Lesbian-Feminist Discourse, Stacey Young reports from a letter in the1986 issue of Lesbian Connection, "There seems to be a plague hitting a lot of long-time Lesbians and turning them straight." Patricia Roth Schwartz stated in off our backs: On the Hasbian Phenomenon - with "hasbian" referring to former lesbians, often targeting bisexuals - that "We want to know who will stand up for us and be counted, who will be at our sides for the duration. Our way of life is hard... It makes sense that we don't want anyone who once came out of the closet to go back in." Stone criticizes this by saying "To lump all bisexual women together and categorically dismiss them as traitors to the cause is as problematic as lumping all lesbians together and categorically defining them as "radical feminist man-haters."
For a long time, there was a lot of hostility towards the bisexual & lesbian community. The attitude around being queer began to change, as people became more aware that homosexual attraction was not a conscious choice, but rather based on many complicated factors; therefore, it was not feasible for lesbianism to be seen as a political identity, but rather a key factor of who a person is. Political lesbianism began to fall out of favor, with many ex-political lesbians instead adopting radical feminism & its transphobic sister gender-critical feminism. Both movements focus on a similar concept of rejecting men & the patriarchy, but instead of practicing lesbianism as a form of rebellion or an act against the patriarchy, many modern radfems are openly heterosexual, echoing Westerband's critiques of lesbian feminism, and often reject the stereotypes involving them all being lesbians. The rise of febfems, or female exclusive bisexuals, is an attempt at the modern-day political lesbian, with self-identified bisexuals rejecting men in all ways but failing to realize that it only highlights their transphobia rather than helping other women.
This is not to say that all modern lesbians are radical feminists, nor that the separationist movement should not have happened. Before the rise in political lesbianism, many bisexuals were beginning to utilize the term as an identity & forming their own groups across the world. Many bisexual men, who were widely unaffected by political lesbianism, created groups for other bisexuals far before much of this ideology took on and became widespread. To say lesbians, political or otherwise, were the reason bisexuals parted from the lesbian community would be ahistorical. The intent to do so was always there, but the outward hostility from political lesbians & lesbian feminists towards bi women at the time drove a wedge between both communities that has taken a long time to heal.
Nowadays, it feels as though there is a form of recociliation between bisexual & lesbian communities. The encouragement of terms like sapphic and WLW allow for more positive discussions to be had surrounding what it means to be a woman who loves women. Furthermore, the discussion of being WLW as a gender & an identity has made the overall space safer for nonbinary & gender non-conforming sapphics, allowing those who may present their sapphic identity in a way that contradicts with cis womanhood a space. There is still much work to be done to make both communities & sapphism as a whole safe for either group, but the push for bi-lesbian solidarity has helped many more people than it has harmed.
Aren't butch & femme lesbian exclusive?
Technically, butch & femme are not terms exclusive to any LGBT group. Their origins are within ball culture wherein they were used to describe different forms of gender presentation in different categories of performance. These spaces were created by & for Black and Latino drag queens, due to the racism & antiBlackness experienced in established drag queen pageant circuits.
From houseofluna.org ;
Butch Queen refers to a gay/bi/same-gender-loving cisgender man.
Butch refers to a masculine presenting woman.
Femme Queen refers to trans and femme-presenting women.
These terms were made in a community that upheld all identities, but was primarily formed from Black & Latino gay men, trans women & drag queens. Gay men & trans women were very common in the ballroom scene, and helped to shape concepts like "vogue", "realness", "face" & "sex siren" alongside "butch" and "femme" - all terms that are commonly used in LGBT circles to this day. We owe so much of our verbiage to ballroom culture & the Black and Latino people within it.
The term "butch" was found earliest in Polari, a form of slang or cant often used in circles involving performers, criminals, sex workers & the gay community which traces back to at least the 19th century, often argued to be as early as the 16th century. Polari was used as a coded language among gay men when homosexuality was still illegal, and often referred to things like flirting, identifying oneself and discussing gayness when being open about such an identity would be illegal. In the 2003 book Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men by Paul Baker, Baker defines "butch" to mean "masculine", and uses it as a term for gender expression, comparable to the more effeminate "camp". Butch was, more frequently, used as a descriptor of gender identity and presentation to define a masculine LGBT person, both male & female, of any queer alignment or identity. Butch was used both as as an adjective and a noun; a person could be a butch or dress/present as butch. This is similar to how butch is used today - it is both an identity, a brand of queer masculinity, and an adjective used to define masculine behavior & dress in queer communities.
Leslie Feinberg's fictional autobiography Stone Butch Blues, which takes heavy inspiration from Feinberg's own life & experiences, makes several notes of both non-women and bisexuals being butches & femmes throughout the novel.
"Jacqueline patted my thigh and flashed me a sweet smile. The other femmes—male and female—looked at me differently."
"It’s funny—it doesn’t matter whether it’s women or men—it’s always high femme that pulls me by the waist and makes me sweat."
Feinberg's work is often cited as a core work for any LGBT person to read, as it helps to put the struggles of butches, stone butches & working class lesbians & LGBT folk into perspective for a modern audience. Hir work has helped many a LGBT person & ally alike understand what our people used to go through & what we endured, and the trans, working class & communist activism zie was part of cannot be ignored as part of hir legacy. If the author of one of the most cited works on being butch refers to men as femmes & self-identified butches as bi, is that not proof enough that we are allowed these identifiers, too?
To call these terms exclusive to anyone is to erase their history and intent, and to remove their importance from Black & Latino gay & trans communities, sex workers and early gay communities. These terms have history behind them, and those before us used them freely to label themselves & their friends, lovers and family. To ignore the butches & femmes of our past is to ignore those who were killed and brutalized, shoved away by society and who fought for our right to call ourselves lesbians, bisexual, gay, transgender & more in the present day.
This is not, however, to say that the butch lesbian identity is somehow comparable to any other identity, or that non-lesbian butches should compare their experiences to those of butch lesbians. The same applies to our femmes.
It is incorrect to assume that the experience of butch & femme lesbians can be compared to those of butch & femme bisexuals, because the experience of being a lesbian is something that fundamentally changes the relationship one has with identity, gender and the patriarchy at large.
Being butch or femme is something deeply personal to all butches & all femmes, and this should always be respected first & foremost.
But how can bisexuals be butch or femme if they're available to men? No person is "available" to anyone. This language and rhetoric is deeply misogynistic and is something many people spread around without realizing the damage it does to bi women & femmes. People are not products, or things to be attainted, and the language used here echoes the way misogynists discuss women - as something to be owned, consumed and thrown away once she is no longer useful. Regardless of if you are using these terms to mean their use in ballroom, the lesbian bar scene or something else entirely, no woman is "available to men". This is true for all women, including heterosexual women. No woman is available to men, and the rhetoric that we are is what leads to misogynistic violence.
I'm [insert experience here], does this mean I'm bisexual? This definition fits me, but I don't think I'm bisexual. Do I have to call myself bisexual? I'm monosexual, but I'm attracted to nonbinary people. Does this mean I'm actually bisexual? and so on, and so forth. Bisexuality is not like the draft - you are not obligated to identify as bisexual just because the label may apply to your experiences. Attraction is complex at the best of times, and there can be a lot of complicating factors that affect the way you might view yourself and your sexual identity. It could be a matter of circumstance - a fleeting crush, a partner coming out, a realization about yourself - or a dissatisfaction with the current label you've assigned yourself. It can be hard to navigate how you feel about yourself at the best of times, and even harder when we live in a world that is so heavy on the idea of everything needing to fit neatly into a little box.
If you do not feel comfortable defining yourself as bisexual, or if it feels as though bisexuality is constricting, you may... not be bisexual. You may be monosexual [gay, lesbian, heterosexual] or find more comfort in blanket terms like sapphic, WLW, achillean, MLM, queer... ultimately, nobody can truly tell you if you are or are not bisexual. That is up to you to decide for yourself, and no amount of wordy write-ups will ever be a succinct diagnostic criteria for bisexuality.
However, if you find yourself repulsed or disgusted by the term, it may be time that you examine where that distaste comes from. If you find the very idea of bisexuality to be repulsive, perhaps it might be good to look inside yourself and think why that is. Many people have internalized biphobia, which ends up impacting the way they view bisexual people - harmful stereotypes and myths about bisexuals as these promiscious cheaters, of being traitors to the feminist cause, of being untrustworthy thieves of terms and culture end up permeating in spaces when they are not challenged.
Even if you are not bisexual, if you find yourself repulsed by bisexual identities, introspection may serve you well.
I used to identify as a lesbian/gay, am I allowed to identify as bisexual? You do not need anyone's permsision to identify as bisexual. If the label feels right & you are using it in good faith, you are allowed to call yourself bisexual. If you've been questioning if you might be bisexual for a while, and have felt like you need permission, please take this as all the permission you need.
Anyone can be bisexual, regardless of how you've identified in the past, your age, your ethnicity, your gender identity, your experience, etc etc. If bisexual feels like the right label for you, please, use it! The worst that can happen is that you find something new about yourself.
FURTHER READING. All links here link directly to books, essays and articles on their respective topics. I have tried to link directly to accessible PDFs where possible - where I could not, I have dropped links to their pages on jstor, Google Books or any other place they can be accessed. I strongly encourage you to read through these sources yourself, and to form your own opinions from here. This Rentry exists as a space for academic resources about bisexuality, in order to help those questioning if they are bi and to dispell common myths about bisexuality. Use this as a jumping off point to learn more.
Books & Articles.
Why Butch/Femme Belongs To Bisexuals Too
A Brief His and Herstory About Butch and Femme
Butch & Femme History Carrd
Queer Studies: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Anthology edited by Brett Beemyn and Mickey Eliason [1996]
Archive of the Boston Bisexual Women's Network Newsletters [1983 - 2010]
Bisexual Resources
Does Liking a Nonbinary Person Make You Bi or Pan? Not Necessarily
Zines, Magazines & Other Written Works.
Femmes Unite!
Anything that Moves
Love Letters to Baby Bis
A Guide to Overcoming Internalized Biphobia
FOX&SNAKE / Issue #1 Bisexual Issue
mousie #2
Videos.
The Comphet Trilogy
A History of The Word Bisexual
Why We Hate Bi Men
Why We Hate Bi Women
How Bisexuality Changed Video Games
biphobia is a real thing, actually
Bisexuality: The Invisible Letter "B"
LGBT+ Discourse: Bisexuality and Fluidity of Labels
And remember - the best way you can learn more is by asking a bisexual!