Queering Queer Theory, or Why Bisexuality Matters

摘要

Bisexuality is an often invisible identity. Heterosexual and homosexual communities contribute to bisexual erasure, acting in concert to protect a binary system that is complicated and disrupted by the possibility and presence of bisexuality. This article approaches bisexual erasure from three different perspectives: historical context, contemporary media and literary representations. Contemporary cultural norms and “pop science” demonstrate the acceptance of two types of partner choice—heterosexual and homosexual—whereas the bisexual person is made virtually invisible. A historical analysis reveals that our modern categories of sexuality came into existence as recently as the 19th century, and that the selection of gender of object choice as the salient feature of sexuality was not accidental, but rather it developed out of pressure to reinforce the sexual binary between men and women. When a literary character engages in sexual acts with members of both sexes, the character's sexual orientation is most often interpreted within the framework of our hetero-homosexual binary, even by the queer community, as demonstrated in an analysis of literary criticism surrounding Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body and Radclyffe Hall's Well of Loneliness. The continued erasure of bisexuality, by queer scholars in addition to mainstream critics, reveals that queer theory has not yet moved beyond its position as a homosexual opponent to heterosexuality, and therefore that bisexual theory has a role to play in queering queer theory.